Run (The Tesla Effect #2) by Julie Drew Read Free Book Online Page B

down the street in the small pool of light made by the streetlamp. She checked her phone, saw that it was after midnight. Sleep was probably out of the question, and her restlessness quashed any hope of forgetting her worries in TV or video games, so Tesla slowly opened her door and made her silent way toward the attic stairs and her mother’s things, boxed up and hidden away by her father.
    Just as she reached the top step, her hand raised to push open the door that was slightly ajar, Tesla froze, her breath caught in her chest and her heart beating double-time.
    Someone was in the attic.
    She took the last step, cautiously putting all of her weight onto her right foot, bit by bit, until she was certain no creaking floor board would betray her presence, and she leaned in the eight and a quarter inches between herself and the door jamb in order to peer, with one eye, through the two-inch crack left by the barely-open door.
    Her father sat back on his heels, his back toward her, in front of one of the boxes of her mother’s things, old clothes, photographs, mementos and other odds and ends strewn about him on the floor as though he’d been digging through the box frantically, tossing items out in desperate haste to get to the bottom of it. He had paused, though—perhaps he had found what he was looking for—and held a photograph of his dead wife in his hand, studying it as if looking for a clue in her smiling face.
    Tesla had actually taken a breath and opened her mouth to say—well, something. Maybe, “Dad, I miss her, too,” or “Let’s look at her things together,” or maybe even “Why don’t you ever let me see this side of you,” but before she could speak, he did.
    “I’m sorry,” he whispered, the broken sound of it burned forever into Tesla’s memory. “I’m so, so sorry.” He sniffed once, and then squared his shoulders, and whatever internal battle he waged, Tesla knew that one side had won irrevocably when he added, “I did warn you, though. And I did what I had to do.”
    Tesla backed up, breathing through her open mouth, short, shallow little gulps of air. She turned and walked down the stairs without seeing them at all, stunned, and entered her room like a zombie. She stood there for a moment, her head filled with incomprehensible static. What had he meant? What was he sorry for? What had he done? But a moment later she shook her head once, hard, to clear it, grabbed her messenger bag from her room and walked swiftly down the hall. She skipped the squeaky stair to the living room out of habit and let herself out the front door. It was colder than it had been earlier, and she paused a moment on the porch to blow in her hands before she put the strap of her bag over her head and across her body. She pulled her hood over her bright hair, walked quickly down the steps and broke into a jog as she headed toward the university.
    She had no plan, not even a clear thought in her head. She seemed to be operating on pure emotion, her body taking her away from that house, away from her father, his grief and his guilty secrets, and all she could do was watch, as if from a distance, to see where all of this would take her. When she turned left and cut across the grass in front of the Art History building, she acknowledged to herself that she was headed toward the Bat Cave. She had felt useful, competent, even powerful last summer when they had all discovered that she alone could travel in time. But it was more than just her ability to trigger the jump, to do what nobody else could do; she had felt good because she had felt a clarity of purpose, and she had acted decisively to face her problems, even when she was afraid.
    She needed to feel that way again.
    Of course, she was barred from her father’s lab as well as the underground facility and the time machine that was housed there. She had expected her father to be surprised last summer when he’d learned that it was her arrhythmic heartbeat, her