Read Online Token of Darkness by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes - Free Book Online

hour.”
    “Sit down. I’ll get you a cup. How do you take it?”
    “Just … coffeelike. Black. I’m a Dunkin’ Donuts guy,” Brent said by way of explanation. “Complicated coffee confuses me.”
    Cooper’s father emerged from the back as Cooper poured Brent a cup of their house roast. “If you want to hang out with your friend, I have things under control,” he said.
    “Thanks.”
    “You’ve been a bit of a menace this morning, anyway,” he pointed out with a chuckle.
    Cooper agreed and led Brent to a table in the corner, as far away from the counter—and his father—as they could get.
    “So,” Cooper began, once they were seated across from each other.
    “So,” Brent replied. “Since I’ve seen her, too, I’m going to work on the assumption that you’re not crazy. I think that’s a good place to start.”
    Cooper nodded. “You’re responding to all this a lot better than I did at first.”
    “My life’s been pretty weird for a while now,” Brent explained. “I’ll tell you all about it when we get to that. What else can you tell me about Samantha and … um, yourself?”
    Cooper wondered if Brent had almost asked something else, but he decided it didn’t matter.
    “You said you saw her?” Cooper asked, curious. “No one else has been able to see her before now.”
    “I don’t think I normally can,” Brent said, “but right after whatever you did in the library—and we’ll get to
that
, too—I saw and heard her for a second or two. Last night I saw her when I was dreaming.”
    Dreaming?
Dear God, it was bad enough when she showed up while he was getting dressed or something. If that girl showed up in Cooper’s dreams—
    “Calm,” Brent said softly. “Wherever you’re going right now, it’s not a good place to go.”
    Cooper’s eyes widened as he focused back on Brent, and
not
on the nightmares. “What are you, some kind of shrink?” he snapped.
    “Not … exactly,” Brent said, his voice smooth and careful. “But I know your mind goes somewhere bad sometimes. It’s somewhere you don’t like to think about. It
hurts
. My guess is it has something to do with Samantha and your ability to see her. But I’m better with computers than with human brains, so I’m not going to try to figure out what the issue is with yours. What I can do is recommend a witch I know.”
    “A …
witch?”
Cooper repeated. First ghosts, now witches. Why couldn’t this get less weird instead of more?
    “Call him a witch, a sorcerer, a psychic, whatever makes you comfortable,” Brent answered. “The point is, he knowsmore about this supernatural stuff than anyone I’ve ever met. He helped me, and I’m sure he can help you.”
    “What did he do for you?” Cooper asked. If Brent hadn’t mentioned that he had seen Samantha, Cooper probably would have brushed him off as a quack already.
    Of course, Brent hadn’t exactly
described
Samantha. And Cooper had been the one to volunteer her name.
    He didn’t want to be cynical. He
really
didn’t want to be cynical, because he desperately needed to be able to talk to someone about all this. But until Samantha showed up to confirm she had spoken to Brent in a dream the night before, Cooper couldn’t help remaining a little suspicious.
    “Well …” Brent hesitated, staring at his coffee. “I was hearing voices. Which turned out to be thoughts. At first I figured I was going crazy, but people kept saying or doing things I had just heard them think. It got so bad that I couldn’t hide that I was having problems. Starting at Q-tech helped, since I could focus on more hands-on projects instead of just sitting in a classroom all day, but by sophomore year it got to be too much. I collapsed at school, and they sent me to the emergency room. I spent the next couple of months going to doctor after doctor as they did a million tests. I wasn’t about to tell them I was hearing voices, so eventually they prescribed me medication for migraines, which