Deception Read Online Free PDF Page A

class, Aiden was waiting for me in the hall. He wasn’t at all surprised by the lack of burns to my skin, despite having a hole the size of my fist burnt through my uniform.”
    “I knew you should have been burnt or something. I mean, I saw the flames, and there was no way you should have been okay, but every time I thought about it, it just made sense.”
    “Yep, that was Aiden’s doing.”
    “Huh?”
    “Aiden’s able to manipulate people’s minds.”
    “No way.”
    “You’re surprised by that, yet you’re completely okay with transportation?”
    Chelsea shrugged. “It doesn’t make that much sense, but I’m not going to start self-analysing when you’re finally explaining things.”
    “Moving on. So, after the science lab incident, Aiden took me home, where he and Anna explained what we are. I freaked, then thought it was kind of cool, but then you disappeared.” I left out the part about the visions I’d had of her being abducted. “Somehow, I transported myself into the cage with you while I was sleeping. You were right about the psycho wanting me, not you. And after he shot me with the tranquiliser, I woke up strapped to a bed, wearing only my underwear. The next thing I knew, the asshole was standing over me with a scalpel, saying he wanted to find out what made me so special.”
    “Oh, my God.”
    “When he started slicing me up, I called out to Aiden, and he somehow appeared and killed him with his mind.” When she opened her mouth, I added, “Don’t ask me how, ’cause we still have no idea.”
    “Anyway, long story short, after we came home from the hospital that evening, I walked into my house and found my mother lying in a pool of blood.”
    “What the hell—”
    “Someone had murdered her and was waiting there for me.”
    “That doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “How were her articles still printed even though she was no longer alive?”
    “No, it didn’t make any sense. And here is where it gets worse. After we disappeared for those few weeks—”
    “Oh,” she said, realising why we had left.
    “I went back to my house to get a few things, and someone left me this disc showing my mum’s brains being blown apart.”
    She gasped.
    I quickly continued before she could give me her condolences, “Later, I received another disc saying my mother was still alive, and she would stay that way so long as I won his games. That was when I saved you and your mum before your house exploded and when I realised I’d brought your mum to me without going to her side first. As soon as I realised what that meant, I brought my mum to me. Then Nathan, Lucas’s dad, removed the bullet from her brain, and she came back to life.” I decided to leave out the part about how I lost the first game and Ben died because of me.
    Her eyes bulged. “What?”
    “Apparently, she is one of us.”
    “No way.”
    “Yes way. And it turns out she’s been keeping some huge things from me.”
    “Like?”
    “Like, the guy who put the bullet in her brain is my father.”
    “No friggin’ way!”
    “I see you’ve told her about your mum,” Aiden said, surprising the crap out of Chelsea.
    She lifted her legs back onto the pier and quickly got up. “Give a girl some warning next time, won’t you?”
    “Sorry,” Aiden said. He sat down beside me with his back leaning against the pole of the gazebo and his legs bent at the knee. “So, what did you tell her?”
    “Everything except the parts about Ben and how we can hear her thoughts.”
    “And how’s she handling it?”
    I swung myself around and sat cross-legged, watching Chelsea gawk at the house. “Surprisingly good.”
    “So whose place is this, anyway?” she asked.
    “I guess you didn’t tell her that part yet,” Aiden said. He then turned to Chelsea. “It’s my family’s home.”
    Her mouth dropped open. “What about Paradise Waters?”
    “Tha—”
    I interrupted Aiden, “That was just somewhere to stay while they’re in