Storm of Visions by Christina Dodd Read Free Book Online

gift?”
    “Hm?”
    “We are the Chosen Ones. We have gifts. What’s your gift?”
    “I don’t talk about my gift.” He had, they’d assured him, a lot in common with these people. Right now, he doubted that.
    Unfazed, she asked, “You’re American Indian, aren’t you?”
    Points for using the politically correct term for his people.
    “That’s why you’re so silent and inscrutable.”
    Deduct points for heading right for the clichés. “Right you are.” If Charisma could see him in his tux, holding a drink, talking finance to all the right men, charming all the right women, while none of them suspected . . . well. Almost none of them. If none of them had suspected, he wouldn’t be here.
    “What do you do for a living?” she asked.
    “I’m a thief.”
    “Of course you are.”
    She accepted his statement so blithely, he couldn’t tell if she believed him or not.
    But it didn’t matter because she lowered her voice and nodded her head toward the Blond Surfer Guy. “What do you think his gift is?”
    Silent and inscrutable. She had decided Aaron was, and it suited his convenience, so he crossed his arms across his chest like Sitting Bull and shut the hell up.
    Charisma sort of jangled her rock bracelets at the guy, and announced, “He’s a weird jumble.”
    Surfer Guy turned. He fixed his mesmerizing blue eyes on her.
    She looked back, searching his face, and in relief said, “Oh. Of course. He’s Tyler Settles. He’s a faith healer and a psychic. Just not a very good psychic.”
    The way she pronounced that, her certainty, took Aaron off guard, and he dropped the inscrutability. “How can you tell?”
    “The stones told me.”
    That was just stupid, to think stones could gather information and hand it out at her whim.
    But no one believed what he could do, either. Thank God, because he’d made a fortune off his specialty.
    “Okay, what about him?” He indicated the other guy, swarthy, handsome, and with an indefinable air of authority.
    She laughed. “He’s Samuel Faa. He’s a lawyer. He’ll do anything to win a case.”
    “Being a lawyer is hardly a gift.” Aaron had good reason to dislike lawyers. Half the Gypsy Travel Agency’s board of directors was lawyers.
    “It is when you can control minds.”
    “Ouch.”
    “Don’t worry. He can’t control yours. He doesn’t even want to. He doesn’t want to be here. They had to blackmail him to get him here at all.”
    There was a lot of that going around. “You got all that from shaking your stones at him?”
    “No, from listening at the door.”
    Aaron viewed her with new respect.
    She had emerald green, charcoal-rimmed eyes to go with that black and purple hair, a sweetly rounded face with dimples pressed into her delicately pale cheeks, and he realized she was laughing at him for his caution. This was a woman who embraced life and all its quirks. “How old are you?” he asked.
    “Twenty.”
    “I would have said sixteen.”
    “Great! I’ve found people underestimate me when they think I’m young.”
    His respect notched up another degree. “You’re smarter than you look.”
    “So are you.”
    The two grinned at each other, and a fast friendship was forged.
    Not far away, a woman in her early twenties stood inside the circle. She had just the right hair, just the right makeup, and expensive designer clothes. Aaron’s expert eye identified a conservative black Chanel suit offset by a trendy leopard-print Betsey Johnson bag and shoes, platinum-set one-carat diamond studs, and a three-carat platinum-set diamond ring on her right hand. Perfect Boston Brahmin, if her accent was anything to go by, but not so perfect after all. She had an exotic look; her bones were as delicate as porcelain and her eyes were faintly slanted. Somewhere in her unknown bloodlines, she boasted an Asian ancestor. She stood apart from the others, glancing at her watch, a vintage Cartier worth more than the rest of the outfit put together, with a smooth