Ash and Darkness (Translucent #3) (4 page)

Where was my dad when you needed him? I looked up and down my street, hoping to catch sight of their Prius. But the street was empty. Just parked cars. No one in sight. Not even a retired couple walking their Shih Tzu.

Today was Sunday.

Sunday . . . that would make it—I strained to remember—October 18. Did my parents have anything planned on the 18th? Another UCSB lecture, maybe? I couldn’t remember.

While mulling over what to do, I reached for the Luna bar and took a bite. The bar tasted chalky and way too sweet. I chewed it slowly, wishing I’d just grabbed an apple instead, and folded the wrapper back up to see what I’d gotten.
Honey Salted Peanut
.

Eugh. I’d told my mom only to get
LemonZest
.

I set the bar aside and forced myself to swallow the bite. It travelled down my esophagus like a gummy wad of cardboard before landing in my stomach, which clenched painfully around it.

Feeling woozy, I climbed out of the car and peered up the street again. The trees stood motionless as far as I could see, stark against an empty blue sky. Not a flutter of wind. Not a rustle.

The silence made me nervous, and I checked over my shoulder.

No one behind me.

Megan’s house wasn’t too far. About a mile on the side streets. I could bike it in a few minutes.

She would know what was going on.

I wrestled my bike out from behind the garage and took off pedaling up the street, craning my neck as I passed each house. Did they have power? No one kept their lights on in the day, though, so it was impossible to tell.

Hair whipping my bare shoulders, I flew down the next hill and slowed at San Roque Road, glanced both ways. Not a car in sight. I coasted right through. Weird.

Usually it was busy.

No one at the next intersection either, and I didn’t even bother slowing at the stop sign.

This couldn’t be right.
Zero
cars? What time was it?

As I sailed through yet another deserted intersection, my unease only grew. The streets, the silence . . . it all felt wrong.

Still, I refused to acknowledge it.

Hardly anyone ever drove back here. It could have just been a slow day. It was all residential. In fact, my mom had specifically taken me down this street to avoid traffic when I first got my learner’s permit.

Before I could stop myself, the memory triggered a hideous landslide in my mind—first my permit, then my license . . . and then hitting and killing Ashley Lacroix on Foothill Road. At once, a sour feeling spread into my stomach.

I threw my bike down at Megan’s curb and ran to her front door, more anxious than ever to see her. We’d gone through that nightmare together. She was the only one who understood, the only one who knew.

I wiped away the strands of hair glued to my sweaty forehead and rang the doorbell.

Except she wouldn’t have been the only one if I had confessed to Emory like I was supposed to . . . like he deserved.

Another stab of guilt.

Instead, I’d lied to him. Like always.

I’d fallen into his arms and missed my one chance, like always.

Like the heartless, wicked creature I was.

I wasn’t going to miss it again.

As soon as Megan and I dealt with dark matter, I was going straight to Emory’s house, marching right up to his door, and confessing everything.
I killed your sister. I did it. I was the one, Emory. Yeah, it was an accident . . . but then I hid the body.

The doorbell hadn’t even rung. I pressed it again.

Nothing happened.

Did doorbells require electricity? I rapped my knuckles on the wood, and waited.

Please be home, please be home.

I scanned the street behind me. Her Ford was parked in the shade, right where it should be. So why didn’t she answer?

I knocked again, louder this time.

“Megan!” I called, leaning to the side to shout around toward her bedroom window. “Megan, open up! It’s me!”

No one stirred inside the house.

“MEGAN!” My voice echoed up and down the eerily quiet street. I spun around, my eyes darting from one lawn to the next. All still. No movement.

Suddenly, I felt very alone.

Where
was
she?

Maybe away with her parents.
You’re freaking out over nothing, Leona.

I tried the handle. Locked. And
covered in so much dust my fingers left smudges. Just like everything else. Seriously, this was really starting to creep me out.

Only one thing left to do.
Sorry, Megan, but this counts as an emergency.

The third flower pot on the right. I nudged it aside and plucked the hidden key out of the ring of stained tile. With a final glance behind me, I let myself into the house.

“Megan!” I shouted from the foyer.

No reply.

I tried the lights. Nothing.

Power was out here too.

I crept up the hall, floorboards creaking underfoot, and peeked into her bedroom. “Megan?”

Empty.

I leaned inside—

A spiderweb brushed my cheek. I flinched back, swatting at my face and hair.

Okay . . .
weird
.

Swinging my arms to clear the web, I advanced all the way into the room. It looked like, well . . . Megan’s room—sheets wadded at the foot of the bed, heels spilling out of her closet, a calendar pinned above Salamander’s terrarium with the days neatly crossed off in alternating shades of pink and purple ink.

