The Gathering Dark (8 page)

The final, rising chord sang in the room even after she’d taken her hands from the ivory keys and dropped them into her lap. With a satisfied sigh, she looked up, flipping a strand of hair out of her eyes.

Walker stared at her, pale as snow.

“That’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen anyone do.” His voice was gravelly. “That was unbelievable, Keira.
You’re
unbelievable.”

She smiled. “Thanks.”

Holding her gaze, he stepped around the keyboard and sat
down next to her on the bench. “No, I mean it. I’m not giving you some random compliment.” He swallowed hard. “Where I come from, music is
everything.
And no one can do anything remotely like what you just did. Growing up, I spent years trying to play.
Years.
Piano and violin and dulcimer—whatever I could get my hands on. And it never worked. I was terrible at everything.”

“It’s not for everyone,” Keira offered, slouching into herself as though she were protecting her talent. As though Walker might want it badly enough to twist it right out of her.

“I know. That’s the problem. But you . . . ” He shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving hers. “Do you know how you look when you play? It’s like you’re making the music from scratch. I could almost taste it.”

The compliment washed over Keira. “I guess we’re all good at different stuff. I mean, I suck at math and history. And I draw like a three-year-old.”

The intensity of Walker’s iron-hard expression cracked. A laugh slipped from his mouth like steam. “Really?” He eyed her. “I’m not sure I believe you.”

“Believe it,” Keira said. “Stick figures are about as good as I get.” She leaned against the edge of the keyboard. “So what about you? You must have a talent of some sort. What are you good at?”

Walker tipped his head to one side. The inviting set of his shoulders, the way his hands slid across the wooden curves
of her piano—it was a reply all its own, and it sent an ache through her. “Numbers. Sleight-of-hand. Making you blush.” He ticked them off on his fingers, his lips curving up when the hot flush in her cheeks proved him right.

In the hall, the front door flew open and Keira’s mom came rushing into the house and dropped her briefcase with a thud. “Keira! Thank goodness you’re okay. Let me look at you.”

Walker slid off the bench and stood with his hands in his pockets while her mother checked her hands and peered into her eyes. “Are you sore anywhere? Any bruises?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“She was complaining about her vision being weird,” Walker offered.

Keira shot him a dirty look, then turned back to her mother—and immediately panicked.

Her mom’s tired, dark-ringed eyes and bobbed hair were the picture of normal. It was the enormous black tree that had appeared behind her mother that freaked Keira out.

Chapter Ten

O
H, SHIT
. N
OT AGAIN
.

The tree trunk was covered in deep-ridged bark and the lowest branches were thick with wine-red leaves and the same strange, oblong fruit she’d seen on the kitchen counter. Obviously, that had
not
been some sort of gourmet banana. The tree seemed to be growing straight up through the ceiling. Keira couldn’t see the upper branches—the tree looked like it had been neatly sliced off by the second story of her house.

She was too shocked to speak, too shocked to move. Even her blood seemed to hesitate in her veins. Part of her was convinced that she was losing her mind. Normal people didn’t see
fruit that wasn’t real. Doors in the middle of the street. Strange trees in the living room. But she felt so
sane.

“Keira? You do look paler than usual. Are you sure you didn’t hit your head?”

“I’m
fine
,” she insisted. “If I’d hit my head, I’d probably be throwing up or seeing things that weren’t there, right?” Saying it out loud was a sort of test. To see how crazy it sounded.

Her mom let out a thin laugh, but behind her, Keira heard Walker suck in a sharp breath. She shifted in her seat, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.

He stood rigid, staring at her, his eyes round as a shark’s. He looked like he was seeing her for the first time—like he suddenly recognized her somehow. Her eyebrows lifted in response, but before she could say anything—before she could even think of what she might say, her mother pounced on Walker, shaking his hand like he was some sort of minor celebrity.

“And you must be Walker! I’m so glad that you were there to help Keira this afternoon.”

Walker blinked, sliding his most charming smile into place like a shield. The tree loomed over them, shivering in a wind that Keira could neither hear nor feel, but that nonetheless chilled her to the bone.

