Free Capture by Melissa Darnell Page B

point of pain.
    "Too bad he had to act so stupid sometimes."
    "You mean…the party?"  I'd lied to my parents about it too, never once even hinting that the real reason Damon had taken me to that secret gathering was so I could learn how to control the magic growing like a cancer inside me, waiting to lash out if I didn’t put a leash on it.  The training sessons had been a secret Damon had tried to pass down to me. A secret he’d ultimately died for.
    " He never should have been there.  Never should have gotten involved with that crowd.  I warned him about having friends like that. Damon died because of them."  Dad's voice was harsh, grating with barely controlled fury. "He wouldn’t listen to me. He was always too good hearted, always looking to make friends with anyone at all. Always looking for the good in others, even when there wasn’t any good to find.  I couldn’t make him see how important it was to fit in. He thought being nice made it okay to be different, that he didn't have to worry about trying to fit in.  And he paid for it with his life."
    So Dad had spent the last few months pounding the lesson into my head instead.
    "But what happened to Da mon won't happen to you because you understand, don't you?"  Dad’s tone and the way he was staring at me made the words sound more like a warning than a reassurance.
    I felt old, weighed down by something invisible on my shoulders and back as I shut the closet door.  "Yeah, Dad, I understand.  No matter what, fit in."
    "That's right."  He reached out and ruffled my hair as I passed him on my way out of the room, even though we were both six foot two and he had to reach up to do it.  Then he shut the door behind us both.
    I returned to my room.  But going back to sleep was out of the question.  Somehow, I had to learn how to control the magic inside me.  Otherwise, my secret would be blown in no time.  And then I’d wind up in an internment camp too.
    Okay, so Da mon's room and the public libraries were out.  Probably the big bookstores had already gotten rid of all their magic books too by now.  But what about small bookshops?  The ones in the small towns might have reacted quickly to the government’s new anti-magic stance.  But the ones in the big cities might not have.
    I pulled up the Internet, did a quick search, and found four independent bookshops in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metro area, which was only a couple hours' drive away.  Surely one of them still had something about magic.
    I didn't risk looking up their book catalogs online, though.  Dad had told me a long time ago how all Internet activity was rerouted through NSA servers housed in the AT&T building in San Francisco.  By now, they would definitely be tagging all searches for magic-related keywords.  And maybe even arresting people based on it.
    I would just have to go to the bookshops in person and see what I could find.
    “Hey, kiddo, where you headed to in such a rush?” Mom called out from the kitchen as I tried to jog past.
    I grabbed onto the kitchen doorjamb to stop myself. My sneakers squeaked on the tile floor in protest. “Oh, just headed into town.”
    It wasn’t a complete lie. I just wasn’t saying which town.
    “Okay.” Mom glanced up from the blender she was filling with chopped greens, probably for yet another wedding she was catering for, and frowned. “Are you feeling all right?”
    “ Sure. Why?”
    “ Because you haven't gone out with any of your friends after school all week, and you look terrible this morning. Are you coming down with something? Maybe you should get some breakfast before heading out.”
    “ I'm fine. I'm not hungry. I’ll grab some coffee later.”
    “ Mochas aren’t breakfast. Come here.”
    I groaned. “Mom—”
    She snapped her fingers then pointed at the floor beside her as if I were a puppy in need of obedience training.
    Grumbling, I gave in and walked around the granite and oak island that took up most of the room,