The Tattooed Heart Read Online Free Page A

mockery.
    Pete was taken aback but forced a sickly smile and said, “No, man, even I’m not really interested in my dad.”
    â€œHe’s got a job anyway.”
    â€œYeah, but he kind of hates it because—”
    â€œBut he’s got a job. Right? So he’s not off somewhereall messed up from being out of work. Right? So shut up.”
    Pete shut up.
    I’ve often wondered about people like Pete. I have never understood why angry thugs like Trent seem able to attract more normal followers.
    But then I winced, remembering. I had been a bad person. I had done a terrible thing. And yes, I’d had friends and acolytes the whole time.
    Self-righteousness rises in me sometimes, and then I remind myself that I do not have the right to look down my nose at others. I am the apprentice to the Messenger of Fear, and as such I deliver a measure of justice. But it had begun when I accepted the truth of my own weakness. My position as apprentice was not an entitlement, it was a punishment.
    â€œOriax can’t see us?” I asked, mostly just to distract myself from painful memories.
    â€œEventually, but not immediately. Her powers are different. Very great, but different. But she will find us in time.”
    â€œThen let’s use the time to figure this out,” I said.
    â€œThe time?” He cocked his head, waiting.
    It took me a few seconds to grasp the hint. “Yes, thetime. But I don’t think I want to see more of Trent. I want to understand the connections. I want to see what led to the death of that poor boy with his face blown away.”
    Just like that, one-half of this split-screen reality replaced Trent and Pete with the solemn scene of the far-distant funeral.
    Messenger seemed accepting of my initiative, even approving. “Proceed.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œDon’t be timid, Mara,” he chided. “You’ve seen that we can travel through time. So do it.”
    I glanced back along the void. Would going backward take us backward in time? This was not how we’d previously done it. Messenger had always just made it happen.
    But of course this was the simple version. This was Time Travel 101, an introduction before greater secrets and techniques could be learned.
    I turned and walked with far more confidence than I felt, back along the narrow black bridge between facing realities. And yes, to my satisfaction, time went into reverse.
    On her side Samira spit her food into her bowl,placed the stew in the microwave, took it out and put it in the freezer, walked backward from the kitchen.
    Far more disturbing, the shrouded body of Aimal once again leaped from its grave and landed on the stretcher, which was then borne away.
    I walked faster, faster, and time reeled backward at a geometrically quicker rate. Now Samira was back at school being harassed, and Aimal’s body was being ritually washed by his male relatives, and Samira was in class, and Aimal was quite suddenly alive. I noticed that the time lines were not synchronized, not matched up. I sensed that Aimal’s was the more recent event.
    Distracted by that realization, I saw that I had moved too quickly. I reversed my direction and slowed my pace.
    Aimal now was in the dirt yard of a bare, one-room cinderblock schoolhouse. There was a single tree providing scant shade from a blistering sun. There were other kids, younger, older, many kicking a soccer ball. Others read. Others just sat in small groups, chatting.
    If you ignored the opium poppy fields and the distant but intimidatingly sharp-edged mountains, and the poverty of the school, it could be any school.
    A pickup truck came barreling down the semi-paved road, kicking up a plume of dust. There were two men in the cabin, one more in the back.
    The kids in the yard didn’t notice. But Aimal did. He rose slowly to his feet, the biggest of the boys. He shaded his eyes and watched the truck and peered closely at something