Trace of Magic Read Online Free PDF

see what happened, but I didn’t want Price to notice me. He was far from stupid. He’d know I’d found Nancy Jane and her mom, and he’d want to know how.
    I couldn’t let him or anyone else know how powerful I really was. I had no doubt his boss, Gregg Touray, would snatch me up in a minute. He had a decent-sized syndicate and was working hard to shut down the rampant violence and reunite the fragmented Tyet factions. Touray tended to protect his own and the hell with everyone else. Don’t get me wrong—he wasn’t the bloodiest of the Tyet bosses, but he sure as hell was no angel. I wasn’t interested in becoming anybody’s puppet, and as long as I was a relative nobody on the Tyet food chain, I had free rein to find out who’d killed my mother and what had happened to my father. Not that I was making any headway. I had zero clues.
    My mother was murdered when I was five. One day she was there, the next she wasn’t. Like me, she was a tracer. Unlike me, she wasn’t crazy powerful. At least, not that I’m aware of. All I know about her is what I remember. After she died, Dad boxed up everything that belonged to her and put it into storage. It was all ruined in a fire that burned the place down a few years later. Dad never talked about her. It was like she didn’t exist—except a couple years later, he married my stepmom, Mel, and she could have been my mother’s sister. Same red hair and green eyes, same joy, same warm heart. After my dad went missing on my sixteenth birthday, Mel and my half-sister Taylor and my stepbrothers are all I have left. We’re family—as tight as blood—but I wake every morning wondering who killed my mother. And then there’s the mystery of my father. His trace had simply vanished the day he disappeared. I don’t mean he nulled out and stopped leaving a trail, I mean that there was no trace of him left. Like he’d never even existed. What the hell had happened?
    That question drove me. He had so many answers to so many questions about my mom and about me. When I was growing up and I asked anything he didn’t want to tell me, he always put me off, saying I wasn’t ready.
    I’d never been ready enough for him.
    I realized I was clenching my teeth. Sometimes I wondered if I wanted my dad to have disappeared of his own free will or if I’d rather that he’d been kidnapped. I was torn between missing him with all my heart and a bottomless anger that he’d left me, and not only that, but he’d never bothered to tell me what happened to my mom or why someone would kill her. I always knew it had something to do with me. I don’t know why, but I know it’s a fact. Like water being wet and fire being hot. No doubts.
    I never did get groceries. I was too sore, and I looked like I’d been dragged behind a car for a few blocks. I texted Patti to tell her I was okay and that I was on my way home. She ordered me to come to the diner for dinner, but I told her I’d come in for breakfast, then shut my phone down. I needed to be alone. I’d watch the news and make sure Price had found Nancy Jane and her mother. Alive , I thought. He was going to find them alive. After that, I’d soak away the day’s soreness and bruises in my bathtub. I’d had some close calls, and I knew that pretty soon it was going to hit me. I could have died. Randall could have shot me—twice. That didn’t take into account the bombs he’d been throwing. I’d been lucky. The trouble was, luck had a tendency to run out. I had a feeling mine was running on empty, and I really didn’t want to know what was coming around the bend.

Chapter 3
    A WEEK LATER, I walked into the Diamond City Diner a little after two in the afternoon. I’d spent the night before following a carpet cleaner who was stealing supplies from his boss. I’d slept a few hours after tracking him to his storage unit, then turned in my report and collected my fee. I hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before, and I was starving.
    Patti