Keepers of the Flame (Trilogy Bundle) - By Melissa F. Hart Page 0,5

to do it. Maybe I was being punished for something I knew nothing about.

I thought I'd hidden my thoughts well, but I obviously hadn't done a good job. She stepped back briefly and silently commanded me to look at her. Yes, telepathy runs strong among our kind, although we don't normally send telepathic messages to people we're not familiar with. So I turned to her in surprise. I couldn't read her thoughts, which was a first for me. Actually, a second. I'd also been unable to read the rich girl's thoughts. That was definitely weird.

“I can tell you're wondering why you were pulled from your current mission to protect my granddaughter. This is a very serious case and not just because she's my granddaughter.” She sighed and I caught a wealth of sadness in her sigh. “You know what? Come with me to my office where we can talk comfortably. This might take a while.”

She turned and walked out and I followed her, not a little curious. I wasn't sure what to think. On one hand she was Katrina Kylor, one of the greatest protector agents we'd ever had before she chose to retire when she had her baby. I studied the woman in protector school, so if she said it was a serious case, then it probably was. Then again, she was a grandmother who cared deeply for her granddaughter. I felt a pang at the thought. Having one person who cared for you no matter what was a thousand times better than having a large family who cared nothing for you. But I wasn't going to dwell on that.

I followed her into a nice looking room. It was lined with books and they each looked worn and old. There was an old fashioned desk in one corner of the room but she led me to the little sitting area in the other corner. She settled regally on the sofa and gestured to the armchair for me to sit. As I settled my bulk on the dainty chair, the phrase bull in a china shop came swiftly to mind. This might have been a comfortable place for her, but it was far from that for me. To my right was a shelf and crammed on that shelf was every kind of porcelain and china figurine you could possibly imagine. I sat stiffly, afraid that if I moved my hand even just an inch, the entire thing would come tumbling down. I focused on the woman and waited for her to speak.

“You do know how her parents died?” She waited for me to nod before she went on. “She escaped because she'd been reading inside the family vault. Trevor, that's my son, had it created so they could have a place to go to if danger struck. Unfortunately, this had taken them without warning, but Lu had made the vault her hiding place, so she escaped the murderers.” She was silent, lost in her own secret world for a few moments.

I felt a twinge of sympathy for how lost the granddaughter must have felt then. I could almost picture the lost little girl, coming out of the fantasy world she'd created inside that vault only to discover that her life had become a nightmare.

“How old was she?” I asked.

She came out of her reverie and answered, “She had just turned thirteen.”

Which meant she was sixteen now. Suddenly, what felt like disappointment began to rise inside me and I forced it down, impatiently. It couldn't have been disappointment anyway, that didn't make any sense. Why would I be disappointed that she was just sixteen? It was probably some left over sympathy. I decided to wait patiently for Katrina to go on.

“Well, she was brought here immediately, not just because I'm her only relative but also because I could protect her. And for the first two years, everything was fine. But when she turned fifteen, she came into some of her powers.” She saw my look of surprise and smiled slightly. “Yes, I know, pretty remarkable since most perereans don't start showing any traces of magic until they're eighteen at the earliest. But it has been known to happen, you should know that.” She looked at me with a knowing smile and I nodded.

Of course I knew that; I'd started manifesting (that's what my family had called it) at the age of ten. I had seen it as a curse until I'd turned fifteen and the Protectors had recruited me. My life