Chapter Twenty-Eight
Stay in the light. Stay in the light.
It’s the only chant in my head as I take off, throwing myself out that door and nearly stumbling as I take the stairs down
two at a time. At first, all I care about is getting away from that clock tower and Harrison and all that oozing, slippery
black.
I run down Main Street, back toward the center of town, staying in the path of whatever light I can find. I don’t know where
I’m going, but I don’t care as long as I’m putting distance between me and the knife-wielding maniac with his pet demon horde—
Though I don’t think the horde is Harrison’s. I think he’s theirs, whether he realizes it or not.
Running feels good, which is unusual for me, but then this whole night is a big left turn. And being outside is better. I
can breathe out here. I can move.
And I have to find Jack and Logan. I don’t know how to stop this, not clearly, but I know I’m not going to manage it alone.
I hear slurping at my heels and heavy breathing, so I don’t stop. I can’t stop or pay attention to any of the innocent, unaware people milling around me. I’m safe in the light, but the light won’t last forever.
Case in point: One of the streetlights I pass makes a kind of popping sound, then goes dark.
They’re going to take my light. And they don’t care about the tourists’ souls—not yet. Because it’s not Halloween and that’s
not the deal.
But I broke the deal, or Harrison did, and I’m the one he wants.
I skirt around a family group arguing about dinner plans and try to make myself go faster.
I look up at the sky, pumping my legs and my arms. I can see a few stars, but clouds are covering portions of the sky, and
the darker it gets, the worse it’s going to get for me. Luckily for me, tonight most businesses are still open for their Night
Before Halloween events, so their lights shine out to the sidewalks as people laugh and chatter.
If they see me, they see a crazy lady on the run and think not much of it. Maybe it’s part of the ambience, they think. They
don’t see demons or Harrison. And they won’t, until it’s too late.
I can’t let that happen.
“Jack, Logan, where are you?” I whisper into the night, my breathing ragged, my panic high. I know they can’t answer me, but I’m desperate for any
sign, any clue, any—
The rock. The big rock, not little heart-shaped pebbles. The rock Jack thought held the answers, and we were going to check out before
Harrison lured me away to the clock tower.
It comes to me out of nowhere, an image of that rock that I dreamed about once in jail and once before on the night Amelia died. I come to a skidding halt in the light of the diner itself. I can see Braxton inside, looking overwhelmed, as usual. Which means Jack isn’t there.
I know he’s not, even as I struggle to catch my breath. He’s going to be at the rock.
As long as there’s light, the shadows chasing me can’t touch me, because it’s not the Feed just yet. I can see them churning
there, waiting—black shapes forming sickening masses and oozing back into pillowy, slurping goo.
I don’t look at them directly.
Jack showed us where the rock is, down by the river, on the other side of the flood wall. He pointed it out on the map, and
it was in some of the maps that were carefully drawn in all the journals Harrison showed me. I know where it is. I know I
can get there.
What I don’t know is how I’m going to stay in the light if I leave old town Midas, but I can’t worry about that. In a way,
I’ve been getting ready for this my whole life. I have wandered out into streets far more dangerous than Main Street, Midas.
And I have lived through every sleepwalking night so far.
Maybe I don’t need to find the light. Maybe the light will find me.
I go with that and start running again, even though my throat feels like razors and I’m freezing all the way through. I’ll
find a way. I always find a way.
It’s the story of the Darlings, I think as I kick my own butt into gear. My mom was a foundling raised by Amelia and she saved
Jack, for me. My dad got Logan and me out of here when he needed to, or who knows where we would have ended up. And Amelia
got me here when I needed to be here.
Everyone found a way to fight.
No giving in. No deals with the enemy. No selling out the people they loved for whatever power looks like when it means abandoning yourself to slurping black horrors that can’t even pick a shape.
I reach the end of Main and see that the flood wall is lit up tonight. That will get me closer to the rock. Maybe not all
the way there, but closer.
In the light.
Then it dawns on me. Somewhere along the way, demon zones got lit up as protections for the town. These lights are to keep
the demons at bay. To give humans a path to safety when the dark presses in.
Maybe the townspeople don’t remember why they decided these certain parts of town needed what might be considered excess illumination,
but it’s been helping to keep them safe—or safer—for decades. Maybe even a century.
