Read Online Twisted Miracles by A. J. Larrieu - Free Book Online Page B

everything went dark.
    I came tumbling out of Mina’s head in terror. My skin was slick with cold sweat, and everyone was staring at me. The feeling that had hit right before the blackness was still with me, an awful, gut-dropping surge of power. Afraid I’d vomit, I put my head between my knees and closed my eyes.
    Everyone had the sense not to touch me. When the nausea passed, I raised my head slowly. “What was that?”
    “I don’t rightly know,” Lionel said.
    Shane was looking at me carefully. “You were screaming. You were saying ‘No.’”
    I finally noticed no one else was curled up with their head between their knees. “Didn’t anyone else feel it? Right before she blacked out?”
    “Yeah...” Shane said. But it was clear it hadn’t affected him in the same way.
    “It was intense,” I said. Even Mina looked concerned.
    “I’m sure you’re just not used to riding memories.” Shane was keeping his voice light, but telepaths are hard to fool. He caught my eye.
    “ Outside. ” His mindspeech came on such a tight line, I barely heard it.
    “I think I need some air,” I said, getting up shakily. Everyone watched as I let myself out the back door, letting the screen door bang behind me. It took several minutes for Shane to follow me out.
    “Here.” He passed me a thick porcelain mug. Coffee.
    “I quit.” I tried to hand it back. I hadn’t had caffeine since I’d left. It made it harder to suppress my powers. I’d given it up cold turkey the day I’d killed Andrew.
    “Drink it, Cass. You need it.”
    “Why?” He’d added cream, the way I’d once liked it. I raised the cup to my mouth and blew, but I didn’t take a sip.
    “What did you feel, right before she blacked out?” he asked.
    “I don’t really know. It was—it was like a converter surge, but stronger. A lot stronger.”
    “You’re sure it was a converter? Could it have been something else?”
    “I don’t know. I guess so. I mean, I’ve never felt anything quite like it. Why? What’s going on?”
    Shane rubbed a hand over his face. “It’s her powers. They’re gone.”
    “What do you mean—how can they be gone?”
    “Bunny says the connections are damaged. I don’t know what she means. But she thinks it was a shadowmind who did it, probably a converter.”
    “One of us?” I stared at him. “It couldn’t have been. How would that even work?” I thought about the man I’d seen in Mina’s memory. “Did you recognize that guy?”
    Shane shook his head and sat down on the steps. “But that doesn’t prove anything. There’re bound to be converters around here we don’t know.”
    I sat down, too, and took a sip of the coffee on reflex. The taste of it shocked me, like cola when you’re expecting water, and I set the mug down on the porch. “It’s not permanent, though, right? I mean—she’ll heal.”
    Shane pressed his palms together at his lips and closed his eyes. “She might. But Bunny can’t find a way to fix her.” He opened his eyes and faced me. “Someone tore apart her powers. And it looks like they did it on purpose.”
    * * *
    I should have been booking a plane ticket back to San Francisco. Instead, I was calling local converters on my cell phone, asking them to come to a welcome-home party for Mina. At least, that was what we were saying. It was really a chance to get every telepath in the city to look at the man in Mina’s memory.
    The Tooleys offered their place so we didn’t have to disturb the B&B guests, and since I was hopeless in the kitchen, I got assigned invitation duty while Shane and Lionel made stuffed mushrooms and jambalaya. I was shocked by how many people remembered me. I was prepared to explain—”used to live with the Tanners, just visiting”—but everyone knew exactly who I was. Mary Ellen Hebert’s mother, Deborah, asked me about California as if it were a foreign country, and Missy Gagnier spent fifteen minutes telling me about her middle daughter’s