The Awakening by K. E. Ganshert Read Free Book Online

her second pregnancy, and then the confusion that must have occurred when she brought forth a healthy, beautiful baby boy. “Why do you think your mom failed your screening? Do you think the tests somehow picked up … the gifting ?”
    “It’s crossed my mind.” He nods at the manila folders on the nightstand. “I was looking through the files hoping to find something about it. But the screenings weren’t around when that older guy, Josiah, was born and it doesn’t mention anything about them for the other two.”
    I shake my head. I’m so tired of having all these questions and no answers. Dr. Roth’s death was frightening and horrible, yes, but it’s also incredibly frustrating. He had our answers. He was going to tell us everything. But now he’s dead and all we have to go on are three client records that are six years old. And these three records are leading us to Detroit, a gigantic, over-populated city we’ve never been to, in search of three people who might not even be there anymore. For all we know, they are in Shady Wood with my grandmother. The chances of finding them is an impossibility that I’m foolishly hanging my hopes on. Because without them, we will be at a gigantic dead end.
    The stinging of my scalp intensifies. I attempt to scratch through the plastic cap. If offers little relief. I think about Leela at the station right now, either failing or succeeding in her mission, and an entire horde of butterflies unleashes in my stomach. I can’t think about Leela. Distraction is key. I glance at Luka, who has taken a seat on the edge of the bed and fiddles with his frayed hemp bracelet. “You look deep in thought.”
    “I’m trying to figure out why we haven’t seen anything lately.”
    He’s right. Where have all the white-eyed men gone? And what about the guy with the scar? I’ve slept two nights in a row without evil infiltrating my dreams. The more I think about it, the less sense it makes. “You’d think if evil were after us, we’d be easy targets here.”
    “It’s almost like …”
    “What?”
    “I don’t know. It’s almost like something’s protecting us.” Luka shakes his head and stares down at his palms. “It’s driving me nuts, not knowing how I protected you.”
    “You mean with the force-field thing?” He’s done it twice now. First in real life, when one of the white-eyed men lunged at me in the locker bay of our school, and again in a dream, while we were saving Pete. Both times, waves of light radiated from his palms and drove the darkness back. It was like a reaction, one he doesn’t know how to reproduce.
    “I was trying to figure it out for at least two hours the other night in the alley.”
    “Did you ever do it?”
    “No, but it was exhausting work. I hadn’t planned on falling asleep.”
    “You had a nightmare.” I pick at a hangnail on my thumb. He wouldn’t tell me about it yesterday, but maybe if I push now, with some distance between the memory of it, he’ll open up a little. “What was it about?”
    “Nothing.” He’s lying. It wasn’t nothing. But he stands and holds up the now-empty hair dye box. “It’s been twenty minutes.”
    Luka helps me rinse all the bleach from my head into the sink. I ring my hair out like a wet rag, then towel it dry. The sight of me in the mirror makes my eyes go a little buggy. “I look like an albino.”
    “A very cute one.”
    There it is again—one of those comments. They do funny things to my stomach.
    “You sure you don’t want to keep it this way?” he teases.
    “You prefer blondes, huh?”
    “I’m pretty sure that’s more like white.”
    “I think we’ll draw less attention to ourselves if I’m a brunette again.” I fill the second application bottle with the brown dye, pour in the golden booster, shake it up, and hand it over to Luka, who has put on a new pair of gloves. Not many boys his age could pull off the look. Luka, however, pulls it off well—wearing the perfect amount