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  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.
r />   Suddenly it quaked.

  Yes, right under my feet.

  The snapshots I was getting through Sinna’s eyes vanished, but somehow, impossibly, improbably, I was still seeing the floor by my feet. It quaked once again.

  On its third quake, a coffin-sized segment of the green floor in front of me ballooned up. In perfect silence, it wriggled and jerked from side to side, as if something large was pushing our floor from beneath.

  My heart sang with excitement: it was happening, it was here, the miracle that would set us free.

  The bulge gave one last shuddering twitch and then, still silently, cracked open. A gush of clear, cold liquid shot straight up out of the hole, wetting my chin, my nose, and a lock of hair that had slipped out of my ponytail. As I wiped my face, wondering why the liquid smelled of rubbing alcohol, the water spurt hit the ceiling and came back down, this time soaking me head to toe, and I couldn’t believe it was just a vision. My skin felt wet. My hair and dress clung to me as if they were truly soaked, and the only word I could use to describe this fluid was “real.”

  More water came through the crack in the floor, and then more still. Only it didn’t spread—it stayed around me in a large circular puddle. I hopped up and down in it.

  “I’m loving this!” I told Sinna, not sure if I would get a response—he hadn’t specified if we’d be able to talk while I was inside a nightmare. But I did hear from him: he chortled and said, “Just don’t attempt to swim in this reservoir, Ever. It’s not real.”

  The water kept on rising. Soon it touched my chin, and I hastened to press my lips together, which wasn’t easy because I was grinning so hard. Then I had to pinch my nose shut. Since I was a bit late on that, a little water trickled down my throat, and it tasted exactly like the tap stuff I drank every day. So…not a salty ocean after all? But no matter, it was still a fun nightmare.

  A small, paper-white ghost flitted past me, and I whirled around, hoping it was a fish. But no, it was only a lock of my own hair.

  When the water reached the ceiling, I took in the sensation of standing at the bottom of a gently sloshing liquid pillar. It was like the best of good dreams. Then, not seeing why Sinna had forbidden swimming, I tensed, bent my knees, and pushed off the floor, feeling light…lighter than ever. When I ran out of momentum, I floated, my arms open wide. The myriad ruffles on my long white gown wafted around me. What with that and my long white hair, I probably looked like a deep-water jellyfish. Let’s say a venomous one. Trying not to giggle, I made a scary face at Sinna, and maybe he laughed, but this time I heard nothing from beyond the water pillar.

  Since by now I was nearly out of air, I made one last glorious pirouette, then waved to Sinna: get me out of here. Before I could finish my gesture, though, the liquid changed. The light blue of the ocean deepened to the color of a bruise, the temperature dropped to freezing, and a sudden weight pushed me down. Sinking, I gestured to Sin again, in a hurry, because the water was rapidly turning black.

  Thud. I hit the floor harder than I expected and at the wrong angle. Instead of landing on my feet, I smashed into the cement with my heels, and before I could regain my balance, I fell flat onto my back. As painful as it was, it woke me up to reality: all around me was just water. Imaginary too. I should be able to simply walk out of it. But as I scrabbled to my feet, the water twisted, propelling me upward, all the way to the ceiling, where it rammed my head into the wires that used to power a smoke detector now long gone. The wires grabbed my hair like long, greedy fingers. Cursing at them, I groped along my scalp, searching for the knot. I found it close to my left temple, a tight webwork of hairs and wires. I tugged on it frantically, and mostly succeeded in undoing the mess, but I didn’t get to finish: the water jerked me sideways, ripping out a strand of my hair.

  But what the heck? This was just a vision—okay, a nightmare—but still, not real. No, wait. Belatedly, I recalled how Sinna had said that knowing none of this was real was not going to help me. The water sloshed in my ears as if laughing.

  “Sin!” I screamed, remembering only at the last moment to keep my lips pressed together. My yelp came out like an echo of an echo. I could barely hear it myself. Worse still, even with my mouth closed, my cry made me lose the last of my air. At once, my brain seemed to be on fire, my chest felt as if it’d been crushed in, and my blood hammered in every cell of my body.

  That’s when I knew I couldn’t wait for Sin’s help any longer. I tore through my options: I could either let myself sink to the floor and try to walk out of this water column or I could attempt to swim to freedom right from this spot near the ceiling. As the second option seemed more logical, I turned my palms downward and dog paddled, aiming for the side of the column. The water gave way readily, but when I was almost out, the evil puddle heaved as if it were taking a breath and threw me back into its center.

  Damn this ocean.

