Outcast

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  Eyes wide, I looked at him. “But—but what about Mari? You made a deal.” That deal was the only reason Garth was going to live. “You agreed to help her in her research.” I shook my head. “She can’t actually do anything without you there to complete the transfer.”

  “Lex can do it,” Nik said, shocking the hell out of me.

  I felt my eyes bug out. “She can? Since when?”

  “You’re not the only one who’s sheut is evolving and growing stronger.”

  I stared at him for a few more seconds, mouth hanging open. “So she can control At like you now?”

  Nik nodded lazily. “Says she’s been working on it for a while. Her abilities are pretty limited at this point, but she’s good enough to meet Mari’s needs.” He shrugged. “I think she’s looking forward to it, actually. It’ll give her something worthwhile to do . . . you know, a way to contribute to the cause even though the war keeps her stuck behind the walls here.”

  I couldn’t stop staring at Nik. As he spoke, it took all of my willpower not to jump up and do a spaztastic happy dance. I pressed my palms together and sandwiched my hands between my thighs. “So you’re serious,” I said, half-asking. “You really want to do this—save the world and all that?”

  Nik chuckled. “Maybe not the whole world.” He leaned in a few inches. “Maybe we can just start with the humans in Seattle and go from there.”

  “Deal,” I said, grinning as I offered him my fist. “So when do we start?” I was so tired of doing nothing that I was ready to start yesterday.

  He smirked and curled his fingers back around the At marble, raising his fist to bump knuckles. “How about now?”

  The end

  ***

  Thanks for reading! You’ve reached the end of Outcast (Kat Dubois Chronicles, #2). Kat’s story continues in Underground (Kat Dubois Chronicles, #3), out in February 2017. Kat also plays a big part in the Echo Trilogy, a completed series that’s available now! Read an excerpt from the first book, Echo in Time (Echo Trilogy, #1).

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  MORE BOOKS BY LINDSEY FAIRLEIGH

  ECHO TRILOGY

  1: Echo in Time

  1.5: Resonance

  2: Time Anomaly

  2.5: Dissonance

  3: Ricochet Through Time

  KAT DUBOIS CHRONICLES

  1: Ink Witch

  2: Outcast

  3: Underground

  THE ENDING SERIES

  Prequel: The Ending Beginnings Omnibus Edition

  1: After The Ending

  2: Into The Fire

  3: Out Of The Ashes

  4: Before The Dawn

  The Ending Series: World After (2017)

  FOR MORE INFORMATION ON LINDSEY FAIRLEIGH AND HER BOOKS:

  www.lindseyfairleigh.com

  EXCERPT FROM…

  ECHO IN TIME

  Echo Trilogy, book one

  A crystalline chiming punctuated my entrance into the cluttered shop. I’d been expecting a dark and mysterious space with shadowed nooks overflowing with eerie objects and ancient leather tomes . . . but I was surprised by its warm, welcoming atmosphere. Bookshelves lined the walls, many filled with shiny new paperbacks. A rainbow of crystals and tiny glass bottles decorated several bookcases from floor to ceiling, each item with its own sign proclaiming this or that mystical property. Tables were arranged close together throughout the shop, displaying spicy incense, aromatic candles, and a variety of odd items I would have been hard-pressed to identify. The cheerful atmosphere was somewhat of a letdown for my first venture into an occult shop. Is it too much to ask for a few shrunken heads and some eye of newt?

  “Can I help you, Miss?” a woman asked, her voice husky.

  I nearly dropped the statuette I’d picked up—a beautiful, carved representation of Thora’s namesake, the powerful Egyptian goddess, Hathor. “Um, yes,” I said, gently placing the pale, beautiful woman back on her pedestal.

  “Are you a practitioner?” the shopkeeper asked as I turned to face her. She fit the shop perfectly with her flowy, ankle-length skirt, layers of clattering gold bracelets, and wavy, black hair that nearly reached her waist. She wasn’t overtly attractive, but her curves in all the right places paired with her rich voice and graceful movements gave her an air of sensuality and mystery.

  Am I a practitioner? Of what? Witchcraft? “Not exactly. I’m here on research . . . for a graduate project. I’m a PhD student in the archaeology department over at the U.”

  She studied me with eyes so dark they were nearly black before saying, “Mostly true, but I don’t think you’re here for a project.”

  I frowned, wondering how she had guessed that.

  “Many people come here under the guise of some other purpose,” she said, seeming to answer my thoughts. “I’ll answer your questions to the best of my ability if you tell me why you’re really in my shop.”

  I weighed my options and decided it wouldn’t hurt me to divulge my story. Or at least some of my story. After all, it was the reason I’d entered in the first place. With a heavy sigh, I nodded.

  “Alright,” she purred. “Follow me.”

  Swaying, she led me through a curtain of multi-hued glass beads and into a cramped back room that had clearly been decorated with fortune-telling in mind; there was a small, square table of polished oak, several dim antique lamps, and a short bookshelf filled with tarot cards, leather-bound books, and other tools of the trade. A teenage version of the shop owner was sitting at the table, rapt attention on her phone. She cocked her head inquisitively at our arrival but didn’t look up.

