Read Online Allie's War Season Four by JC Andrijeski - Free Book Online

another way, Cass, even if it seems like there isn’t. Ask my mom. She lost everything after dad died. The insurance didn’t cover any of it...then she lost her job. She found another way.”
    Cass only looks at me, not hearing me, that pleading look still on her face.
    “Please don’t, Allie. I’m begging you,” she said. “I’m begging you, Al. Please, I swear to God, I’ll make sure he never bothers you. Anyway, he’ll sleep this off and apologize tomorrow, he always does...” Her voice grows more urgent. “Allie, it was my fault for going over there on a weekend night, okay? I knew he’d be drinking. You know this isn’t an issue much anymore, since I’m hardly ever––”

    “––IS EVERYONE HERE?” Revik said, his voice monotone. “Can we start?”
    Jon sat in one of the high-backed chairs, on one side of the antique table, both of which were made of some heavy, dark wood. Balidor sat two seats to his left. Wreg sat opposite Revik, at the other end of the narrow dining room. Jorag sat directly across from Jon.
    They always sat in the same chairs now.
    It felt like they lived in this damned room.
    The table itself was probably an original, given the millionaires who used to inhabit this dwelling. Now burn marks marred its otherwise-burnished surface, probably from drug pipes and cigarettes from when thieves and looters squatted here.
    Wreg cleared his throat.
    The sound pulled at Jon, but he found himself avoiding the large seer’s nearly-black eyes, focusing on Revik alone. He watched the Elaerian’s lean, hard-muscled body fall in a near-vertical line as he sat himself at the table’s head.
    Still, he didn’t quite meet the Elaerian’s gaze, either.
    In spite of what Jon had told Balidor, Revik had been drunk the night before.
    Too drunk, as it turned out. Somewhere in that inebriation, he’d made his way to Jon’s room. Jon had no idea if anyone else in the construct overheard the conversation that had followed from Revik’s late-night visit, but he sure as hell hoped not. He especially hoped Balidor missed it, as the Adhipan seer seemed to hear everything...much less Wreg.
    Hell, he didn’t want to have to explain that conversation or what followed to anyone, much less revisit it with Revik himself.
    Honestly, he hoped Revik was too drunk to even remember it.
    Jon looked away, catching the edge of Wreg’s eyebrow-raised stare.
    He didn’t miss the coldness that shone there, however.
    Exhaling, Jon found himself watching Revik again surreptitiously, maybe to avoid looking at Wreg, noting that Revik had been eating less again, but clearly hadn’t let up on his time spent at the building’s improvised gym. The Elaerian had been running every morning too, Jon knew, often well before dawn. Sometimes he ran around Alamo Square itself, but more often, he ran to the panhandle and into Golden Gate Park...even as far as the ocean, at times.
    Jon hadn’t personally been working out with him in the sparring arena, but he knew Revik had an open challenge out there, too, in an attempt to get himself into shape and pick up new fighting techniques. So far, only Jorag, Wreg, Yumi and Balidor took him up on that challenge on a regular basis, although Jon overheard Torek saying he’d fought him a few times as well, along with Maygar, and some of the cockier youngsters among the new recruits.
    A few of the last of these came out of there with broken bones, including one shattered cheekbone, a broken hand and a dislocated jaw. Revik himself had barely recovered from what that sadistic fucker, Ditrini, had done to him in the sewer tunnels under New York, or the injuries might have been worse.
    The Elaerian only seemed to be marginally aware of the rest of them again, Jon noticed. His clear eyes focused outward, almost as if he were conversing with someone in the Barrier. Or maybe as if the larger part of him simply remained absent from the room.
    After everyone found a seat, and the shuffling and