Free Catalyst (Forevermore, Book Two) by K.A. Poe Page A

only to be brushed back with annoyance. He had just given his order for a bacon and cheese omelet, along with my apple cinnamon pancakes and a side of hash browns, and now was rolling his straw wrapper into a ball and looking thoughtfully in my direction. I looked back at him with a smile, and my eyes couldn’t help but wander to the rim of silver around his irises.
    “ Has that always —”
    He interrupted me mid-sentence and said, “The snow’s really piling up out there.”
    Blinking, I glanced out the window beside us, where the curtains were drawn down to where only a few inches of the outside world was visible. Sure enough, there was a thick blanket of white, shimmering snow covering the roads and sidewalks; it hadn’t been that way when we’d walked over. The color of the snow reminded me of everything that was Mathias — his hair, his silvery eyes when he used his ability, the pure gentleness that was him.
    “ Penny for your thoughts,” he said after setting down his glass of cola.
    “ What? Oh ...” I sat there looking dumbfounded. “Just thinking about ... the snow. Have you ever seen an up-close picture of a snowflake?”
    He shook his head. “No. Just little white flecks, right?”
    I grinned and watched him resume pushing around the rolled up wrapper. “They are so much more than that. They’re gorgeous; they look like tiny glass sculptures, and are exactly what cutout paper snowflakes look like.”
    “ I always wondered why snowflakes were cutout into shapes like that, actually. I seriously just always thought that was an artistic way of showing it.”
    “ Well, now you know,” I said and paused. “When I was little and it would snow ... it always felt magical to me. The way it fell from the sky as if in slow-motion and landed on the ground, sticking there. The way it sparkled under the sunlight ... that was magic to me. And now, now magic is that and so much more.”
    Mathias stared at me with a crooked smile and there was amusement lighting up his eyes. “You have a wonderful way of looking at the world.”
    “ I don’t really think so. My mom — Eila, I mean — she thinks snow is a nuisance. It covers the streets and causes people to miss school and work or slip and crash, it builds up so high that it keeps you locked up in your house. But while she complained about it, I just admired it. I think she just holds a grudge against it because one time when I was eleven she slid on a patch of ice in the driveway and broke her ankle.”
    I wasn ’t surprised when he laughed, because even I did — mostly at remembering the moment. There was a pang of sadness at the memory of my adoptive mother, and I wished she was still a part of my life.
    “ She’ll come around, you know.”
    “ What?” I muttered, looking at him in shock.
    “ Eila. She’ll get through this, and you’ll be on speaking terms again. She’s still your mom, after all.”
    “ For a second there, I might have thought you could read minds.”
    “ You don’t have to read minds to see it in your eyes. The sadness. You miss her.”
    I nodded and scooted my hands off of the tabletop so our waiter could set down our plates. Before he had a chance to leave, I quickly asked for ketchup and he promptly returned with a bottle. “Thanks,” I said and sprinkled a light dash of salt onto the crisp potatoes, followed by a layer of ketchup, which I spread over the top with my knife.
    “ It’s strange being apart from her, when all of my life she was the one I went to when I was upset or scared. Now it’s like there’s this chasm between us that I can’t find the way around and it was so sudden. My uncle took me to her house to pick up the rest of my things and ... it was almost like she wasn’t even there at all, even though she was. Her eyes had this empty vacant look to them, and she barely responded to a word I said. It hurt to see her like that.”
    Mathias nodded while chewing a forkful of omelet. “Like I said,