  “Kat, go watch the counter. I have some business with this customer.”

  The teenager—Kat—rolled her eyes before standing and exiting the room with a huff.

  “Your daughter?” I asked, amused.

  “Do you have children?”

  I shook my head, surprised by her question.

  “I’d advise that you spend some time remembering your teenage self before reproducing. If you can’t stand the idea of being around that version of yourself for more than a few hours, you’re not ready,” the shopkeeper replied.

  “I heard that, Mom!” Kat called from the front of the store.

  My hostess pointedly raised one artful eyebrow. “Please, have a seat.” She took her daughter’s place while I sat in the wooden chair opposite her.

  “Thanks for agreeing to speak with me,” I said after a long silent moment. It wasn’t much of a conversation starter, but it was the best I could come up with under pressure.

  With a knowing smile, she said, “I’m sure it will be enlightening for us both. Now, what brought you here?”

  I pursed my lips, considering the best way to start. “I guess you could say I’m looking for answers . . . or an explanation. You see, I’ve been experiencing something sort of . . . odd.”

  “Odd how?” she asked, resting her clasped hands on the table.

  “Well . . . it’s these dreams I’ve been having. Except, I just had one and I was awake, which doesn’t really make sense, does it? And they’re not dreams exactly, but more like visions. I mean, some are things I’ve witnessed in my life, but some happened before I was born, and—this is going to sound totally nuts—some haven’t even happened yet. But they’re all real.”

  As I spoke, my companion sat up straighter, e
vidently intrigued. “What makes you think it’s anything beyond an active imagination? What makes it ‘real’?”

  I leaned forward, intent on making the woman—a stranger—believe me. If she believed me without thinking I was crazy, maybe I could too. “Because I know things.” I said. “Things I shouldn’t know . . . things I couldn’t know. I dreamed something bad would happen to me, and it happened exactly as I saw it.”

  “If you knew it would happen, why didn’t you try to change it?”

  I laughed bitterly. “I thought I was just anxious. It didn’t seem possible that I could see the future in my dreams.”

  “You said it’s not always a dream, that you’ve been awake for these ‘visions’?”

  “Yeah . . . just once, about fifteen minutes ago.”

  She leaned back in her chair, studying me, her generous lips pressed together in a flat line. After a protracted silence, she asked, “You want to know what’s happening to you, correct?”

  “Yes.” Eager, I licked my lips. She knows something . . . she has to.

  “I’ve heard of people with abilities like this. Usually it’s genetic.” She paused. “Have you spoken with your parents about it?”

  Frustrated, I shook my head. “My mom doesn’t know about any of it. She’d tell me if she did. And . . . I don’t know who my father is.”

  “Mom!” Kat called from the front of the shop.

  “Just a minute!” the woman across the table from me yelled back. To me, she said, “Your situation is odd, like you said, but there are others like you out there. It’s standard for your kind to learn about such things from their families. I’m amazed you’ve slipped through the cracks for so long.”

  “My kind? What are you talking about?” My hands gripped the edge of the table so firmly that my nail beds were turning white.

  The muffled sound of Kat’s voice, along with a deeper, male voice, grew louder from beyond the beaded curtain.

  “Yes, your kind.” The woman seemed to be struggling with something as she stared into my eyes. Her head turned toward the doorway, and almost inaudibly, she whispered, “I’m truly sorry, but I can’t tell you more. Just know there are others like you and they will find you.”

  “But you—”

  Kat’s pleading whine sounded from just outside the back room. “But she’s busy right now!”

  “My dear girl, your mother is never too busy for me. You know that. I must see her immediately,” a familiar, faintly-accented voice said. Oh, you have got to be kidding me!

  “Hey!” Kat’s outraged admonition came just before a well-dressed man walked through the beaded curtain, making the pieces of glass clack excitedly. His eyes widened when they met mine, then narrowed slightly as he turned to my hostess.

  “Marcus?” I asked, stunned. He was the last person I would’ve expected to run into at a quirky magic shop, and seeing him triggered a deluge of the images from the previous night’s dreams. Oh God . . . those were just dreams, right? I shook my head, suddenly afraid I would start to suspect all of my dreams were visions. I cleared my throat. “What are you doing here?”

  Kat and her mother wore identical expressions of surprise.

  “I could ask you the same thing.” The corner of Marcus’s mouth quirked slightly. “Is Genevieve reading your cards . . . or perhaps your palm? She’s earned quite the reputation as a reader of fortunes. She specializes in past lives, you know.”

  Irked that he’d avoided my question, I responded in kind. “Is that why you’re here? Want to peek into a crystal ball?”

  Marcus laughed out loud, finding unexpected humor in the question. “No, definitely not. Genevieve, here, is quite skilled at acquiring certain rare, moderately illicit antiquities.”

