About the Dark Read Free Page A

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