Tormented (Evolution Series Book 2) (4 page)

Before anyone answered, I knew by the look on Anna’s face what
they
were planning to do. I had seen that look only twice before, and each time it meant that something freaky was about to happen. They wanted to see for themselves what had happened back in Thailand. And with that thought, I could see Dave, Anna, Nathan, and even Kai nodding their heads in agreement.

All eyes were on me, waiting for permission to enter my mind. Kai had even stopped ripping apart the lobsters.

“
Aargh
! What the hell?” I figured they had already been listening to my internal rambles since I stepped into the room, so what was a bit more invasion of my privacy? “But don’t be looking for anything that’s not related to the terrorist,” I added. God, I hoped they would listen to me and not go through all my personal thoughts and memories.

“Promise,” Dave said and looked at Kai and Nathan for them to give their word too.

“There are some things a guy really doesn’t want to know. A teenage girl’s mind is one of them,” Nathan assured me.

Everyone looked at Kai. “Fine,” he finally agreed.

Within seconds, I felt them all enter my mind, searching for any information they could find about what had happened in Thailand.

Aiden was the only one who didn’t need to see. He put his arm around me, pulling me to his side. “Don’t worry. They’ll figure it out.”

Just as fast as they had started, they stopped, and everyone was out of my mind. I looked around, meeting their eyes and hoping that I would be met with a ‘we’ve got it figured out’ look.

Anna, Dave, Nathan, and Kai all glanced at each other, but didn’t say a word. I knew what they were doing, but I couldn’t understand why they were blocking me from their silent conversation.

“Jade,” Anna said with a look that worried me. “Honey, there are some things that I need to talk to you about. How about we go for a walk?” she suggested, pushing out her chair and standing.

“Um, yeah, okay.” Whatever it was, I didn’t think it was going to be good; otherwise, I was sure she would have said it in front of everyone. I looked to Aiden to see if he was coming with us.

“You go ahead,” he said, wearing a similar expression as the others. “I’ll catch up with you in a few minutes.”

“Don’t be long,” I said before following Anna out of the room.

She led me down a long corridor, passing three sets of doors before stopping in front of another set to the right. Anna turned the handle and stepped inside. She flicked on the light to reveal a medium-sized room—well, for a castle. In any other house, it would be classified as a large room. I wasn’t sure what the point of the room was, but I guessed there would be another ten rooms just like it.

“This is a sitting room,” Anna explained. “And it’s perfect for times like this.” She pressed a button on the wall, and the fireplace lit up, giving a soft glow to the room. “Take a seat.” Anna pointed towards a cream plush sofa to the side of the fireplace.

I sank into the lounge and waited for her to tell me why she needed to speak with me in private.

She sat on the adjacent matching sofa. “In hindsight, I probably should've told you sooner, but I didn’t want to worry you unnecessarily.”

“Told me what?” I asked, fidgeting with the hem of Aiden’s T-shirt. An uneasy feeling was starting to take hold of me, making my stomach churn.

“Remember back in Australia, how
Chrissy
thought she had seen Ben with Chelsea the night
Chels
disappeared?”

I nodded, remembering how when I grabbed
Chrissy
, I had been able to see the memory she had of seeing Ben having an argument with
Chels
at the movies. It didn’t make any sense. Dave had said that Ben was telling the truth about him being at home asleep when
Chrissy
supposedly saw her. And it wasn’t as if Dave would have gotten it wrong.

She continued, “Well, remember how I went to see
Chrissy
while you were at the police station giving them the description of the guy you supposedly saw following you and Chelsea?”

The police had called me in for routine questioning, when halfway through, Aiden told me from the waiting room that my next-door
neighbour
had seen the face of the guy who had taken Chelsea. I then had to give a description of the kidnapper, which in the end didn’t help us find him. I got my ability to transport while I was sleeping and woke up in a cage with Chelsea. Of course, I didn’t know how to get myself out of there, but Aiden somehow transported to me just as the psycho started to slice me up. That was when Aiden lost it and killed the guy without touching him. “Yeah,” I finally replied.

“I told you before that
Chrissy
had just told one too many lies, and her mind had started to believe them as truths.”

When Anna had first told me that, I knew it didn’t sound right, but every time I started to question it, my thoughts got foggy. Anna sat there with a guilty look on her face.

“You did that to me, didn’t you?” I asked. She had told me once that she had never manipulated my mind and never would, but obviously, that was a lie. I wondered what else she had lied to me about.

“Nothing. I have never touched your mind since,” she promised. At the moment, I wasn’t sure I believed her. “Look, I swear I haven’t,” she reiterated. “But that’s not what I wanted to talk with you about. What I needed to tell you was that someone planted that memory in her mind.”

I pulled my eyebrows together in confusion.

Anna quickly continued, “We don’t know who or why someone had done it, but it’s clear that whoever it was is like us. They must also have complete control over their abilities to pull something like that off. At first, we thought it had nothing to do with you, but when we found out that the kidnapper had mistakenly taken Chelsea instead of you… well, it seems we were wrong. It seems that it has
everything
to do with you.”

