The Gathering (Darkness Rising 1)

"Oh, that's mature," I said.

"Keeps me young."

"So, did you bump into Mrs. Morris today? I hear Mr. Morris is away at a conference." I waggled my brows at him in the rearview mirror.

"Enough, you two," Mom said.

"What's with the ride?" I said. "You missed me so much you couldn't wait for me to get home?"

"Don't answer that, Rick." Mom looked back at me as Dad pulled away from the curb. "We need to pick up some things in the city, and we thought we'd go out for dinner."

By "city," she did not mean Vancouver. When I tell online friends that I live on Vancouver Island, they start asking questions about the city of Vancouver. I guess it makes sense that it would be on the island with the same name. It's not. It's across the strait, and while it's barely thirty-five kilometers away, the water flowing in between means we only cross for special occasions.

The city we were heading to was Nanaimo, on the eastern coast. With just under a hundred thousand people, it was hardly a major urban center, but on an island almost five hundred kilometers long, with a population of under a million--half of them living in Victoria at the southern tip--you take what you can get.

"I can pick the restaurant, right? Since Saturday is my birthday and apparently we aren't going to Vancouver to get my tattoo. Not that I'm bitter about that or--" I stopped as I glimpsed a familiar face out the window. "Hey, there's that hiker from this morning. Did you ever catch up with her?"

"No, and I really do need her to file a report. Hold on."

Dad pulled over to the curb as a group of kids passed. He peered out the window. "Where'd she go?"

"Right there, behind Travis Carling."

Dad opened the door and got out. The kids went by ... and there was no one else on the sidewalk. I rolled down the window.

"She was right there." I pointed. "In front of the library."

The library was part of the community center, which took up most of the block, meaning there was no way the woman had ducked around it. Dad walked over and tried the library doors, but they were locked--it was open only three days a week.

"I think it's time for a drug test," Dad said as he came back to the car.

"I'm serious. I saw her."

"Maya's right," Mom said. "I noticed her before the kids went by. I don't know where she went, but she was there."

"She doesn't want to tattle on the cute kitty," I said. "Don't worry. Just hand her the papers while she's cornered again by a hundred and seventy-five pounds of snarling kitty and she'll change her mind."

FOUR

IT TOOK US FIVE minutes to get out of Salmon Creek. Without exceeding the speed limit. When I tell people that I live in a place with fewer than two hundred people, they don't really get what that means. They say things like, "Oh, I'm in a small town, too," and I look up theirs to see it has a population of six thousand.

Two hundred people means Salmon Creek doesn't get on most maps. It's not even a town--it's a hamlet, with only six streets--the downtown strip and five courts of about ten houses each.

There are three shops downtown. There's a decent grocery, but if my mom needs anything more exotic than white mushrooms and dried herbs, she has to grow it in our greenhouse. There's a hardware store, but if you want something unusual, it has to be ordered from the city. Then there's the Blender, our only restaurant, owned and run by Hayley's dad. Good food but don't expect sushi.

Kids in other small towns complain about needing to go to the city to find a mall. We can't even buy clothing here. Well, we can, but it's carried by the hardware store; and unless your fashion sense runs to coveralls and rubber boots, you'd better plan a trip to Nanaimo.

The last building we passed on the way out of town was the medical research facility. That might sound like a huge hospital-sized place, with helicopters landing on the roof at all hours, but it's just a boring-looking building, two stories tall, about the size of a small office complex. It looks innocent enough, like you could walk right through the front doors. And you could ... you just wouldn't get much farther.

Security is supertight in there. Every door has a key card lock and some have access codes, too. I know because I've been in it. Everyone has. One problem with running a top-secret facility is that it makes people curious. So every year there's an open house. Most of us kids stopped going as soon as our parents let us. It's an afternoon of hearing talks on their drug research and being toured around labs full of computers and test tubes. Drug research may be big business--big enough to build a town to protect it--but it's killer dull.

I'd be a lot more interested--in a negative way--if they were doing animal testing. If they are, it isn't here. Same with subject groups; they don't ever visit Salmon Creek. The helipad on the roof is only for flying in other doctors--like Dr. Davidoff and his group--and corporate bigwigs from the St. Cloud company, who want to keep tabs on where their money is going.

So Salmon Creek is a small, quiet place. Maybe I'd be itching to get out if I remembered living somewhere else. But most kids are fine with Salmon Creek. We get used to driving an hour to the city. Our parents have carpooled monthly trips for us since we were young. Almost all of us plan to go off to college or university, and not many intend to return, but we're happy enough living here until then.

When we finally got to Nanaimo, we parked at the harbor front. There's a ferry up the coast that will take you over to Vancouver across the Strait of Georgia. You'd be able to see the city from the harbor if there weren't islands in the way. Well, in theory you could, though at this time of year we usually get fog, and sometimes you can't see even those nearby islands, despite them being close enough to swim to if you're really good.

Serena swam out to Protection Island once and we--