No Peace for the Damned

would feel sorry for you or accept you without question. It doesn’t work that way, little girl.”
    Little girl. That was cute.
    My power rose like an electric current under my skin. I put my drink down so I wouldn’t spill it by accident. Then my mouth twisted into an unpleasant smile. “What
you
believe really doesn’t matter, though. Does it, Marie?” Then I took another drink and peered at her over the rim of my glass. Her face darkened in rage. To be so easily dismissed, she actually started to tremble. I smiled wider.
    You’re not the only bitch in the room, sweetheart
.
    Jon gently waved to Marie in a “settle down” gesture. “Let’s assume for a moment that what we experienced yesterday was a real memory,” he said. She ground her teeth but sat back in a pout. “What exactly did we witness? The water changed, but what happened to it? And how did you survive?” He raked me with his gaze while he spoke. He wouldn’t find anything. I healed too completely to leave scars.
    “You know,” Charles said, leaning around Marie, “if what she showed us
was
real, that could explain Kazan.”
    “Oh my God,” Cordele gasped, “he’s right. All those men, with those burns all over their bodies. We couldn’t find a cause.”
    Charles continued, “What was it, two days later that the Kazan State Technical University announced its exclusive agreement to collaborate with Kelch Incorporated on their aircraft technology?”
    “Was there a sprinkler system,” Shane asked, “in the warehouse where the bodies were found?”
    Jon’s calculating eyes remained fixed on me. “Yeah, there was a sprinkler system. No one thought to see if it’d been triggered, though.”
    “We need to go back and check that.” Shane pulled out a notepad and started scribbling.
    Everyone turned to me.
Where the hell was Thirteen?
Jon saw my hesitation and frowned.
    “If you don’t mind,” I said, as politely as possible, “I’d like to wait for Thirteen to return before we get into all the details.”
    That appeased Jon for the moment, but questions still bubbled in everyone’s thoughts.
    “Who was the third man?” Theo asked before the others had a chance. His dark hair fell forward to frame his face.
    “I—I’m not sure who you mean,” I stammered.
Shit!
I seriously needed to pull it together.
    “In your memory,” he explained. “Who was the third man?”
    “Well, there was my father, Magnus—the one with the remote, and my oldest brother, Malcolm, then my other brother, Markus, and my two uncles, Maxwell and Mallroy.”
    Something sparked in Theo’s eye and he turned to Jon. “So that’s Mallroy, then.”
    The back monitor beeped twice. In the distance, an SUV approached.
    “What happened to us—er—to you,” Heather said quickly, “your legs…they were so…small. How…how old were you?”
    The monitor gave a single beep as Banks’s pounding footsteps vibrated from the porch. Heather’s face strained. She didn’t want Thirteen to see her reaction if my answer was as horrible as she believed it would be.
    I leveled my gaze to look her in the eye. “I was nine.”
    The front door opened just as Heather raced past me to the small bathroom down the hall. As Thirteen and Banks entered the kitchen, the sound of Heather’s heaves broke through the stunned silence.

Apparently Chang wouldn’t be a regular part of the team anymore. Oh, he’d do research and consultation crap, but Thirteen had approved his request for a “less visible role.”
    It wasn’t like I gave a shit what any of them thought of me. Still, I couldn’t deny the ache at knowing that one of them had officially requested
not
to work with me. I glanced at Theo. Then again, maybe that ache was from something else.
    “So what exactly are we talking about here?” Shane asked Thirteen. “What kind of powers are we looking at?”
    Thirteen turned to me. This was it—what I had agreed to from the beginning. I gulped down my whiskey and swallowed the nagging twinge of memories that threatened to resurface. With a deep inhale, I began.
    “Well, while we each have the same base-level powers, our individual abilities vary. We all have the enhanced strength and speed that most supernaturals have. We each possess a level oftelepathy that allows us to speak to one another mind-to-mind. Uncle Max has the ability of aggressive telepathy, or mind manipulation, and can also perform a mindsweep. Father has telekinesis. Very powerful