Read Online Daddy's Little Angel by Shani Petroff - Free Book Online Page B

Whenever she spoke like that, she was lying.
    “Oh my God,” I shouted, and leaped to my feet. “You think I’m a mini-devil. That’s why you’re always praying for my soul.”
    Mom stood. “No, no, no. It’s not that. I know you’re good.” She made me sit back down. “It’s just . . . I don’t want you to panic.”
    Okay, if she didn’t want me to panic she shouldn’t have said, “I don’t want you to panic . ”
    “ But,” she continued, “there’s a fifty percent chance you inherited his powers.”

chapter 18
    Powers!? There was no way. I couldn’t even do a card trick, forget something supernatural. “This is a mistake,” I shouted as I fumbled with the salt and pepper shakers. “I must be in the percentile that doesn’t have them. I’d have known if I could steal souls, make fireballs shoot from my nose, or whatever it is that evil can do.”
    Mom put her hands on both my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “It’ll be okay. Powers are what you make of them. You can use them for good. But you don’t have to use them at all. I actually hope that you don’t.”
    “You’re not going to have to worry about it because I don’t have them.” I went and grabbed a carton of orange juice from the fridge. Something a girl with powers would never have done. She would have just made it magically appear in her hands.
    “Angel, you’re going to have to face this,” Mom said, trailing after me.
    “No, I’m not. Because I don’t have powers .” I slammed the refrigerator door shut. “There’s a fifty-fifty shot. And I know I’m in the clear.”
    I refused to turn around. Instead I pretended to study the word magnets on the freezer. As I stood there innocently reading the Gaelic incantation my mom had constructed, the magnets started to move. First they jumbled together, then they sank down to the bottom left corner of the freezer, leaving lots of room on top. Then several word magnets shot up and filled that empty space. They formed a sentence:
    Why not try and see?
    No. This wasn’t happening. I swiped the magnets to the ground, but more magnets flew back up.
    Try and activate them. Then you will know for sure.
    “Lou, stop it,” I screamed.
    I went to take the magnets down again but Mom caught hold of my arm. “It’ll be okay,” she said. “If you end up having powers, look at them as a gift. Something to make you even more special.”
    I sure didn’t feel special. I felt cursed. “Right. That’s why you spent the last thirteen years trying to keep my dad from me and attempting to ward off evil.”
    “It’s not that,” she stammered. “I thought it would be easier for you not to know. But now that you do . . .” I moved away from my mother and fidgeted with some of the angel figurines she had on the windowsill. I can’t have powers , I thought. Can I?
    Mom moved to the stove. “Why don’t we have a nice, hot drink and relax?” She ladled some of her potion into a tea cup.
    She did think I was evil. “No thanks,” I shouted, then stormed up to my room and crawled into bed.
    I felt like someone dumped a truckload of ice cubes on me. I couldn’t get rid of the chills. I mean, what if I did have powers and I decided to give them a try—would I be able to control them? Or if they had evil aftereffects and caused anyone I helped to get hairy, webbed fingers? The possibilities for doom and destruction were endless. It was too risky. I mean, I always wanted something that made me stand out. Like being able to run a crazy-fast mile, do a quadruple back flip, paint like Monet or Picasso or one of those famous dead guys we learned about in art class, remember all the lines to every movie I’ve seen. Anything. Well, almost anything. I didn’t want tainted powers . No, powers from some radioactive spider or a wish-granting genie would have been an entirely different story. I’d have been all over those . But these were evil.
    I walked over to my window and stared out. Things had