My gaze moved on to her nightstand, where a smartphone in a camouflage case sat next to a tube of lip gloss.

Megan’s cell phone.

I fetched it and clicked the power button. The screen stayed black.

Why am I not surprised?

I wandered over to the terrarium, noting a black smudge on my finger from pressing the button.

So now what should I do? Stay here and wait for her to come back? If she and her parents had gone to lunch and a movie, it could be a few hours.

Oh, please. They hadn’t gone to lunch and a movie.

I should probably check Emory’s house next, see if he was there . . . and if he was, just get it over with.
Confess.
This time, nothing could stop me. At the thought, a nervous pressure lodged in my throat.

Just as soon as I figured out what the hell was going on here.

Damnit, Megan, where are you?
I felt like she’d abandoned me.

Salamander the snake lay stretched out in the bark chips, asleep by the looks of it.

I tapped the glass, also coated with dust.

He didn’t budge, and I was about to move on when something else in the cage
did
move. Something tiny near its head. I leaned closer, expecting a cricket.

But it wasn’t a cricket. It was a worm.

A tiny white worm.

My nose wrinkled instinctively. Slowly, the worm’s front end wiggled around in widening circles until it touched the snake’s skin. Then it latched on and crawled onto the snake’s head. As I watched, it found a hole in the head and began to slither inside, wriggling until just its white tail stuck out. Then it was gone.

And it wasn’t just one worm. There were hundreds of tiny worms, all along the length of Salamander’s body, wriggling over each other and crawling in and out of holes, flesh like Swiss cheese. I pulled back, fighting the nausea rising in my throat. My heart made heavy thumps in my chest.

Salamander was dead.

Long
dead.

Chapter 4

The calendar.

My gaze rose to the calendar pinned above the terrarium. Right in front of me this whole time.

How long had I been gone?

The snake had been alive yesterday. I’d seen it just yesterday . . .
looking
at me.
She thinks you’re a cricket
, Megan had said. That was yesterday.

At least, I
remembered
that being yesterday.

My eyes narrowed at the calendar, trying to make sense of it. How long had I been gone?

Row after row of pink and purple X’s. Numbers. My heart thudded in my ears, distracting me. What was I looking for? Numbers . . . the date . . . what was the date?

What month was it?

At last my gaze found the big bold word at the top.

September. Most of the days crossed off.

Huh?
September?

It was October.

I reached over the terrarium, making sure not to touch it with my thighs, and flipped the calendar to October. A blank month. Clearly Megan didn’t stay on top of this. She’d let it go a whole month without crossing off a day. It didn’t prove anything.

I let the page fall back down.

The last day crossed off was Friday, September 25.

Forget it, Leona.
I turned away, swallowing a lump in my throat. On to Emory’s house. Megan had just forgotten to cross off the days.

It wasn’t like I had been transported back to September 26.

I needed to
find someone . . .
anyone
.

In the middle of the deserted intersection of State Street and Las Positas, I coasted my bike to a stop, swung my leg over the bar, and kicked out the kickstand. I stood and turned in a slow circle, shading my eyes against the glare and peering up the length of each street in awe.

Not one car in sight.

From here to the horizon, not a single moving car—no roaring buses spewing soot, no loud motorcycles rupturing my eardrums, no minivans taking kids to weekend soccer games . . . and no pedestrians.

Just silence.

A dozen city blocks of silence.

I’d made it halfway to Emory’s house. I couldn’t ignore it anymore. As far as I could see, heat waves rippled off hot asphalt and fused into a silvery haze on the horizon. The stoplights—all of them dark—stood over deserted intersections, baking in the midday sun.

And all so eerily still. My long hair hung limp and motionless, scalding my neck. Towering over the abandoned sidewalks, the ficus trees stood still as statues. Not one leaf fluttered.

My gaze panned to Loreto Plaza Shopping Center—with Gelson’s Market and Chase Bank and Chaucer’s Books—and my confusion deepened. The parking lot was deserted. Rows and rows of empty spaces, only one parked car—a beat-up Station Wagon lurking sketchily on the fringes.

On a
Sunday?

Normally I had to wait five minutes just for a break in traffic to make a left turn out of that lot.

I’d stopped in the middle of a busy intersection at lunchtime on Sunday. So . . . where was everyone? Where were my parents? Where was Megan?

Plus I’d been biking past residential homes all morning, and I’d seen no one. Where were all the lawnmowers? The kids on skateboards, the people walking their dogs, the dads working in their garages?

Evacuated.

