The MORE Trilogy Read Online Free PDF Page A

hands, no longer his concern. The thought bothered him more than he cared to admit.
    He reached out to her mentally, probing and poking along the edges of her psyche and seeking for some clue how to proceed, how to lead her down the trail of thought that would give him something—anything—he could use for her defense.
    Nothing.
    He needed to get her talking about her background, her childhood. Something personal that he could latch on to, to prove she was . . .
    Well, what she believed she was, and not what the Council feared she might be.
    But Caleb was quickly learning that it wasn’t quite as easy as he’d thought it would be. Ava was irritatingly tight-lipped about herself, and he had a feeling she only opened up to those very close to her. Probably not completely, even to them.
    The friend, he thought. The roommate. She could be the key. If he couldn’t get what he needed from Ava, perhaps Lucy Matthews might be more forthcoming. He’d observed the two of them together enough to see they were close, and Lucy was definitely the more talkative of the two.
    An idea began to form. In his time watching Ava, he’d heard Lucy encourage her numerous times to have more fun, often followed by a suggestion to hit that —usually accompanied by a leering wiggle of her eyebrows in the direction of a man nearby. Perhaps a few subtle hints sent Lucy’s way might get her matchmaking juices flowing, and a few drinks might loosen her tongue enough for Caleb to gain the information he needed.
    If not, he wasn’t sure what he would do.
    “Done!” Ava said brightly, looking up from her textbook. “Want to talk Kirchhoff’s Laws?”
    Caleb sat up, tugging out his ear buds and leaning forward on the table. “Sounds like a plan,” he said.

Chapter 3
    “You sure you won’t come?” Lucy whined. Caleb could see the top of her head through the window as she bounced on her toes. “It’s going to be so much fun.”
    “I can’t,” Ava said. “I have to study.”
    “But it’s Friday night!”
    “And I’m working tomorrow night and all day Sunday, and I have a physics quiz on Monday that I need to ace,” Ava said patiently. “I need all the study time I can get. Just go. Have fun for both of us.”
    Lucy huffed, and Caleb imagined her pouting, even though he couldn’t see her face from his position outside. After a moment, she relented. “Okay. Call me if you change your mind. Even if you only come for one drink?”
    “Okay.” Ava laughed. “If I change my mind—which I won’t—but if I do, I’ll call you.”
    Caleb waited in the shadows, leaning against the wall around the corner until Lucy came out the front door of the dorm, her coat drawn tightly around her. He didn’t like leaving Ava alone, but didn’t really see a way around it at that point. He needed a chance to probe Lucy for information, and this was a rare opportunity to see her apart from Ava. He just had to hope Ava would stay put, safe and pocketed in her dorm room—well, safer, at least, than if she were running around who-knows-where—and that the Council wouldn’t pick that night to finally take action.
    Maybe he’d get lucky. Maybe he could actually do what he needed to do.
    Or maybe he’d fail miserably, and Ava’s life as she knew it would be over.
    Caleb inhaled sharply and pushed off the wall, following Lucy from the shadows. The heels of her pumps clicked on the concrete, and Caleb smirked slightly at the impracticality of the shoes. She quickly made her way across campus, turning on to the town’s main street and down a few blocks to the Palace, a bar and restaurant popular among the college crowd. She flashed a winning smile along with her I.D.—fake, Caleb knew, since she was only nineteen—and the bouncer gave it only a brief glance before waving her through the door. Caleb followed her inside, working his way through the crowd to stand unobserved in a dark corner after nabbing a beer from the bar.
    The room glowed from