Ash and Darkness (Translucent #3)

by Dan Rix

  I let out a moan.

  I heaved my trembling body into the pipe and slid to the bottom, then stumbled along the tunnel, following Sarah’s footprints. An uncovered manhole came into view, spilling light into the storm drain.

  I crawled free of the sewer and stood up on the street, squinting and shielding my eyes against dazzling sunlight. Cars whooshed by, the purr of their engines joining the murmur of distant traffic. A breeze swished through palm fronds, kissed my neck, lifted my hair and swirled it around me, and I caught the scent of honey and damp soil woven in with fresh, sooty exhaust. Buzzing around my face, a bee sniffed for pollen in my eyelashes before moving on to a bush of rustling lavender.

  And voices . . . I heard voices! A mother pushing a stroller across the intersection, chatting on a cell phone, like this was all no big deal.

  When it was. It was.

  A tear slid down my cheek.

  This was Earth.

  A spray whisked my ankles—someone’s sprinklers. I pounced on it and cupped my mouth over the sprinkler head, and I gorged myself on real, precious, life-giving water.

  Ding-dong.

  I released Emory’s doorbell, and a flutter of nervous anticipation breezed through my stomach.

  While I waited, I fished the cell phone out of my pocket and turned it over in my hand—a disturbingly convincing fake, I now knew.

  When I’d gone back home to eat, take a boiling hot bath, and change—an hour of pure bliss—I’d found it sitting on the dashboard of my Corolla, where Megan must have left it. My parents weren’t home. Probably still at work.

  The cell phone displayed 3:59 p.m.

  Emory would be home from school by now.

  Muted voices came from inside his house, and my pulse hiked, suddenly drumming in my temples.

  I went to click it off, when I noticed the new message icon at the top. Huh? Curious, I tapped open the message.

  It was from Megan, sent an hour ago.

  Don’t go inside your house, don’t go to school, don’t talk to ANYONE. Call me the moment you get this.

  My eyebrows pinched together.

  No time to process it.

  Inside, heavy footsteps clomped down the stairs. I hastily shoved the phone back in my pocket, just as the latch clicked and the door swung open.

  Cheeks flushed, Emory stepped into the doorway, smoothing down messy blond hair with a hint of a smirk hovering on his lips.

  Until he saw me.

  He jerked back, startled. “Whoa, what the—?”

  “Don’t talk,” I said, cutting him off before he could derail my confession. “Don’t talk until I finish. There’s something I need to tell you, something I’ve needed to tell you for a long time.” I took a deep breath.

  “But how’d you . . . ?” He glanced behind him at the stairs, eyes narrowing.

  “I killed Ashley,” I blurted out. “It was me. I’m the one, Emory. I’m the one you’ve been looking for all this time. I hit her that night on accident, and I hid her body so no one would find out, that’s why I’ve been so obsessed with you, because . . . because I wanted you to forgive me, but I was too scared to tell you.”

  The words tumbled out faster and faster, and the release was pure catharsis, pure bliss. “I’ve been running for so long, I can’t stand living in my own skin anymore. I should have told you a long time ago, but I lied to you . . . I lied to you when you needed the truth the most, and I’m never going to forgive myself for that. I’m never going to forgive myself for what I did to her. Never, never, never. And I’m sorry. I’m so, so, sorry, and I . . .” I swallowed the growing lump in my throat. “I want you to turn me into the police.”

  He blinked, no expression.

  Another set of footsteps came down into the foyer.

  “Babe?” said an annoying girl’s voice. “Babe, who is it?”

  Emory spun toward the voice, startled.

  Then he glanced back and forth between me and the voice, and his ruddy face went ash white.

  A pretty girl with long dark hair stepped into view, kissed his unresponsive cheek—ew, his girlfriend—and peeked out the door. Our eyes met.

  And then I understood.

  Not his girlfriend.

  Me.

  Dear reader,

  We’re halfway through the series. Before you start book four, I want to ask you something (but if you’re biting your fingernails right now and want me to just shut up so you can see what happens to Leona next, you can click here to get book four and come back to this later). If you’re enjoying my Translucent series, then I encourage you to sign up for my new releases email (you can click here to sign up).

  It’s my hope that I’ve given you such a surprising, emotional, page-turning thrill ride that you’ll decide to read many more books from me in the future, and my new releases email will make that as easy as possible. But by signing up, you’re also supporting me and my books.

  Why am I asking for your email address? As an indie author, I don’t have the deep pockets and the marketing team of a large publisher, so in order to get my books out there, I have to do my best to communicate directly with my fans, hence this email list. But this is also a good thing, because it means I don’t have to water down, censor, and soften the hard edges of my stories as is so often demanded by traditional publishers to make their books more mainstream. It means more authentic, edgier fiction.

  So, if you’d like to support me as an indie author—and of course, you don’t have to—you can sign up for my new releases email at this link.

  Glad to have you as a fan,

  Dan

  P.S. Keep reading to see what else I have out and what’s in the works. For starters, you can click here to check out my brand new YA time travel series.

  Timeloopers. When a time machine delivers a cryptic warning that his crush dies in a car crash, 17-y.o. Cory must do the unthinkable: alter the timeloop to save the life of the girl he loves, only to forget everything about her . . .

  >>CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT TIMELOOPERS<<

  God’s Loophole. After Gabriel and Raedyn experiment with a device that temporarily erases them from existence, the two star-crossed teens must solve a physics riddle before they lose their souls to an unthinkable limbo outside the boundaries of spacetime.

  >>CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT GOD’S LOOPHOLE<<

  If you’re enjoying Translucent, here are two of my standalone YA titles that will keep you up all night reading:

  Broken Symmetry. What if you could walk through a mirror . . . and end up in another universe? Blaire Adams can do just that, but when she finds herself trapped behind a mirror with no path back to reality, can she ever break free?

  >>CLICK HERE TO BEGIN BROKEN SYMMETRY<<

  Triton. In the middle of the Atlantic, four hundred miles west of Bermuda, the eight thousand passengers and crew aboard the cruise ship MS Cypress vanish into thin air. Everyone—men, women, and children—all gone. Taken.

  Everyone except five teenagers.

  >>CLICK HERE TO BEGIN TRITON<<