Free Awakening by Kelley Armstrong Page B

them, I’ll give you a shout. You got a card?”
    “We’re quite certain they’re in here.”
    “Nope. This is the only door that opens from the outside, and I’ve been at my post all shift.”
    “I understand. But perhaps if we could take a look—”
    A chair squeaked and I pictured the beefy man rising. “This is a factory, folks. Do you have any idea how many safety regulations I’d be breaking if I let you poke around?”
    “We’ll wear hard hats and safety glasses.”
    “This isn’t a public building. You can’t come in here without an appointment and an escort.”
    “May we speak to the plant manager, then?”
    “He’s out. Meeting. All day. I told you, no one got past me. Your girls aren’t in here. But if you really want to check, that’s fine. Get the cops and I’ll let you in.”
    “We’d prefer not to involve the police.”
    “Well, you’re gonna have to, ’cause it’s the only way you’re getting past me.”
     
    After the guard chased them off, we holed up to wait for dark. We each found a separate spot, far enough apart that we had an excuse for not chatting. That was fine with me at first. Like Tori and I would have anything to chat about. But after a while, even bickering would have been better than this silent waiting with nothing to do but think. And cry. I did a lot of that, as quietly as I could. I’d taken out the envelope so often it was covered in tearstains. I wanted to open it, but I was terrified that whatever was in it wouldn’t be a good enough explanation, that it
couldn’t
be good enough, and I so desperately needed it to be.
    Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I ripped it open. Inside was money, but I shoved that into my pocket without counting it, then unfolded the letter.
    Aunt Lauren started by explaining how necromancy worked. In necromancer families, not everyone saw ghosts. Most didn’t. Aunt Lauren didn’t. Nor had my mom or their parents. But my uncle had. My mother’s twin brother, Ben—I’d never known she’d even had a twin. Aunt Lauren wrote.
    Ben died long before you were born. Your mom would have showed you pictures, but you were too young to understand. After she was gone…there just didn’t seem any point in bringing it up. He started seeing ghosts when he was a little older than you are now. He went away to college with your mom, but it was too much for him. He came home. Your mom wanted to quit and come back, too, to keep an eye on him. He insisted she stay at school. I said I’d watch over him, but I didn’t really understand what he was going through. When he was nineteen, he died in a fall. Whether he jumped or whether he was running from ghosts, we never knew.
    Did it matter? Either way, his powers had killed him. I kept telling myself ghosts couldn’t hurt me, but in my gut I knew I was wrong, and here was the proof. Just because you can’t reach out and push someone off a roof, doesn’t mean you can’t kill him.
    Your mom had been looking for help for Ben before he died. Our family had some connections in the necromancer world, and eventually someone gave her a contact name for the Edison Group. Only Ben went off the roof a month before she got the message. Later, when I started med school, I contacted them. If they were scientists, they could use doctors; and if I could help people like Ben, that’s what I wanted to do. Your mom wasn’t involved. Not then. That didn’t come until she wanted to have a child.
    She’d planned to have kids even after what happened to her brother?
    As if in answer to my question, Aunt Lauren wrote:
    You have to understand, Chloe, it’s like any other genetic disorder. It’s a risk we accept. If we have a child and she has the power, then we deal with that. Your mother wouldn’t take that risk, though. Not after Ben. She wanted to adopt, but with your father, that wasn’t an option. There were…things in his past. The agencies didn’t consider him a suitable parent. Your mother was