  I tried not to panic, but my lungs felt full of water, and I was dizzy in a bad I’m-about-to-pass-out way. Well, since this ocean seemed to have a brain somewhere, and that brain seemed to hate me, I decided to trick it. For a moment, I hung immobile, pretending to have accepted my drowning fate, then I threw myself forward with every ounce of strength I had. The column had to give, no matter what Sinna had said, but instead of flying out to freedom, I slammed into a hard surface.

  “Sinna!” I shrieked.

  Eagerly, the water rushed down my throat, and it didn’t taste like tap anymore—it was blood full of razors. The ocean roared with glee while I thrashed, my hair twisting around my arms, my dress binding my legs, and the water hanging like a boulder around my neck. Down, down, down I went.

  “Ever, wake up!” Sinna’s voice, weak and far-off, drifted through my waterlogged ears. “Please! Please! Wake up this one time and I promise I’ll never make another nightmare!”

  The water column shuddered, grumbled with disappointment, and then, all at once, the ocean was gone. I gulped down the air.

  “Ever!” Sinna cried. “Ever, are you okay?”

  After a few greedy breaths, I felt strong enough to take in my real surroundings. I was lying in Sinna’s lap, one of his arms hugging my shoulders and the other pressing hard on my solar plexus. Perhaps this was some kind of life-saving maneuver, but he didn’t need to worry: as soon as the nightmare vanished, I was fine. I mean, my chest still hurt, my throat tasted raw, and my temple pulsed with pain, but I was far from dead. Maybe I could even sit up—if Sin would let go of me. I lightly tapped on his arm, asking him to release me, but he only squeezed me tighter.

  “Ever, say something.”

  “It wasn’t like I expected,” I said. “I thought it would be a gentle ocean. With warm water and small waves, and instead—”

  “Instead it was a nightmare,” Sinna finished, and a drop of something salty—tears or sweat?—landed on my lower lip.

  “Precisely,” I said. “And I was silly to expect anything else because you’re not gifted in weaving little shiny dreams. Your gift is to make the most terrible of nightmares. And trust me, that’s what I just had. Which means this test was a huge success!”

  “No, no…” Sinna choked on his sobs. “I wanted you to have a good time in there. And I wanted to be in control of what was happening. Only I wasn’t. You waved at me to stop the vision, and I did, but it had no effect on you. So I hugged you. I talked to you. But you couldn’t hear me. You wouldn’t breathe. You were suffocating in a room full of air—and I couldn’t do anything.”

  I smiled at him. “Sin, I’m fine. Honest. And I’m even dry. Which is beyond bizarre because, I’m telling you, that water was so-o-o real. But hey, wait, my temple hurts like mad. Did I really go up to the ceiling? How?”

  Sin only groaned, and I knew: “I yanked that hair out myself, didn’t I?”

  Sin looked away, glanced at his own reflection in the mirror-like steel door, and he seemed aged. His usually brown skin looked gray, and his straight blue-black hair was plastered to his cheeks as if he’d just got
ten out of real water. The top button was missing from his jacket.

  I put my hand on his cheek. “Oh, come on. Don’t chew yourself up. I survived, and you did it. You’ve come into your gift. The first one out of the four of us. How awesome is that?”

  “Awesome?” Sin shook his head vehemently. “Ever, it is nothing of the sort. You are too kind to scold me, so I will do it myself: I am a moron. You could have died. And then Fox would have murdered me. And that’s exactly what I deserve. And what on earth am I going to do now?”

  His last question puzzled me, and I was about to ask Sinna what he meant by it when he abruptly and incongruously focused on the lower part of my face. Confused, I gave it an once-over through Sinna’s eyes too, and it seemed nothing but its usual self: a sharp chin, two pale lips, and a short, pointy nose with a slight indentation on its tip as though I had two noses fused into one.

  “Sin, you okay?” I asked.

  Instead of an answer, Sinna leaned in and pressed his mouth to mine. I couldn’t understand a thing. Sin adored Demi. And he knew I loved Fox, the only one of the four of us who’d never lamented having been kidnapped because, as he’d told me, that’s how he’d chanced to meet me. And so I put my hands on Sinna’s shoulders, preparing to push him away, when I realized that his mouth tasted of strawberries, and his lips were fuller than Fox’s, and softer, and not as hot. And come to think of it, I’d never kissed anyone but Fox in my life. I began mapping Sinna’s mouth with my tongue.

  And then there were steps—and a voice—Fox’s voice: “Ever, what the hell are you doing?”

  Chapter 2

  Before any of us could move, an alarm sounded in our bookstore, a scratchy, low-pitched howling that warned us about our guards coming to check on us and bring us our food. Every morning for at least a decade, we’d heard this caterwauling, and it had long stopped scaring us. But today proved different. Too caught up in the moment, we all startled: Sinna’s legs jerked under me; Demi, who stood next to Fox, cursed; and Fox’s right fist swung forward, barely missing Sinna’s cheekbone.