Forty-three

I WENT TO BED and I slept. I wasn’t sure I would, with the lingering excitement of the night, my fear over Aunt Lauren, my worries about the surrounding forest, filled with animal corpses waiting to be raised. But for the first time in weeks, we were safe, and that was all the encouragement my exhausted brain and body needed to shut down and bless me with deep, dreamless sleep.

I knew this wasn’t the end. Not by a long shot. Even the first step—persuading the rest of this group to go back—wouldn’t be as easy as Andrew hoped. And even when it was over, it wouldn’t truly be over. Not for me.

I was changed. Not just the genetic modification, but me—I was different. The very thought of going home to Dad and our condo and my school and friends made my brain reel. That life was gone now. Maybe I’d go back to it someday, but it would be like replacing an actor with someone who looked, sounded, and even behaved differently. I wouldn’t be the same person. I wasn’t even sure I could play the role.

My old life felt like a dream—a mostly pleasant, uneventful dream. Now I’d awakened from it and realized who I was and what I was, for better or worse. There was no closing my eyes and sliding back into that blissful dream of normal. This was my normal now.

Acknowledgments

I MISSED THIS WITH the last book, so I have a bunch of folks to thank. First, to Sarah Heller, my agent and fairy godmother for this series, who took my wish of wanting to write for young adults and made it happen. To Rosemary Brosnan of HarperCollins, who worked with me for the first time on The Summoning. Working with a new editor can take some adjusting, but she made it a breeze from day one. Also a huge thanks to Maria Gomez of HarperCollins for introducing Rosemary to my books. Thanks, too, to editors Anne Collins of Random House Canada and Antonia Hodgson of Little, Brown UK, who have been with me from the start and are always willing to let me try something new. And thanks to Kristin Cochrane at Doubleday Canada for her support and hard work behind the scenes.

On this particular book, I had my first batch of Darkest Powers beta readers. Thanks to Sharon B, Terri Giesbrecht, Stephanie Scranton-Drum, Matt Sievers, and Nicole Tom, who read an early copy and helped me find errors that slipped past everyone else (apparently the shark in Deep Blue Sea was a Mako, not a Great White—whoops!).

About the Author

KELLEY ARMSTRONG is the New York Times bestselling author of the Women of the Otherworld series and the first book in the Darkest Powers series, THE SUMMONING, about which Kirkus Reviews said in a starred review: “Terrifying ghosts, smatterings of gore, and diverse teen voices will prompt young adults to pick up the next in this series.”

Kelley has been telling stories since before she could write. Her earliest written efforts were disastrous. If asked for a story about girls and dolls, hers would invariably feature undead girls and evil dolls, much to her teachers’ dismay. All efforts to make her produce “normal” stories failed. Today, she continues to spin tales of ghosts and demons and werewolves, while safely locked away in her basement writing-dungeon.

To find out more about the Darkest Powers series, visit www.chloesaunders.com.

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Copyright

THE AWAKENING. Copyright © 2009 by KLA Fricke Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Microsoft Reader March 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-185784-3

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