Gathering Dark Candice Fox (e reader TXT) 📖

I’m supposed to go to class again tonight, but I have a bag of weed here and no sense of panic or fear in my chest about not going. There’s another party tomorrow night, and another class. Some dangerous people are going to the party, apparently. Sounds fun. I feel no real guilt about the trouble that will come if I keep sliding. Am I turning into you? Following in Daddy’s footsteps? If I stop going to school completely I’ll lose my place in the course, lose my scholarship, probably end up out on the street like my mother. What am I supposed to do to turn all this around? Am I fighting destiny?

You should just come right out and tell me if you have the cash buried out there somewhere or not. I’m sick of thinking about it.

Talk soon,

Dayly

BLAIR

I needed sleep. It was dangerous, with the probable concussion, but I had a shift at the Pump’n’Jump that night, and every limb weighed twice what it should. I left Sneak, still damp, in the kitchen, searching every cupboard and drawer for Hugh Jackman. I knew the creature was gone, but it seemed cruel to tell Sneak so. The thing was tame, but it had almost certainly walked out the open door when my attacker and I left the apartment. I tried not to think about its tameness likely making it easy prey for cats, hawks, or coyotes out there. Him. Making him easy prey.

I woke to the sound of furious scratching and leaped out of bed, hoping the sound was the gopher trying to make its way under the door to my bedroom. It was not. When I found Sneak she was in the shower, and the scratching noise was my toothbrush working a chemical foam back and forth in the grout between the floor tiles. The whole house smelled of bleach. She had cleaned every surface. I opened the oven and stared at the gleaming interior. She had cleaned the collected gunk off the little plastic ring around the red “on” light. The curtains had been steamed and were still blotchy. I thought about cocaine or ecstasy or whatever the hell she was on, and how easily I would be able to get through a night at the Pump’n’Jump on it. I saw myself cleaning the fine cracks in the slushie machine of crusty blue sugar crystals with a toothpick and a sponge.

Sneak came down while we drove out of the city, as we turned off the I-10 and onto the I-85 toward San Jasinte. She watched the vast, flat suburbs of Redlands recede into sun-bleached farmland at the base of the mountains. Road signs to Big Bear Lake encouraged drivers to speed through our destination without bothering to stop and look. There was little township to speak of. A yellow minibus outside the school was waiting for students as we drove by, half of the driver’s face masked by enormous aviator sunglasses and a ten-gallon hat. The only bar in San Jasinte had a horse post out the front. Inconceivably, a surf gear shop dominated the corner of one block, blaring loud rock music, a chalkboard reading simply SALES! SALES! SALES!

On the edge of town, Sneak perked up as we followed signs to the airfield.

“I can’t believe you asked the cop who arrested you to get involved in all this,” she said.

“She’s the only cop I know.”

“Well, I appreciate it. It must stir up a lot of stuff.”

“It’ll be worth it when we find Dayly.”

“Why the hell is she doing this for you?” Sneak asked. “You’re her old collar. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

“I think there’s something terrible going on there,” I said. “I’m afraid to ask what it is. But she looks awful compared to when I knew her a decade ago. She’s thin and exhausted. That house isn’t hers. Can’t be. And the broken windows? What the hell is that? I think I saw bandages under her shirt. Maybe she’s trying to distract herself from all that trouble, whatever it is, with a side case.”

“It doesn’t matter. If she’s going to help find my child, that’s all that counts.” Sneak picked at her wounded ear. “I want to know what’s happened to Dayly, even if it’s bad. Even if it’s the worst.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing.

“It has to be bad,” she said. “The gopher’s gone.”

“The gopher’s gone because of me. I knocked it off the counter.”

“It’s a sign.”

“It’s not a sign, Sneak.”

“I want to know if it was my fault, whatever happened to her. I showed her the dark path,” Sneak said. “If she turned and walked that way and got mixed up with some drug dealers or pimps or bad cops or whatever, then I’ve got to know. I can’t wonder forever.”

We arrived at a windswept field full of long, dry grass. A squat, plain building stood surrounded by large sheds, small aircraft lit yellow and orange by the falling sun. I pulled over in the parking lot and grabbed Sneak’s arm before she could get out.

“Sneak,” I said. “In Happy Valley, you slapped some sense into me when I was lying there pretending I was on another planet for days on end. Remember that? You might not. It was early on. You told me that if I cracked up, everybody would wonder why they weren’t doing the same.”

“Sounds a bit deep for someone like me.” She shrugged.

“You said ‘We all get through it or none of us get through it.’”

She looked at the buildings beyond, didn’t reply.

“It doesn’t matter why Ada and Jessica have come along. They’re with us. You’re not alone. We’re going to get answers. We’re all going to get through it together.”

She turned away and opened the car door, but in the side mirror I saw a flicker of a smile on her