Lost by M. Lathan Read Free Book Online

me to follow her to our pillow room. She closed the door behind her and pointed to the floor.
    “Sit,” she said. I plopped down and crossed my arms. “A car?”
    “What’s wrong with that?”
    “Are you kidding me? Were you dropped on your head as a baby?”
    “I don’t know. I’ll go ask the nuns at St. Catalina, or we’ll find out if my parents were clumsy when you get the candles.”
    She frowned, and I looked away as I realized I’d taken sarcasm too far, too deep into my painful past. She sat next to me, as close as she could get without touching.
    “Sorry for saying that. I wasn’t thinking. Forgive me?” I nodded as I toyed with the tassels on one of her pink pillows. “What did he say?” she asked.
    “A lot of stuff about money, the job, and my phone. Which isn’t fair. He threw me into the pool with my old one in my pocket. What was I supposed to do?”
    It stung even more when I realized he’d been keeping things to himself for three months and compiling a list of things that annoyed him about me. What else wasn’t he saying?
    “He’s overreacting about the phone, but he has a reason to be upset about the car.” I almost walked out on her. I was always on her side with Paul, right there listening to her cry after she’d put herself in the same compromising and uncomfortable position time and time again, but when it came down to it, she didn’t extend me the same courtesy. “Don’t get mad when I say this, but when I let myself think about it, being your friend feels weird and … wrong.”
    Her words plowed into my chest. I looked at her slowly, praying that my face wasn’t showing how much that had burned.
    “You think I’m going to do something to you?”
    She reached her hand to my shoulder, nearly touching me, then yanked it away. That burned even more.
    “No, Chris. Of course I don’t think that. It’s not your powers that makes us feel awkward. It’s your money. Sophie has always been the richest person in the world to me, and you … make her seem poor.” She sighed and picked at her nails that were not so grungy and chipped this morning. “And we’re living here and haven’t been able to pay you a dime until now. That’s not right. Sometimes, it feels weird being friends with someone who has so much. I have one hundred and twenty three dollars. You have millions. I have to work. You’ll never have to. If a hunter captures me, I would be priced at eight thousand dollars like I always am. If you were …”
    She paused, approaching highly uncomfortable territory – what I would be worth to hunters and what they would do to me.
    “It would be millions,” I said. “My mother was worth three million.”
    That was why CC had run away from Julian. In her diary, I’d read that he’d tried to auction her off, and her highest bid was three million dollars.
    I was starting to see the real things Nathan said I didn’t value. Important things like how much a person could cost. Witches and wizards around our age went for a few thousand. Shifters, a few hundred. I had a price too. I prayed I’d never know exactly what it was. Because I wouldn’t sit in a cage until someone came for me. Girls with powers were sold like well bred animals, to make more well bred animals.
      “I don’t know why I assumed you’d do something simple and sweet for him,” she said.
    “Is a car not sweet?” She chuckled and shook her head. “I just wanted to make him happy, Em.”
    She snapped and a white rose appeared in her hand. “Christine, my love,” she said, in a better imitation of Sophia’s voice. “He was already happy.” I took the rose, chuckling, and her phone rang. “It’s my parents. I’ll be talking about the job they’re so surprised I have for the next few millennia. Goodnight, hun.”
    She answered her phone, speaking in full speed French. She managed to sound bored despite the beauty of the language. In addition to the one with Paul, she also had an awkward