Free Darkness Watching (Darkworld #1) by Emma L. Adams

not?”
    We all laughed. We’d established already that none of us was at university for the one-night-stands. Sarah actually had a boyfriend back home, where he was studying at the local college, and Alex was more interested in climbing mountains and joining every student society imaginable. As for me… well, I didn’t yet know what I wanted.
    “I heard the person above me going at it last night,” said Sarah. “The walls in the flat are stupidly thin; you could hear everything. It was traumatising.”
    “Fun,” said Alex. “I heard some weird-ass music coming from Terrence’s room.”
    “Me, too!” I said. “Sounded like screaming. At first I thought he was torturing a small animal.”
    “You never know,” said Alex. “That guy’s seriously weird. If we see him carrying a body bag out, then we’ll know for certain.”
    “My best friend back home would say he’s planning to poison us all,” I said.
    “Hope not,” said Alex.
    “I think he’s given me the plague,” said Sarah, shivering. “I keep losing my voice.”
    “That’d be Freshers’ Flu,” said Alex, knowledgeably. “Just keep your germs away from me!”
    I decided not to mention that I’d been coughing all night, too. Since we’d still been tired, we’d watched a film in the common room then opted for an early night―albeit a restless one, punctuated by shrieks and yells from Terrence’s bizarre music collection. I kept shivering, even though I couldn’t feel any temperature change.
    Wednesday was the day of the weekly market in Blackstone. Stalls selling everything from cupcakes to jewellery, from dog collars to DVDs, sprung up overnight along the street under white marquees. The cobblestones were slick with rainwater.
    “Neat,” said Alex, examining a collection of precious stones.
    “Lucky charm for you, love?” said the stall owner, a middle-aged woman adorned with layers of coloured shawls. “That amethyst there’ll ward off all evil.” She held up a stone like the one Aunt Eve had sent me.
    “Um, no thanks,” said Alex, raising her eyebrows at the price tag. “We’re just looking.”
    The stone winked at me as she put it back down, and I felt the hairs rise on my arms.
    The strange feeling grew more pronounced as we moved farther into the market, nearing the town square. We hovered around a stall selling old books for a while, and I gave into temptation and purchased a book of Victorian vampire stories and a second-hand version of the poems of Lord Byron. After all, I reasoned, I’d probably need them at some point.
    Last time I’d seen the town square, it was deserted, bare cobblestones circling the stone statue of the angel and the wooden benches empty. Now, stalls and crowds of chattering people filled every inch of space, and a large black tent obscured the entrance to the cathedral.
    My skin prickled with uneasiness; I felt something slightly amiss. I walked toward the black tent to take a look, feeling the prickling intensify as I neared it.
    My heart dropped.
    All around the tent were dark spaces, tears in the universe, overlapping with reality like patches in a quilt. The untouched gaps between the dark spaces looked unreal, as flimsy as the fabric of the tent, like the world could collapse around us and send us spinning into a black void. I closed my eyes. I could feel myself trembling all over.
    Someone stepped up behind me.
    “A fortune-teller?”
    I opened my eyes and saw the sign above the tent that read: Madam Persephone: Fortune-Teller .
    “Not sure I want to waste my money on that,” said Alex. “Those things are usually hoaxes.”
    “I think some are genuine,” said Sarah. “It’s just there are a lot of fakes out there.”
    Ordinarily, I’d have agreed with Alex, but, after everything I’d seen recently, who was I to judge?
    “Might as well get a free Tarot reading,” I found myself saying.
    “Huh? Didn’t think you were into that stuff,” said Alex.
    “I’m not. I think it’s