Fractured by Sarah Fine Read Free Book Online

so is mine.” She bit her lip and looked at my hands, at my broken, unpolished fingernails. “I wondered if maybe you wanted to come with me tomorrow when I take it. We could work the lunch shift at the kitchen. They need volunteers.”
    Tegan’s therapist must have put her up to this. “Where is it?” I asked.
    “Pawtucket. You know, in the sketchy part?”
    I did, having lived in that area at one time. It also happened to be pretty close to where the Mazikin had been caught on video, north of Providence’s East Side. And if Henry was right about the Mazikin targeting the homeless specifically … I groaned inwardly. Nadia had considered Tegan a close friend, and I didn’t dislike her enough to wish Mazikin possession on her. I also didn’t feel like carrying the guilt if anything happened to her. “Yeah … I’ll tag along.”
    She flashed me a winning smile that screamed mission accomplished . “Cool. Aden’s coming, too.”
    I snorted. Aden, Tegan’s boy of the month, was the starting pitcher for the baseball team and, as far as I knew, a first-class jackass, one of those golden boys who believed the world owed him something special. He seemed more likely to shout, “ Get a job! ”from the window of his car than to work a shift at a soup kitchen. “I have new admiration for your powers of persuasion.”
    Tegan arched an eyebrow and gave Malachi another speculative look. “How about yours? You can bring your boy toy if you want. Or do you need me to help you convince him?”
    The idea of Malachi being anyone’s toy made me want to laugh. And the idea of Tegan going anywhere near him made me want to kidney-punch her. “I’ll ask him.”
    Then Tegan reached forward and grabbed my arm, which made my muscles tighten. I hate being touched without permission, but she didn’t seem to take the hint. She also didn’t seem to notice that Malachi was on his feet as soon as her hand moved. He was watching us with total concentration, like he thought Tegan might attack me or something. As if I couldn’t kick her ass without blinking. Still, his concern felt nothing short of awesome.
    “Lela, I was thinking maybe it would give us a chance to talk.”
    The way she said the word talk made me queasy, and I suddenly craved the opportunity to give her therapist the finger. But her trembling bottom lip and her waifish fingers on my arm reminded me of Nadia. Maybe Tegan was overachieving on the outside while she caved in and shriveled up inside. “We should do that,” I forced myself to say.
    She grinned as the bell rang. “Later, then,” she said, and she headed back to her table.
    “Later,” I mumbled, wondering if I would live to regret this.
    The school day raced by. The teachers were outdoing themselves with final project assignments and homework, and all I could think about was how I’d never get any of it done because when I got home, I had to figure out how to prevent a full-scale Mazikin infestation.
    When I passed Aden in the hall, he actually nodded at me, as did Ian Moseley, his best friend and the star slugger on the baseball team, and the five teammates crowded around them. Had Tegan told them to be nice to me?
    Or was it that I was holding Malachi’s hand?
    After all, he was the hot foreign guy who, within an hour of arriving at our humble school, had nearly strangled Evan Crociere—who would forever be known as “Dirty Jeans” in my mind—our school’s resident drug dealer. And not only that, Malachi had performed said strangling defending the honor of Lela Santos, who, it was rumored, had killed someone, and who, it was also rumored, was either a lesbian or a stone-cold bitch more likely to shank a guy than let him touch her … or both. Our reunion by the fence behind the school had been the source of gossip that had been building for a week.
    I had only two classes with Malachi—Pre-Calc and Senior Lit—which wasn’t nearly enough for me. Apparently, Raphael didn’t think we needed to