Thief of Souls by Neal Shusterman Read Free Book Online Page B

people, she knew, wouldn’t care about how clean her socks were, but the people who now resided within her extended aura were not exactly normal. They were . . . clean.
    â€œI don’t care if people see,” she muttered.
    Max bristled. “Whatever.”
    They turned down an alley that had once been full of fetid cardboard and rags—a place where the destitute took shelter. But there were no homeless here anymore. No one was exactly sure what happened to them, and apparently no one in the neighborhood cared.
    Tory stopped walking, overcome by a wave of cold nausea that dragged her back to her vision of Dillon. She leaned againstthe brick of the alley, and Max looked at her with concern, trying to make sense of her odd behavior. He gently touched the smooth skin of her face “You’re cold,” he remarked. “Tory, are you sure you’re okay?”
    Tory closed her eyes and thought back to the day she arrived here, in November—almost a year ago—in search of her mother, who had vanished from her life years before. Back then, this part of town had been the armpit of civilization, aspiring to even less attractive regions of the anatomy. There was no discrimination in the Miami Miasma. The dregs from all nationalities were drawn here equally.
    She had found her mother in a welfare hotel, destitute and wheezing with bronchitis. Tory had nursed her back to health remarkably quickly. And, amazingly, the woman began to find in herself the qualities of a good mother. Before long, Tory noticed other things changing around her as well. Actions and attitudes of the neighbors began to slowly shift. The evidence of it surrounded her even now as she walked with Max. A group of small children ran through the street picking up litter as if it was the best game to play. From across the street came the caustic hiss of a shop owner sand-blasting decades of soot from his building. Strolling all around them were sparkling-clean men and women oozing an almost Victorian refinement. The whole neighborhood had become a strange mix of accidental übermenschen —an anomalous set of people suddenly rising above the random violence and lewd behavior that had once been a part of their lives, repulsed and mortified by the sights and smells of urban decay. Turns out, the Miami Miasma cleaned up real good; now, not even the garbage smelled.
    It was still hard for Tory to understand and accept that she was the cause of all this. Not by anything she did, but by her mere presence. It was an aura that penetrated the streetsaround her like radiation, cleansing it, body and soul.
    Of course, just a few blocks away, the wretchedness still lived on in the places where her light did not reach.
    â€œTory, are you sick? Do you have a fever or something?” asked Max. “Maybe you’re getting the flu.” It obviously hadn’t occurred to him that no one in this part of Miami had come down with the flu this year.
    â€œMax,” Tory dared to ask, “do you remember what you were like before?”
    Max blinked at her in total innocence. “What do you mean?”
    â€œI mean, when I first met you?”
    Max’s shoulders twisted in a shiver. “I was awful. Let’s not talk about it.”
    The fact was, he had been worse than awful. He was a gangbanger with neither conscience nor remorse for any of the brutal things he did. He bragged about his gun, and longed for the day it would take a life. Tory had despised him. The way he and his cohorts would hang out on the corner, shouting rude, lusty comments at her as she passed had made Tory hate leaving the small apartment she and her mother shared. She had feared that one day the verbal assaults might turn physical when those thugs were too drunk or aroused to care.
    But then Max began to change. The gun went away first. Then his attitude. He became caring, and good, without even noticing the change in himself. His gang slowly