Read Online Jennifer Estep Bundle by Jennifer Estep - Free Book Online

had been able to tell whether or not people were lying just by listening to their words. And I had the ability to know, see, and feel things just by touching a person or an object. But our Gypsy gifts had always been just that—gifts, small things that we could do—and I hadn’t thought too much about them, where they had come from, or if other people had magic like ours.
    Until the day that I picked up Paige Forrest’s hairbrush after gym class.
    We’d been in the locker room changing after playing basketball, which I hated because I totally sucked at it. Seriously, sucked out loud at it. Like, sucked so bad that I’d managed to hit myself in the head with the ball when I was trying to shoot a free throw.
    After class, I’d been hot and sweaty and had wanted to pull my hair back into a ponytail. Paige’s brush had been lying on the bench between us. Paige wasn’t one of my close friends, but we were in the same semipopular circle of smart girls. Sometimes, we hung out when our group got together, so I’d asked her if I could use her hairbrush.
    Paige had stared at me a second, a strange emotion flashing in her eyes. “Sure.”
    I picked it up, never dreaming that I’d feel anything. Despite my psychometry, I usually didn’t get much of a vibe off common, everyday objects like pens, computers, dishes, or phones. Things in public places that lots of people used or that had a simple, specific function. I only got the biggies, the deep, vivid, high-def flashes, when I touched objects that people had some personal connection to, like a favorite photograph or a cherished piece of jewelry.
    But as soon as my hand had closed around the hairbrush, I’d seen an image of Paige sitting on her bed with an older man. He’d brushed her long black hair exactly one hundred times, just like everyone claims you’re supposed to. Then, when he was finished with her hair, the man had unfastened Paige’s robe, made her lie back on the bed, and started touching her before he took off his pants.
    I’d started screaming then, and I didn’t stop.
    After about five minutes, I passed out. My friend Bethany had told me that I’d kept right on screaming, even when the paramedics came to take me to the hospital. Everyone thought I was having an epileptic seizure or something.
    I think Paige knew, though. About my Gypsy gift and what I could do. Two weeks before, she’d asked me to find her missing phone. I’d walked around Paige’s room, touched her desk, her nightstand, her purse, and her bookcases, and eventually seen an image of her little sister swiping the phone so she could snoop through Paige’s text messages. Sometimes, I wondered if Paige had put her hairbrush there on the bench just for me to pick up. Just so someone would know, just so someone would feel exactly what she was going through.
    I’d woken up in the hospital later that day. My mom, Grace, was there, and I told her what I’d seen. That’s what you did when something terrible was happening to one of your friends. And because my mom was a police detective who’d spent her whole life helping people. I wanted to be just like her.
    That night, my mom had arrested Paige’s stepdad for abusing her. My mom had called when she was at the police station and told me that Paige was safe now. She’d promised to be home in another hour, just as soon as she finished the paperwork.
    She never made it.
    My mom had been hit by a drunk driver after she’d left the police station that night. Grandma Frost had told me that she’d died instantly. That she’d never even seen the other car swerving toward her or felt the horrible, horrible pain of the crash. I hoped that was how it had happened, because my mom had been so torn up in the wreck that the casket had been closed at her funeral. What I could remember of it, anyway.
    I hadn’t gone back to my old school after