Free Shattered by M. Lathan Page B

do either. “Is this about what happened earlier?” I
asked. She nodded. “Thank God. I was starting to think everyone was crazy
enough to pretend it didn’t happen.”
    She chuckled. “No. We are just very
cautious about what we say in front of Christine. I’m hoping you will keep this
meeting between us.” I nodded and sighed. I was good at keeping things from
Chris, she wasn’t the type to pry, but I didn’t exactly revel in the idea of
lying to my girlfriend.
    She led me into a home office and said,
“CC.” The walls opened and revealed a high-tech surveillance room. Most of the
screens showed important buildings and monuments like the Eiffel tower and the
Statue of Liberty. Some of the screens showed houses. The largest screen showed
a map with a blinking red light hovering over Louisiana.
    “What’s that?” I asked.
    “Kamon. I have a tracker on him.”
    Of all the questions to ask, I came up
with, “How did you get a tracker on Kamon?”
    She chuckled. “It’s a long story.” I
couldn’t stop my eyes from bulging, imagining some weird scheme involving her
and Kamon that I didn’t really want to think about. “Not that kind of story,
Nathan. Sophia did it. With a spell.”
    “Of course. I’m sorry.”
    She tapped a monitor as I recovered from
my flub. At first glance, it looked like any ordinary home. Then, I spotted Christine’s
window of our old home, remembering when all I wanted was to see inside of that
room and talk to the girl in there. The thought had consumed me completely and
eclipsed where I’d come from and who I was before then.
    With a remote, Lydia changed the screen
to the kitchen, and I jumped. Kamon was sitting at the island with his feet
propped up on a chair like he lived there. The room was full of balloons.
    “As you may know, Remi showed Kamon the
house after I rescued you two from the chapel.” I nodded as I watched Kamon.
I’d assumed as much. “It’s why he chose it for the portal spell,” she said. “He
thought she would try to kill me, and that it would be easy to lure her to the
house, but nothing he tried worked, mostly because Christine was knocked out
from a very bad seizure for days.”
    I’d never panicked so much in my life.
Christine hadn’t answered her phone in days, and when she finally did, a man,
calling himself Chris, had answered. I will regret my subsequent fit for the
rest of my life.
    “That night, he didn’t get her,” she
said. “But I walked right into a trap, and for the first time ever, I lost a
fight with Kamon. The triplets drugged me, and brought me there. At that point,
they didn’t expect Christine to show up. They didn’t need her to. As you know,
she did.”
    The rest of the story went: and my girlfriend ended the world . We
both loved her too much to mention that part.
    On the screen, Kamon adjusted in his
seat, and the panther we should’ve killed months ago, walked into the room with
him. Remi attempted to massage his shoulders, and he shrugged her off.
    “I think a similar thing happened today,”
Lydia said. “He was trying to lure her. He had the balloons there first, and when
she didn’t come, he sent them to Trenton. He’s still waiting there for her.”
      “How would he lure her with balloons?” I
asked.
    “The balloons are just for dramatic
effect. He wants to lure her with what he knows. Make her fight, I guess. If
she had her powers, it would be very easy to make her sense him being in New
Orleans.”
    Remi tried to touch him again, and he
leaned back slowly and pointed a finger at her. She flew across the room and
caught her balance before hitting the wall. She seemed amused. She liked
whatever game she thought she was playing.
    “Just by being there?” I asked. “She
could sense him just by him being there?”
    Lydia shook her head. “If you don’t want
someone like us to discover something, you would rarely speak about it. You
would tell very few people and keep the energy of this thing from