  Slowly, I stood and backed into a corner, looking from Marcus to Genevieve and back. “You deal in black-market artifacts? Both of you? That’s . . . that’s . . .” I couldn’t finish the statement, my mind reeling at the implications. Over the past two millennia, innumerable pieces of archaeological evidence had been destroyed or stolen as a result of the antiquities black market. So much of the ancient world had been lost because of it—because of people like Marcus and Genevieve. “I don’t think I can . . . can do . . .”

  Marcus strode around the table, stopped an arm’s length away from me, and placed his hands on my upper arms. I didn’t know when we’d become touching friends, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about the new development. In his present, looming state, I was leaning toward not-so-great. The memories of Mike attempting to force himself on me were still too fresh.

  Marcus leaned down so his eyes were closer to my level, and his expression changed from haughtiness to concern. “Lex, the black market is a necessary evil. You have to understand that if you want to make it in our field. It already exists, and the only way to save bits and pieces of the artifacts floating around in its torrent is to join in. I promise you, I only rescue artifacts from greedy hands—I never give them any.”

  The intensity of his words chipped away at my anger and fear. “And her,” I whispered, flicking my eyes to the woman still sitting at the small table. “What does she do?”

  He smiled wolfishly, but his tone matched mine in softness. “She’s like me, rescuing the most important pieces.” Shaking his head, he added, “The disparity between value and importance has always amused me.”

  “What do you—”

  “Later,” he interrupted and dropped his hands, turning to face Genevieve and Kat. “I need to take care of some quick business with Gen, then I’ll explain everything.”

  Genevieve raised her delicate eyebrows.

  “Well, maybe not everything,” Marcus corrected, smirking. Unintentionally, I wondered if Marcus and Genevieve were more than business acquaintances. If he felt comfortable enough to barge in on one of her private meetings with a customer and she could ask him a question by simply raising her eyebrows, surely there was something else between them. The thought caused an unexpected vise to squeeze my heart, making it throb with an emotion I wasn’t used to: jealousy. Where did that come from?

  Looking at the floor, I said, “I’ll wait out front,” and rushed out of the room.

  Kat followed me, retreating to a stool behind the checkout counter. As I perused the shop, I could practically feel her laser-like glare piercing my skin.

  “Something wrong?” I asked pointedly. I found the small, alabaster Hathor carving again and held it up, examining its exquisite detail. I would’ve guessed it really was over four thousand years old, if any Old Kingdom Egyptian alabaster pieces had ever been carved with so much detail. The goddess’s lithe, feminine body, carved so she was eternally standing with one foot stepping forward, fit perfectly in the palm of my hand. Her exquisite face stared back at me with such determination, I almost expected her to open her mouth and make some godly demand.

  Still glaring, Kat grumbled, “Are you, like, going out with him or something?”

  It took me a few seconds to shift all of my attention to her. “Am I dating Marcus?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Yeah,” Kat said, rolling her eyes and sighing dramatically.

  I snorted. “Definitely not. We work together.”

  “Oh.” She brightened noticeably, straightening from her slouched position.

  I hesitated, worried I wouldn’t be able to conceal my unreasonable jealousy if I asked the question I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t resist. “Your mom seems to have a, uh, connection with him. Is there something between them?”

  Giggling, Kat hopped off her stool and skipped around the counter to join me. She was built like her mom—curves everywhere they should be—just not quite so filled out. If it weren’t for her outfit, she easily could have passed as an undergrad. As it was, her white, neon-splashed t-shirt, black skinny jeans, and bright green Chucks placed her in high school, maybe as a junior or senior. Her long, nearly black hair was twisted up into a high, messy bun, and the multiple piercings in her ears were filled with a variety of g
emstone studs.

  “No,” she whispered, “but Mom totally wishes there was. I mean, damn, who wouldn’t? He’s totally, like, the hottest guy I’ve ever seen . . . ever. It doesn’t even matter that he’s so old.”

  I laughed—I couldn’t help it. There was no way Marcus was beyond his mid-thirties, but to a teen, I knew that could seem ancient.

  “How much is this?” I asked, holding up the carving. I’d come to the highly improbable conclusion that the little goddess wasn’t a reproduction, but was actually the real deal. What she was doing in the shop, on a table of artful junk, was beyond me.

  Kat bit her glossed lip. “Um . . . that’s one of the special items. I have to ask my mom.” So it really is authentic . . . I knew it!

  “Ask me what?” Genevieve asked, her rich voice startling us both as she walked through the beaded curtain and joined us in the front of the shop. I was surprised Marcus hadn’t followed her out. Maybe he’s busy buttoning his pants, I thought snidely. And then I mentally slapped myself. Not mine . . . off-limits . . . get a goddamn grip!

  “The cost of this statuette,” I explained, holding up the small carving for her to see.

  Genevieve pursed her lips and squinted before coming to a decision. “Take it, no cost.”

  Kat’s mouth fell open. “But . . . Mom—”

  A firm hand gesture from her mother quieted the teenager. “Consider it an apology gift, since I can’t give you the information you seek. It seems to want to be with you anyway. It’s fitting.”

  By the time Marcus emerged from the back room, my newly acquired artifact was wrapped in a soft, pale green cloth, fitted into a gift box, and tucked into a small, dark purple bag.