Entangled by Nikki Jefford Read Free Book Online Page B

inside an empty room.
    Graylee squeezed her eyes so tight her upper lip pressed into her gums. Her desire to transport was so intense that she cried out in frustration when she opened her eyes. The dining room came rushing back into focus.
    Graylee stood up so abruptly her chair skidded back.
    Fine, if she couldn’t teleport she still had her own two feet.
    She ran outside into the rain and took off down the street. The rain beat down and she did nothing to stop it from pelting her, absorbing through the layers of her clothes to the skin beneath.
    Her own sister had taken everything Graylee was and locked it tightly away. She’d let the other kids laugh at her in sixth grade. She’d made Graylee doubt herself and feel like a screw-up. What kind of sister would do that?
    She hadn’t taken her powers from her completely, but enough to make her out for the fool in front of her peers and her own mother. Graylee had been hesitant to practice on her own. Just when she thought she was getting into the swing again she’d try something at the dinner table or Gathering and hit a brick wall once more. Just think what new spells she could have mastered if her sister hadn’t blocked her for FIVE YEARS!
     
     

Chapter Six
     
     
    The dim room was making Raj sleepy. Adrian’s voice in the main chamber brought it all back into focus.
    “Just relax, Mrs. Court, and give me your hands.”
    Adrian, or Hedrick, as he went by these days, was barely visible through the narrow gap between the velvet curtain and the doorway leading into the back room where Raj was crouched on a low stool. On the other side of the curtain, the dark chamber was lit with dripping candles. Adrian sat in front of his client at a round table covered in a midnight-blue tablecloth. The setting looked better suited to a psychic reading than a healing session.
    Luckily Raj could see in the dark. If only he could absorb an entire book with the touch of his palm instead of flipping through a tomb on the art and magic of healing terminal diseases.
    Adrian had told Raj he’d be fixing a migraine, not a brain tumor.
    He shouldn’t have been surprised when the shady warlock pulled a fast one on him. There was a reason the coven had stripped Adrian of his powers. The man couldn’t be trusted. Adrian did, however, pay cash under the table to those who accepted employment working for the famed Hedrick the Healer. Basically, Raj was doing Adrian’s work for him.
    Before losing his powers, he’d called himself Adrian the Avenger, and it was his business of avenging that had cost him his powers.
    Adrian Hedrick Montez.
    Rumor had it he’d started out in his early youth as Montez the Magician before going on the whole avenger kick. Rumor also had it that Adrian’s body wasn’t even his own and the body one chose for themselves said a lot about a person. Adrian’s was about twenty-two years old, a tall stud with a muscled chest and thick brown hair.
    “Now I’m going to blindfold you, my dear. Do not be alarmed. The eye has a tendency to want to open and I need to ensure they stay closed while I take a look inside your brain.”
    As Adrian tied the blindfold over Mrs. Court’s eyes, Raj silently slipped into the chamber and took the seat Adrian had vacated. Mrs. Court’s aura crackled. That’s what had tipped Raj off about a serious illness to begin with. Without the curtain blocking his view of her, he saw that Mrs. Court transmitted a distinct white.
    “Now I’m going to put my hands on your head.” Adrian’s voice would be coming from behind Mrs. Court, but Raj supposed that added to the illusion of his powers.
    Raj reached forward. Mrs. Court’s tight curls felt crusty under his palms. The woman must have used half a canister of aerosol. Raj leaned forward and lined his eyes with Mrs. Court’s covered eyes. He closed his.
    There were bright horizontal lines running across his mind. They were faint and brilliant all at once. Raj worked his fingers through