Free Comes the Night by Norah Wilson, Heather Doherty

was quite sure that Brooke hadn’t seen it either. Though she was equally sure Brooke had searched for it amongst everyone’s things in their shared room at Harvell. But there were stretches of time when Alex would be gone for an hour or more at night. Only to return ashen and quiet and so lost in thought. Maryanne expected she had been reading the words of Connie Harvell. From the little she already knew, that was one sad tale.
    Once, when Alex had crept into the room and crawled into bed well after lights out, Maryanne had heard soft crying from the other side of the room while Brooke gently snored and she herself pretended to be asleep. She had said nothing, of course. Not then and not the morning after when Alex had awoken with her gray-blue eyes red-rimmed.
    Jason’s eyes had been gray-blue.
    “I’ll ask you again, Ms. Hemlock!” McKenzie snapped his pointer on the whiteboard, bringing it down hard on the triangle’s lower corner. “What is the answer?”
    Maryanne started. Crap! Had that question been directed to her? Had she been that zoned out? But ten studying seconds later, Brooke answered for her:
    “Seventy-two degrees.”
    With obvious disgust, Mr. McKenzie cast a dirty look at both Maryanne and Brooke before he turned back to the board.
    And that was a very good thing because if he’d stared at her for one minute longer, he might have seen the tears welling in her eyes. And she didn’t want him to think they were because of him.
    The tears that threatened were for her little brother, not this jerk of a teacher. They were for this counting day. And maybe too, a bit for herself.
    At least tonight she would have some distraction. She, Brooke and Alex had agreed that they would sneak up to the attic again after lights out to hear more from Connie’s diary. But they wouldn’t stop there. This morning in their room as they’d prepared to go off to school, they’d agreed to simultaneously tap on that window and beg to fly out through the pane as Alex had done once before. As Connie Harvell had done. If that couldn’t distract her, nothing could.
    Much as part of her yearned for it, Maryanne was terrified of what the night might bring.
    I bet poor Jason was terrified that night, five months ago today.
    One tear slid slowly down her cheek, followed by another. It was just a small mercy that Mr. McKenzie didn’t turn around to see. But shy and quiet Ty Piper was watching her, she saw through tear-filled eyes. A couple others too, no doubt. More than anything right then and there, Maryanne wanted out of that classroom.
    She just wanted out.

Chapter 9
Into the Brilliant Darkness
    Alex
    G OD , SHE HATED it here. Hated the very air in the room. Hated everything about it.
    Alex felt her throat constrict as she ascended the final step and walked the length of the dim attic. The candlelight flickered crazily as her hand trembled. Just like every other time she’d entered this room since waking here that awful morning, the almost-memory hammered at her. Rhythmically, relentlessly pounding outside the barrier of her mind as she looked around at the now familiar space. Dresser, rocking chair, crib, cot, musty trunk, old coat tree... Something would surely trigger a memory. But it didn’t. As she stood there—right there on the very spot where it must have happened—she still had no recollection of the attack. No picture of her attacker.
    “Spooked out?”
    For once, Brooke’s voice didn’t have that taunting edge.
    “Scared stiff,” Maryanne breathlessly confessed.
    Alex didn’t doubt it. She was scared herself, and she’d already done it once before; they hadn’t. And though she’d loved the exhilaration of joining in with the night, loved knowing that part of her had slipped through the stained glass unscathed to fly into the darkness, it was still a frightening prospect. A slip into the unknown. Yet as this week had passed, Alex had thought about little else, and the niggling craving to do it again