Read Online Defy the Dark by Saundra Mitchell - Free Book Online Page A

flute?” Patricia asked when he grabbed his case.
    Cado stroked the cracked black leather. “Turns out I don’t need your magic purse after all. I got my own right here.”
    â€œ A flute case? ” she said in a voice too shrill for two a.m. “You think you’re one of the Hardy Boys or Harry Potter? That if you’re clever and plucky, you can play a tune and save the day with the power of music?”
    â€œI know what I’m doing,” he reassured her. “And it doesn’t involve pretending to be the Pied Piper.”
    â€œWhat does it involve?” she asked, not in the least reassured.
    â€œWhat’s going on?”
    Mr. Markham’s robed appearance in the doorway barely registered, Cado and Patricia too busy staring into each other’s eyes as if for the last time.
    â€œNothing,” said Cado, finally looking away. “I was just leaving.”
    â€œWhere do you think you’re going at this hour?”
    â€œTo learn about fear,” he said, his mind already on the adventure ahead. “About real fear.”
    But instead of walking out the door, he looked back at Patricia and immediately wished he hadn’t. She seemed bruised somehow, as if he had struck her. That’s how she would look at his funeral. Of course she wouldn’t stand over his grave and laugh at him. Cado was amazed he had ever thought such a thing.
    â€œI wish I had kept those flowers,” she said. “Looks like they were a good symbol after all.” She put her hands on his shoulders. “At least kiss me good-bye?”
    Cado kissed her between the eyes and once on each cheek.
    Patricia made a tsk of impatience. “That’s not good enough!”
    â€œThat’s because it wasn’t a good-bye kiss. Just, you know, a ‘see you later’ kiss. I’ll kiss you for real when I get back.”
    â€œWhat is going on around here?” Mr. Markham asked as Cado escaped downstairs.
    Patricia answered but her tears distorted the words. Her father’s response, however, was as clear as arsenic:
    â€œYou should have kissed him good-bye.”
    Â 
    S t. Teresa Avenue was within walking distance of the Markhams’ home, so it didn’t take long to reach. Cado had the town all to himself, the shops now closed and the street empty. His steps echoed like a giant’s. The purple-tinged fairy glow beneath the lampposts only illustrated the absence of light.
    Cado went up the steps that beveled the sidewalk and stumbled over an indistinct lump. No. Not a lump. A person.
    A bum?
    A stroke victim?
    â€œHey, you okay?” Cado grabbed what felt like an arm and pulled the person beneath the lamppost a few feet away. The weak light illuminated a woman in black sweats with long, pale hair and no face. It had been peeled neatly off from hairline to chin like the skin from an apple.
    Cado scrambled away and fetched up against the blue bench at the trolley stop. After winning the struggle to free his phone from his pocket, he sat and dialed the sheriff’s office with fingers that had gone numb and spoke with a voice he hadn’t used since he was thirteen.
    â€œA woman without a face?” the deputy was saying, uninterested. “Another one? We’ll get someone out there as soon as we can, miss.”
    Miss? Cado looked down at himself, then quickly away. If he looked too long, he might grow breasts. Or if he looked directly at the dead woman, his own face might peel off for no reason. The world felt dangerously malleable.
    He called Patricia.
    â€œCado? Is it over already?” The hope in her voice was painful to hear. “Cado?”
    â€œAm I awake?”
    A long pause. “You were when you left,” she said, all hope gone. “You sound weird. I’d tell you to come back, but it’s in God’s hands now. God’s or whoever’s. Why aren’t you saying anything? Cado!”
    â€œThere’s a