The Dark Divine

He put his hand against mine, the thin metal mesh between our skin. "Tomorrow. I'll be here tomorrow. I told your dad I'd fix the fence." He made no guarantee beyond that.

"I'll see you then."

Daniel pulled his hand away.

"Wait," I said.

He stopped.

"Thank you. For what you did for my dad ... out in the backyard."

Daniel bit his lip. "You saw that?" I nodded.

His face colored slightly. "Don't worry about it, Gracie. Your dad was just feeling the aftereffects of what happened today--thinking he'd lost a son forever." Daniel stepped backward to the edge of the shingled eve. He sprang up onto his toes. "Lock your window," he said, and did a back flip dive off the roof.

Chapter Fourteen

Such great heights

IN BED

I curled up with my comforter and tried to make my brain stop whirling. But I couldn't stop thinking about Daniel: how it felt to be held in his arms, the exhilaration and freedom of ru

I have to admit I didn't know much about that sort of thing--monsters, demons, vampires. A lot of people in the parish thought it was a sin to read books or watch movies about such things. My parents limited the shows we were allowed to watch, and I had friends who were ba

At least that's what I'd believed.

But restrictions didn't stop people in Rose Crest from talking. I'd always tried to believe that the Markham Street Monster was just some kind of morality tale to scare us kids into behaving. The stories started out as just sightings of some kind of hairy beast on Markham Street. Then people in that part of the city went missing. Mostly shelter guests, prostitutes, and kids who were wasted, so no one seemed all that concerned. That is until their mangled bodies started turning up on Markham about once a month. At least those were the rumors I'd heard when I was a kid. Things closer to Rose Crest weren't as bad. Mostly dead animals--like my little dog, Daisy, ripped to pieces. Dad had said it was probably just a raccoon from the woods, but I'd always feared something worse. And what if I was right? What if it had been the

Markham Street Monster? What if it had been as close as my front yard?

Those strange things had stopped years ago--before Daniel ever left town--but now they were happening again. Marya

Could it really be a coincidence that any of these things started happening again only after Daniel had come home? Could the monster have followed him here? Or maybe he was the one who was tracking it.

Daniel said he'd returned because of art school, but I'd felt there was something more to it. Was this it? Was the Markham Street Monster back? Was Daniel here to protect us from it?

MORNING

I must have fallen asleep eventually, because I was startled awake by a loud thunk outside my bedroom window. I rolled over and looked at the clock: 6:00 a.m. I heard the thunk again, so I stumbled out of bed and went to investigate. It was mostly dark out, but I could still see that the side yard was empty. The thunking continued. It seemed to be coming from the backyard. My legs were so stiff I practically had to slide down the stairs on my butt.

I was in the kitchen when I saw Daniel out in the backyard. He was driving a wood fence post into the frozen dirt--with his bare hands. I couldn't tell for sure because his back was to me, but it looked like he was holding the post in one hand and then swinging his arm, presumably whacking the top of the post with the butt of his hand. No mallet, or hammer, or any tool was even nearby from what I could tell. He'd probably gotten such an early start so he could do it his way.

I was about to go out and join him when I ran my hand through my hair, and my fingers lodged in a nest of snarls. I watched Daniel take another swing, sinking the post a good three inches into the ground, and I suddenly felt compelled to he cleaned and dressed in something more flattering than my fla

By the time I'd done my makeup, flat-ironed my hair, and changed my sweater three times--why was everything I owned so boxy?--Charity was in the kitchen perusing one of her science hooks and eating sugared cereal from her private stash. Which meant that Mom wasn't up yet. The thunking noise had stopped, so hopefully Mom and James would sleep in for a while longer.

I peered out the window. "Did you see where Daniel went?"

"Nope," Charity grumbled. "I was about ready to go strangle him for making all that racket, but he was gone by the time I got down here."

"Sorry," I said, like anything Daniel did was my fault.

"Meh." She shrugged. "I was go

"Oh." I stared farther out the window. "I wonder where he went."

"The Corolla's gone. Maybe Dad took him to the hardware store or something."

Or maybe whoever took the car last night never came home. I didn't hear the garage door last night, and I hadn't fallen asleep until at least three a.m. Dad's study was closed and locked, and the light was out. If Daniel wasn't with Dad, then where had he gone?

I sank into a kitchen chair. Perhaps Daniel's reason for fixing the fence so early was because he'd changed his mind about wanting to see me again.

"May I?" I reached for Charity's box of Lucky Charms.

She nodded. "Did you hear about Mr. Day's granddaughter?"

"Jessica or Kristy?" "Jess. She's missing."

Little frosted three-leafed clovers tumbled into my bowl. I hadn't seen Jessica in years. She was in Daniel and Jude's grade growing up, but her family had moved to the city when she was a sophomore. "Doesn't she run away on a bimonthly basis?"

"Yeah, but never seriously. She's never missed a holiday before. When she didn't show up for Thanksgiving, her parents called the police. Her friends said they were with her at a party downtown the other night. They said she was there one minute and gone the next. It was in the paper." Charity scraped the bottom of her bowl. "The

Markham Street Monster strikes again."

I dropped the cereal box. "Is that what they're saying:

"Yep. There was even a little blurb at the end of the article about James wandering away. I don't know how they even heard about that. They say the monster might have tried to take him." There was a sudden edge to her voice. She looked at me over the cereal box. "You don't think--"

"They're just trying to freak people out to up their sales." I wished I could believe what I was saying, but I knew now the article might be right. "Where's the newspaper anyway?"

"Jude surfaced a few minutes ago. He took it back downstairs," Charity said. "The paper said the police are waiting for test results on that blood before they release a statement."

My heart did a little flip-flop in my chest. What would they find with those test results? I pushed away the bowl of too-sweet cereal.