About the Dark (2 page)

“You two are very quiet,” Fox said. “Is there
any groping going on?”

“No,” Sinna said firmly and made a step after
me.

“Keep it that way,” Fox advised him.

I straightened out and tapped Sinna on the
shoulder. As he made another step deeper into the room, I tiptoed
around him and back toward the wall. I slightly worried about not
finding it again, but no, it was still where I’d left it. Sinna,
however, was lost: I could hear his thoughtful, meandering
steps.

“Ever, where are you?” Demi yelled.

“Somewhere,” I said, holding onto the
wall.

Judging by her voice, Demi was on the other
side of the room, and now, judging by the sound of her steps, she
began walking toward me. I assumed she’d get lost en route because
it’s impossible to walk in a straight line when you can’t see, but
Demi must have moved too fast to lose her way. She slammed into the
wall next to me, and even though it sounded painful, she didn’t
complain. She only groped around. I barely dodged her. Yes, I knew
it had been barely because her nails scratched my cheek.

As I trotted ahead along the wall, she
started to chase me, her feet making harsh slapping sounds. I tried
to walk as lightly as I could, but it wasn’t easy: my toes smashed
into a stray book on the floor. I cursed. My fingers hit a wooden
plank, and I got a sliver under my nail, which meant I had reached
the doorway into the bathroom. The corner of the room was only a
few feet away.

Demi was closing on me.

Just as my hand found the corner, I prepared
to step away from the wall and crouch so Demi would pass me by. I
was already letting go of the cement surface when I heard someone
else approaching me, cutting me off from the rest of the room.
Since Fox had stopped his humming a minute ago, I didn’t know if it
was he or Sinna. I tried to “look” around the store in my mind. The
counter should be behind me, Fox’s bed should be to my right, and
Fox himself should be somewhere on the other side of the room. As
if upon some infernal cue, the darkness around me stirred, and I
suddenly wasn’t sure about anything. I felt scared. Cornered.

If only I could do that stupid corner
jump…

Demi panted right behind my back.

Wait, I didn’t have to do the flip; I only
had to make Demi believe I did it.

And so I took a noisy breath and pretended I
was running.
Stomp, stomp, stomp
. After a few stomps, I
jumped up, slapped first my left palm against the wall, then my
right one, at which point Demi must have panicked I was going to
fall right on top of her because I could hear her backpedaling. The
person on the other side, however, rushed forward, probably to
catch me. Probably because it was Fox. He and Demi tangled together
while I dropped on all fours and crawled away.

In a moment, after her expectations of my
tumbling on top of her didn’t actualize, Demi stammered, “What?
How?”

And Fox guffawed. “Nice trick, Ever.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Demi half-exhaled, half-growled, and who knew
what exactly had set her off—my trick or Fox’s laughter or her
frustration at her inability to catch me—only she dashed after me
at a dangerous speed. I hastened to stand up, and as I did, my
fingers brushed against my morning book tower. I yanked my hand
away. The stack was here? Had I really crawled all the way to the
middle of the room? The darkness whirled. Demi’s feet pounded on
the floor faster than bullets coming out of a machine gun.

“Demi, wait!” I shouted. “Stop! There are
books here. You’ll trip. You’ll fall. You’ll break your neck
against the damn counter.”

But she was already ramming into the books. I
heard her flailing her arms, trying to regain her balance. I heard
her choked breath when she must have realized she couldn’t. I
darted toward her, grabbing at the air, hoping I would catch her
arm or her shoulder, but I overshot. I was still groping in front
of me when Demi crashed into my side. She grabbed my neck, and I
rooted my heels, and somehow…somehow…somehow I held up.

“Demi,” Sinna said, his voice tense, but
relaxing as he spoke. “I am glad I haven’t heard you fall down. I
am assuming you are fine.”

By this point I was clean out of breath
because Demi stupidly kept on squeezing my throat. I thought she
was just in shock, so I tapped on her hand to tell her that hey, it
was high time she let me go. Only she didn’t. She was throttling me
for real. Panicking, I pulled on her hands, but they were stronger
than cement. I started to black out.

