Diamond City Magic, Tome 3: Whisper of Shadows

Chapter 1

I HAD A WHOLE lot of questions for the man standing in front of me. All of them starting with why.

Why did you leave, Dad?

Why didn’t you tell me where you went, Dad?

Why did you abandon me and the rest of your family, Dad?

And probably most important of all: Why did you put a psychic bomb in my brain to kill me if I breached your carefully constructed walls locking away my memories and my ability to trust, Daddy Dearest?

That last question probably should have been the first. Having to ask the question at all says something about my life, as does the fact that the bomb in my brain wasn’t even my most recent near-death experience of the last few days. I’d come close to dying at least twice since the brain bomb, plus had my thumb cut off.

I’ll admit I wasn’t in the most charitable frame of mind as I stared at my father. For ten years I’d had to wonder whether he was dead or rotting in prison somewhere or even living on Mars. Someone else might have gotten through all the emotional baggage and given him a big hug. Mostly I just wanted to kill him. Except killing him wouldn’t get me the answers I needed.

While I tried to calm down from the shock of finding him in my stepmom’s living room, standing there like he’d never ditched us, I rubbed a finger over my thumb knuckle just to make sure it was still there. Maya, a tinker friend who was quickly earning enough from me to build a vacation home in the Bahamas, had reattached it after a madman cut it off. The reattachment between my dad and me wasn’t going to be so easy. Inwardly, I snorted. Impossible was more like it.

He’d been the last person, place, or thing I’d expected to see tonight. I don’t see the future. I’m a tracer. I can see the magical trails people leave behind by merely existing. I can even see dead trace, which makes me unique and dangerous to all the wrong kind of people. My abilities are the modern-day equivalent of a chimera or a Sasquatch or a snipe. Only I actually exist.

My last couple of cases “outed” me. Now everybody wants a piece of me—whether to hire me, to enslave me, or to kill me. I’d formed an uneasy truce with Gregg Touray, the boss of one of the most powerful Tyet organizations in Diamond City. His half brother Clay Price is my . . . boyfriend of sorts, a former detective who’d traded his own freedom for mine, and quit the force to work for his brother as part of the bargain for Touray’s leaving me alone.

Tonight was about finally introducing Price to the half of my family he hasn’t met—namely, my stepmom Mel and my stepbrother Jamie. He’s already met my sister, Taylor, and my other stepbrother, Leo. Since I’ve never in my life brought a date to dinner, it’s a pretty big deal.

Actually, it was more like a gauntlet, where my metal-working stepbrothers would wrap him up in a cage and either threaten him if he hurts me or tickle him to death. They aren’t exactly predictable, and even though they are older than me, they still have a healthy teenage practical-joker streak going on. That, or my stepmom Mel decides to get in on the action and interrogate him about, well, pretty much his entire life. As an FBI reader, she can read emotion. She’s also an Einstein-level psychologist, so pretty much she’s a walking lie detector who can get anybody to spill their guts about every last little thing. Another reason I’d been avoiding her since the whole thing with Price started. I couldn’t keep secrets when she turned her detection skills on me.

On top of that, I had planned to announce that Price and I were moving in together. Silly me, I’d thought that last tidbit was going to be the shocker of the evening. Then my dad shows up. Now I had to wonder if he was planning to try to kill me or kidnap me. It wouldn’t be the first time for either.

My stepmom felt the need to warn us. When she opened the door, Mel acted kind of cold, which is not her. When she shook Price’s hand, I could tell she did something. As a reader, she can also transmit feelings when she wants to. Whatever she sent to Price morphed him into stone-cold-brutal mode.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered.

Mel gave a brittle smile. “We have unexpected company for dinner tonight. It’s quite a surprise.”

“Who?”

“Come see.”