The Anathema Read Online Free PDF

mean to argue, but it seems a bit odd that a girl of your charms would have so many difficulties with such an average boy. In my experience, most girls have to try fairly hard to avoid male attention.”
    Emily stared at the ground in front of her, blushing and feeling ugly, useless, and very, very angry with the condescending, sanctimonious girl in front of her. She wondered bitterly if Chandi’s marching orders had ever included having sex with someone she had only just met.
    “As much as I hate to suggest such a thing,” Chandi said, not sounding as if she hated it very much. “Perhaps it is simply an issue of personal attraction? Is it possible that you are simply not Alexander Warner’s type?”
    Emily blushed ever more furiously, and wished desperately for a hole she could crawl in, a meteor to strike the building, a fire to break out – anything to get her away from the office and this horrible conversation. She could see her chances of staying at the Academy dwindling in front of her while they talked, and her mind scrambled desperately for defenses, excuses, rationales that would keep her here.
    “I am certain that he does,” Emily insisted, feeling ashamed. “But things with Alex are complicated.”
    “Be that as it may,” Chandi said, frowning. “We are here to deal with complicated situations, yes? Now, could you tell me who this ‘Eerie’ person is, and why her last name doesn’t appear in any of my files?”
    Emily’s heart had already sunk, but at the mention of that girl’s name, her heart seemed to fall right through the floorboards, and she was not sure where it stopped. Emily wondered who had ratted her out, and if there was any way at all for her to stay at the Academy, after this. The thought of returning to her home a failure was poisonous, but once the idea entered her mind, it spread like wildfire, sapping her of her poise and confidence.
    “Eerie is a changeling. I don’t know if she even has a last name,” Emily said, more bitterly than she intended. “She is our classmate, and also friends with Alex.”
    “I see,” Chandi noted primly. “Then, perhaps the changeling is the ‘complication’ in the situation? Warner appears to spend a fair amount of time with her, not to mention that strange business in San Francisco.”
    Emily fought the urge to hang her head, blinked back the stinging tears from her eyes. She was not, she decided, giving Tuesday the satisfaction of breaking down. If she were going to cry, it would not be here.
    “Eerie is interested in Alex, I suppose. She’s certainly managed to get my way several times. However, she’s a Changeling – she is not, well… sane or normal. She’s not even human! I can’t imagine that Alex would fall for her.”
    “She is your rival for Alexander Warner’s attentions, then?”
    “You don’t understand, Miss Tuesday…”
    Again, Chandi interrupted her with that annoyingly confident and solicitous smile.
    “Let me tell you what I do understand, Miss Muir, and you can correct me when I am mistaken.”
    She flipped quickly through the pages in front of her, settling her finger on a specific line, but Emily did not believe for a minute that she had actually had to look it up. The files were a prop, nothing more. After all, Chandi Tuesday was a precognitive.
    Emily didn’t know much about how precognition worked on a practical level. Like everyone else at the Academy, she had studied probability grids and matrices in homeroom, and she understood the basic theory. As Vivik had explained patiently to her one cram session, precognition wasn’t so different from empathy, in that every precognitive had a different way to perceiving possible futures. Some precognitives experienced visions like ancient Catholic saints, often in the throes of epileptic seizures. Others had prophetic dreams, and woke screaming and crying over potential tragedies, still years away and uncertain. Perhaps the most coveted were precognitives who