Fox, as if intuiting something, announced,
“Well, Ever, you know I’d love to hear your voice. Just something
along the lines: ‘Dear Fox, I love you very much.’”

I fought to make a sound, but my throat was
crushed between Demi’s fingers. I did, however, remember I had
fingers too, so I slapped on Demi’s arms as loudly as I could.

Fox ripped off his blindfold. “What’s going
on?”

He saw Demi strangling me, but before he
could move, Demi released my neck, and I fell in a heap on the
floor. I gasped for air.

“Ever, you okay?” Fox ran toward me. “Ever,
what happened?”

He glared at Demi as she removed her
blindfold, and she seemed unsure of what to say. I weighed possible
outcomes. If I told Fox the truth, he would try to kill Demi. She
would of course fight back, and Sin and I would have to join the
fray, he on Demi’s side and me on Fox’s, and all of us would get
hurt, and some of us might get murdered, and then whoever left
alive would still have to share this bookstore.

I smiled. “Oh, I tripped on the books, and
Demi caught me.”

“By the neck?” Fox squinted at me.

“Well, she was blindfolded,” I said,
struggling not to sound all scratchy and raspy. “She couldn’t
see.”

“Demi?” Fox asked. “Is that what
happened?”

Keeping his eyes on the floor, Sinna walked
over to us and gave me my dress. I pressed it to my neck, hoping to
hide the bruises that must have begun darkening there.

“Demi?” Fox asked again.

“Yeah,” she said tentatively, then with more
certainty, “Yeah.”

I nodded. “Well, congrats, Dem. You won.”

But she shook her head. “No. You just
tripped. It doesn’t count. Let’s play again. I insist!”

There was a ringing fury in her voice. And
hate. And rancor. And abruptly, I felt dead certain the people
who’d kept us here in hope we’d grow up to be their pet murderers
were going to be very pleased with Demi and very disappointed with
me. Because I wouldn’t survive the next game.

More about Ever, Fox, Demi, and Sinna…

Into
the Blind (Excerpt)

And the Queen of Hell will come to rule the Earth,
and everyone will love Her
.

—Delilah 6:66

Prologue: A Heart Child

The black market was closing. The last sellers and
buyers clustered behind an out-of-business toy store in Brooklyn,
where the road smelled of trash and the subway trains that ran high
above the street rattled the loudest. There were no children for
sale at this hour. The last and least important bits of the day’s
tidings were hastily sold.

“There’s been a dance kid born in Queens this
morning.”

“Hell, who needs a child gifted in
dancing?”

“But it’s right around the corner. And the
parents haven’t hired any security.”

Monies changed hands.

Everyone was stealthily watching two bulky
men who were not selling or buying anything. The slightly shorter
man of the duo held a large four-wheel suitcase, and the slightly
taller one, wearing a trench coat and a black fedora hat, gripped a
gun. They did not talk. They had the letters DH tattooed on their
right cheekbones.

Cars honked in the street, and somewhere far
off a police siren howled.

A woman entered the alley. Neither tall nor
short, she wore a pixie-cut blond wig like a ski hat: pulled down
over her ears and forehead. Her shoulders were wrapped in an
oversized faux fur coat that made it impossible to guess her real
proportions. Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of dark
sunglasses.

The men with the DH tattoos looked up at her
simultaneously. They didn’t say anything, but the woman answered
them nonetheless, “Yes, it’s here, the child.” She nodded at a
rather small purse in her hand. “And the money?”

The black market sellers and buyers stopped
even pretending they were still trading. They held their breaths
and listened. All of them had wondered if the suitcase held money,
but it was such a big suitcase. No child was worth that much.

The man with the suitcase lightly swung his
burden. “Yeah. Ten mil. Wanna count?”

The fedora hat man puffed. “Wait, bro. I
don’t think…you know what.”

The bro clearly knew. “Lay off it, man. We
talked enough about it.”

“Oh, yeah?” The hat man jabbed his gun in the
direction of the woman’s purse, a fake brown leather affair with an
ugly brass zipper. “This kid…how do you know it’s gifted in what
this gal says it’s gifted? Yeah, sure, two dream guys told us it’s
legit, but what if they are in on it? Ten mil is good money even
split three ways.”

The bro shook his head. “I said. Lay. Off.
It.”

