Free Fated by Sarah Alderson Page A

to clothe the two mannequins which, after thirty seconds, she estimated was probably more challenging than fighting a demon with a tail. All the while she was thinking back to what Victor had said about her not wanting to disappoint her parents and feeling like she didn't fit in around here.
    Even if the Hunters had been watching her, it didn't make sense that Victor could know things that she'd never been able to voice herself, stuff that had just been unformed, foggy thoughts in her head. She hadn't wanted to tell her parents that she dreamt of leaving this small farming town and moving somewhere busy and frantic and completely the opposite of here. She couldn't tell them she wanted to move to the other side of the country and maybe become a journalist, because her father had spent her whole life teaching her how to ride horses and shoot rabbits and run a farm, and how could she repay him by telling him that she didn't care about horses and cows' udders and the price of peaches?
    Halfway through trying to pull a navy jumpsuit onto one rigid mannequin, still puzzling angrily over what Victor had said, Evie felt the heat of someone's eyes on her. She spun around. The street outside was empty, yet she could have sworn someone had just passed by the window. She had seen the shadow cross her and caught the dark reflection of something in the shiny plastic shoulder of one of the mannequins. The hairs on the back of her neck were raised. She stood there, holding the mannequin's hand for balance, scanning the street.
    Maybe she was just paranoid. Maybe that was par for the course. She saw a couple of kids she recognised from her class walking into Joe's Diner opposite but nothing else was out of place on the street.
    'Are you OK?'
    Evie turned from the window and manoeuvred around the mannequin. Victor had come to stand by her, his face concerned.
    'Yeah, I'm fine,' she said. 'I just thought I saw something.' She paused, glancing back over her shoulder at the street. 'You're sure no one is coming back?'
    'Well, I don't think there's anything in Mrs Lovell's size.'
    'No, I mean the others, the Unhumans.'
    Victor sighed loudly. 'They aren't coming back.' His tone said Stop doubting me. 'They can't get into town. The Brotherhood is small right now and weak. They won't risk it again. And besides, we'd know as soon as they tried to get near.'
    'How?' Evie asked, hoping that he'd finally start telling her some of the stuff she needed to know in order to, say, stay alive.
    'We can detect Unhumans. We sense them.'
    Evie arched an eyebrow.
    Victor's voice took on a softer tone. 'Have you ever walked into a room and felt something - a change in the atmosphere - as if it's charged with something? A movement that's out of place? Something that makes your ears prick up or your gut tighten?'
    Evie nodded slowly.
    Victor's eyes held hers, a dark caramel colour that was hard to look away from. 'That's your instinct. It's the voice in your head that warns you to run if it senses danger.'
    She thought back to the night before, when the crazy one with the tail had approached her in the lot. The voice in her head had been loud and clear then.
    'Humans do this automatically,' Victor went on, 'subconsciously. We're programmed from childhood to read body language all the time. True, some people are better at it than others. Your instinct, your ability to read a situation is strong, Evie, but with training we'll make it stronger still. Eventually you'll be able to sense an Unhuman within a two-mile radius.'
    'How? Do they smell or something?'
    'No. Some of them look unusual - Mixen, for example - which helps. But some - Shapeshifters, in particular - can blend and look as normal as you or me. A normal human being wouldn't be able to tell them apart. As a Hunter, your instinct will flare immediately. You'll learn to read the atmosphere around you, to sense the shifts and the changes in energy. It's the same instinct that allows me to read you. I know right