Lending Light (Gives Light Series Book 5) by Rose Christo Read Free Book Online Page B

summer sounds, cicada songs.  My eyes weren't blurry, but pierced with color, sore and bright with clarity.  Suddenly--eerily--I was calm.
    I'd had everything planned out.  I would hate the St. Clair kid the way everyone else hated me.  I would force him to share the burden of my father's absence.  I'd had everything planned out; and it lasted all of two seconds.  The moment I saw that soft, unassuming face I could only think of protecting it.  He was new around here, but his face--his mother's face--was old.  People were going to tear him apart for it.  I'd thought I was one of them.  Maybe I was one of them.  Maybe I couldn't help myself; I had Dad's blood, after all.  I didn't want to hurt this guy.  You wouldn't blame me if you'd seen what I'd seen.  Who looks at a lamb and wants to hurt it?  Even hunters know to kill their prey humanely.
    I went home early that night, not entirely sure whether I felt frazzled or at peace.  I sat between the tall, wall-wide windows in the sitting room, wishing they were the kind that opened, or at least that I lived in the badlands like the falcons did.  It was nighttime now, real nighttime, but the light from before hadn't completely left me.  It cloaked the badlands outside the windows in scattered, ethereal droplets, the blue-gray canyons rendered Titanic dreamscapes.  It made the stars in the sky look like suns, the blue-black of the sky look like as warm as the ocean.
    "Hey," Uncle Gabriel's voice said.  I heard the front door snap shut.  "Where did you go all of a sudden?  I turned around to talk to Rosa and you disappeared."
    Uncle Gabriel came into the sitting room with his winsome, unassuming smile.  His smile flickered when he looked at me, which made me wonder, again, what my face was doing.
    "The St. Clair kid," I said.  My voice sounded weird, unsteady.  "Why exactly is he in Nettlebush?"
    Uncle Gabriel resumed his polite veneer.  "You mean Skylar?"
    Skylar?  Sounded like a hippie name.
    Uncle Gabriel sat down on the Pendleton-patterned sofa, flares and triangles in orange and yellow.  "His dad's gone missing," Uncle Gabriel said, rubbing his face like he'd had a long day.  "Social services handed him over to Catherine."
    "Mrs. Looks Over's his grandma?"  Skylar didn't have her winter gray eyes.
    "Yes, that's right," Uncle Gabriel said.  "Huttsi," he specified; which meant father's mother.  Mother's mother was kaku.
    "His kaku didn't want him?" I asked.  "Where's his Naneewi?"
    "I'm guessing they're estranged from him," Uncle Gabriel said.
    "Yeah," I said, "but so's Mrs. Looks Over.  I've never seen him at her house.  Is he really okay with that?  Living with a stranger?"
    Uncle Gabriel looked at me, his hands folded on his knees.  His face was tense, brown eyes gauging my reaction.  What?  He didn't think I was going to kill the kid, did he?  Maybe I was.  Maybe I couldn't help myself; it was in my blood.
    "I heard Mrs. Looks Over talking," I said.  "She said Skylar doesn't speak."
    "That's right," Uncle Gabriel said.  "He's mute."
    Dad's favored murder method had been pinning the women down, slitting their throats open.  I realized Skylar had worn a blue jacket, zipped all the way up to his neck.
    "His throat didn't heal?" I asked.  I couldn't hear my voice.
    Uncle Gabe could.  "His vocal cords are paralyzed."
    No.  No, that wasn't right, because Dad had taken so much from him already; why did Dad need to take his voice, too?  How do you even live without being able to talk to people?
    "Raf," Uncle Gabe said.  "Between you and me...maybe it's a good idea that you stay away from this boy."
    I lifted my head.  My braids slapped my cheeks.  "What do you mean?"
    Uncle Gabriel stood up.  His hands on his hips, he looked out the window at the wide open badlands.  I could tell he was fighting himself on something, his posture unnatural.
    "It's very likely he has memories from that event," Uncle Gabriel said.  "He was about five