The hat man didn’t. “And where did she even
get that kid? Sure, Bones…I mean, not Bones…I mean, I never said
your name, okay? Anyways, we bought death kids, time kids—pricey
kids, yes, but those gifts can be priced in. But this…a kid with
this gift…who would sell it? It’s like selling the Almighty!”

The people in the alley inhaled sharply. A
heart child had been born on earth? That was some tidings to
sell.

The woman in the fur coat stepped away from
the two men. “Fine. The deal is off.”

Bones shoved the suitcase after her. “No, no,
take it. Give us the kid.”

The woman grabbed the handle of the suitcase,
then handed him the purse.

“Are you at least going to check if it’s
actually a kid and not a pile of rags?” the hat man asked his
partner.

Bones unzipped the purse, and there, swaddled
in several disposable diapers, lay a newborn, its face tiny and
pink and its delicate white hairs tangled. It slept.

The woman suddenly, as if in a paroxysm of a
strong feeling, clasped the hat man’s arm. “It’s a girl,” she said.
“A girl.”

The hat man, unsure what to do with this
information, scratched his temple. “And? You want to give us a
discount for that or what?”

The woman spun around and walked away,
wheeling the suitcase along the cracked, rot-smelling road.

The hat man followed her with his gaze. “If
this kid is really a heart, I’ll eat my damn hat.”

The hat remained uneaten for the next fifteen
years.

Chapter 1

The green cement floor under my feet wasn’t doing
anything. I mean, I wasn’t sure what exactly was supposed to
happen, but Sinna was looking down at the floor with so much focus.
Presently, he raised his eyes at me, and since I’m blind but have
this highly fortunate ability to see what the people around me are
looking at, I saw the object of his gaze: myself. Together, Sin and
I surveyed my short figure, my pale, heart-shaped face, and my
hopelessly tangled white hair. Sinna sighed as if I were somehow
wrong for what we were doing.

“Ever, I can’t,” he said finally. “It’s too
dangerous.”

I made a funny pleading face. I wanted to
joke, to ask him how a nightmare could be dangerous. It was just a
hallucination. A waking vision that temporarily blocked out one’s
reality. And if Sin succeeded in making it for me now, he’d be able
to make one for our guards later. We could be free in half an hour!
But I suddenly choked up. The room around me—the cold cement walls
the color of gangrene, the ugly kidney-shaped wooden counter, and
the piles of books, magazines, newspapers, and journals (for this
room used to be a mall bookstore)—all of it began to suffocate me.
I had to get out of here. I had to be free. How I wished I could
make Sinna feel this crushing need!

He squeezed my shoulder: he understood. Then,
sounding like the
Collegiate
Thesaurus
he’d used for
a pillow for the last several years, he said, “Very well,
Ever-Jezebel. Do you recall what I have imparted to you not three
minutes ago?”

I nodded and made my voice sound deeper to
show Sinna that I was quoting him, “Ever, you ought to remember
three things. First, if you notice that something, even the tiniest
and most insignificant detail, deviates from the nightmare we have
agreed upon, please stop me. Second, even if everything does go
according to the plan, but you feel that you wish to be released
from the nightmare, please stop me. Third, once in a nightmare, you
will not be able to see through my eyes, and fourth, knowing that
it’s not real is not going to help you in there.” I switched to my
own voice, “Did I get it right?”

The sounds of steps and whacks came from the
back room, where Sinna’s girlfriend was teaching my boyfriend a new
method of killing people. By breaking their necks with the edge of
a palm. I only hoped Demi wouldn’t kill Fox because that girl was
freakishly strong.

Sinna chuckled. “Yes, it was all correct,
although I do not believe I sounded even fractionally this excited.
However, let’s proceed. An ocean. Blue and warm. With a school of
fish that looks like the one on the cover of the
Marine
Atlas
.” The last words he muttered quietly under his nose,
clearly to remind himself of what I’d requested to see in a
nightmare.

He backed away from me…a few steps…then a few
more…then all the way to the massive steel door that stood between
us and freedom. He stopped there, and again, we watched the dusty
green floor by my feet.

Suddenly it quaked.

Yes, right under my feet.