The Sweetest Dark Read Free Page B

creatures who were destined to dig their talons into me and change my life forever.

Chapter Three
    Mine was the final stop of the line. By then there were only two of us left in the compartment, me and a slouched, elderly man with a tweed cap pulled down low over his ears, a cane and valise propped by his feet. He’d been snoring for the past two hours, even through the lurching stops and starts.
    Beyond the glass of my window the night was now amethyst. Infinite amethyst, deep and dark with a ripple of stars winking over the obsidian break of the forest paralleling the tracks. I found that depth of purple sky mesmerizing. Nights in the city were always gray or black or the color of the streetlights. Always. So I wasn’t sure why this particular hue—those stars, the jagged line of trees—was so familiar. I must have imagined it this way, I decided. I read so much. I must have read of amethyst nights and imagined it.
    â€œ Bourne mouth, end o’the line,” called the stationmaster from past my window, clumping along the wooden platform as the train hissed to a halt.
    I stood, stretching the ache from my shoulders, and found my suitcase. A glance back at the snoring man showed he was already up and shuffling out, so I followed him, my case bumping against my knees.
    A waft of damp air hit me as I exited, stirring the loose strands of hair that had pulled free of my chignon. It wasn’t balmy precisely. It was April, so it wouldn’t be, even here. But it carried the promise of warmth, smelling strongly of the salty Channel and of the coming summer that only waited to bloom.
    I took it in with wonder. I could taste the sea, I realized. I could taste it.
    â€œLast stop, miss,” barked the stationmaster, now paused before me. “Everyone off. Even little girls, eh?”
    I had lingered too long on the steps leading down to the platform. In my chagrin, I jumped over the last two rungs, landing smartly on both feet, but the man was already pacing off.
    I walked slowly away from the train, looking around the platform.
    Someone was supposed to meet me. Director Forrester hadn’t known who, but he had been reasonably certain—those had been his exact words, reasonably certain, mumbling to himself as he’d ruffled through all the papers on his desk, because surely they could not expect you to find it on your own, no, indeed; I cannot seem to locate the telegram that says so, but —that someone from the school would meet me here and take me on the rest of the way to Iverson, which apparently involved traveling by foot and carriage and maybe even a ferry. I was as unclear on the exact location of the school as the director had been.
    I prayed he was right, that someone would come. I didn’t have enough money left for another cab.
    But … the station itself seemed closed, its curtains shut, its windows dark. That by itself wasn’t too surprising; in London the streetlamps were extinguished at six and windows were papered in black to block any little leaks of light. No one wanted to guide the Germans’ nighttime bombs. Yet the train station’s windows weren’t papered. There was simply no one left inside to turn on the lights.
    I did hear music playing from somewhere, lovely and haunting, muted. Perhaps the stationmaster had left on a phonograph in his office.
    The platform was virtually empty. There was no one at all to my left, toward the end of the train, and only a pair of porters unloading a stack of luggage far up by the front, near the first-class compartments, threading in and out of a single pool of light cast from a lamppost nearby.
    The stationmaster had aimed their way. After a few more minutes of glancing nervously around the deserted platform, I did the same.
    Before I’d gotten far, a new cluster of people approached the growing wall of trunks. There were four of them plus the stationmaster, their hats and shoulders stroked with gold