Severed Read Online Free PDF Page B

wall and an old, dust-coated computer was sitting on a desk under the window, opposite the bed.
    Evie got up and walked over to it. Taped to the wall beside it were a couple of photographs. Evie leant in closer. There was one of Flic posing with her arms around Jamieson. Evie had to do a double take to make sure it was really Flic in the picture because she was grinning and not scowling. She peered more closely at Jamieson and wondered again what he was, other than insane to be dating someone so clearly psychotic. A Shapeshifter, she figured. There weren’t many other options.
    The photograph beneath was more battered. One edge was torn and the colour had faded. But the girl in it was recognisable as Flic. She looked about ten in the photograph. She was beaming a gap-toothed smile and had long dark hair hanging in braids. Evie wondered what had happened to make her change from the sweet and happy-looking child in the photograph to the laser-tongued fury next door. Then she remembered what Lucas had told her about his childhood. They had lost both their parents, just like she had. She couldn’t suppress the surge of sympathy.
    Beside this sweet, ten-year-old, alternative-universe version of Flic stood a boy, staring darkly at the camera as if suspecting it of sinister motives. He had eyes the colour of storm clouds and unruly dark hair. Lucas , she thought with a smile, tracing a finger over the picture. Between the two of them, kneeling down, was a woman. She had straight brown hair, almond-shaped eyes and a smile that lit the picture better than a camera flash. Their mother, obviously. Just a few years after this picture had been taken, she had been killed by Victor. Lucas had watched her die.
    Victor . Evie shook her head, trying to clear it. It was still hard to believe that the man who’d walked into Joe’s diner a month ago and informed her that she wasn’t Evie Tremain but Evie Hunter, the last pureblood demon-hunter on the planet, the man who’d trained her – well half-trained her, half-tortured her – was the same man who’d killed her real parents too.
    Evie closed her eyes. Images, jumbled and fractured, pierced through with the sounds of screaming, filled her head. She pictured Victor flat on his back, Lucas’s knife pressed to his throat, blood bubbling chemically against the metal. And she pictured herself telling Lucas to let him go. What the hell had she been thinking? Victor was out there now. Looking for them. Looking for her, so that she could fulfil this damn prophecy, which no one seemed to have a clue how to do, not even a Sybll. If only they could find the other fragments of it, that might help.
    A sound made her eyes flash open. She tiptoed to the door and poked her head around it. From the living room she could hear the hum and hiss of voices speaking in raised whispers. She couldn’t make out what they were saying but undoubtedly it was about her. And seeing how she was the odd one out in this situation and the idea of killing her had already been voiced, she decided it was only wise to find out what exactly was being said. She eased open the door and stepped silently out into the hallway. It was Flic who was the loudest, her whisper stepping over the line into a shout that had probably woken the neighbours over in the Shadowlands.
    ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this, Lucas. When you ran off and joined the Brotherhood I thought that was stupid enough, but this? This is beyond stupid. Way beyond. This is crazy!’
    ‘Flic,’ she heard Lucas respond, exasperation and tiredness flattening his voice.
    Flic ignored him. ‘Are you trying to save her because you couldn’t save mum? Is that what this is all about? You think that if you save Evie it will make all your guilt go away?’
    ‘Don’t,’ Lucas hissed through clenched teeth.
    There was a brief pause before Flic spoke again, quieter now. ‘Lucas, you’re my brother. Do not ask me to stand by and let you do this. I’m not