Fear Me Not (The EVE Chronicles) Read Online Free PDF Page B

aliens down the liquid like shots of liquor, or sip at them like cocktails. One or two seems to be enough to get them through an entire day.
    A long-legged figure parts the cafeteria crowd as she walks. Raine smiles, the Gutters watching her pass. They nod, and she nods to them in what I think is a sotho display of respect. The humans can’t do much beside gape - boys and girls alike. I think she’s a condescending bitch with a princess-complex, but I can’t help admire her effect on people. She knows how to work a crowd. She’s spots me, and walks my way.
    “What do you want?” I grunt. She sits daintily opposite me.
    “I just came to enjoy lunch with my roommate. Something wrong with that?”
    I point to her empty tray. “I’m the only one eating. That’s not lunch. That’s you watching me chew with my mouth open.”
    The cafeteria goes back to their business, but a few glances come Raine’s way. She flicks a bit of dried nail polish, voice casual.
    “When I was little, in the reservation, they brought us a box of secondhand toys every year. We weren’t allowed to have new ones, or ones the government agents didn’t approve of. I snatched the nail polish up before anyone else could. My new human fingers scared me. But I got used to them by painting them, over and over and over. I learned to like them. I had to. I had no choice but to learn to like everything about my new body.”
    How painful had it been? How frightening and disturbing was it to get used to a whole new body?
    “That’s why I like clothes,” Raine continues. “And jewelry. And fashion. I poured my heart into learning how to make my human body beautiful. And now I am. And it keeps me strong.”
    I pick at my steak, grasping for what to say. But there’s nothing I can say. I see Taj out of the corner of my eye, eating with a bunch of Gutters surrounding him.
    “So you’re…not the head of any enforcers or anything?” I ask Raine.
    “No. But then again, I don’t need enforcers. I’m not Taj. Brute force is boring and so cliché. I have my own ways of going about things, and keeping my faction in check.” She smiles.
    “So why were those two Gutters fighting this morning?”
    “The Adjudicator and the Illuminator, I presume? We don’t like Adjudicators. They don’t like us. It’s very simple.”
    “And what about Shadus’ people? The Executioners?”
    Raine shrugs. “The Illuminators and Adjudicators have fought over the Executioner’s favor since the dawn of our civilization. We fight and scheme against each other for Executioner favor. Always.”
    “Because the Executioners have the raw power. Because you want them to back your cause.”
    “Precisely.” Raine smiles. “My, you really are getting the hang of this!”
    I glance over at a far, empty table. Shadus sits at it, sipping at a single vial. Gutters approach his table, try to strike up a conversation with him, and are turned away with a few short words. His expression is blank and lifeless. They approach him in groups, too afraid to do it alone. Even from here I can feel the imposing air he’s putting off to keep people away. It’s almost pitiful how much he wants to be left alone.
    Me? Pitying an alien?
    I shake my head and turn back to Raine.
     “So that’s it? Everybody on your planet is organized into three neat categories?”
     “Oh, no,” Raine laughs. “No, not at all. There are dozens of factions, spread across every continent. Or…there were.”
    “Were?” I narrow my eyes.
    Raine glances up at me, doe-eyes flashing from morose to light-hearted in an instant. She’s good at hiding her emotions.
    “It’s nothing. Forget I ever said anything.”
    “You guys said you left your planet on a scouting trip. Your planet’s okay, right? I mean -”
    “Our planet is perfectly alright,” Raine interrupts. “In fact, it’s much better off than this alien planet. We don’t pollute it nearly as much. 
    “This is Earth. It’s not ‘alien’.”