Free Blood Rules by Christine Cody Page B

determined, he grabbed her fingers again.
    This time it was Mariah who quickly let go.
    Gabriel felt confusion swirling in her, and he couldn’t push it out of himself, either, because the little man was smiling, as if he had indeed come across a long-lost pal.
    Who was this guy, and what’d happened when he’d touched Mariah?
    â€œYou’ve had lots of blood in your life, haven’t you?” the man asked her.
    Time to go. “We’ve all seen blood. Michelle, let’s turn in.”
    â€œNo, don’t.” The little guy held his hand out to Gabriel now, those cloudy eyes making him look like a half-blind sage.
    â€œMichelle?” Gabriel said again.
    But Mariah hadn’t moved.
    The little man said, “Michelle isn’t your name. I don’t know much more than that, because you do a good job of blocking, so all I understood about you for now was the blood and how it covered you and the people you loved. You’re looking for . . . something. Can’t quite put my finger on it, though. It’ll probably take a minute. . . .”
    Crap. Now Gabriel knew exactly what was going on.
    They’d run into a rogue psychic.
    The government had driven them out, probably fearing that psychics could feel and see things that they didn’t want made public.
    As if noticing that Gabriel had hit the mental jackpot, the little old man smiled. “I knew you two would be introducing yourselves before I died, and let me tell you, time was getting short. I was starting to think I was wrong and my clairvoyance was on the outs, right along with a lot of other parts of the old body.”
    â€œYour clairvoyance must be mistaken.”
    The little man started talking in earnest. “I can help you . . . for a small price, of course. I’ll put you on your path.”
    â€œI—”
    But the man beat Gabriel to the punch. “If you can’t trust someone who’s been in this camp ever since the government ran him out of house and home, who you gonna call?”
    Mariah looked into Gabriel’s eyes. What should we do?
    No answers there. As for trusting this so-called psychic, he’d only made a fairly vague guess about Mariah’s past and their present—after all, who hadn’t suffered in this life? Who wasn’t searching for something more? The guy hadn’t even guessed that Gabriel was a vampire and Mariah was a werewolf.
    Maybe he was a good con man and they could still leave unscathed.
    â€œCome on,” the little man said. “Help a fella out. Since my beans were stolen, I could use something substantial to eat. Haven’t had much but root juice for the past couple of days, and with all these people coming from the east, the salvaging has been a tough haul lately.”
    Mariah seemed pained by his confession, and the little man hitched onto her sympathy.
    â€œYou really think a put-aside psychic and an old man to boot is gonna have any bad-guy connections? Please.”
    And that was true enough—people like this man and the oldster were usually sent to pounds in the hubs, where they were considered to be next to useless.
    â€œIf you’re really a psychic,” Gabriel asked, “why don’t you know where your beans are?”
    â€œIf I had the ability to control the information I received, I’d be water rich.” The little man coughed, and it seemed to rack his whole body before he dove right back into talking. “But I can use touch”—he motioned toward Mariah’s hand—“and focus my thoughts on getting a reading. I’m an excellent conduit for prophecies every once in a while, too, just like when I saw that you’d be coming here. I saw the change of the world right before the mosquito epidemic hit. No one listened to me, but back in my younger years, my talents put some real major evils to justice. . . .”
    A wistful smile tugged at his mouth. Then he coughed