Mind Magic Read Free

your concern, is it? Now come along.”
    Slowly she did, somewhat reassured. If he didn’t want her to know how he’d tracked her, maybe he wasn’t planning to shoot her, or have one of his soldiers shoot her, or whatever. Because she was pretty sure he was here because of her. He’d found out what she planned to do and come here to stop her. Only how? She’d never found a precog for him, except for that one boy whose parents hadn’t wanted him to leave home, so he hadn’t been tipped off that way. And even if Amanda could read her mind, which she couldn’t, Demi had been too far away until today. Amanda might have increased her range, but not that much.
    As for more prosaic means . . . she’d been so careful! Surely if they knew about her back door, they wouldn’t have left it open? And she’d paid cash for her bus ticket, and she didn’t see how they could have known about the bike she’d borrowed to come the rest of the way. She supposed that someone could’ve been following her, but the NSA was all about electronic surveillance, not the in-person kind. And she’d left her phone in airplane mode the whole time, so . . .
    Wait a minute. Look at it the other way around. How would she track someone’s phone when it was in airplane mode?
    That had her thinking furiously until they reached the porch, where the two soldiers peeled off, going back to whatever they did when they weren’t helping Mr. Smith collect trespassers. Demi felt a little sick, a little scared, and altogether weird as she went up the three stairs.
    The farmhouse had started out big, with ten rooms plus a finished basement that held the classrooms, a couple of half baths, and the housekeeper’s room. When she first came here, she’d had a bedroom of her own, but that hadn’t lasted, and she’d moved out before the addition was finished. That had nearly doubled the house’s size. The two-story wing had a rec room, the teachers’ bedrooms and shared bath, plus lots more bedrooms, restrooms, and shower rooms for the kids. The kids’ bedrooms were dorm-style. There were twenty-one “Gifted young people” living here now, most of them below the age of thirteen.
    It felt so odd to walk inside the Refuge . . . and that’s what it had been when she first came here. Not a home, but a refuge. The place looked like it always had—the same scuffed floorboards, with one that squeaked three steps inside the entry hall. The big, square living room on her right still had that squishy couch where she’d liked to curl up with a book. The TV was new, but she’d bet they still weren’t allowed to turn it on until after supper.
    Three kids were in the living room playing some kind of board game. She knew two of them because she’d found them. Adrian was fourteen—two years younger than her—and a strong farseer. Susan was fourteen and a Finder. The other boy, the one she didn’t know, looked about twelve.
    All three were staring at her. She looked away.
    “He’s upstairs,” Mr. Smith said. “Second bedroom on the right.”
    Not in the new wing, then. The only way into that was down the hall on her left. Demi’s heart pounded as she started up the stairs. Mr. Smith came up behind her. “Adrian and Susan and that other kid aren’t on the field trip.”
    “I’m afraid they’re grounded. Minor infractions, but the rules exist for a reason. I’ve always thought you agreed with that.”
    It was true that Demi liked rules. Rules kept things fair and orderly. Because she followed most rules scrupulously, everyone thought she was a good girl, not the sort to cause problems. It had never occurred to Dan and Sharon that she might sneak out sometimes at night. But Demi had needed time alone more than she’d needed to follow the house rules. To her surprise, she’d turned out to be good at sneaking.
    Not good enough, apparently. She paused at the top of the stairs. “Why isn’t Amanda on the field trip?”
    “A stomach virus. Please