Walker cleared his throat. “Well, Keira actually didn’t seem to need much help. Even after a bad car wreck . . . ” His words slowed, like he was turning them over, looking for some
sort of secret hidden underneath. “A
terrible
car wreck . . . Keira’s very . . . capable. Independent.”

“But you stayed with her,
and
you gave her a ride home,” her mother insisted. “That was way above and beyond. I’m grateful for that.”

“It was my pleasure, really,” Walker said, his gaze shifting from Keira’s mother back to her.

“Well, I’m glad Keira was with someone so considerate.” Behind her, one of the fruits fell from the tree. The instant it would have landed—should have landed—on the carpet, it disappeared, taking the vision of the tree along with it. There was nothing abnormal left in the living room—Keira had a perfect view of the sagging couch and the dusty picture frames on the mantel.

The simultaneous relief and embarrassment overwhelmed her. Keira felt herself start to flush. “Mom! Please.”

“All I’m saying is that I appreciate that he’s being nice to you!” Keira’s mother snapped. She turned back to Walker. “I’d invite you to stay for dinner, but I think Keira should probably rest, and we need to call the body shop before they close.” She tapped her knuckle against her forehead, thinking. “Oh! And I should call the insurance adjuster too. Maybe dinner one night soon?”

“I’d like that.” Walker looked straight at Keira. “A lot.”

Heat spread through Keira that had nothing to do with being embarrassed. All at once, her mother was incredibly
in the way
and Keira just wanted her out of the room.

Walker started for the door. “I’ll head out,” he said, sticking his hands back in his pockets, which made him look almost vulnerable. He looked over at Keira’s mom. “It was really nice to meet you, Mrs. Brannon.”

“You too, Walker.” Her mom followed him toward the door, but when Keira stood up to go with them, her mother raised a warning finger. “Oh, no you don’t. You stay right there. As soon as I see Walker off, I’m going to get you settled on the couch and you are going to take it
easy
, young lady.”

Walker waved as he headed out the door.

“Handsome
and
charming,” her mother said as she watched his car pull out of the driveway. She sighed. “Don’t let him turn your head, though,” she warned Keira. “You don’t want to end up stuck because of some guy. Trust me. I wasn’t that much older than you when I met your father. We shouldn’t have gotten engaged so young. We were just babies.”

The story had gotten more bitter over the last couple of years. When Keira was little, her mother’s cheeks would bloom pink when she got to the proposal bit, and the pinprick diamond of her engagement ring would sparkle as she spun it around her finger. Back then, the story went that Keira’s dad’s love was even bigger and stronger than her mom’s singing voice.

The phone rang and Keira’s mom hurried across the room. She glanced at the caller ID. “Speak of the devil,” she muttered.

“Hello? Dennis?” Her mother headed into the kitchen. “Yeah, she’s fine.” She dropped her voice, but it didn’t stop
Keira from hearing. “What I want to know is where the hell
you’ve
been all afternoon.”

While her mother banged pots and cracked open cans, Keira sneaked back over to the piano. Nothing hurt, and she knew that the visions had nothing to do with hitting her head. Not when they’d started before the accident.

Slowly, quietly, she started to play the Goldberg Variations. It was calm. Logical. It was good music for thinking and she had so much to think about—like the possibility that she was losing her mind. Or whether Walker could have seen the same visions, which seemed even crazier. Superimposed over all of it was the thrill that went through her every time she thought of Walker—the feeling that something had begun between the two of them that Keira wasn’t going to be able to stop.

She stayed at the piano while her parents argued over the phone and dinner simmered on the stove. The music soothed her, but no matter how long she played, it didn’t answer any of her questions.

•  •  •

Later that night, when she was supposed to be in bed, Keira called Susan.

Susan answered, sounding vaguely out of breath.

“Hey,” Keira said. “You busy?”

“Nah. I just got home. I was literally one minute past curfew.”

“Did your mom freak?”

“A hundred percent. I’m actually not allowed to see Tommy
alone anymore. Which is completely ridiculous. Oh—there was one good thing, though. My flute teacher loved ‘Syrinx.’ She was—and I quote—‘impressed’ with me for picking it.”

