The Severed Tower Read Online Free

had given up trying to understand their motives. Their interest in the little girl was as mysterious as her powers.
    “Holt, what’s in your pocket?” Mira’s voice startled him from his thoughts, and he looked back. She was studying him with a strange look. A suspicious one. It was only then that Holt noticed his hand was stuck in his coat pocket, his fingers clutched protectively around the Chance Generator. He couldn’t remember exactly when he’d reached in for it.
    “My head hurts,” Zoey said before Holt could answer.
    “Hurts how, kiddo?” Holt asked.
    “On the sides mainly, comes and goes.” Zoey stopped moving and rubbed her temples.
    “From the truck maybe?” Mira asked. It was a good question. Holt couldn’t imagine what kind of strain came with Zoey’s abilities, and to be honest, a headache would be the least of what he’d expect.
    “Everyone gets headaches now and then,” Holt said, gently rubbing the little girl’s head. “Rest a sec, there’s no rush.”
    The little girl leaned against the wall and Max whined gently, pushing his nose into the girl’s hand. “The Max…” she said softly, petting the dog’s head.
    Holt looked back up at Mira. Her eyes were already on him. “You’re using the abacus.” There was a note of accusation in her voice.
    Unexpectedly, Holt felt a swell of anger. Who was she to ask? She wasn’t his boss, or in charge of him. Hadn’t he saved them back in Midnight City, saved her, all with the artifact? Hadn’t he and it just saved them a few minutes ago?
    The anger grew so intense, it startled him a little. It wasn’t like him to feel that way. He was probably just jumpy, he told himself, on edge from the previous experience.
    When he thought about it … why wouldn’t Mira question him? She’d already said she thought the Chance Generator was dangerous. She was an expert, wasn’t she? She’d warned him.
    Besides, signs that suggested she cared had been rare the last few days. There were moments where he thought he detected it again. Glances. Smiles. Incidental touching that lasted longer than it should, but they had only been glimpses, a dim reflection of what had passed between them at the dam when they’d kissed.
    Holt wasn’t positive where her hesitation came from, but he had an idea.
    The other one, the Freebooter she’d been close to, the one they were probably going to run into sooner or later. Ben. It wasn’t something Holt was looking forward to.
    It didn’t really matter, though. Mira wasn’t the real reason he was here. Zoey was.
    As much as he didn’t like it, the kid had pulled one hell of a rabbit out of her hat at Midnight City. She’d saved them all, and at the same time done something even more impossible. She’d gotten Holt to believe that things could change—maybe even that the Assembly could be beaten—and Holt had promised to help her, whatever it took. He’d promised.…
    “Holt?” Mira asked again.
    “Yeah, I was using it,” he answered, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. “And if I hadn’t we’d all be dead. We wouldn’t have made it to that truck, and we definitely wouldn’t have outrun the tripods.”
    “That doesn’t make it right!” Mira exclaimed. “We can’t start depending on something unpredictable. We have to rely on our own skills or we’re going to wind up in trouble, especially where we’re going.”
    Where they were going, of course, was the Strange Lands. A dangerous place to the north, where, for whatever reason, time and space no longer worked right. Mira was a Freebooter, someone who specialized in traversing that landscape and bringing back the artifacts that lay there—common, everyday objects that had been imbued with otherworldly powers. The abacus in his hand, the subject of their argument right now, was one such artifact, one Holt had unwillingly become the owner of in Midnight City. Since then, it had proved to be more valuable than he could have imagined.
    Holt