The Mortal Bone Read Online Free PDF Page B

cool, salt-scented breeze washed over me, and somewhere distant, I heard the horns of the shipping yards. We were in the warehouse district, south of Seattle’s downtown. Concrete everywhere. Skyscrapers crowding the horizon. The only color surrounding us was gray, in all its limited variations.
    I missed Texas. Quiet and safe, where I could pretend to be a mother to a teenage boy. Where I could be a new wife in an old house and imagine that I was a normal woman with a normal life, who did not have five of the most lethal creatures in the world living as tattoos on her skin.
    When I touched Grant’s hand, he tangled those long, lean fingers around mine and pulled me close.
    “Byron will be okay,” he said quietly.
    “Promise?” I said, knowing it sounded childish and not caring.
    He was silent a moment. “I almost . . . calmed him. If I’d said a single word, I would have.”
    “It wouldn’t be the first time,” I reminded him. “If you’ll recall, you’ve done a lot more than just ‘calm’ people at this shelter.”
    For years, he had conducted morning sermons and impromptu flute concerts, using those opportunities to cure attendees of addictions or abusive behavior, or to transform despair into hope. But it was without their knowledge and against their will.
    Therapy or control. Such a fine line. Grant called it playing God—and for a former priest, like him, that was a moral quandary difficult to reconcile.
    He grimaced. “This time it felt different. I’m not sure I would have just calmed Byron down. I didn’t even stop to think about whether it was necessary. The power was there. I barely stopped myself in time.”
    “You make it sound as though you would have hurt him.”
    “Maybe. I know my potential now, Maxine. I could be like the Aetar.” Grant gave me a concerned look. “I didn’t feel in control.”
    “But you did stop.”
    His jaw tightened. “I didn’t want to.”
    I held his hand, tight. I would never know what it felt like to manipulate the living energy of another person, but it was a power that made him, quite possibly, the most dangerous individual in the world—besides me.
    He was also, likely, the last of his kind. Last of the Lightbringers, the most hated enemies of the Aetar—who had destroyed them all in a long war that amounted to little more than genocide, and the enslavement of an entire race. The human race, to be exact, which the Aetar had commandeered as their playthings.
    If the Aetar learned Grant existed, nothing would stop them from trying to capture him. It was only a matter of time. They had already sent one investigator—a genetically enhanced slave, descendent of a Lightbringer. We had managed to turn her to our side. I didn’t think we’d be so lucky a second time.
    But this . . . Grant’s struggle with his power . . .
    “I trust you,” I said. “You know that.”
    “You’re the only person in this world I can’t affect with my voice.”
    “That’s not why I trust you, and you know it.”
    Grant shook his head. “Now, when I speak, every sound I make . . . there’s more waiting. More power. More . . . potential . It feels as though I’m plugging the Hoover Dam with my finger.”
    “It’s not the same finger you use to touch my—”
    “Maxine.”
    “I’m just saying, it’s a magical finger. I’m not surprised it can—”
    Grant bent and kissed me hard and sloppy on the corner of my mouth. I held up my hands in surrender.
    “Listen. Don’t be like me, all gloom and doom, and full of self-doubt. You feel like you’re on the verge of losing control and doing something awful? Been there, done that.” I stood on my toes, gripping the front of his shirt and staring hard into his eyes. “Accidents will happen. Accept that now. You are going to screw up.”
    “You always make me feel so much better.”
    I kissed his chin. “You are my best friend. Nothing you do will change that, ever. Whatever you’re dealing with now? Don’t be