Hex by Rhiannon Lassiter Read Free Book Online Page A

experience left him bewildered. He had flagged down a skimmer to take him to the rec complex and it blew his mind. He had never seen so much space devoted to recreation. Arkade had areas he hadn’t even heard of. He had no idea how to ice skate and he stared at the glittering expanse of frozen water in incomprehension. And he was even puzzled by the museum. Kez couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to look at carved rocks and pictures of dead people they didn’t even know. But it was full of old people, looking at the stuff with evident fascination. In the end he followed a group of kids, a couple of years older than him, who had just got out of school. He tailed them around for about half an hour as they checked out music and clothes stores; eventually buying some viddisks he thought Raven might like because he couldn’t think what else to get and was worried about being stopped by a store cop. He was looking at a synthleather jacket, wondering if he should get rid of his old denim one, when he noticed one of the girls in the group he had been following standing next to him.
    She flashed him a brilliant smile as he turned to look at her and held out a smooth hand. He took it, more out of surprise than anything else, as she introduced herself.
    â€œI’m Zircarda Anthony—my parents run the Anthony Corporation,” she told him. “You must be new to Belgravia, right?”
    â€œI’m Kez, Kester Chirac,” he added. “I just moved in today.”
    â€œAre you going to go to Gateshall?” Zircarda asked. “We all do.” She waved airily at the rest of her group of friends.
    â€œThat’s a school, isn’t it?” Kez said, alarmed at the possibility and wondering why this girl was asking him so many questions. “No, I don’t think so.” The girl looked surprised and he lied quickly, his instincts taking over. “I go to school back in the States. I’ve come over with my cousin—she’s a researcher for a vidchannel.”
    â€œWhat channel?” a girl with ash-blonde hair asked authoritatively.
    â€œAdAstra,” Kez replied, desperately trying to remember the cover story Raven had primed him with.
    â€œI haven’t heard of it,” the second girl said superciliously and a third, this one with curly brown hair, informed him:
    â€œAli’s father owns seven vidchannels.”
    â€œReally?” Kez’s heart sank and he wondered how he was going to get out of this one. The answer came to him just as he was getting desperate. “AdAstra’s kind of alternative. It’s into twentieth-century music, kind of fin de siècle .” He was pretty sure that he had pronounced the last phrase wrong, but it looked as if the girls had accepted it.
    â€œI knew you would be into alternative music as soon as I saw you,” Zircarda pronounced triumphantly. “You know your jacket makes you look just like a ganger.”
    â€œYeah,” Kez replied, too astonished to think what else to say. But the group of kids talked enough for it not to matter. Zircarda introduced them all, with brief explanations attached.
    â€œThis is Ali, Bob Terrell’s daughter, and Caitlin, her father’s an MP, and Mira, her mother is Martia West the actress . . .” The list went on and on as Kez was presented to each and every member of a group of kids who apparently thought of themselves as a kind of exclusive gang for the children of the very rich.
    Within minutes Zircarda had extracted from him the location of the apartment Raven had rented and his “cousin’s” name, and had quizzed him in detail about fin de siècle rock. He was completely terrified at what Wraith might say when he found out about this and worried that any minute he would get tangled up in his own lies. Eventually he got away, claiming his cousin was expecting him back, and flagged down a fast flitter outside Arkade to take