Read Online Blood's Shadow: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 3 by Cecilia Dominic - Free Book Online

future, but only if you promise you’ll be careful and try not to talk to the see-through people too much.”
    His eyes widened as he scrambled out of the chair to stand. “I will, sir.” He lowered his voice. “I don’t want to talk to most of them, anyhow.” He left the room without making much sound, and I suspected that was how he did most things—as unobtrusively as possible. It made me wonder how many secrets he’d spilled in childish innocence before he learned less attention was better than more.
    I unclenched my left hand and forced my jaw to relax. When to demand attention and when to shy away from it was a lesson learned harder by some. And some of us were better at avoiding the limelight than others.
    The rest of the morning passed in a stream of twenty-minute interviews. None of the other children had anything interesting to offer or say, and I noted which ones I suspected would manifest the full CLS spectrum of symptoms. I wished I could tell Corinne exactly what I saw or how I did what I did, but my determinations were based on instinct rather than logic. I only knew my father had had the same ability, one of the few tidbits I’d learned about him in his official capacity. Of course I felt like I was being watched or that he was there, but he didn’t communicate with me, and I wondered whether he was, indeed, there, or if he had left when Alexander did and my mind was playing tricks on me.
    “Tell me about Alexander,” I said when I sat down for lunch with Corinne in her office. “How did he end up here?”
    “Right now, most of our boys are here because of being born with CLS into human families, but he’s the exception. His parents are both lycanthropes, but they’re puzzled with him—he has these strange abilities and no CLS symptoms.”
    “So has he had behavior problems? He seems inclined to stay under the radar.”
    She shook her head. “His father wanted him to come here to be exposed to children with CLS to see if it would ‘toughen him up’. As you can probably guess, he doesn’t really fit in with the bad boys.”
    “Poor lad.”
    “What did he have to tell you that was so important?” She paused with a forkful of salad in her hand.
    “I’m still trying to make sense of it,” I told her. “You know how it is with clairvoyants.”
    “Right, sometimes they’re clear and sometimes not, and when you want them to be one way, they’re usually the opposite.”
    “Exactly.”
    “What did you want him to be?”
    I thought about being told there was a ghost following me and then how it resembled my long-dead father. “I’m not sure.”
    The afternoon passed quickly with two more possible lycanthropes emerging from the group of preadolescent CLS sufferers. That brought me up to four, a typical number for the full phenotypic expression. I gave their names to Corinne before I left.
    “Watch these especially closely,” I told her.
    “When will you be checking on them again?” she asked and opened up her calendar to August. “They’ll be going back to their homes this weekend but will be back end of the summer.”
    “It will likely not be until September. I have a major investigation going on right now.”
    Wrinkles creased her otherwise flawless brow. “Is that the one about the Institute? The murders there?”
    “You know I can’t tell you that. It’s an ongoing case.”
    “Right. Just let me know. I’ll continue to watch over young Alexander as well. His family is actually local.”
    “Thank you.”
    As I walked out of the front door, I felt the weight of someone’s gaze on me and turned to see Alexander standing in one of the second floor windows. He held a hand up to me as if to wave farewell, and rather than sweet, the gesture struck me as creepy. The hair on the back of my neck didn’t stand down until I got well away from the Council School.

Chapter Seven
    My interviews had ended at the termination of the school day, and although I typically used that as an