Arise (Awakened Fate Book 4) Read Free Page A

let her know we were getting close.
    But anything could have happened between then and now. Harman could have called and told Olivia what had happened from his perspective. Something else could have changed to put us all in danger. Ellie swore we could trust her mentor, that even though she was a landwalker elder like Harman, Olivia didn’t think like him. She wouldn’t see me as just a half-and-half kid who needed to be turned back into a landwalker, and she could help with more information about this ‘Beast’ thing that had caused the Sylphaen to want me dead.
    But Ellie could be wrong, and on the roller coaster my life had become, I’d found paranoia of strangers wasn’t always the wrong reaction. After all, at least half of them had ended up trying to kill me.
    Zeke gently jostled my hand. “It’ll be alright,” he whispered.
    I glanced over, and then caught sight of Noah looking back at us. Discomfort tangled through me for a whole other reason, and hastily, I turned away and pushed open the door.
    Warm summer air pressed against me, carrying the smell of pine and river water. The neighborhood was silent, the hour long past when most people probably had gone to bed. From the car, Zeke climbed out. I hesitated, waiting to see if he needed any help.
    “I’m fine,” he assured me, reading the pause.
    I stayed close just in case, and tried to ignore the feeling of Noah watching us both. Ellie led the way while we headed for the porch. The steps creaked beneath us and the hinges of the screen door made popping noises as Ellie pulled it aside. We gathered inside the enclosed porch, and when Ellie knocked, the heavy, mahogany door seemed to absorb the sound.
    A second passed and then footsteps hurried toward us from within the house. The door swung open to reveal a slender African-American woman with a short afro and black-framed glasses. Above her jeans, an old flannel shirt covered her, the plaid fabric visibly softened and faded with age. Her dark eyes swept us as though counting and running a calculation on the number she found, and from her face, I couldn’t tell what the result could be.
    “Hi Olivia,” Ellie managed with a tiny, nervous smile. “I’m sorry to drop in so late.”
    “It’s no problem,” the woman answered, sounding more cautious than upset. “Is everything okay? You were fairly vague on the phone.”
    “Uh, yeah. Sorry about that. It’s… well, I mean… can we come in?”
    Eyebrow twitching up, Olivia nodded. Not looking away from us, she stepped back to allow us all space to enter. Ellie hurried inside, with Baylie coming more slowly behind her. Noah followed, only to pause on the opposite side of the entry from the woman, still watching her. Olivia’s eyes skimmed over him questioningly before flicking to us.
    And then she spotted the bandages on Zeke’s legs. Alarm on her face, she looked to Ellie.
    “I can explain that,” Ellie began. “It’s just… he, uh…”
    “Why don’t you all join me in the kitchen?” Olivia offered carefully when Ellie trailed off. She waited while Zeke and I walked past her and then she shut the door. “I have a couple chairs in there and I was just getting some cocoa ready.”
    Ellie took off for the kitchen. Still casting short glances to the wounds on Zeke’s legs, Olivia trailed after her.
    I took a deep breath to steady myself. With Zeke beside me and Noah a step ahead, I walked down the hall. Through an archway to my left, I could see a darkened study. A trio of monitors sat on the desk in the corner, their blue power lights blinking sleepily. A computer tower waited on the floor near them, and in the dimness, I could make out a thick braid of cables running to additional machines several feet away. Beneath the bay window to the right, a couch sat with a laptop and a few paper file folders on it, the latter of which looked as though they’d been in the middle of being read.
    With a wary glance to Olivia, I kept going. At the end of