Iron Inheritance Read Free

hot wind tossing chocolate hair into my face. “Do you think Grandpa’s ok?”
    “What?” Nate flicked his green eyes to the rearview mirror to make sure he’d heard me correctly. “Affirmative.”
    Yeah. Answers like that make me feel so much better.
    I didn’t know why I was so worried about him. Even if someone had called already and told him what happened, it wasn’t like the news was as horrible as last time. He wasn’t going to have to come pick me up from the police station. He wasn’t going to have to talk to friends’ parents and apologize profusely. He wasn’t going to have to hear me yell and whine and turn my mistake into blackmail that would let me go to a regular school for my senior year. He wasn’t going to have another stress-induced heart attack because of what I’d done…I hoped.
    I sunk back into my seat and watched massive billboards and jumbo screens flank our exit as we pulled onto The Strip—Sin City. Twelve-story bikini women posing partway between seductress and contortionist winked their alluring Siren’s call of anonymity. Whatever happened here would stay here.
    What a load of crap.
    It took almost forty-five minutes to get from the center of Vegas to Red Rock. The dense, red, clay earth on either side of the two-lane highway was speckled with prickly shrubs that changed color with the fading light—sometimes pale green, sometimes purple. In the distance, jagged red cliffs rose across an expanse of color-sapping, shifting sands. The wind carved the cliffs like clouds until everywhere you looked you saw a portrait of someone you knew.
    That’s what Grandpa used to tell me, anyway. Used to.
    I missed that.
    Each of our three families had ranch houses twenty miles outside the city. Ria’s was near the resort at the base of the canyon—still technically Vegas, her mom always said. Nate’s was in the middle. Mine was the most remote and the one we spent the most time at.
    We pulled onto the gravel driveway, and all I could do was wonder what I’d tell Grandpa. His contacts in town might have kept me out of jail, and maybe Mr. Domestic Violence deserved what he got, but that wouldn’t change the fact that I’d broken a promise—however involuntarily. Grandpa was big on promises.
    I wiped my knuckles on my jeans again even though they were thoroughly clean by now. I’d rubbed every crack clean with a tissue and a water bottle as we drove, but they still felt dirty.
    Nate cut off the rumble of the engine, and my ears took a while to adjust to the lack of wind pounding into them. I exhaled slowly. Grandpa would be in the garden this time of day. I should just tell him now, whether he’d heard about it or not. The consequences didn’t even matter anymore. I had three months before I left to college, and I wasn’t going to leave things broken between us again. Not again.
    I rubbed my thumb over the broken blue stone of my half-wing necklace. I knew myself well enough to recognize that guilt weighed more heavily on me than most people. I had enough to deal with without adding anything more with Grandpa.
    “How about you two head inside or something while I talk to him,” I said from the back seat.
    Ria misinterpreted my intentions and widened her eyes in a psychic trance. “You have to tell him the truth. He’ll know. It’s like a Mom-mind-reading thing, except he’s older, wiser, and wrinklier.” Her face contorted. “He’s that tiny green guy in those movies with the laser thingies.”
    “Yoda?” I raised an eyebrow and couldn’t help a smile from creeping across my lips. “You think he’s Yoda?”
    She nodded, eyes still wide.
    I squirmed when she didn’t look away. “Stop it. You know that weirds me out.” I creaked open the side door. “I’m going to tell him exactly what happened. I deserve some kind of lashing for what I just did.” I swallowed, but a lump still stuck in my throat.
    Ria dabbed her eyes, careful not to smear her makeup, as she pretended