Dark Awakening Read Free Page A

probable future as a crazy old cat lady.
    A long shot, maybe. But a shot.
    At least it was a beautiful night, Lily thought, inhaling deeply. The smell of an October night was one of her favorites, especially in this part of New England. It was rife with the earthy, rich smell of decaying leaves, of wood smoke from someone’s chimney, and shot through with a cleansing bite of cold.
    Lily looked around as she walked, taking her time. In the faint glow from the streetlights along the road, this place really did have a haunted look about it, but not scary. More like someplace where you’d find a dark romance, full of shadows and sensual mystery.
    She huffed out a breath, amused at herself. She taught English lit because she had always liked the fantasy of what could be, instead of the often unpleasant reality of how things were. Speaking of which, it looked like a little
Phantom of the Opera
might be in order for her Friday night movie. Even if the ending absolutely refused to go the way she wanted, she thought with a faint smile, no matter how many times she’d willed Christine to heal the dark and wounded Phantom instead of wasting her time on boring old Raoul.
    It would have made for one hell of a love scene—
    There was a sudden, strange tingling sensation at the back of her neck. Lily felt the hairs there rising as a rush of adrenaline chilled her blood. Someone was behind her. She knew it without seeing, felt eyes on her that hadn’t been there a moment before.
    But when she whirled around, stumbling a little in her haste to confront whoever was behind her, she saw nothing. Only the empty expanse of lawn, dotted with the skeletal shapes of slumbering trees, an empty bench, and beside her, the dark shape of the house. Nothing.
    Nowhere even to hide.
    Lily felt her heart kick into a quicker rhythm, and her breath became shallower as her eyes darted around, looking for a shape, a shadow, anything that would explain her sudden, overwhelming certainty that she wasn’t alone.
    Stupid,
she told herself.
You’re walking through a horror movie setup, and it’s just got your imagination running, is all.
    Lily knew that was more than likely it, but she still wanted to reach her car and get out of here. Soothed a little by the thought that there were a whole bunch of people inside the house who would hear her scream if anything did happen, she turned to continue making her way out front, casting a lingering look over one shoulder.
    Though the moon rode high in the night sky, nearly full, and the air was still rich with the very scents she’d just been enjoying, all her pleasure had vanished in favor of the insistent instinct that had kept humans walking the Earth for as long as they had: flight.
    “Hey, are you all right?”
    She gave a small scream before she could stop herself, jumping at the sudden appearance of another person infront of her when there’d been no sign of another soul only seconds before.
    He raised his hands in front of him, eyebrows lifting in an expression that plainly said he was as startled as she was. “Whoa, hey, don’t do that! I’m not a ghost or anything. You can start breathing again.” One eyebrow arched higher, plaintive. “Please?”
    It was the faintly amused concern he put into that last word that finally got her to draw in a single, shuddering breath. But she still shot a quick look around, gauging distance in case she had to run.
    “Look, I’m sorry,” the man said, drawing Lily’s full attention back to him. “I needed to get out of there for a few. Too many people, not enough ghosts, you know?”
    “I… yeah,” Lily said, still trying to figure out how she should deal with this. Had he been inside too? She wasn’t sure…. There’d been a cluster of people, and not everyone had shown up at the same time. It was certainly possible. But when she looked more closely at him, she was sure she would have remembered if they’d crossed paths.
    “Let’s start over,” he