Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Her nod was jagged. “You were the best option. But the final decision will be based on your proposal.” The words flowed off her tongue, as if she’d been running business operations for years.
A chill wind over her skin.
Some of what she’d been doing of late might be explained by things she’d observed in her years of blurred awareness, but not this, how her mind had begun to make calculations without thought in terms of business, how the right words just bloomed in her brain and took shape in her mouth.
“We get that.” Remi glanced over at her cabin, then back at her. “Call me when you decide you’ve had enough aloneness, and we’ll talk. I’ll print you a bed in the interim.”
* * *
• • •
TWO hours later, Auden got into her jet-chopper and flew herself home. Once she’d calmed down, she’d realized she had no choice. If she’d had a seizure bad enough that it had nearly wiped out all memory of her flight to the cabin, then her piloting the craft again was a huge risk, but it wasn’t a deadly one.
She’d put on both biometers that Dr. Verhoeven had assigned her, then locked them into the onboard system. Any major fluctuation and she’d programmed the chopper to land at the heliport behind her family home—that heliport was equipped with emergency “homing beacons” that would guide the chopper safely down.
The same wasn’t possible at the cabin, which meant she’d be stuck at the house until she could figure out another way to reach the freedom of this place of mountain and trees, morning mist and creatures wild.
She kept her eyes trained on the trees as she flew, searching for glimpses of gold and black, but jungle cats were masters of the hunt. All she saw were waves of fall foliage, the canopy so verdant that she couldn’t even make a guess as to where RainFire made its home.
Her heart clenched when she cleared the final trees, their leaves a cascade of oranges and reds intermingled with lime green and the odd pop of a darker shade. It felt as if she was shutting the door behind herself, giving up on her quest of freedom for her baby. “No,” she vowed. “This is just a roadblock. Even if I am irreparably damaged, my baby isn’t. She’s going to make it out.”
Auden did everything in her power to keep that thought uppermost on her mind as she landed. Charisma was waiting for her, her organizer held at her side. “I thought you were planning to stay two days,” she said once Auden had made it inside the house.
“I wanted to see Dr. Verhoeven,” Auden said, and almost told Charisma about the seizures.
Usually, it wouldn’t have mattered, because the doctor reported to Charisma anyway, doctor/patient confidentiality no proof against the other woman’s power. But Auden was changing, becoming a woman far more able to manipulate and control. The idea made her a little sick—but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t use her new skills if those skills would keep her daughter safe. This time, the doctor wouldn’t be spilling his guts to Charisma.
Auden would make sure of it.
“Oh?” Charisma’s eyes sharpened. “Did you have a seizure?”
“That,” Auden said with cold precision, “is none of your concern, Ris.”
Never in all her existence, had Auden referred to Charisma as Ris. It had been her mother who’d done that, the two of them having worked together since Shoshanna’s first company.
Charisma was also the only one who’d been permitted to shorten her mother’s name to Shanna—though that had changed as Shoshanna grew in power, the informality strictly one-sided.
Charisma sucked in air, her pupils expanding. “Sir,” she whispered, with the slightest bow of her head, and that whisper…it held a kind of awe that didn’t make sense.
Gut twisting, Auden said nothing else, and kept her face emotionless—that, too, came easier than it should have. It wasn’t that she was unused to wearing masks. She’d been wearing one from the moment she first became aware that as a psychometric, her Silence would never reach the level of her father’s or mother’s.
But this mask, it was different. Not just pretending true Silence, but having to use no effort to do so. As if this was her reality. So much so that she wasn’t sure she could take the mask off. Her hand twitched, wanting to reach for the food carrier she’d left in the cabin, break the cycle of her thoughts with a violent surge of imprints brimming with emotion warm and happy.
“I’ll leave you here, sir,” Charisma said, once they reached the building that held their private medical facilities, her tone eerily subservient.
Auden gave a clipped nod that felt so natural it scared her.
When she walked into the doctor’s office moments later, she felt zero surprise to find him watchful in a way he’d never before been. No doubt Charisma had telepathed him, warned him—about what, Auden wasn’t sure. But he didn’t give her any orders or just take her arm as he usually did.