The word just popped into my mind.

But even that seemed farfetched. To virtually empty a city? It would take days. There would be stragglers, air raid sirens, the National Guard.

No, there was a simple, obvious explanation. There had
to be. Something I was missing. But
what?

At least I wasn’t completely
alone.

Behind Gelson’s, a group of crows squabbled over some trash, picking at it and tearing it apart. Watching them uneasily, I climbed back on my bike and pedaled up Las Positas toward the Mesa, toward Emory’s house.

Who was I kidding? He wouldn’t be home, either. But I had to check. I had to try. Besides Emory kind of being my only friend other than Megan—and besides the fact that I had killed his sister and now might be in love with him—his dad worked for the defense contractor, Rincon Systems. He’d be able to get Major Connor on the phone.

First priority.

For the rest of the trip, I had the roads to myself. I saw no one.

I stared straight ahead, trying to focus . . . and trying to shut out the
other
theory picking at the back of my brain.

Everyone had apparently vanished without a trace.

There
was
something that could do that.

I’d been wearing it.

The thought made me queasy. Evidently, my stomach couldn’t make up its mind between stabbing hunger pangs and barfing up the liquid sloshing around in my belly.

On the downhill, my hair whipped across my back.

I needed to tell someone about dark matter, what it was capable of . . . and that I’d been secretly using it to make myself invisible.

I rolled my bike past Emory’s black convertible and up the driveway, panting from the ride. My fist rapped on the door, sending a twinge through my nerves.

No one answered.

I knocked again, and waited.

Silence.

His car was here, his parents’ car was here. I backed up and craned my neck to peer at the second story.

“What the hell?” I breathed.

I tried the handle.

It opened, surprisingly. The door creaked inward, revealing a sliver of the dark interior.

Well, well, well
. They’d quit locking their doors. I stepped inside, into cool, musty air, and waited for my eyes to adjust in the nearly pitch black entryway.

Out of habit, I reached out to accept a lick from the golden retriever. The animal was nowhere in sight.

“Hello?” I called hesitantly. “Anyone home?”

No reply.

In the kitchen and dining room, all the blinds had been drawn, turning the rooms into gloomy caves. Through tiny gaps, beams of sunlight slanted through floating specks of dust.

Something about this house felt . . .
different
. The silence here was thicker, almost foreboding.

“Hello?” I called again, my heart thudding.

I climbed the stairs, each step squeaking under my feet. At the top, I faced down the dim hallway, breathing faster. The closed door at the very end tugged at my gaze—Ashley’s door.

The hairs on the back of my neck bristled.

Why did it still have a hold on me?

“Is . . . is anyone home?” I whispered.

I peeked into the dad’s office. All dark. None of the usual blinking lights on his laptop and monitor. I moved on to Emory’s room. Also empty. I threw open the blinds to let some light in, sending up clouds of dust.
His
room should be well lit.

Back in the hallway, my breath rasped in my dry throat, the only sound breaking the unnerving silence.

What was I still doing here? They weren’t home, obviously.

Just do it. Just check her room.

I slid up to Ashley’s bedroom and took a deep breath. Then I twisted the handle and pushed it in.

Complete blackness.

Not even the tiniest hint of daylight.

A sickly sweet smell wormed up my nostrils. I peered around blindly, waiting for my night vision to catch up. The details materialized at last, and then I understood why it was so dark.

The windows had been boarded up. They’d boarded up Ashley’s windows. Why would they do that?

I flipped the wall switch a few times.

Power still out.

My gaze fell to the floor. The source of the smell.

Littering the carpet were the crumpled wrappers of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, the deflated foil bags of potato chips, a half-empty jar of peanut butter. In the corner, crumbs spilled from a dented tube of Pringles, and a sticky purple pool had formed under the chewed straw of a squashed juice box.

I let out a shuddering breath.

When had this happened?

A week ago, her room had been clean. As of yesterday, she’d been dead and gone. And all that time in between, she’d been invisible . . . unless she’d been sneaking back here to eat from a secret stash of junk food.

Why did none of this make sense? I pulled the door shut and stood in the hallway, wondering what to do next.

The streets were deserted.

My parents weren’t home. Neither were Megan, Emory, or their parents.

Had dark matter erased everyone?

My one last tiny hope clung to life, refusing to be snuffed out.

It was possible—at least
conceivable
—that it wasn’t in fact Sunday, but Monday, and that all the houses and streets were empty because everyone was at work or school. It was possible that somehow, in my frazzled state, I’d simply missed everyone.

Because what other explanation was there?

I sighed. One last place to check.

Santa Barbara High School.