Read Online Iniquity (The Premonition Series Book 5) by Amy A. Bartol - Free Book Online Page B

shoulder. “Just you and me.”
    He kisses the top of my head. “I doubt Buns or Brownie will allow that.”
    He has somehow found a way to make me smile. “Do you know where you’re going?”
    “Detroit—to your childhood home,” Reed answers. “I’ve been there.”
    “That’s right,” I murmur as I remember that he went there to take care of things after Freddie killed my Uncle Jim.
    “I’ve been there several times when I was looking for you after you left Crestwood.”
    Once we reach the highway, the rest of the trip to Detroit passes quickly as Reed flies by cars like they’re standing still. When we exit, he weaves in and out of traffic on the icy two-lane roads. We enter my neighborhood and Reed is forced to slow the car. Garlands decorate doors shrouded by iron bars. People are getting ready to celebrate the winter holidays and the familiarity of it all seems foreign to me—my life prior to Crestwood is so far removed from the one I have now.
    Everything in this city is the same, which shocks me. Maybe it’s because I’ve changed so much since I was here that I expected it to have changed as well. But it hasn’t. It’s the same. The rectangular-shaped storefronts and restaurants hide behind growing piles of plowed and shoveled snow. People with scarf-wrapped necks and gloved hands hold shopping bags as their boots hurry toward parked cars to get out of the cold.
    After we pass the fire station, we turn right onto the street where I grew up. It’s all single-family, two-story dwellings with postage-stamp lawns and open front porches. Reed avoids the driveway and pulls up to the curb in front of my childhood house, parking beneath the snow-covered branches of the elm tree. It had belonged to Uncle Jim’s parents, my grandparents. He’d inherited it when they died. I don’t remember them at all—they were gone before I was born.
    The red brick façade, black-shuttered windows, and bright red front door of my house cause my throat to tighten and close. I have to take shallow breaths—I can’t afford tears right now. “Someone replaced the net,” I murmur, gesturing to the basketball hoop affixed to the detached garage. I open my door and step out of the car; Reed is by my side immediately. “We always kept shovels in there.” I point to the small potting shed beside the garage as I walk up the driveway that has been snowplowed recently.
    Reed goes to it and finds a shovel inside. Taking it, he follows me to the fenced-in backyard. After I open the gate, it’s immediately apparent that we’re too late. A hole and small pile of dirt beneath the base of the enormous oak tree makes that painfully clear, not to mention the tracks in the snow leading to and from the house. The back door of the house opens and Xavier steps out onto the deck wearing the ring that I haven’t seen since high school.

R eed takes my hand and we turn to go, but there are at least ten Powers walking up the driveway toward us. None of them display their wings, but I know them to be Powers—Dominions. It’s in their stride, the military way in which they carry themselves. All of a sudden, it feels like the house itself is bearing down on me. I turn back to face Xavier and find my father has joined him. Tau’s gray eyes, so much like my own, are on me and I’m struck by our resemblance to one another, though we look more like brother and sister than father and daughter. I had thought once that I shared my Uncle Jim’s eyes. I was wrong. They’re my father’s.
    My heart gives a lurch and I panic. I drop Reed’s hand as I raise mine. I let energy pulse out from it, the force of which connects with Tau. The smell of burnt cotton is in the air at the fury I unleash on him. The railing in front of him cracks, and then explodes, shattering. Tau cringes upon impact, but he absorbs the energy that should’ve easily lifted him off of his feet and thrown him back. He staggers a step, but then holds his ground as the