Darkness Calls by Marjorie M. Liu Read Free Book Online Page A

Insignificant. A mere pretender in the art of death.
    I had killed that Avatar. I had destroyed her—and a part of myself—with only a touch. No choice in the matter. No way to question her about Grant. And the only other individual who knew the full truth of what my man was had disappeared like a ghost, gone now for three months.
    My grandfather. Jack Meddle.
    “So,” I said. “The file.”
    “The investigator I hired was thorough.”
    “And?”
    “And,” he said, not looking at me, “my mother didn’t exist before she married my dad. Not on paper, not anywhere. There’s nothing, Maxine.”
    I hesitated. “She could have been from another country. Immigrated on the sly. Easy enough to do.”
    “Yes.” Grant finally met my gaze. “But the investigator found old neighbors, some hospital records. According to what he uncovered, I had already been born. Before she was married. I was at least a year old.”
    Scandalous, that was not. But something in his tone made me careful. I sat in his lap, and he was tense as a blind man in a minefield, and I wanted to hold his hand, hold him tight. I waited, though, unmoving. Until he said, “I was told something different by my parents.”
    “Ah,” I replied, and thought of all the lies my mother had told me. “So?”
    “So nothing,” he muttered tersely, reaching back to swipe the necklace off the desk, the chain flashing soft and golden as it draped over his wrist. “But a year is a long time, Maxine. The nine months before that even longer.”
    I finally understood. “Your real father might be a different man than the one who raised you.”
    He was so grim. “Wouldn’t make a difference. It wouldn’t.”
    But it would. Not in love, but in identity. Blood was serious business. It was good, knowing the roots of what flowed in your veins. Helped put your feet on the ground, when you had nothing, no one else to anchor your heart.
    I did not know who my father was.
    Grant held up the necklace and studied the gold links, the pendant sunk deep in his large palm. “I thought she was buried with this. But after my father died, it was found in his papers.”
    I studied the golden lines, knotted in a circle half as large as a compact disc and almost as flat, with a natural opening near the top where the chain looped through. No end, no beginning, just a tangled coil that became ever more intricate the deeper one looked; as though there were layers buried in layers, buried deeper still, despite the deceptively level shape of the disc. Made me dizzy. I had to look away, blinking hard. Grant’s fingers closed around the pendant.
    “First time I’ve seen it,” I said, nauseous.
    “I bring the necklace out about as often as you handle your mother’s guns. Receiving those files made me want to hold it again.”
    I leaned in, pressing my brow against his warm, hard shoulder, trying to steady my upset stomach. “So, what now?”
    “I don’t know.” Grant slid his fingers through my hair. “My dad . . . was normal. All business. Aggressive, ruthless. But not . . . not like me. I took after my mother. Except for . . .” He waved his hand—still holding the pendant—around his head. “If she could see what I saw, do what I did, she never let on. And I only told her . . . a little.”
    “You thought you were unique.”
    “But I’m not. Especially if what I do marks me with a name.”
    “Lightbringer,” I whispered.
    He held me closer and placed his mouth against my ear. “Not human.”
    I closed my eyes. “Old news, man. Join the club.”
    He set down his mother’s necklace. “I need to find out what I am. I need more information. I’ve been running on instinct all this time because I thought that was all I had. I thought I was alone in what I do. But I’m going to slip one day. I’m going to do something I shouldn’t. Push a mind too far. Make too big a change in some person’s soul. Maybe it’ll be an accident. Maybe not. But if there’s someone who