AllFreeNovel
Share Us
What the hell? I tore open the package, braced in case it was something dangerous, but all I found inside was a basic headset. I studied it, and sound crackled from it, just loud enough for me to hear a voice. “Put it on, Rachel.”
Even as tinny as the voice was through the small speakers, I recognized the Hunter at once. My stomach clenching, I slipped the headset over my ears and stepped back into the shadow of a tree at the front of a nearby lawn.
“What do you want?” I demanded under my breath, abruptly pissed off as well as confused. The only reason I was here at all was because of the garbage he’d stuffed into my head that might not have any truth to it at all. And how had he figured out I’d come to the house right now? Had that woman been hanging around waiting for me to arrive for my next visit—or had he tracked me somehow?
My skin crawled, and I rubbed my arms.
“Ah, Miss Malik,” the Hunter said, as if this was a totally normal call. “It’s wonderful speaking with you again.”
I was done playing his game. “Wonderful for you, maybe,” I said. “I’ve got better things to do than listen to you ramble on about your delusions.”
“Oh, you’ve decided they’re delusions, have you? Didn’t bother to do your research all that well.”
“Or maybe there’s just nothing to find.”
He guffawed. “There’s so much to find when it comes to Damien Malik that I’m starting to think you’re willfully blind.”
“And yet for some reason you can’t tell me any specifics or offer up any proof,” I shot back. “I don’t work for you. I don’t know you, and it’s obvious you have your own agenda. If you’re using me for whatever goal you have, I’m not interested in being your puppet.”
“Then you’re just interested in being theirs,” the Hunter said.
“I’m nobody’s puppet,” I spat out.
“Well, the evidence that I told you about should speak for itself, and you can decide what to do with it. Have you dug it up yet?”
I opened my mouth to respond, but I closed it. He didn’t need to know what I’d learned. I wasn’t working for him, and he claimed to be an investigator. He could do it himself.
“The more you learn, the more you’ll see,” he went on. “You can’t let your desire to have a family close your mind to what’s really going on here.”
I didn’t like having a stranger tell me of my biases, but his remarks echoed what Julius had said to me a couple of hours ago too closely. I did need to listen to people other than myself, because even if I knew I could never have a full relationship with my family, part of me still balked at believing they were awful in ways I hadn’t discovered.
But that didn’t mean that one of the people I listened to had to be this total creep.
“You don’t know anything about what having a family has done to me,” I snapped. Then I tore off the headset and tossed it into a set of nearby bushes.
Let the Hunter come and retrieve it if he wanted it. I owed him nothing, and he wouldn’t continue using me—not without giving me real information.
But I still had my own mission here.
I walked carefully toward the Maliks’ home. A second car was parked in the driveway—not one belonging to either of my parents. It took me a moment to place it as one that belonged to an aunt and uncle. My mom had company.
Well, that meant more people to be having conversations I might want to overhear. If I wanted to get facts, this was the place where I should be able to do it.
I slipped across the lawn and flattened myself to the exterior of the house. The summer day was warm enough that the windows were open to let in the breeze—perfect.
I listened at one window and then another, slinking around the house, prepared to jump away with an excuse if someone happened to step outside and notice me. It didn’t take long to determine that most of them were in the family room while my mother puttered around in the kitchen nearby.
When I peeked inside, I saw Aunt Mabel and Uncle Henry were sitting side by side on the loveseat across from my brother, no sign of my cousin Margaret today. But five mugs had been set out around the teapot and the plate of squares on the coffee table. Maybe they were expecting her later—or one of the other relatives might be on their way. I’d have to keep my ears pricked for cars.
Right now, I was more interested in the voices traveling out to me. When I’d first homed in on their voices, they’d been talking about a golf tournament, but it seemed the conversation had shifted. My aunt was saying something about “proper preparations.” She tsked her tongue. “I mean, it really isn’t the sort of thing you want to spring on someone if they’re not ready.”
Carter slouched in his armchair, what I could see of his face grim. “Are we really going to bring her into all of it? The rituals and everything? She’s barely part of the family.”
“She’s as much family as you are,” my mother said firmly from the kitchen, where I couldn’t see her at the moment. “But it could be a difficult transition when she didn’t have the full upbringing to help her form the right mindset… Your father was able to explain it to me well enough, though. We’ll have to see how it goes.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. They were talking about me, weren’t they? But what “rituals” was Carter talking about? Why would I need a special mindset to understand them?
Uncle Henry cleared his throat. “We have time to sort that out. No need to rush anything. But she’s a Malik. She deserves the chance to claim her full birthright if she’s up for it.”
