Going Dark (Nightfallen #1) Read Online Free PDF

having him to flirt with, a pleasant break from home life with Nathan and my sisters, where I was losing myself a little more each night, being reduced to a mindless plaything.
    Luring food back to the house wasn’t so bad, but constantly buying lingerie to replace what Gina, Cynthia, and I tore off one another was getting to be a bit much. Who knew a big part of what it meant to be a Le Femme Nosferatu was modeling fetish wear and having bisexual sex? Increasingly, it seemed like that’s all there was.
    But Jackson offered something more: a mystery. I wanted to solve him.
    We’d hung out the night before, so it was going to be a few days before we met in Café Trios again. He’d be alone tonight—or at least doing whatever he normally did when I wasn’t around.
    He hadn’t shown me his den, so I didn’t know where he would be coming from. But when we’d met in the alley, he’d said that he’d seen me around town. I mostly kept to Dominion Street and the nearby Ramsgate upper quad. Given that it was the heart of the college, it followed he’d be in the area at some point.
    I climbed a rickety fire escape to the roof of the same building where I’d taken Tracy, and waited.
    The first night, I didn’t seem him. The next night, I was on the roof again. By two in the morning, the Dominion Street bars were emptying out, undergrads milling around to get leads on parties or make a last-ditch effort to find someone to go home with. All that young life shined. In the middle of it, I spotted a piece of blackness.
    It was Jackson.
    I wondered if he was going to chat up a coed—he had the looks. Instead, he just moved through the crowds like a chaperone, sticking out badly because of his black coat and being at least a decade older than the students.
    I laughed to myself. It wasn’t just abilities I’d have to teach him, but basic hunting. Not really befitting a man of mystery. I wondered if I was being silly following him like this.
    He began walking the upper quad. I worried he’d hear me moving down the fire escape, so I went down the other side of the building. I couldn’t climb up walls spiderlike, unlike some of the other races, but I was strong enough to catch fingerholds on windows and ledges before jumping down from the second story.
    I kept my distance as he made his way to the student union. Jackson paused at one of the side doors, looked around to see if anyone was nearby, then stepped in.
    It should have been locked—Tracy had mentioned all the buildings being locked by eleven. Someone was expecting Sergeant Wheel.
    I followed him. Listening, I was able to track him through the building’s darkened halls.
    He went down emergency stairs to the building’s basement, and from there, into a mechanical room.
    The whine of furnaces made it hard to track him, but peeking into the mechanical room, I realized he wasn’t there. With all the heat and noise confusing my senses, it took me a moment to notice a door hidden behind some pipes.
    It was unlocked, and the passageway was lit at intervals by dim, bare bulbs. I hadn’t realized Ramsgate College was honeycombed with steam tunnels.
    I could feel the heat coursing through the pipes that ran lengthwise down the winding tunnel. The temperature hovered in the nineties, but spiked to well over a hundred degrees in pockets. The decaying asbestos insulation encasing the pipes did nothing for the air quality.
    Carefully, I made my way down the tunnel. My hearing was useless with all the knocking, hissing pipes, and the dryness threw off my sense of smell. I wasn’t tracking at this point, more like guessing.
    I came to a split in the tunnels. There was a thin coat of dust on the floor, and while it had been disturbed by what I guessed was the comings and goings of maintenance men, there seemed to be a fresh trail going to the right.
    I followed it, then followed it again at a four-way intersection.
    From time to time there were doorways to what were probably other