Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 52864 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 264(@200wpm)___ 211(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52864 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 264(@200wpm)___ 211(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
My mind was spinning. I just didn’t know whom to trust or what to do.
“Then follow your gut,” Mia said. “And if everything turns out the way it’s supposed to, you might not get your dream life, but you’ll get your afterlife.”
I stared, my mind trying to process all this.
“In case you’re wondering,” she added, “the afterlife lasts much, much longer.”
So it was worth the suffering in the here and now. I got it. I did, but, “I just don’t know if I can turn my back on him.” I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“You can. Now stop my husband from making the biggest mistake of his existence.”
“How?” I asked.
“Distract him so Draco can get away. Tell him—tell him that Draco’s sister, Ariadna, has taken me. Tell him Ariadna won’t let her brother die without a fight.”
Draco has a sister? What sort of supernatural bullshit soap opera did I walk into?
Mia said, “She died and is with the Seers now. She isn’t exactly on our side.”
There had to be more to the story, but did I really need to know? “Draco hears my thoughts. How am I supposed to keep anything a secret?”
“You’re not a Seer, Piper, but you carry the gene. Every cell in your body holds our knowledge. Use that to figure out how to block him. Now go. Hurry! King is about to kill him!”
I blinked and was back inside the elevator. King and Draco were still in the midst of a life-or-death struggle, and King was winning.
My heart was pounding a million beats per second. I wasn’t all in with what Mia wanted me to do, but I did agree with her on one thing: Draco could not die.
“King! Stop!” I yelled. “Ariadna has Mia. She says she won’t let Draco die without a fight.”
The flurry of violence halted, and Draco scrambled to his feet. But instead of taking a moment to breathe, Draco reached toward King’s shadow and squeezed. The shadow melted away.
I let out a sigh of relief. It worked. Mia was right.
“What happened?” Draco asked, panting hard. “And who is Mia? Who is Ariadna?”
I couldn’t let him hear what came next, but how could someone like me block him? I had no powers. And telling me to access the knowledge inside a strand of DNA was like telling a person to stare at a library and read all the books inside.
“Piper! We need to get out of here. Why are you thinking about libraries and books?”
That was it. If I wanted to shield my thoughts, I had to clutter my mind with random shit.
I threw a wall up in my mind, flooding it with things from my lectures—the ruins of Knossos, the artifacts in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum, and my own mental images of what life might have been like during the time of the Minoans.
“I was thinking about the classes I give, and I remembered the names of two women from King’s time. It was a shot in the dark, meant to distract him, and it apparently worked.” I visualized the different glyphs in my class’s textbooks.
Draco stared for a moment and then brushed back his hair. “Thank you.”
“Where did he go?” I asked. “Is he dead?”
“No, but I have weakened him further.”
This was my chance to start turning on him. Weak like his son.
Draco stared in disbelief. “You think I am weak.”
I just had to come to your rescue for the second time with King. “Sorry. I don’t like dealing with all this stuff. Guess it’s making me resent you. Just a little.” I held up my fingers, pinching an inch of air.
“Let’s go. We need to talk to my mother.”
“Hopefully she won’t try to kill you, too,” I said. And, of course, it instantly felt wrong. I wanted to do what was right, but did I have the strength to go against who I was?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The taxi let us out in front of a gorgeous aqua-colored beach house with white trim and plantation shutters, tucked into a lush green hill overlooking the turquoise bay below. It was breathtaking, but I couldn’t get over how it looked like such a normal house. Okay, not normal. It was a million-dollar home with a million-dollar view, but it wasn’t the sort of structure I’d look at and think, Wow. The mom of the anti-Christ lives here.
“Piper…” Draco growled.
“Sorry. You know what I mean.”
“Whatever happens, you let me do the talking. Understand? And any sign of trouble, you run. I’ll meet you back at the hotel.”
“Are you planning to brawl?” I asked.
“I have no plans other than asking questions.” He marched up to the stained-glass front door, still looking elegant in his suit despite having gone head-to-head with the supernatural shadow of his dead father. Draco’s hair was a little messy, but that was it.