Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
She sat in frozen silence until the car pulled up to the shiny silver building that was the family’s business HQ. She’d been shown it before she was sent to live with Colette. Grandfather had told Pax it would all be his one day. She’d been happy for her twin, hadn’t understood then what Grandfather’s words really meant.
Today, she kept her head down as she followed him into the building, then into the elevator. He took her directly to his office, where another person was waiting. A woman with skin as white as snow and eyes brown and empty who wore a gray suit with pants and black high heels.
Grandfather put his hand on Theo’s shoulder, digging in his fingers hard enough to hurt. “To the central location. We’ll drive from there.”
“Sir.” The woman put her fingers very lightly on Grandfather’s brown coat . . . and the world tumbled.
Theo cried out and fell to her knees . . . except she didn’t fall on the carpet of her grandfather’s office, but onto cold concrete that scratched up her hands and made her knees hurt a lot.
“Sir, I didn’t realize it was the child’s first teleport. I apologize.”
“There’s no need. Bring around the car.”
Her grandfather looked down at Theo as she got herself upright. Her hands were a little bloody and dirty; she pressed them against the black of her coat. The rough fabric felt better than the way he looked at her. As if she was a worm he wanted to crush.
“Pathetic,” he muttered. “Get in the car and fix your hair. You’re part of the Marshall family. Act like it.”
Knees hurting, she nonetheless climbed into the back seat and tucked herself right into the corner. Though her hands trembled and her palms stung, she used them to straighten up hair that had become messed up when she fell.
She hadn’t put it in a braid today, had wanted to look her best for her special trip. So she’d brushed it until it shone really bright, and then she’d added a black satin hairband that Colette had bought for her.
Theo hadn’t been able to believe Colette would get her something so pretty. She’d asked why.
“Physical perfection is to be valued not for its emotional value,” her foster parent had explained, “but because even Psy respond on a visceral level to beauty. While you’ll never be beautiful, neither are you ugly. And considering how few advantages you have in life, I feel compelled to at least teach you how to present yourself as best you can.”
Theo wasn’t interested in things like that, but she listened to Colette’s lessons, and she tried to follow them because she knew it mattered to her grandfather. He was always dressed neat and perfect, his hair cut and his short and pointed beard groomed. Back when she’d lived in the family house, he’d always told her and Pax off if they ran inside with dirty knees or untucked shirts.
She wished she had enough telekinetic power to ’port over her hairbrush, but wherever she was now, it was really far from her room. She couldn’t reach that place with her mind. Not wanting to look at her grandfather and see the nothingness for her on his face, she just looked out the window at the strange city through which they were passing.
The people looked like at home, but their clothes were a bit different and the buildings were a lot different. Some of them seemed really old and had the style of round domes she’d seen in a geosocial lesson about India. But she didn’t think this was India. The people didn’t dress the way she’d been taught many people in India dressed, and their skin was mostly pale like hers.
Then the people disappeared and so did the buildings and they left the strange city behind, driving and driving until the teleporter who was the driver pulled up in front of a set of thick metal gates.
“This is why we didn’t teleport in, Theodora.” Her grandfather’s voice snapped her to attention. “I wanted you to see these gates, understand that if you ever give me cause to take you through them again, you won’t come back out.”
Theo stared at the cold metal . . . and sucked in a breath when she saw the electricity that arced a searing blue at the top, above what looked like spikes sharp enough to stab a person straight through from one side to the other.
She’d never seen electricity like that, out there in the open.
“It’s a warning,” her grandfather said at the same time. “No one should be out this way regardless, since we own a large chunk of the area, but the visual warning should halt anyone curious enough to make the attempt.”
Theo tried not to panic. He hadn’t read her mind. She’d been staring at the electricity, so he’d told her why it was like that. “I understand,” she managed to say in a calm voice.