Token of Darkness (9 page)

“Hmm.” Cooper paused, his gaze going distant. Then he glanced up at Brent, searchingly. He seemed about to speak, then stopped again, and finally said, “It’s really weird talking to someone who can read my mind.”

“Trust me, it’s just as weird from the other side,” Brent
answered honestly. “If it makes you feel better, most of the time, I really don’t
want
to hear anyone’s thoughts. You’d be amazed how many random and really unpleasant things cross people’s minds. You know how sometimes you’ll get a visual image of something gross or just seriously twisted? That’s the kind of thing I used to pick up from people all the time—mental images I
never
wanted, because no one wants them. Like the stuff that comes to mind when someone says, ‘I saw your mom buying handcuffs yesterday.’”

Cooper’s expression at that moment was priceless.

“Okay,” he said. “I could get why you wouldn’t want to see that kind of stuff.”

Brent waited patiently for Cooper to decide what he wanted to do.

At last, Cooper broke the silence by saying, “Tomorrow. I can’t skip school again, but tomorrow would be good.”

Saturday. Brent’s last free weekend before school started. There was some kind of fund-raiser for the football team, so at least Delilah probably wouldn’t be hanging around Ryan’s when they got there. As far as he knew, Delilah and Ryan had been on rocky terms ever since the mishap that had also ended her relationship with Brent.

“Sure. Tomorrow’s probably better, in terms of timing. Will you be able to get off work?”

“Yeah, no problem,” Cooper said without hesitation. “I might have to cover the early morning and opening, but I doubt this Ryan guy would want us to show up at dawn anyway.”

“I have to check the train schedule, but I think there’s a nine-something. I’ll meet you here around eight?” Brent asked.

Cooper nodded and glanced over his shoulder at the clock on the far wall. “I should get going,” he said. “We need to open, and then I’ve got to get to school. But I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Sure, sounds good,” Brent said.

He drove home with every intention of looking at the public police reports, and scanning for any headlines about missing teens, accidents or abductions, but the conversation with Cooper had started a pounding in his head. It wasn’t
only
for Cooper’s sake that Brent hoped Ryan could help him.

His mother had passed out, thankfully, so Brent didn’t need to deal with whatever inflated accusation she would come up with about where he had been. Instead, he crept back upstairs, turned out all the lights, drew the curtains, and crawled under the covers on his bed. In absolute darkness, he closed his eyes. At least the migraine had shut down his mind enough to keep the shadows at bay.

He was driving through a fine drizzle. The weather was otherwise warm and visibility wasn’t too bad, so he wasn’t uncomfortable. He was driving reasonably. He had his headlights on, and used his blinkers whenever he had to change lanes
.

In fact, he had just put on his right signal, and looked over his shoulder to check his blind spot, when it happened
.

A flash of color in front of him, almost a blur
.

The blare of horns, screaming of brakes, screech of metal against metal—

Brent woke with a silent scream choking his throat. Oh,
hell
. It wasn’t bad enough that he was hearing thoughts and apparently dreaming ghosts—now he was sharing Cooper’s post-traumatic flashback nightmares. Spending too much time with that guy was going to end up giving
Brent
a severe case of anxiety.

With any luck, he could hand Cooper over to Ryan, and Ryan would have an easy answer.

In the meantime, he went downstairs and booted up the family computer, which he had built himself and which his mother had taken possession of so she could order prescriptions without looking a pharmacist in the eye. There had to be
something
online about this girl. Then again, the search could be a little more complicated than Cooper made it out to be.

Cooper had said Samantha sounded local, but it was more true to say that she didn’t seem to have any distinctive regional accent at all, at least in the short period when Brent had spoken to her. That meant she could be from anywhere in New England, the Midwest, or Northwest, at the least. She
didn’t
sound southern, and she definitely sounded born-and-raised American … but that wasn’t a lot to go on.

Searching for deaths in the area in the last few months, of course, instantly pulled up articles about Cooper’s accident.

Brent swore out loud as he read the details. He had spent most of the summer at Ryan’s or in the library, not watching television, and pointedly avoiding anyone from the regular high school in order to keep out of Delilah’s way. He vaguely recalled Elise mentioning something about an accident one day while he had been helping her stack books, but he’d had no idea the extent of the damage.

Samantha had to be related to the accident. If she had died as a direct result of the crash, even Cooper would have made that connection, but maybe she was a family member of someone involved? Hell, for all he knew she was a guilty brake mechanic, who blamed herself for the way Cooper’s car handled in the accident. The only thing he was
sure
of was that it would be too much of a coincidence if Cooper’s ghost wasn’t somehow connected to Cooper’s near-death experience.

Well, there was one thing more to do.

He picked up the phone, and called the le Coire estate.

“Hello?” Brent wasn’t surprised to hear a stranger’s voice. So many people went to Ryan, either to work with him or to learn from him, that Ryan rarely bothered to answer his own phone.

“Hi,” he replied. He was pretty sure he was talking to a secretary, but for all he knew he could be talking to some kind of super-mystic. “This is Brent Maresh.”

“I remember you,” the voice on the other end said. “Everything all right?”

“For me, yes,” Brent answered. “But I have a friend who has been having some weird things happen to him, which I
think Ryan might be able to help with. Or at least might be interested in. Could I talk to him, and see if he would mind if we came by?”

“I think he’s working with someone right now, but I can pass on a message. When were you thinking of coming over?”

“Tomorrow morning, if that’s all right.”

“Mmm. Probably. What’s the guy’s name?”

“Cooper Blake,” Brent replied, though he doubted that detail would matter to Ryan. He wasn’t the type to bias his judgment of someone’s power by doing much background research.

