Read Online Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 03 - Dark Legacy by Nancy K. Duplechain - Free Book Online

sighed.
“Of course I don’t mean for her or you to live that way forever or even for an
extended time. Just until we can figure out what’s going on.
    “How long will
that take?”
    “Be patient.
I’ll speak with Father Ben and Charmagne and see what we can come up with. For
now, be with your mother and look out for her.”
     
     
    ***
     
    “Noah! Company!”
yelled Selena from downstairs.
    He found his mom
standing in the living room with Nadia. “Hey,” he said, a little perplexed.
    “Nadia, you
said?” said Selena.
    “Yes,” said
Nadia.
    “She says she’s
a friend of yours.”
    “Yeah,” said
Noah. “We just met a few days ago.”
    Selena grinned,
and Noah knew she was doing her “mom” thing, seeing her little boy growing up
and possibly finding a girlfriend. He wished she’d stop grinning like that. It
was getting awkward.
    “Uh, you wanna
go hang out in my room?” said Noah.
    “Sure” said
Nadia.
    As they headed
upstairs, Selena called out, “Door stays open!”
    Noah’s cheeks
flushed with warmth, and Nadia giggled. He closed the door to his room anyway.
    “I like your
house,” said Nadia.
    “Thanks. So,
what’s up?”
    “I needed to get
out of there. The convent. It was stifling.”
    “Oh. How … how
are you? Are you okay?”
    She nodded. “I
keep trying to block everything. I don’t want to think about it.” She ran her
hand along his desk against the window. She picked up a pencil and sat on the carpet
with her legs crossed. “To be honest, I don’t have to try too hard to block
anything. Everything I touch, I get flooded with that object’s or person’s
memory.”
    “Like what
happened when our hands touched?”
    She nodded.
    He scrunched his
brows. “How can an object have a memory?”
    She shrugged. “I
think it’s more of an imprint left by the person or people who used it. I’ll
pick up a pencil like this, and I’ll just get an image of you writing something
down, like homework or something. I can feel the graphite gliding across the
paper. I can hear it, smell it. But other things have stronger imprints. Like
Sister Adele’s rosary that she wears. When I touched it, I saw how she had it
since she was a very young girl and how she clung to it for protection when she
was mistreated because she was deaf and mute.”
    Nadia looked up
at Noah, who stared back at her, not with distrust or caution, but like he
believed every word she said. “I shook your mother’s hand when she invited me
in the house.”
    She waited for
him to catch on to what she was saying. When he did, Noah said, “You saw her
past?”
    She nodded,
looking down at the pencil in her fingers. “I’m sorry about what happened to
her.”
    “So you saw him .
My … father.”
    Her eyes found
his, and she nodded.
    He almost didn’t
ask the next question. “What did he look like?”
    “Like you. Dark
hair, eyes the color of steel.” She hesitated and then said, “Beautiful purple
wings.”
    He sat on his
bed and stared down at the floor.
    “I’m sorry if I’ve
upset you.”
    “It’s not you.
They’re coming back.”
    She frowned, her
eyebrows knotted. “What’s coming back?”
    Noah sat next to
her on the floor and then took off his shirt. He hesitantly turned around so
that she could see what he was talking about. They looked like tiny shards
of amethyst struggling to break away from his shoulder blades. She lightly
traced a finger over one of them. He bristled.
    “Does it hurt?” she asked.
    “Feels a little sore.”
    They looked so much like gem
stones that she was expecting them to feel jagged and rough, but they were soft
and yielded to her touch.
    “I can’t believe this is
happening,” he said sadly, and pulled away from her, putting his shirt back on.
    She leaned back against the wall,
bringing her knees up into her chest and resting her arms across them. 
She watched as he nervously paced the room, and then she smiled softly. 
“I think it’s