Twisted Scars Read online

  Twisted Scars

  Scars of Days Forgotten Series

  Natalie J. Reddy

  Copyright © 2021 by Natalie J. Reddy

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover created by Original Book Cover Designs

  Visit the Author’s Website at www.nataliejreddy.com for more information.

  For Suraj. My husband, best friend and the one who inspired me to write Darshan’s character in the first place. I love you, babe! This book’s for you!

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Excerpt From Deadly Scars

  Excerpt

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Natalie J. Reddy

  I gritted my teeth and laid on my horn as I drove through downtown Toronto much faster than was legal. It was just before five in the morning, and already cars were beginning to pack the streets. I swerved around the silver Honda Civic in front of me, determined to avoid the rush hour traffic.

  I needed to get home.

  There was a lump forming in my gut. Something wasn’t right. It tinged the air in a thick layer of something I couldn’t quite name. Like an idiot, I’d left my phone on my nightstand, so if anyone had tried to call, they wouldn’t be able to get through to me. Even though I hadn’t heard from anyone... I just knew. Something wasn’t right.

  Something was very, very wrong.

  I glanced at the briefcase on the passenger seat next to me. It was the reason I’d gone out in the middle of the night instead of staying with Wren, the girl I’d been kissing just a few hours ago. The girl I was pretty sure I was in love with. The kisses and the way she’d pressed herself into my arms still lingered in the back of my mind. I desperately wanted to see her. She was the reason I was swerving through traffic, ignoring the trails of horn blasts. I was heading back to her.

  What if something had happened to her? Wren had been so upset earlier. She was sure she was remembering things from her past, but those things hadn’t made sense. But Wren could be impulsive. What if she’d done something dangerous to find the truth? She hadn’t looked well when she’d come to my room. She’d been in pain, her usually bright blue eyes dulled by the headache she’d been trying to hide. I wouldn’t feel better until I saw her face and felt her in my arms.

  “You should have healed her before you left,” I hissed to myself as I made a dangerously sharp turn onto a residential street.

  The briefcase slid off the seat at the motion, and I cursed. It was full of old leather-bound books. Books that were usually under lock and key at the Psi Boarding school I’d only recently started teaching at. They were ancient, and realistically, they should have been in a museum. But Psi didn’t have museums, for obvious reasons. It was a human world, and we were just living in it. At least that’s how it felt most of the time.

  I shook my head, cursing myself for the hundredth time for forgetting my phone. I didn’t understand why Wesley needed me to run this errand in the middle of the night. But he’d insisted it was important. Wren’s memories seemed to be returning, and Wesley was sure the knowledge in these books would help him find the missing pieces. But while we’d been talking, I couldn’t help but notice Wesley seemed less worried and more… excited. He had tried to hide it, but the gleam in his eyes and the twisting of his fingers gave it away.

  The tires squealed as I finally swerved onto our street. As I neared the house, it was blazing with light despite it being ridiculously early in the morning. My body thrummed with adrenaline-laced anxiety as I pulled into the garage. Cutting the engine and not even bothering to remove the keys from the ignition, I raced up the stairs to the first floor.

  I shoved open the garage door and suddenly realized I’d left the briefcase in the vehicle. “Shit.” I turned to head back down when I noticed Alessia. She was standing in the middle of the freshly waxed floors of the foyer, nibbling on her pinky nail. She was dressed, but her curly, auburn hair was sticking out in all directions like she’d just woken up.

  “Darshan.” She rushed forward when she saw me. She was pale, which made the hundreds of freckles on her face stand out that much more, and her eyes were wide with panic.

  “What?” I asked, my body tense and ready to spring into action. “What’s going on?”

  “I’ve been trying to call you for over an hour.”

  “I forgot my phone,” I said, my gut churning with unease. “What happened? Where’s Wren?”

  Alessia opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Wesley appeared at the top of the stairs.

  “Darshan,” he said my name cautiously.

  “What’s going on, Wes?” I brushed past Alessia, taking the stairs two at a time until I was standing in front of him. I could feel Alessia coming up behind me, and for reasons I didn’t understand, I was glad she was there. I didn’t know what had happened, but it was something I wasn’t going to like. I could just tell.

  “It’s Wren,” Wesley spoke.

  “What about Wren?” I shoved around him and strode towards her room. “Is she okay?” I lifted my hand to knock on the door and noticed it was ajar. I pushed it open and found the room empty. The bed was unmade and all her things were still there, but she wasn't. I turned and looked first at Wesley and then Alessia. “Where the hell is she?”

  “She’s gone, Dar,” Alessia spoke first, but Wesley shot her a look, and she snapped her mouth shut.

