Free The Handler by Susan Kaye Quinn Page A

curled at the edges.
    I sighed. I could change Anna’s instincts, mentally handle them into something not quite so endearing, but manipulating my sister wasn’t just wrong, it was slightly dangerous, given her handiness with a gun and general impatience with me. I could handle that out of her too, but eventually she would make me pay for it. Still, I wished Anna’s protectiveness and attempts to replace our dead parents wasn’t quite so… obvious.
    It would make it easier to remain angry with her.
    “That girl,” I said, putting some arch in my voice, just to needle her, “was the one who thrust our revolution into the light. Or would you rather still be working in secret? Hiding and pretending to simply be mindreaders?”
    Anna hurled my insult back with a sharp glare that found its mark as surely as the black knives she routinely embedded in the factory walls.
    I softened my tone. “All I’m saying is that Kira did us a tremendous favor. She changed everything. And, in the process, made our lovely new home possible.” I gestured grandly to the cobwebbed cabinets of the makeshift kitchen area. Anna had recently cleared them of chipped plates and petrified pests to make room for her weapons: several small caliber pistols, a couple of scoped rifles, and an impressive assortment of electric devices. My flip answer didn’t appease her for my slacking in the cleaning-and-arsenal-stocking department, but I knew the revolution wouldn’t be won with guns alone. In fact, I wished we didn’t need Anna’s arsenal at all. We needed to win hearts to our cause with words, not weapons. Starting with the very first recruits I was currently seeking.
    So I tried the truth instead.
    “Kira’s accomplished more with one act than we could have achieved with an armory packed with weapons,” I said. “She’s just the kind of person we could use in the cause.”
    I wished, for the hundredth time, that I could read my sister’s thoughts. Normally, I could slip in through the instinctual minds of readers and jackers alike, but Anna’s thoughts were locked tight behind an impervious barrier. Not that reading her face was particularly difficult, especially when her blue protective instinct shifted abruptly to the red, smoking aggression that normally wrapped around her head.
    “Kira is unpredictable and reckless,” Anna said. “Who goes in to rescue a bunch of changelings with nothing but a pistol and no apparent backup plan? From what I hear, she left far more changelings behind in Agent Kestrel’s grasp than she’s ever rescued. That makes her untrustworthy and dangerous as well.” Anna pushed up from the table, grabbed a rag from the counter, and scrubbed at the cabinets, clearing away decades of grit and the earnest work of dozens of spiders. She kept her back to me, like there was nothing more to discuss, but her red-hot fighting instinct, swirling at the back of her mind, gave her away.
    FBI Agent Kestrel was the first target of our revolution, but I felt—I knew —that Kira Moore was meant to join us, despite her mysterious disappearance after the rescue. Kestrel was our enemy, and Kira was our friend. It was important to know the difference: the fight ahead would be worse if we cast aside the people who knew how to win it.
    I heaved up from the depths of the decrepit couch. “You should stop listening to rumors on the chat-casts.” I placed the still-blank screen on the kitchen table next to my sister’s partially assembled guns. “You know, only half of what you hear on the casts is true…”
    “And the other half are twisted lies. The trick is to know which half will kill you.” Anna finished our father’s favorite admonishment with the same look of fervent warning he always wore. “Don’t forget that part, Julian.”
    I peered over her shoulder at the dust-draped cabinet. “I think you missed a spot.”
    She glowered. I smirked. We called it a draw, as we usually did.
    She resumed her cleaning, and I