Category: Stories

Brooke spent the day wandering the house and browsing the internet while she waited for her father to get back to her about the potential water taxi lead, and hoping that Gary Patel wouldn’t try anything again. She browsed Jack’s collection of books – tomes on everything from software design to logic systems to biographies…

Light from the morning sun blasted into her face and Brooke woke up with a groan, turning over and putting a second pillow on her head. She was having such nice dreams, and was sleeping so soundly after rubbing another one out last night… this just wasn’t fair. As she was about to close her…

She held on tight, eyes closed because she half-expected him to kick her from him like a piece of garbage stuck to his leg. She could feel the flexing muscles under his skin, the hard tendons like cables strung up the length of his towering limb. And still she held on, pressing the whole of…

Martin was thrilled to finally hear from his daughter, though she had decided to omit several… details about what had happened over the past few days. As far as her father knew, Brooke was being treated well enough and that she didn’t fear for her safety, though progress on the case was hard coming. “That’s…

“Good morning, Miss Foster. Are you feeling better?” Amos’s genial voice sounded from the panel in the room as she lay in bed and stared out the window. Brooke turned to face the little green light and smiled gently. Aside from a few aches from Jack dropping her on the ground yesterday, she felt right…

Brooke didn’t get very far before it became a herculean struggle to keep herself afloat in the frigid sound. The otherwise tiny swells seemed enormous now as her strength was being sapped from her faster than she’d anticipated. About 150 feet from the shore, and she had to resort to flailing her numb, clothing-ladened limbs.She…

Brooke tried using her phone to contact her father, but she couldn’t get even the weakest signal here. Must be some part of the magic, she thought. Or maybe Ilyin planned things that way when he built the house. She flopped backwards down onto the bed and stared at the ceiling for a while, puzzling…

Seeing him destroy the tree had shaken her, and Brooke took to running back to the house. “He’s in one of his moods,” Amos said as it stood between the pool and the courtyard, head perked in Ilyin’s direction. “I knew asking him to talk about it would make him angry,” she said, passing the…