The Gathering Dark Read Free Page B

Keomany replied, jangling her keys. “It’s a Druidic celebration of the earth at the peak of its fertility. Maybe if you’re good, I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.”
    “Yes, O Earth Goddess.”
    “Bet your ass.”
    He smiled, this handsome kid who was only five or six years younger than she was and in the space of an eyeblink she had considered and discarded the idea of sleeping with him sometime. Whatever the age difference, there were so many ways in which Paul was really just a kid.
    Keomany was about to go out the door when she turned and shot Paul one last admonishing glance. “Oh, and if you’re going to be seducing Jillian while I’m gone, please don’t do it during work hours.”
    The kid actually blushed. Jillian was a year younger than him, still a high school senior, and Paul had been sweet-talking her since Keomany had hired her. Whether it had gone further than that, she had no idea.
    “Hey,” Paul protested.
    “Call ’em like I see ’em,” she said, and then she was out the door and the music of the wooden wind chimes followed her all the way across the street to where her car was parked. As she pulled out, Keomany saw Paul standing in the open door of her shoppe, the hand-painted sign for Sweet Somethings just above his head swaying slightly in the breeze. She waved but by then Jane and Ed Herron, an older couple who were regulars, were walking up toward the shoppe and Paul’s attention was on them.
    Keomany gave the place one last glance and then turned her attention to the road and the trip ahead of her. The steering wheel clutched in one hand, she reached down and clicked on the radio, coming in just a few lines into a blues-rock tune that the local pop station had taken to playing every hour or so in the last few days. She still had no idea what it was called or who sang it, but the woman’s raspy voice reminded her of Joan Osborne, and maybe a little bit of Sheryl Crow.
    For a moment she was tempted to change the channel, but as it always did, the song cut a groove down inside her, and despite how often she heard it, Keomany left it on.
    As she drove south out of Wickham, she glanced around at her hometown. The village was small enough that she at least recognized more than half the people she saw on the sidewalk or driving past. Many she knew by name. She actually slowed down to wave and call hello to Annie Mulvehill, with whom she’d gone to high school, and who was now a police officer in town. Probably the first female ever to have the job in Wickham.
    Keomany’s apartment was behind her, on the northern end of town, just far enough away from her parents, who still lived in the house over on Little Tree Lane where she had grown up. As she drove by the turnoff that would have taken her there, she felt a twinge of guilt that she had not been able to go by and see them the night before as she’d promised. But she’d make it up to them when she returned.
    A frown creased her forehead. Despite the sunshine and the blue sky and the inescapable rhythm on the radio, a chill shuddered through her and Keomany actually slowed the car to glance back at the turnoff. Something made her want to go there now, made her worry about her parents. It was foolish, of course. She’d called them on the phone that morning and they were fine.
    Relax , she told herself as she eased her foot back down on the accelerator. Whatever earth magick she had dabbled in since college, she had never had a premonition before and doubted she was starting to have them now. But there were goosebumps on her arms and a cold feeling still at the base of her neck. So just the same, premonition or not, she would give her folks another call just as soon as she reached Brattleboro. It was only a couple of hours. Not a lot was going to happen in that time.
    Still, some of the good feeling of the day had gone out of her now and Keomany was no longer smiling as she passed the fire station that marked the town