Read Online Eternal Ever After by A.C. James - Free Book Online

little trick of mine. Fun, isn’t it?”
    “No, not fun. Can you read my mind?” Please tell me he can’t.
    “If I could read your mind there would be no need for conversation.”
    “Well, I don’t like your little parlor trick. Don’t do it again. Is there anything else that you can do?”
    Arie grinned. I felt drawn into eyes that seemed to be laughing at me. “I can do lots of things.”
    Ignoring his innuendo, I looked away. The server returned with a selection of sashimi in a dashi broth for shabu-shabu , a traditional Japanese offering. With it were two glasses of Riesling. I grimaced at the thought of more wine.
    “It’s different for all of us. Like I said, we can scan auras. Some of us can control things, like the weather, or shapeshift. I suppose it all depends on strength and age.”
    I thought about the ominous threat and the clouds morphing. But I didn’t want to say anything that might have him trying to scare me off again. Except that now I wondered if he knew and that’s why he showed up when he did. Was he trying to protect me? If so, what was he trying to protect me from? “I suppose that makes sense. Not everyone is good at the same thing.”
    Arie raised an eyebrow.
    “Humans. Not all humans are good at the same things,” I said, clarifying perhaps unnecessarily, but the wine was getting to me.
    Arie smiled. “So how long have you worked at the Coffee Grind?”
    “You ask an awfully mundane question. Why would you possibly care?”
    “Don’t you think you’re being a bit rude?”
    I flushed. “Sorry. I’ve been there a little over a year. It’s okay, I guess, and it’s quiet, which is…good for me.”
    “Why?”
    “It’s not easy. The Sight isn’t predictable. Sometimes it comes in a waking vision and other times it comes as a dream. I can’t control when or what I see. And the less contact I have with other people the better.”
    Arie’s eyes hardened infinitesimally.
    “What are you thinking?” I asked.
    He sipped his wine and it seemed like his thoughts took him somewhere else. I didn’t want to intrude and waited for him to continue.
    “Holly, the Sight is something that usually runs in families. Didn’t anyone teach you how to control it? It’s rare, but I’ve seen it before. But I wouldn’t be able to tell you how to use it. You’d be better off asking someone else with your gift.”
    “I never knew my parents. My mother had me when she was sixteen and died giving birth to me. My father was eighteen and went off to college. I guess my grandmother couldn’t take me in, but I don’t really know all the details. I grew up in the foster-care system. No one adopted me when I was a baby since I was premature and had RSV. I had to be on a ventilator in the NICU and parents don’t want babies with health problems. If you’re paying that much money, you want a perfectly healthy baby. And when I got older people were afraid of me until I learned to keep my mouth shut about the visions. Then I got lucky when I met the Ellis family. They adopted me.”
    Arie nodded. He reached across the table and brushed a stray chestnut strand out of my eyes, which glistened with unshed tears. I don’t know why I told him all that. I never talked about it with anyone. Even after a year, Trina didn’t know that I’d been in the system or that I was adopted. I liked to keep that to myself. I was surprised that I’d told him, and wasn’t sure whether he dazzled it out of me or if I told him of my own accord. Maybe it was because he didn’t look at me like I was a science project, knowing that I had the Sight. And he looked at me like I was so much more. I didn’t know how to explain it, and the wine made everything more confusing.
    He pulled his hand away. Our main entree of surf and turf came in the form of wagyu beef and Maine lobster—a potato fondant came with it. I rolled my eyes as yet another wine was paired with the dish. I had lost count of how many glasses had been