Susan’s flute lesson sounded so normal—so impossibly normal and far away from everything that Keira had been worrying about with Walker and the accident and the strange things she was seeing. It took her a minute to remember picking out the music in the first place, which startled her. Music was always the first thing on her mind. It was
supposed
to be the first thing on her mind. And now it wasn’t.

“Oh—oh, good,” Keira stammered.

“You sound kind of weird,” Susan observed. “Did everything go okay with Walker? Because I was really hoping the two of you would go to dinner with me and Tommy next weekend, what with the whole no-more-solo-dates dictum my parents just handed me.”

“It’s not Walker—I wrecked my car. Some moron in an SUV slammed into my door like I was invisible.” Absentmindedly, Keira ran a hand down her left side, feeling her impossibly intact ribs.

Susan’s gasp crackled through the phone. “Oh, my God! Are you hurt? Is your car okay?”

“I’m fine, which is kind of a miracle, because my car was—is—totally smashed up. Walker thinks the insurance company’s going to total it.” She sighed, wondering if the payout would be enough to buy her another car, or if she’d be stuck begging rides and catching the bus.

“Wait—this was before or after you met Walker?”

“After. I was actually leaving the diner when it happened. He stayed while I waited for the tow truck. I think he wanted to make sure my brain wasn’t going to start leaking out of my ears or something.”

“That’s totally sweet.” Susan sounded pleased.

“It was pretty helpful,” Keira admitted. “He saved me from having to get a ride home with the creepy tow truck guy.”

“So you got a ride with the helpful hot guy instead?” Susan asked pointedly. “He
rescued
you, Keira. You have to see him again after that, right?”

The desire to pretend that Walker didn’t mean anything to her rose up in Keira, curling around her like some sort of fast-growing vine. Still, the way she’d felt when they touched, and how he’d stared at her after she’d played for him—she couldn’t act like those things hadn’t meant something.

“He didn’t ‘rescue’ me. He gave me a ride home. Which actually isn’t all that uncommon at the end of a date.”

“So it
was
a date!” Susan crowed. “And you like him enough to see him again next week. Just once. For me?” It wasn’t really a question. “I’ll plan it all. Dinner and a movie. You won’t have to do anything except call and tell him when and where.”

“I’m not sure I can give up that much practice time,” Keira hedged.

Susan ignored her. “I’ll check with Tommy about what day, and then I’ll call you back.”

“I’d rather make plans just with you,” Keira insisted. “Speaking of which, do you want to come over this weekend? I could accompany you on ‘Syrinx,’ if you want to practice.”

She rubbed her forehead, hoping Susan would take the bait. All she’d wanted was to call her best friend and moan about her wrecked car. And maybe, God forbid, talk her way through the confusion that Walker had stirred up inside her. Instead, here she was trying to keep Susan from forcing her into an faux relationship with someone Keira wasn’t even sure she had room for in her life—no matter how scaldingly hot he was.

“That would be great, actually,” Susan said. “My teacher was happy, but she seemed a little worried about whether I’d be able to pull it off. If you help me, though, I know I’ll be able to get it. What about Sunday afternoon?”

“Perfect,” Keira said. “I’ll see you then.”

They hung up. With the phone still in her hand, Keira flopped back on her pillow and threw her arm over her eyes.

There was no way she was getting out of this double date. And, in the darkest little corner of her heart, she knew she didn’t really want to get out of it anyway.

What am I thinking?

She was thinking about his low-note voice.

She was thinking about his knowing grin.

But mostly, she was thinking about the things he’d told her after she’d played for him, and how much she wanted a chance to talk to him again. Even if it meant breaking her own rules.

Chapter Eleven

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, K
EIRA
wandered into the kitchen, her eyes gritty with sleep and the bitter taste of yesterday’s weirdness still thick on her tongue. Her mom was sitting at the table. She’d obviously been waiting for Keira.

“Hey, sweetie. How’d you sleep?” she asked. Her hands were curled tight around her coffee mug. There was something overly alert about her—like she was spring-loaded. Keira was surprised to see her. Usually her parents both evacuated the house early on Saturday, like refugees fleeing a coming war.