That tells me that the nights must have been pretty bad here before the advent of electric lights. Because a candle can only
do so much. And worse, can be blown out.
I remember the journal I read by the Village Lamplighter and, all things considered, think maybe I was wrong about that guy. Maybe he was the hero he thought he was after all.
I follow the wall’s light, and despite the way my body feels, I don’t let myself slow down. I race down to the riverside,
outside the center of town and on the far side of the flood wall. I ignore the fact that my lungs are burning. It feels like
tears have frozen to my cheeks, and maybe blood, too, and still I run.
I can see the rock now. It’s illuminated by a few weak lights that I don’t know the source of, but this is no time to worry
about light—only its absence. As I get closer, I see that there are two dark figures moving around in the dim light, and these
figures I recognize.
Jack and Logan.
I run for them, shout for them, sob a little that I’ve finally found them—but before I can reach them, the path of light abruptly ends.
There is a pit of blackness between me and that rock now. And shadows thick with slithery demon shapes between me and it.
If I step into those shadows, I know Harrison can keep me immobile again. Maybe even kill me, here in front of Jack and Logan,
to hurt them, too.
But he can’t have my voluntary blood if I don’t give it. I hold on to that, just like Amelia and Cleo must have.
Jack and Logan turn as I shout, then are suddenly wearing nearly identical scowls—with some panic behind them.
I remember the blood on my face, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.
“I’m fine!” I call to them, pointing at my face.
That only makes them look at each other, then scowl harder, and that nearly makes me cry. My two favorite men, on the same
page at last.
We can’t reach each other, but I wasn’t sure I was ever going to see them again, so I take this as a win. A small win that
makes the stitch in my side worth it.
“Don’t cross the darkness!” Jack yells at me. “I will.”
“No!” I yell right back. No sacrifices. Not now. There has to be another way.
I refuse to believe that we’ve come this far to come no further. I am the harbinger. The tool for good.
I think of Amelia. I think of my mother, who Jack seemed to suggest just . . . went around saving people, just like him. I think of Cleo, who flew airplanes and cared for her elderly grandmother and acted like living at home with her family
was a punk rock privilege, not something to be ashamed of, and probably would have punched me and Logan in the face that first
day if it had been up to her.
I think of Nora, who dreams like me, and took my place in that cell. So I could be out here, harbinging.
That had to be for a reason. That means I’m supposed to be here, at this rock. I know it.
If I’m some great herald, I think, in a way that seems to resonate inside me, and out of me, too, then I should have a little more control over what it is I bring forth.
I don’t know who I’m talking to. The void. The universe. The divine within. I’ll take any or all of the above.
There has to be more to who I am than playing Cassandra for twenty-eight years only to get taken out at the last moment. I
don’t need the heart-shaped stones. I focus on the one on my chest, and all the love that has made me who I am—
Abruptly, something in front of me starts to brighten.
I look up, searching for its source, half-afraid it will be something gross or wrong—like that bizarre light that somehow
wasn’t light at all in the clock tower.
Instead, I see an actual beam of light. Coming from across the river. Coming from the direction of the airport, if the map
in my head is right. And it’s like any spotlight I’ve ever seen, but the beam of it goes exactly where I need it to—a path
of safe, pure light from me to the rock.
I want to sink to my knees in joy, in relief. I want to thank Virginia, or Cleo’s dad, or Cleo’s spirit—whoever made this
miracle happen, but there’s no time.
My body hurts but I ignore it, hurling myself along the path the spotlight makes before me.
And I throw myself into Jack’s arms before I make it to the rock, because he meets me halfway.
Then he’s practically dragging me into the little circle of light they’ve made with lanterns. Jack and I kind of stumble together
and end up on the ground, and Logan crouches in front of me.
“Are you okay?” my brother asks. More demands.
I manage to nod at him. I stand up, and Jack comes with me. “Kind of,” I tell Logan.
Jack claims my attention. Meaning he literally takes my face in his hand and turns me toward him. “Where were you? You weren’t
supposed to leave. When I went to get you, neither you nor Grandpa were anywhere to be found. What happened? Where’s Grandpa?”
He wants to know what happened. Worse, I have to tell him.
“Jack . . . It’s . . .” How do I say this? How do I crush him the way I know this will? “Harrison took me to the clock tower.”