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and crawled into bed. But she wasn’t done for the night.
    She had to read the rest of her mom’s diary, because talking to Jonah had made her realize that as Ellen had grown into her teens, the one thing that kept her and Jonah together was horses.
    What if I could make that happen again? Darby asked herself. She thought she could, but first she had to figure out why Jonah had started keeping her mom home to do chores instead of letting her act.
    Darby kept reading, and though she didn’t find the answer, she discovered what her mom had done about it. To get back at Jonah, Ellen had quit riding.
    This is too depressing, Darby thought. She was about to tuck the pages back in the diary when she saw, “A wild stallion, a flash of silver and black under the candlenut tree, came to visit tonight. He was amazing—a horse made of starlight and black satin.”
    Darby repeated the words to herself. They sang through her like a magical spell.
    Then she sucked in a breath, got up on her knees, and looked out her bedroom window. She couldn’t see much through the glass reflection of her own face,but there was the candlenut tree, and right there she’d seen the Shining Stallion, which was probably Black Lava, coming to steal mares for his herd.
    She shivered. This was her mom’s old bedroom. Why hadn’t anyone told her?
    But that didn’t matter half as much as what happened next in the diary.
    â€œHe came for Ebony,” Ellen had written in tiny letters. “A wild black-and-white paint stallion.”
    It could be a coincidence, but what if it wasn’t? What if the mare she’d just seen was descended from this creature of starlight and black satin?
    Keep reading.
    â€œâ€¦I let down the rails on Ebony’s pen. In the morning, I’ll run down before anyone else is awake and put them back up. I’m setting my alarm now. I know Ebony won’t run away, but if she has a foal by…”
    That was the end, the last line on the last page Darby had allowed herself to read. She read it over three times before she looked up in amazement.
    Never, not in a million years, would she have guessed her mother could be such a bad kid. Could Mom’s trick have created the mystery mare that I saw today?
    Darby bounced on her bed in frustration. She wanted to read more, but a deal was a deal, even if it was with your conscience.
    She turned off her bedside lamp before slipping out of bed and reaching underneath for the hatbox.She lifted the lid—careful not to feel around for the diary’s smooth cover, since that would be too tempting—and dropped the pages in.
    Moonlight streamed through Darby’s window. She still wasn’t sleepy, so she retrieved a book. They’d read a short story by Madeleine L’Engle in their literature textbook, and she’d liked it so much, she’d gone to the school library and checked out a novel by the writer.
    Curling on her side, Darby read.
    She was smiling as the book dropped from her hands, and the link she’d found to her mother, through her diary, comforted her. Her mom was coming. Tomorrow.
    Probably today, but she didn’t open her eyes to check the clock, and as Darby drifted to sleep, images of the black leather diary reshaped themselves into an aristocratic mare named Ebony, then shrank to a dancing foal, daughter of a black-and-silver stallion.
    Â 
    It was four o’clock in the morning when Kimo’s truck rattled into the ranch yard. Then Darby heard Hoku’s neigh. She knew that sound by heart.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” Darby slid off her bed and hit the floor, but she was up, walking and talking before her eyes opened.
    She managed to open her bedroom door, but collided with Jonah in the dark hallway.
    Her grandfather turned her around by her shoulders.
    â€œGo back to bed,” he told her. Chuckling, he walked behind her, steering her toward her warm blankets. “A few