Free Jamb: by Misty Provencher Page A

were driving me nuts with their questions,” Freddie admits.  That part isn’t surprising.  Mark and Brandon have a remarkable gift for finding things they weren’t supposed to know anything about.  The boys had managed to root out Nok’s tunnels beneath the Celare; Veritas tunnels that trained Seals and the FBI and the most adept spies would never even know existed—the boys had won the most impossible lottery in the world when they caught Nok exiting one.
    “Mark wasn’t with him?” Sean asks. 
    “No, it was only Brandon. ” Freddie’s eyes drop to the floor.  “I saw him staggering in on the cameras.  He was all alone.  He hit the doorbell and collapsed.”
    “When did he get here?” Garrett asks.  Freddie rubs his nose and looks away.
    “About forty-five minutes ago.  We had to secure the entry before we could bring him in and then check him out to be sure there was nothing on him.”
    “He’s a little kid!” Sean erupts.  “You just left him out there?  Even when you saw what kind of shape he’s in?”
    Mrs. Reese bites her bottom lip.  It takes a moment before her shaky words emerge. 
    “There is a protocol,” she says and Freddie looks at the floor when she pats him on the shoulder.  “And I’m glad that you followed it, Freddie, even when it was my son.”
    I am dizzy and breathless, thinking of Brandon stumbling to the hotel all alone and thinking of what could’ve happened to make him look like this.  Maybe The Fury caught him and beat him.  Or maybe it’s all because I collapsed the hotel on him and Mark.
    The Addo steps into the room, from who knows where.  H e comes in quietly and moves close to the couch, looking over Garrett’s shoulder at Brandon.
    We all watch as Garrett’s strong hands move in a meticulous, gentle current over the top of his brother’s body. I am desperate with how much I want Garrett’s healing to work. On the third pass of his hands, Garrett hovers longer over some of the cuts.  His hands flinch at other places, like at Brandon’s left elbow, his wrist, his right kneecap.
    Once he reaches Brandon’s feet, Garrett closes his eyes and says, “I need as much as I can get, Addo.”
    “You got it,” Addo says and closes his eyes.  Addo puts his hand on Garrett’s shoulder and begins to hum.  It’s the same kind of hum I remember from my mom’s Memory ceremony, when my eyes closed involuntarily and I was able to connect with my mom again, even though she’d died.  Mrs. Reese immediately joins the hum, placing her hand on the Addo’s shoulder, and Freddie’s hum starts next, deep and soft, placing his hand on Mrs. Reese’s shoulder.
    The hum sends a throbbing panic right through the center of my chest.  Brandon must be dying.  He sure looks it, all crooked and cut and covered in blood.  But he can’t be too broken for Garrett to heal.  He just can’t.
    T he air isn’t coming fast enough.  My eyes are starting to bulge as I turn my gaze wildly on Sean. His face is pinched with concern for his brother, and I see how desperate he is for something to happen, but I don’t know what.  The humming closes in on me and I can only suck in thin ribbons of air.  My head starts to spin.
    “Don’t fight it, Nalena,” Sean whispers.  “Please.  They need you.”
    I reach out , clawing for him when I can’t pull another breath, but instead of reaching Sean, my palm lands hard on Freddie’s shoulder.  Freddie doesn’t even flinch when my forehead hits his back.  And instead of passing out from lack of oxygen, the hum explodes inside my throat too.  My eyes slam shut.  I crash down into the family’s stream of healing energy with the ease of a junkyard car released from a magnet.
    But once I’m there, I’m there.  I f eel everyone surging together like generators, our energies building and pressing forward, toward Garrett.  I can’t hold back.  I leak out of myself, not all of me, but some, just like when my field deploys