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand. I just saw her here a few hours ago. Where would she go?”

  “We don’t know,” Wesley admitted. “But she’s disappeared, and we think it was Misha who took her.”

  “Begin.”

  My voice held an air of boredom as it echoed through the room. The two students at the front of the class reacted as if it were an order, which it was. Crossing my arms, I strolled in lazy circles around the edge of the classroom. My classroom. I’d been teaching for almost two months at a Psi boarding school most humans didn’t know existed. It was my last class of the day, and my current group of students sat silently at their desks. It was so quiet I could hear the ticking of the clock hanging on the wall at the front of the room. It was a mixed bunch of kids. All my classes were. Students at the Psi schools weren’t put into classes according to age but skill. This class had the strongest tendencies for mind manipulation at the school.

  Today we were having a competition, because what’s life without a little rivalry? I was the youngest teacher at the school, and while not all the teachers appreciated my methods, my kids seemed to respond and learn well from them. And the fact that they
were learning seemed to matter more to the headmaster than how they were learning. Today I was pitting the students against one another. They were taking turns using their powers to enter the other’s mind with the grand goal of making the other person scratch their nose. The one who got the other to scratch their nose first was the winner, and the scratcher was obviously the loser.

  I watched as a lanky fifteen-year-old boy named Griff faced off with tiny eleven-year-old Sasha. Griff’s brow was slick with sweat and his face was contorted like he was about to take a shit. It was a student who had pointed out the ‘shit face,’ and I’d given him my best hardass teacher glare, but I’d laughed on the inside.

  Sasha looked completely relaxed. She sat with her hands on her knees, her shoulders loose, and her eyes hidden behind the thick fringe of her Dora-the-Explorer-style hair. I knew this was personal for her. Sasha was a little different than most of the other girls I taught. She was tiny for her age, and instead of looking eleven, she looked closer to eight or nine. She was shy and usually only spoke when she had something worth saying. Usually whatever she had to say was… dark. Not dark like someone contemplating mutilating the neighbor’s cat, but dark like someone who had a tired soul from living too much life in too few years.

  Sasha bit the inside of her cheek, causing the scarring that took up most of the left side of her face to flex. That was another thing that made her different. The burn scar that took up the entire left half of her face and the milky color of her blind eye. I wasn’t sure where the scarring or blindness had come from, and since she hadn’t offered that kind of information, it hadn’t seemed like any of my business. But other students at the school didn’t seem to think the same. That scar, along with her shyness, had made her a prime target for bullies. Bullies like Griff.

  I’d gotten after Griff more times than I could count. He took every opportunity he could find to try to intimidate or belittle Sasha. The last time I’d had to intervene, he and a couple of other boys had come to class with rather elaborate makeup jobs that had made their faces look similar to hers. He was a pathetic little jerk. Sasha hadn’t reacted to the makeup; in fact, she rarely reacted to their taunts at all. But I could tell it bothered her by the way she gnawed on the inside of her cheek every time Griff was nearby.

  It had been a couple of minutes since I’d told them to begin, and I knew that Sasha could have easily entered Griff’s mind by now if she’d wanted to. She was my shining star student after all. My own mind control abilities almost paled compared to hers… almost. As a matured Psi, my powers were still stronger, but I’d never been as strong as she was at such a young age. It was… fascinating. She would be far stronger than I was when she reached maturity.

  I cocked my head as the entire class waited silently for something to happen. Maybe letting these two pair off had been cruel. Not for Sasha, but for—

  Griff’s fist suddenly went flying into his face, smashing his nose with a very satisfying crunch. Griff’s muffled scream echoed through the room, and the entire class roared as they leapt to their feet. Blood gushed from his nose, and the sharp tang of iron filled the room.

  My lips twitched in silent amusement, and I bit back a laugh.

  Griff was holding his face in his hands. Blood seeped through his fingers and dripped onto the school crest sewn on the front of his navy sweater vest. He was staring at Sasha over his hands like he was about to piss himself. Maybe he was. I definitely doubted he would taunt her anytime soon.

  “Griff, go see the healer.” Pushing off the wall I’d been leaning against, I strode to the front of the room. “Everyone else, sit back down.”

  “What about her?” Griff pointed a bloody finger in Sasha’s direction. “She broke my fucking nose!”

  “Language,” I chastised, shuffling papers around on my desk. “And it would seem Sasha’s taught us all a very valuable lesson. Size and age don’t matter with something like mind manipulation. Just because you are older or bigger doesn’t mean you will have the upper hand, so never underestimate your opponent. Got that, Griff?”

  Griff’s eyes widened, and he opened his mouth like he was about to argue.

