Free DARK SOULS (Dark Souls Series) by Ketley Allison

ice cream shop behind us, and buy the rugrat a cone. ”
    In what I had come to expect, her pupils dilated immediately and her gaze became vacant, her lips slackening slightly.
    “Yes, all right then,” she said, though her voice was noticeably flat. She didn’t look away from me.
    She turned the stroller stiffly, the toddler suddenly going quiet, seeming to sense the change in his nanny. That, or he heard me say he was getting ice cream.  
    I blinked, breaking our connection, curious to see if she would still go into the ice cream shop despite my lack of eye contact with her.
    She blinked back at me, smiled politely, then continued over to the shop, the toddler happily gurgling all the way. I had a brief spurt of guilt over the fact that I was going to give that little terror a massive sugar high, but it was secondary compared to the major revelation I just had.
    “Huh,” I said, unsure what to make of myself as I watched her leave.
    I turned back around, wanting to try my newfound superpower out on someone else. That would make it four times of influencing someone for certain, meaning it had to be true. It just had to. As I crossed 3 rd Avenue, I felt the breeze on my face and my fingers started to chill with the cold. I took comfort in the coolness, knowing that these tangible feelings meant I wasn’t hallucinating. This was indeed happening.
    My next subject was a guy a little older than me. He was sitting on a bench under the cover of a tree, facing the used bookstore that he must have just come out of, because he was reading a well-worn book, his nose practically touching the pages as he fanned them. All I could see was the top of his head covered with a mop disheveled brown hair.
    “Excuse me?” I said as I approached him.
    “Yes?” He said, without looking up. Damn.
    “Can I ask you a question?” I tried again.
    “You just did,” he said, mumbling as he turned the page and still not looking up.
    I frowned and continued to stare at him. His book had lowered slightly, and I saw that he was wearing black-framed glasses. I knew instantly that I had to keep trying. He had just unintentionally added to my experiment, because now I wanted to see if maybe glasses could act as a type of barrier to my mysterious superpower.
    You couldn’t blame me. My mind was flying in all sorts of directions at this point.
    “Hey, what’s your name?” I asked, trying a different tactic. Social queues would require him to look up at me and either tell me his name or see who it was that wanted to know, as any normal person would.
    “None of your damn business,” he answered, again without looking up.
    “Seriously?” I asked, almost stomping my foot to punctuate my frustration. I was just starting to get good at this!
    To my surprise, he looked up at the change in my voice, out of curiosity maybe, or probably just extreme annoyance with me. I immediately recovered and took advantage, catching his eye and beginning to pull at the flame.
    “What the—”
    He immediately flew into action, springing up and flinging his book right at my face. It landed with a thunk , and I cried out in pain.
    “Are you out of your mind? ” he cried.
    I was bent over in pain, cupping my nose. “That hurt!’ I cried back. “Why’d you do that? I just asked you a question!”
    “Oh no you did not.”
    He walked closer to me, possibly to intimidate, but I couldn’t be sure. I was still blinded with pain. The spine of the book had hit me right in the nose.
    “You have got to be insane,” he said, bending closer to get a good look at me. “You can’t be doing that in such a public place! And with the Trine on the loose no less!”
    “Huh?” I rose back up slowly, so I could be at his level and try to understand just what he was saying. “What are you talking about?”
    His eyes narrowed as we both straightened at the same time. He was slightly taller than me. The top of my head reached his nose, so I was forced to look up to meet his