The Empath (The Above and Beyond Series Book 1) Read Free

Yale, Ivy League then.
    “It says on your file that you believe you can see the future.”
    I sighed. Most people who started off with “you believe” generally finished by saying “delusional.” I may be many things, but I know what I see.
    “You saw Lori attack Sheila?”
    I folded my arms. “In what context?”
    Llys looked up, her steel-gray eyes unnervingly clear. She thought I was trouble. If she kept up her attitude, I would be.
    “Is there more than one?”
    “You start by saying I see the future, then asked if I saw Sheila and Lori. Therefore it ain’t too obvious to assume you’re referring to my foresight other than the actual events.”
    She raised her eyebrows.
    Yeah, I read, lady. I can throw out a sentence when I need to , I thought. Stick that, Ivy League .
    “Did you see it . . . beforehand?” she asked.
    Human curiosity. All the degrees in the world couldn’t suppress the inner-gossip.
    “Yes.”
    She sat back and perched her hands together in a prayer-like pose. I half wondered if she was going to do just that. “You saw Lori attack Sheila, and you didn’t stop her?”
    “Correct.”
    “Why?”
    I looked past her out of the window. When you’re stuck inside four gray walls for years on end, it’s funny how much greener the world always looks beyond . . . even if it was through bars and barbed wire.
    “Freedom,” I answered.
    “Yours?”
    I laughed. Now, she was just being dumb. The only thing it would offer me was peace from Lori’s screaming all night long and her desperation coating the walls of the cell like thick black tar.
    I didn’t bother to answer and that seemed to rile Miss Ivy-League right up. “Did you convince her it was a good idea? Is that the way you work? Is that how you and your friends entertain yourselves?”
    I raised an eyebrow. Did psychiatrists come off production lines? If they didn’t get a satisfactory answer to shove you in box A, B, or C. They went for an attack instead.
    “Nice of you to think so highly of me.”
    “I haven’t come to any opinion of you yet,” she answered.
    “Haven’t you? You sat for twenty minutes reading the notes of a man who should have been retired forty years ago. You borrow his opinion and he didn’t know me.”
    Llys smiled.
    I smiled back.
    I’d just told her exactly what had happened and it confused the hell out of her. She would put it down to perception skills or guesswork. Doctors are like that.
    “So who are you?” she asked.
    I tried not to roll my eyes, if in doubt switch the question. “Aeron Lorelei . . . but then I thought you’d read it on the notes.”
    “Is this the way it’s going to be, Aeron?” she asked. You know you’re definitely irritating them when they use first names.
    “That depends on you, Tess,” I shot back.
    She froze. How could I possibly know her mother’s pet name for her?
    I smiled. No use in trying to outplay an Empath. We can see all your cards.
    And that’s when our first session ended.
    Abruptly.
    She kicked me out.
    It was the first time I’d been kicked out of a session.
    I liked it.
     
    Chapter 4
     
    THAT NIGHT I managed to sleep for the first time in a month. I could feel that somewhere, wherever people go after they leave here, I could feel that Lori was happy. The next morning, however, Llys had decided to assert her authority in the hope of wearing me down. In short, she had separated me and the other so-called ringleaders.
    I breathed in the biting cold of December and tried not to shiver with fear. She’d not only separated me but she’d stuck me in the yard with Sheila’s fellow fury-fiends. All of which I knew instantly felt that I was responsible for Lori’s attack.
    In here that kind of attention would see you in the infirmary and that was if you were lucky. My neck prickled with the cold and the wave of hate as I wandered over to a pile of fallen snow. Pure, pristine, gleaming snow undisturbed by the boots of the inmates.
    I knelt in front of it.