  I lifted a hand. “Think twice about what you’re about to say.” I narrowed my eyes at him, and he shut his mouth. “Get to the healer before I make you sit through the rest of class with a broken nose.”

  Griff stormed from the room, slamming the door hard enough that the windows rattled. Sasha rose from the chair she’d been in and used the sleeve of her sweater to smear away a stray dot of blood on her cheek.

  I felt a surge of pride watching her walk towards her desk at the back of the room. Well done, Sasha. I pressed the words towards her mind.

  Sasha showed little reaction to my words as she sat down, but there was the smallest of smiles perched on her lips, and I knew she’d heard me.

  I leaned my hands on my desk and looked at the rest of the class. “So, who wants to go next?”

  It was the end of the day when I pulled the SUV into the garage and cut the engine. I leaned my head back against the headrest and closed my eyes. God, I was tired. After Sasha had made Griff punch himself in the face, the other students had been buzzing with energy and we’d never gotten back on track. Teaching was exhausting, especially with kids like Griff getting on my last nerve.

  My mentor Wesley had insisted on the teaching job. He said it would hone my leadership skills. According to him, if I could learn to teach and lead eleven to seventeen-year-olds, then dealing with adults should be a piece of cake. But in all honesty, as crazy and hormonal as my students could be, they were way less annoying than adults. Sure, some of my students could be frustrating, but I didn’t really mind teaching. I was actually pretty good at it, and my students were definitely improving in their abilities. Most of the kids even seemed to like my classes, and if I were honest, I liked my students, especially kids like Sasha.

  But teaching wasn’t where my focus was supposed to be. It wasn’t what my father had been training me for most of my life, or what I’d been working so hard for now. Maybe if my father had been alive and still the Caretaker of our district, I could have enjoyed teaching. I could have spent the next ten years being teacher of the decade before it was my time to take over the Caretaker position from him. But he wasn’t alive, and I needed to become Caretaker now. Plus, if I wasn’t spending all my time at the school, I might have been able to help find Wren or Misha by now.

  At that irritating thought, I shoved open the car door and slid out. The hard steel of the key bit into my palm as I squeezed my hand into a fist. Lately, thinking about Wren or Misha was always followed by anger and frustration. It had been a month since they’d both disappeared, a long and frustrating month. I couldn’t decide what was worse, missing Wren and worrying about her safety, or wondering why my best friend had been the one to disappear with her.

  I slammed the car door and strode to the wall where I hung the car keys on their assigned hook. After Wren had gone missing, I’d spent the next two days searching for her until Wesley told me to stand down. He seemed positive Wren and Misha had left together of their own free will, but he’d never shared how he knew that with me. It wasn’t for lack of asking. But he had been strangely tight-lipped about the whole thing. I wasn’t so sure they left on their own. It didn’t make any sense that Misha would up and take off with Wren. It made even less sense that Wren would leave with him of her own free will. She barely knew him. Someone had to have taken them.

  Taking a deep breath, I climbed the stairs from the garage and pushed open the door that led into the sweeping foyer of the house. It was quiet, and no one was milling around like they were most days.

  There’d been more Psi coming and going lately. Misha’s disappearance had been a security nightmare and had left a tangible tension at the house. Wesley had relied on Misha, and Misha had been privy to a lot of internal information. Now that he was gone, everyone else seemed to be questioning each other’s loyalties… or lack thereof. I could
n’t help but wonder if my closeness with Misha was the reason I hadn’t been offered the Caretaker position. I’d wanted to be a part of the investigation to find Wren and Misha; in reality, it should’ve been part of my job as future Caretaker, but Wesley had refused. Instead, he sent me day after day to the Psi boarding school, and I could feel the Caretaker position slipping through my fingers.

  “Darshan?” A voice cut across the open space, and I lifted my head to see the housekeeper, Tully, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. The hearty scent of meat and something baking drifted towards me. Tully was more like a surrogate grandmother. We had grown up with her, and I couldn’t recall a time when she wasn’t a part of our lives.

  “Hi, Tully.” I did my best to hide the weariness around my smile, but the way her hazel eyes narrowed at me told me she saw right through me like she always did.

  “Long day?” She crossed her arms. Her cheeks were flushed and her short grey hair was mussed like it often was after she spent hours in the kitchen.

  “No longer than any other.” I shrugged.

  She cocked her head. “Why don’t you come to the kitchen? I just made a big pot of beef barley soup and some cheese scones.”

  “Sure.” I nodded. “Maybe a little later. I need to change and have half a minute to myself first.”

  “I’ll leave a helping set out in the fridge for you,” she said, knowing full well that once I got up to my room, I wouldn’t be down anytime soon. “I’ll also leave you a big piece of the raspberry cake I made.” She winked.