she’d passed. I’d stopped living life the old way because I’d had no choice if I wanted to fit in.
I’d even tried to shove aside my abilities with auras. Not wanting to be weirder than I already was, I pretended they weren’t there to the point I didn’t often see them anymore. It helped that I rarely looked at people as a result, preferring to stare at my feet. Sure, people thought I was shy. Really, I was just avoiding seeing them.
The real them.
But Cain?
Even now, on the walk back to the Majors’ home, I shivered.
He was malevolent.
Evil.
And it felt strange to say that about a boy, a kid in the grand scheme of things, but he was twisted.
Adam had lied when he called him a narcissist. I wasn’t sure why, but he had. I’d sensed a depth in Cain that I’d never come across before—everything about him was wrong and mahrime. Impure.
In this new life of mine, to be fair, most things were, but not like him.
As for the rest of my life, while my nanny wouldn’t like where I was, the place had running water and we weren’t always on the move, so I appreciated that.
The Majors were like a lot of foster parents—doing it for the extra welfare check. But I didn’t blame them. They weren’t cruel like other foster families I’d lived with, and they weren’t mean with food or care. They had a sick daughter whose meds cost a fortune, and they needed all the help they could get. They were way better than my last foster home, and Emma fed me and the other foster kid well, made sure Kenny and I were properly clothed, and generally looked after us.
I wasn’t upset with her disinterest in me. How could I be? I’d visited with Louisa enough, had checked in and helped out when I wasn’t busy with schoolwork. Her aura spoke to me too, this time unavoidably so because it seemed to shadow the entire room, creeping into the corners, penetrating the walls itself, and what it communicated wasn’t good.
I didn’t need the cards to tell me she wasn’t long for this world. No matter how hard Emma scrimped and saved to get her meds, no matter how many extra shifts Jon took, the doctors’ cures weren’t working.
The gift wasn’t a gift in my opinion. Knowing things like that were an inconvenience at best, and cruel at worst.
Knowing Louisa would pass soon, no matter that she was loved by her parents, no matter that they were killing themselves to keep her alive? It was wrong. So wrong.
But then, many things in this world were.
I shouldn’t have lost my daddy in that horseback riding accident, and my momma? She shouldn’t have given up and taken her own life for the loss of him.
I’d always resented that, but Nanny had said my father was Momma’s One.
Just like Adam was mine.
My one.
My only.
The thought dazed me, and I ground to a halt, the long walk to the house unimportant as I stared up at the bright blue sky—just like Adam’s aura. Until he spoke about Cain, when the glimpse of sadness morphed into his mood, changing him in ways he wouldn’t understand.
The Majors lived on the border of the good and bad part of town. The community center was in the bad part, so I always hustled out of there and was a little more relaxed on the latter half of the trip.
My shoulders always drooped when I’d left Laurence behind. Wrecked cars were the best of it. I’d often glimpsed drug deals going down from the corner of my eye and always did my best to shuffle forward, gaze turned downward.
As I moved toward the Majors’ place, polished homes were more of a common sight than the downtrodden bungalows that lined the roads on the first half of my walk. Lawns were mowed on a weekly basis, there were kids’ toys littering the yard, and in the morning, just as day broke, a paper was tossed onto the front step by a paperboy.
It was that kind of place.
The Majors had the most respectable house I’d ever lived in, and as I approached it, staring at the clapboard that was painted and well-tended, the roof that didn’t have any leaks, and the neatly cropped hedges that lined either side of the property, I wondered at the irony of fate.
Had Louisa fallen ill just so I would be brought here?