I sat there letting what she had just said sink in. Someone was playing with me. It couldn’t have been the kidnapper who wanted to “find out what made me so special,” as he put it, because Aiden killed him. Also, Aiden wouldn’t have been able to kill the guy if the psycho was like us. And I watched the man die.

“So if it wasn’t him, then someone made him do it,” Anna said, responding to my thoughts. “Just like someone planted the memory in
Chrissy’s
mind.”

My thoughts went to my mother and how I had walked in on her murder scene. Aiden told me that my mother’s murderer was still there when I found her. Aiden couldn’t hear his thoughts, so he knew the guy was like us. Aiden had bounced me out of there, and that was how we ended up on a plane to Thailand.

At the time, we couldn’t figure out why the guy had been waiting there for me. But with the new information, it seemed so obvious. I looked up at Anna, asking for confirmation that I was on the right track. I was met with a slight nod, and her eyes were filled with compassion.

Nausea hit me like a ton of bricks. I fought the bile creeping up into my throat as memories of my mother’s lifeless body came flooding into my mind. I had come home from the hospital with Aiden. I walked into our lounge room where I found her body lying in a pool of blood. Someone had killed her just to get at me.

“I think I’m going to be sick.” I stood and ran towards the door.

There was no way I was going to reach the toilet in time on foot, so I closed my eyes and transported to Aiden’s bathroom, where I collapsed in a heap over the toilet bowl.

Within a second, Aiden was by my side, holding my hair away from my face. When I was finally done with throwing up everything I had just eaten, I slumped against the bathroom wall with my knees curled up and my head in my hands. How could anyone kill someone like that just to play with my head? Aiden sat down beside me and handed me a glass of water.

“Thanks.” I sculled the water down to get rid of the spew taste in my mouth. Once I’d finished, I placed the glass beside me and tilted my head back to rest it against the cold marble wall tiles.

My life was changing so fast. Only a couple of months ago, I had been oblivious to my true existence. Then, it all changed so quickly when I learned that I was a next gen, which basically meant I was the next generation of the human species. “I don’t get it. Why me?” I asked, even though I was
sure
as hell Aiden had no clue either.

He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer to him so that my head was resting on his shoulder. Sending some of those feel-good calming endorphins my way, he said, “They’ll figure out who is doing this to you.”

“I hope so.” Although I really didn’t have much faith in his parents and their entourage finding out who was behind everything before something else happened. For some reason I couldn’t shake the feeling that what had happened back in Thailand, and even Australia, was only a taste of what was to come.

I decided then and there that I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for whatever that asshole had planned for me next. I was going to find him. I was going to find my mother’s murderer.

CHAPTER 4

When we finally returned to the dining table, everyone except Kai had finished eating. Kai had worked his way through the seafood and was on the desserts.

“Are you feeling better, honey?” Anna asked once Aiden and I had taken our seats.

“Yeah, I just hope Kai left us some food.” I gave a small forced laugh, trying to lighten the mood. I didn’t want to talk about what had happened to my mum with Kai and Nathan there. I knew that to the Scotts, those guys were probably like family. But I had only just met them, and I sure as hell didn’t feel like pouring my heart out in front of them, although they would most definitely already know how I was feeling and what I was planning. I so had to figure out how to block my thoughts.

Anna leaned over and whispered, “There’s still plenty of food. I had Bernard put some aside for you and Aiden.”

Kai stopped mid-mouthful, giving Anna a quizzical look.

Dave made a half-grunt, half-laugh kind of noise, then pointed at Aiden and me. “We all know if these two had been another ten minutes longer, you would have polished off everything on the table.”

Nathan let out a bellowing laugh and pointed at Kai. “You should see your face, man. You’ve got your mouth stuffed with cheesecake, and you have remnants of pork, beef, and whatever else you shoved in your gob hanging off your mug.”

A smirk crept across Kai’s mouth,
then
turned into a wide, open-mouthed laugh, exposing a mushed-up piece of cheesecake that he hadn’t yet swallowed.

Those guys acted the ages they looked, rather than their actual ages, which I guessed was good because it would be a little strange to see twenty-something-year-olds acting as though they were a hundred. I then
realised
that I didn’t know how old any of them really were, and for some reason, whenever I asked, the subject was quickly changed.

Bernard came in, carrying a seafood platter that he placed in front of Aiden and me. We dug into the food. Everyone respected my wishes and didn’t mention Thailand, my mother’s murder, or how I was planning to find the person responsible.

It was nearly eleven o’clock when Aiden and I said our goodnights and retreated to his room. I needed to get used to saying “our room.” We would most likely be staying long enough that his room would become my room as well. I was already dressed for bed, so I crawled in and snuggled under the sheets, which were really warm, thanks to the electric blanket.

Aiden took off his shirt and climbed into bed, too. He lay on his side with his hand supporting his head. He watched me, waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t know what to say.