Strangeness and Charm: The Courts of the Feyre Read Online Free PDF Page B

Alex."
      "Really? How is she?" she said.
      "Sulking."
      "I could hear you across the courtyard."
      "Yes, that went well, didn't it?" My shoulders sagged in resignation. "She's bored. She wants me to take her to see Katherine."
      "You're going to have to take her eventually."
      "I know. I said I'd think about it."
      Blackbird looked up from the files. "You need to do more than think about it, Niall. Perhaps if you were to see Katherine alone, just to begin with."
      "If I even hint that Alex is alive then Katherine will want to see her. After all she's been through she'll need to see Alex for herself."
      "Then you're just going to have to grasp the nettle, aren't you?" she pointed out.
      "I'm trying to think of a way to do it that won't seem like I lied to her. Alex does have a point."
      "By delaying you are only making it worse," she said. "If you'd told her as soon as Alex got back you might have a leg to stand on, but as it is…"
      "Alex had no control whatsoever to begin with. She was still in shock after what happened. How could I take her to her mother in that state? With her emotions driving her power, anything might have happened. She was a danger to herself and everyone around her. She still is."
      "Nonsense. She's no worse than any other teenager."
      "I spoke to Fionh earlier and she said she's not ready to join the courts."
      "And what would Fionh know? When was the last time Fionh had anything to do with anyone under a hundred years old?"
      "She's the one coaching Alex. She has the most contact with her."
      "She's a Warder, Niall. With all that entails."
      "What does that mean?" It didn't escape my attention that I was also a Warder, so that particular criticism was aimed at me too.
      Blackbird shook her head and went back to reading the files. "Where did these come from?"
      "Originally they were from Porton Down. They were passed to Garvin from Secretary Carler, the civil servant who looks after relations with the six courts."
      "What are you supposed to do with them?"
      "I'm supposed to find the people mentioned in them. Why?"
      "They read like scientific mumbo-jumbo. What do you think morphological instability is?"
      "In what context?"
      "Andy exhibits signs of morphological instability, exhibiting severe disassociation and fragmentation," she read from the file.
      "The doctors at Porton Down were experimenting on these people. Maybe Andy couldn't control his glamour. That would lead to sudden changes in appearance that might be called instability. I had trouble with it myself at first."
      "Pyrokinetic projection?"
      "That would fit with the guy who burned down a shopping centre. Garvin says the fire spread without an accelerant and through fire barriers, killing one guy and injuring another. Plus the CCTV wasn't working. That would point to someone with a fey affinity."
      "If this person is throwing fire around, then that would tend to indicate a degree of control. You don't just throw fire – air doesn't burn on its own."
      "So maybe there was an accelerant, but not something they'd recognise, or they don't have the language to describe it."
      "Or maybe they don't know what they're talking about." She tossed the file back onto the pile. "This is just jargon and speculation. The language is so technical you'd need a glossary to decode it. It's as if it was written to deliberately obscure what they were doing."
      "Perhaps it was," I said.
      "I read through the file on Alex and didn't understand it, even though I know what happened to her."
      "I don't need a file to tell me how Alex is."
      "They thought she was delusional, and schizophrenic," said Blackbird.
      "Was that before or after they tortured her?"
      "It's nonsense, in either case."
      "Well since you've had the chance to read through the files, maybe you could suggest which of these people I go after first?"
      "Do you think you're ready to