“I’ll let le Coire know.”

The line went dead before Brent could say good-bye.

What next?

He could call some friends and make plans, but he didn’t feel the urge. He didn’t have a lot of close friends these days; he had pushed most of them away in his search for some peace and silence before his hospitalization, and hadn’t dared make many new ones since. If he hadn’t met Delilah in such intriguing circumstances, he probably wouldn’t have even let her into his life.

He grabbed his keys, and had just reached his car when the dream from earlier came washing back. He stayed there, one hand on the driver’s-side door handle, until the memories had peaked and fallen, and then he forced himself to get into the car. He refused to be stuck with Cooper’s issues.

It took more willpower than it should have to turn the car on, and take it out of the driveway, but by the time he reached the town center it was like his body had remembered that the accident hadn’t actually happened to him. The fear and phantasmal pain faded.

To test his recovery, he merged onto the highway, and was gratified to learn that his body didn’t panic. He still drove carefully—Cooper’s memories remained, and would probably be vivid for a while—but he had successfully sloughed off the imprint of terror that he had picked up from Cooper.

C
ooper just barely made it through the school day. He found his way home and ate dinner, then faced his room again.

He hadn’t seen Samantha in almost twenty-four hours. In the entire time he had known her, she had never been gone so long.

Might she be
gone
, for real? If this was over, he didn’t need Brent’s help … but then what? Should he try to go back to his friends and pretend she had never existed?

He wasn’t sure he could handle never knowing who she had been. Didn’t he owe it to her to learn that? People shouldn’t just be able to disappear without anyone noticing.

He tried to fall sleep, but anxiety kept him up. He stared at the shadows in the corners as they crept up, and
wondered if they had at last … No, he couldn’t think that way. She couldn’t be
gone
.

He wasn’t ready for her to be gone, damn it. It was selfish of him, but maybe he was a selfish guy. If there was a possibility she had moved on to where she needed to be, he knew he should be
happy
for her, but instead he felt empty. She couldn’t just be there one day and gone the next.

He leaned back on the bed and shut his eyes, less because he had any hope of sleep and more because he was so tired he couldn’t keep them open. It was almost one in the morning.

“Cooper!”

He sat up so fast he nearly fell out of bed, just as Samantha tried to fling herself into his arms. It should have been comical the way she bounced off him—but it wasn’t. She looked pale and worn and scared. Her entire form seemed gray and insubstantial. He would have held on to her if he could have, but he knew that trying to would only make her disappear.

“I got lost!” she cried. “I was walking in Brent’s dreams, and then he woke up suddenly and I fell … somewhere … and I got lost! Those
things
were there, and they could see me, and they wanted to hurt me …
and why can’t I cry?
Cooper!”

“Samantha …” He didn’t know what to say. She was huddled on the floor and he couldn’t even help her up.

He sat next to her, a little distance away so he didn’t
bump into her and displace her. It was awkward, but it was the best he could do.

“I talked to Brent,” he said.

She nodded, her hair—devoid of any extra color, and as plain as her torn jeans and black T-shirt—cascading forward to hide her face.

“He knows someone who might be able to help us. He’s telepathic, you know.” She looked up at that, the fear still on her face, but now mixed with surprise. “Yeah, it was kind of a shock for me, too,” Cooper added. “Maybe that’s how he could see you in the library, or how you could talk to him in his dreams. You can’t normally do that, can you?”

“I don’t know. It was the first time I tried it,” Samantha mumbled. “He kind of heard me when he was awake. I thought maybe he’d be able to hear better when he was sleeping. I’m not going to do it again, though. It was—” Her breath hitched, but she still couldn’t seem to cry. Through all this, her eyes had remained dry.

He put a hand out, and she put one of hers carefully on top of his. He couldn’t feel her, and was pretty sure she couldn’t feel him, but there was something comforting about at least
trying
to make that kind of contact.

“Brent said this guy he knows believes in magic and supernatural stuff,” Cooper said. “He and I are going over there later today. With more people working on it, I’m sure we’ll be able to figure out who you are and how to help you.”

“A golem?” she said, before sticking out her tongue.

“Who knows?” Cooper watched as her mood lightened, and color literally seeped into her. Green and blue streaks appeared in her hair, and her clothes picked up swirls of color, tonight a fuchsia paisley pattern.

“You look like hell,” Samantha observed.

“Yeah,” he said, his relief at her reappearance finally allowing his body and mind both to relax.

Samantha looked like she was going to say something sharp—probably complain about his being half conscious after she had had such a scare—so Cooper tried to rouse himself, but instead she just shook her head. “You should lie down. You act like you wish it weren’t true some nights, but you keep telling me you need sleep.”

He tried to follow her advice. He thought he might even have drifted off and dreamed for a little while, judging by the bitter taste of adrenaline in his mouth when he woke at three-thirty. That’s when he gave up, stumbled into the shower, and headed to the shop.

Samantha followed closely. He wasn’t even sure she had left his room while he tossed and turned in bed. She obviously didn’t want to be alone. He recalled his nightmare from the hospital as he sat at a corner table after his shift, watching people come and go while he waited for Brent. He remembered the dark creatures coming and tearing her into pieces. She had fought to gather herself back together. She had wept then, but now she had no tears.

Had the darkness devoured her tears? Had it taken her memories?

“Hi, Brent,” Samantha sighed, causing Cooper to jerk his gaze up. He hadn’t noticed Brent come in.

Samantha prepared to scramble out of the way as Brent grabbed the back of her chair and seem poised to sit down.