Free Losing Lila by Sarah Alderson

a telepath.’
    ‘He what?’
    ‘He knows. And he knows about the Unit too, but he believes that the Unit’s mission is to contain people like us – contain psys – because we’re dangerous. He thinks I killed your mother, because that’s what the Unit told him.’
    My jaw fell open. The silence thickened as I tried to get my head round the fact that my father had known about my mother’s powers all this time. It suddenly made sense – why he’d dragged me straight on a plane to London after my mother’s funeral. Why he’d been so mad at Jack for staying behind. Why he’d freaked out about me coming back. Oh God. I put a hand to my head to try to contain all the thoughts banging against my skull. How much more freaking out would he be doing now? With me missing?
    This was so bad. So, so bad.
    ‘There’s more,’ Demos said, because clearly he could tell I wasn’t panicked enough already. I looked up warily, bracing myself.
    ‘Your father’s been working on something all this time.’
    I waited.
    ‘He’s been carrying out research to find out what makes us this way.’
    ‘No, he hasn’t,’ I laughed, but my laugh sounded empty and false. ‘He’s a paediatric specialist. He researches childhood diseases. He writes papers. He’s always at conferences and stuff. I’ve been to the hospital where he works.’
    Demos just shrugged. ‘For the last five years your father’s been trying to find a medical cure for what we are.’
    ‘But we’re not sick,’ Suki spoke up from the corner of the room.
    ‘No,’ Demos said. ‘But to Lila’s dad, we’re suffering from a kind of cancer and he’s been trying to invent what you might describe as a type of chemotherapy, some way of curing us.’
    No one spoke. It seemed like this was news to everyone – not just to me.
    I drew in a breath. All this time. The whole time we were in London. The trips abroad, the hours spent in his study, in his lab, working, working, working. And never enough time for me. And there I was thinking my dad was just working to put my mother out of his mind when all the time he’d been working with her right at the forefront of his mind. For her. Because he thought if he could find the answers to curing us, he could what? Stop Demos? Undo what had happened? Fix something? Is that what my mother had wanted too? To be cured? Because I wasn’t sure it was what I wanted.
    ‘How do you know this?’ Alex asked.
    ‘Because I’ve been keeping a close eye on him,’ Demos answered, his eyes darting to me. ‘And Lila. And Jack. I promised Melissa that I would look out for them and protect them if anything ever happened to her.’
    ‘You’ve been spying on us? Since when?’ I shouted.
    ‘Lila,’ Demos said, his voice shot through with weariness, ‘I was only interested in making sure you were safe. When your dad took you to London I breathed easier, but I still needed to make sure the Unit weren’t going to try something. Luckily they didn’t see the need to.’
    ‘Why not?’ I demanded.
    Demos chewed his lip. I guessed he was trying to evaluate how many more surprises I could take, which I had to admit wasn’t many.
    ‘We think the Unit knows about your father’s research. It makes sense. It explains why they’ve left you both in peace.’
    Why we’re still alive , he meant.
    Suki stamped her foot. ‘Can someone please start explaining everything to me in simple English. I’m just not getting it. Any of it. And it’s very annoying.’
    ‘They want Lila’s father’s research,’ Alex said, almost as if he was speaking to himself, ‘because it might help them unlock the secrets about what you are. He’s helping them – without meaning to.’
    ‘Alex is right,’ Demos said. ‘The Unit is waiting until Michael unlocks the answers to the genetic code that makes us this way. There’s almost no better person to do the job. He’s an expert in childhood diseases – hereditary ones.’ He paused and I thought about