Fear's Touch: A Darkworld Novella (The Darkworld Series) (15 page)

Early Saturday morning, Cara and I took the train to Preston, where a bus service ran to the university.

“Bloody hell, it’s freezing,” she yelped as we jumped off the bus into a gale. The tour began at the student village, which was helpfully signposted.

“Pretty, though,” I said, indicating the collection of sandy-coloured houses surrounded by patches of vivid green grass. A field doubled as a car park, with a path down the centre leading into the nearby woods to the other side—the village, also named Blackstone—and through the woodland that surrounded the campus on all sides.

Blackstone University was about as isolated as you could get, a small campus tucked away on a hillside. As Cara put it, “The only inhabitants are students and sheep.” Several of the latter watched us from the field, woollen coats fluffed up against the wind.

The tour took us on a winding loop around campus, and I felt my smile growing bigger by the minute.
Perfect.
Cara shook her head when I grinned at the reading list.

“You’re crazy, Ash.”

“You know you love me for it.”

“Damn straight. Enjoy your Milton. But”—she tapped me on the nose—“
no stressing
. Got it?”

“Yes, mother,” I said with another grin. I could trust Cara to stand by me. She might be going to Edinburgh, but neither of us were about to let distance ruin thirteen years of friendship.

“And another thing,” she added. “You have to actually go out there and talk to people. You know…
people
people? Not fictional ones?”

I stuck my tongue out at her.

“Come on, Ash, if you’re staying in student halls, you can’t hide in your room playing
World of Warcraft
.”

“I’m not planning on going out and getting shitfaced every night, either.”

“Me neither. Not like my sister. She tells me she woke up next to a new guy every week and has a collection of road signs mounted on her wall.”

“Seriously?” I said. “Definitely not the life for me. Quiet literary discussions are more my thing.”

“You’re like an old woman, Ash. What about dating?”

Good question.
I see demons
wasn’t exactly a good way to start a relationship.

“If I meet a guy who loves Milton, it’s clearly meant to be,” I said. “Well, I guess that’d be more like a threesome.” Truthfully, I never wanted to read
Paradise Lost
again, but my comment made Cara shriek with laughter.

“You’re a riot,” she said.

“Don’t forget about me,” I half-joked. I’d never been Miss Popularity―less so since I’d ostracised myself―but I found it hard to ignore the way people sidestepped me in the corridors like I’d contracted leprosy or walked into me like I was invisible. Even Alice and Sammy, my friends from primary school, pretended I didn’t exist. I knew I looked the same, outwardly at least. I kept the insanity all on the inside. People changed, I guessed.

Still, Cara and I had shared memories of the awkward horrors of surviving seven years at an all-girls’ school. Nothing could take that away, not even a two-hundred-mile separation.

“This place is like the set for a bad horror movie,” said Cara later as we waited for the bus back, this time from Blackstone village itself. “You’re asking for an encounter with a serial killer. Hannibal Lecter probably hangs out at the Coach and Horses.” She referred to the local pub frequented by students. Personally, I thought it quite cosy.

“It’d be pretty handy living on a hill if there’s a zombie invasion,” I said.

“True. But that forest is damn creepy. When I come and visit, we should film our own version of
The Blair Witch Project.”

I smiled at the memory of that time we’d taken her dad’s camera when we were twelve and run around the wild part of the local park, looking for a scare. No ghosts or monsters had materialised, but we’d had to flee from irate neighbours after accidentally trespassing in someone’s garden. Good times.

“I don’t think it’s creepy,” I said. “At least, this is like the safest university campus, ever. No risk of serial killers here. There were people walking on the woodland path.”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t want to go in there at night. Honestly, Ash, you get freaked out over exams, and yet you look at that forest and don’t think ‘I’m going to get murdered?’”

“Pretty much.” Hey, I never said I had my priorities in order.

“You’re dead sure you want to come here?”

“I think so.” I nodded, smiling. “Yeah.”

One thing swayed it for me. All day, I didn’t see a single demon.

Emma Adams
spent her childhood creating imaginary worlds to compensate for a disappointingly average reality, so it was probably inevitable that she ended up writing fantasy and paranormal for young adults.

She was born in Birmingham, UK, which she fled at the first opportunity to study English Literature at Lancaster University. In her three years at Lancaster, she hiked up mountains, skydived in Australia, and endured a traumatic episode involving a swarm of bees in the Costa Rican jungle. She also wrote various novels and short stories. These included her first publication, a rather bleak dystopian piece, and a disturbing story about a homicidal duck (which she hopes will never see the light of day).

Now a reluctant graduate, she can usually be found in front of her writing desk, creating weird and wonderful alternative worlds. Her debut novel
The Puppet Spell
, published in January 2013 by Rowanvale Books, is a fantasy tale for young adults and the young at heart, featuring disappearing uncles, invisibility potions and chimeras.

Emma also writes dark and creepy supernatural novels for older teens and adults. Her next book,
Darkness Watching
, is the first in the upper-YA/New Adult
Darkworld
series, and was published in October 2013 by Curiosity Quills Press.

Now that you have completed this book, we hope you will leave a review so that other readers may benefit from your perspective. Authors like Emma L. Adams live and die by your reviews, after all!

Please visit
http://curiosityquills.com/reader-survey/
to share your reading experience with the author of this book!