Twice as Hot Read Free Page A

other warehouses, more people.
Apparently these groups not only survived, they’ve begun to thrive. Rome was to
bring them to PSI for questioning and testing. John wants to do a little
recruiting of his own, I’m sure.”
    “Wow,
experiments that actually worked,” she said reverently, her blue eyes glazing
over. Then her features softened, and her mouth parted on a dreamy sigh.
    Her
mind was wandering.
    What,
she wanted to be experimented on? I shook my head and had to hook several
strands of my honey-colored hair behind my ears to keep them from slapping my
cheeks. “Sherridan.”
    No
response.
    I
rubbed my temples and closed my eyes for a moment. If I knew my friend, and I
think I did, since we’d been friends for years, she’d just entered her Happy
Place. She would be there for half an hour, at least. Trying to engage her now
would be pointless.
    Ever
since Sherridan had learned about my abilities, she’d been acting strangely,
retreating more and more into her mind. Oh, she still loved me. That wasn’t in
question. And I knew she didn’t fear me. If she asked me to blow-dry her hair
from fifty paces one more time, I was going to strangle her. But there was
something almost…depressed about her, as though her life now lacked excitement
and adventure.
    I
knew that feeling.
    There
were people in the world with beauty, riches, power. Their every step seemed
blessed; failure and rejection were not things they’d ever experienced.
Excitement greeted them everywhere they went, danger was something to be
laughed at and anything they desired, they could have. In their hands, they
held the power to change the world. At one time, I would have killed for such a
life. Now, I have killed for it, but it wasn’t the charmed existence I’d
once thought it would be.
    Perhaps
I should have known such gifts would come with a price. But all I’d seen was
the glitz, the glamour. The exhilaration. I hadn’t known that there would
always be a thousand others willing to rip me apart to possess what I have.
    I
prayed Sherridan didn’t desire what I had desired—what I had gotten. This power
beyond imagining. I prayed she was smarter.
    Behind
me, I heard a door creak open. Close. Footsteps.
    I
twisted. A slump-shouldered Tanner was strolling down the hall. I worried over
the change in his appearance. He wore black as usual, but in the past his
clothes had always been clean. Now his dark attire was dirty and wrinkled, his
azure hair unwashed and in spikes around his head. He looked terrible. There
were bruises under his eyes and lines of tension around his mouth. He’d even
taken out his signature eyebrow ring and Eight Ball contacts.
    I’d
known and loved him for several months, and I hated seeing him like this. He
was tall and when I’d first met him he’d been extremely lean, more boy than
man. But he’d begun to fill out and muscle up, coming into his own in both
command and confidence. This past week, though, he’d started to slim down
again, as if he didn’t have the will to eat.
    “Hey,
Crazy Bones,” I said. It was my pet name for him.
    Usually
he grinned. Now he stopped a few feet away from me and peered down at Sherridan
as if I hadn’t spoken. “Happy Place?” he asked.
    I
nodded, my heart lurching at the sadness in his tone.
    “She’s
weird.”
    “Tanner,”
I said, then stopped when he faced me. My heart gave another lurch. God, his
eyes. Once a bright blue (when he didn’t disguise them with those crazily
patterned contact lenses), they were now dull and listless and swimming with
misery. They were dark and dismal. Hopeless.
    In
that moment, I hated Lexis. Tanner was the brother I’d never had, hadn’t known
I’d wanted and needed, and couldn’t live without. I couldn’t stand seeing him
like this.
    “Don’t,”
he said. His jaw tightened. “Just don’t.”
    “Don’t
what?” I asked, even though I knew what he meant. I just wanted to draw him out
of his miserable shell.
    “Don’t
feel