Read Online Undercover Magic by Judy Teel - Free Book Online Page A

notice. She looked at the
     one white puffy cloud in an otherwise blue sky and frowned. I threw another rock.
     It collided solidly with the glass and cracks spread out from the point of impact.
    Oops.
    Falcon's mom looked down at me and her eyes widened in surprise. She fumbled with
     the lock on the window and then slid the sash up. Nothing triggered. With all the
     precautions on the outside, why put them on the inside?
    Her face was thinner than I remembered and a vague air of desperation had sharpened
     her features. "Is it hailing?"
    "It's me. Addison Kittner," I called up.
    "You can't be. She's only a little girl."
    My hopes fell and a spasm of pain hit my soul. Time rushed away from me and for a
     moment I felt small and dirty and hungry and Falcon's mom was placing a bowl of steaming
     stew in front of me. Dark circles smudged her eyes and her hand trembled, but she'd
     smiled at me and she'd meant it. 
    That woman wasn't here anymore and suddenly I wished that she wasn't my only link
     between the past and the present. I stepped closer. "I meant I'm her sister...um,
     Stacey."
    "You can't be. She didn't have anyone." She started to close the window.
    "Wait! Mrs. Hallford, please. I need to ask you some questions about your brother."
    She stopped and pain flickered across her face. The window slid up a few inches. "Is
     he home? I've been waiting for him to come home."
    Falcon was ten when I'd first met his mom. Mrs. Hallford's husband had been dead for
     a year, killed defending their neighborhood in the first wave when the paranormal
     terrorists struck. A few months after that, her brother had managed to make his way
     from Virginia to Charlotte. Eight months later, he lay upstairs, badly wounded.
    I'd met him a block away from the dumpsters where my friends and I sometimes slept.
     He'd been returning from a deal with a grocery store owner and had been jumped. When
     he triggered his last trap to disable two of the practitioners, their friends had
     decided to get revenge. I'd shot them.
    Too weak to risk traveling through the streets, he'd taken me with him through a series
     of tunnels that Falcon had designed. By the time we got to their house, I was dragging
     Uncle Ben by the leg and ordering him to stay conscious. I was almost twelve.
    I stared up at Mrs. Hallford's vague, faraway expression, and sorrow clogged my throat.
     Two days after I'd met them, Falcon had told me that his uncle had left town in search
     of buyers and his mother wasn't well. We'd banded our small groups of forgotten children
     together and survived. He'd created the traps and weapons people needed, we'd found
     the buyers and made the drops.
    I never realized that Falcon had meant she'd broken.
    "Mrs. Hallford, is your brother home?" I gently asked.
    Her grey eyes, so like Falcon's, grew troubled. "Not here." Her hands fluttered up
     and down her sweater, buttoning and unbuttoning. Buttoning and unbuttoning. "My son's
     house. He's aways at my son's house now."
    "Do you think he would speak to me?"
    "I don't think so. You do look quite a bit like little Addison. Such a lonely child.
     So sad. A good girl."
    I swallowed, working to control the constriction of pain in the middle of my chest.
     Despite how hard this was, I had to know the truth as much as I needed to take my
     next breath. For Falcon's sake. And for mine, though I had no idea why.
    "Why won't Ben speak to me, Mrs. Hallford?"
    "He's in the backyard."
    "What do you mean?"
    "I saw it. He didn't know, but I saw it. He was so small. The shovel was nearly twice
     as tall as him. How did he manage it?"
    A cold rush of fear scattered down my back. "Manage what, ma'am?"
    "When I saw, I knew it was over. I knew we were never going to make it." Her fingers
     plucked at the round gold button at her throat and then started twisting it. "Then
     everything stopped."
    "But you did make it," I said.
    "It just...stopped."
    "You're here. Falcon's okay. Your brother's okay." Please let