Awakening Read Free Page B

world—unless they happen to be a very specific kind, namely the ghost of an Agito.”
    “A what?”
    “Agito. It’s Latin roughly translating to ‘put into motion.’ Half-demons come in many types, as you’ll discover. An Agito’s power, as the name might suggest, is telekinesis.”
    “Moving things with the mind.”
    “Very good. And it is an Agito who moved that chair, though one who is still very much alive.”
    “You?”
    He smiled and, for a second, the mask of the doddering old fool cracked, and I caught a glimpse of the real man beneath. What I saw was pride and arrogance, like a classmate flashing his A+ paper as if to say
top that
.
    “Yes, I’m a supernatural, as is almost everyone who works here. I know what you must have been thinking—that we’re humans who’ve discovered your powers and wish to destroy what we don’t understand, like in those comic books.”
    “The
X-Men
.”
    I don’t know what was more shocking, that Dr. Davidoff and his colleagues were supernaturals or the image of this stooped, awkward man reading
X-Men
. Had he pored over them as a boy, imagining himself in Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters?
    Did that mean Aunt Lauren was a necromancer? That she saw ghosts, too?
    He continued before I could ask anything. “The Edison Group was founded by supernaturals eighty years ago. And as much as it has grown since those early days, it’s still an institution run by supernaturals and for supernaturals, dedicated to bettering the lives of our kind.”
    “Edison Group?”
    “Named after Thomas Edison.”
    “The guy who invented the lightbulb?”
    “That’s what he’s best known for. He also invented the movie projector, which I’m sure
you’re
grateful for. Yet you, Chloe, have accomplished something he dreamed of but never succeeded in doing.” A dramatic pause. “Contacting the dead.”
    “Thomas Edison wanted to talk to the dead?”
    “He believed in an afterlife and wanted to communicate with it not through séances and spiritualism but through science. When he died, it’s thought he was working on just such a device—a telephone to the afterlife. No plans for it were ever found.” Dr. Davidoff smiled conspiratorially. “Or, at least, not officially. We adopted the name because, like Edison, we take a scientific approach to matters of the paranormal.”
    Improving supernatural lives through science. Where had I heard something like that? It took me a moment to remember, and when I did, I shivered.
    The ghosts I’d raised in the Lyle House basement had been subjects of experiments by a sorcerer named Samuel Lyle. Willing subjects, at first, they’d said, because they’d been promised a better life. Instead, they’d ended up lab rats sacrificed to the vision of a madman, as one ghost had put it. And that thing in my room had called Brady—and me, I think—Samuel Lyle’s “creations.”
    “Chloe?”
    “S-sorry. I’m just—”
    “Tired, I imagine, after being up all night. Would you like a rest?”
    “No, I-I’m fine. It’s just—So how do we fit in? And Lyle House? It’s part of an experiment, isn’t it?”
    His chin lifted, not much, just enough of a reaction to tell me I’d caught him off guard and that he didn’t like it. A pleasant smile erased the look and he eased back in his chair.
    “It
is
an experiment, Chloe. I know how that must sound, but I assure you, it’s a noninvasive study, using only benign psychological therapy.”
    Benign?
There was nothing benign about what had happened to Liz and Brady.
    “Okay, so we’re part of this experiment….” I said.
    “Being a supernatural is both a blessing and curse. Adolescence is the most difficult time for us, as our powers begin to manifest. One of the Edison Group’s theories is that it might be easier if our children don’t know of their future.”
    “Don’t know they’re supernatural?”
    “Yes, instead allowing them to grow up as human, assimilating into human society