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Brynna sniffed "Because there’s a light inside you that shines so bright it’s hard to look at You are kind and funny, and you’re the smartest boy I’ve ever met Most of all, you see potential and opportunity where others see obstacles"

"Yeah," Nick said, his throat tight as he remembered all the times when all he’d needed was a kind smile from someone Anyone And Brynna had been that one person that day when he’d felt battered beyond his endurance "Those words etched themselves into et started on , you never did You are an angel, Brynna Don’t let the haters win They wouldn’t have attacked you had they not felt inferior to you So you hold your head up and you dare them to co theot me, LaShonda, Kody, and dozens of other people ill take on the devil himself for you"

She threw herself into his arainst his neck "I love you, Nick You’ve always been such a good friend toher on the back, he knew she meant that the same way he did As friends "I love you, too Noant to be really evil, let’s sic Tad on theraduated early and gone on to college up in Baton Rouge "He would beat them senseless, wouldn’t he?"

"You know it, and he’s the one person outside of Bubba and Mark who could track the at the tears on her cheeks, she drew a ragged breath "Up here, Daddy"

Nick put a little distance between them as her father cliht of Nick outside Brynna’s bedroom, he stopped dead in his tracks

Now Nick had always known that Mr Addae he ht noith that furious glower on his face, Nick could swear that her father grew about nine inches taller and his muscles expanded to the size of Raht in her father’s eyes ca his hands up in surrender, Nick took another step away from her "I did not step one foot inside her room, sir I swear it on my mother’s life We’ve been out here the whole time"

Brynna wiped at her nose "I had a really bad day at school, Daddy, and Nick ca, her father closed the distance between theot a call about it froed himself closer to the stairs "And now that I know you’re not alone, Bryn, I’ at all or soht, call me"

Brynna frowned "Did you really coed sheepishly "I don’t know anyone else who lives out this way"

Her smile warmed him "Thank you so much, Nick"

"No problem" He inclined his head to her before he went to the stairs

Mr Addams followed him down to let him out the door

Nick paused in the foyer and looked up tobefore he spoke to her father "Mr Addams, I don’t knohat the principal told you, but I am seriously worried about Brynna I was in the class that saw … those lies about her, and it was pretty gruesome what they did And I kno ht want to keep her home a few days and watch over her Please make sure she’s not left alone I know her irls If she needs soh school, too And she survived it I know she thinks the world of Brynna and would betonight at Sanctuary, but she’ll be home all day tomorrow"

Her father smiled at hi, Nick left But he didn’t go too far He stopped by the fountain that they had in the middle of the yard and stared into the water It took a few minutes for his powers to kick in When they did, he saw Brynna still crying in her rooed one of the stuffed aniry However, the i in relief, he headed back to the streetcar while his thoughts ran through everything that had happened

Caleb had assured him that this perverse maliciousness was hu else was behind it It just didn’t feel right Yeah, people were cruel They were nasty He’d seen the worst of humanity Had looked into the eyes of a friend as that friend beat him to the brink of death and then ruthlessly shot him on the street

More times than he could count, Nick had sneered at the hypocrites around him and bathed in their conde in his ear in a language he couldn’t understand

Nick froze as he tried to comprehend it Was it the voice of the ether spirits that Caleb listened to? The ones who carried information and wisdom?

Ambrose had told him that he would one day be able to access the universe--see all things hidden Know the unknowable It’d sounded far-fetched, but the one thing he’d learned over these last fewto find sense in the world was like trying to unlock the key to the universe using a Tinkertoy

In a way, he norance Those days of supreme comfort he’d had back when the world had made sense, and any proble hi his boo-boos Back then, he’d dreaer He’d told himself that once he had a job, he’d be a man

But he didn’t feel like a man

Well, some days he did Some days, he felt as ancient as Acheron, as over eleven thousand years old Other times, he still wanted to run to his e ti his own man His mom had leaned on him so hard at times that he felt like he was the parent Like they’d raised each other

And at the sa a toddler to take care of It was a wonder his mom was sane Not to mention the fact that he’d been a sick little kid For the first two years of his life, he’d been in and out of hospitals for all kinds of weird things

Because you were de his father’s DNA And the de to kill the human half

How had hisshe refused to talk about Nor would she speak ill of him

For better or worse, he is your father, Nick Family is family, no ht He’d onlyvisitations at the prison His only real memory of the man had come from when he was ten and his father had lived with theh to parole him

Like some bad Hollywood cliché, his father had laid up drunk and knocked them around until one of his for the robbery, his father had brutally slaughtered four people he clai to kill him At the time that’d seemed stupid

Now, not so et hi the conviction, his father had pled guilty and been sent right back to Angola About a year later, just shy of Nick’s eleventh birthday, there had been a huge riot where his father had been wounded He’d also killed a guard Soain