Order of the Omni: A Supernatural Romantic Suspense Novel (The Immortalies Book 1) Penny Knight (100 best novels of all time TXT) 📖

I can see Topher looking at me out the corner of my eye, but my gaze is fixed to the ship as it sails out toward the ocean.

If she can hear my thoughts, oh, that means she hears everything. Crap, what if she can hear something I don’t want her to? Like me making her an online dating profile last week? Shit, I just did.

I slug his right arm.

“Ouch!” he cries out.

“Serves you right. A dating profile? Really, Topher?” I shake my head.

“I’m going back downstairs in case I get myself in any more trouble.” He just about sprints back to the manhole. Not before he spews more secrets while he flees. Accidentally letting it slip what really happened to my pants.

“They were my favourite pair of jeans!” I yell out to him as his mind keeps spewing confessions.

“I’m sorry. I can’t stop thinking,” he yells running down the ladder. Then disappears along with his thoughts, the more distance he puts between us.

I rub my eyes, trying to not get angry at him. It’s not his fault I can hear his thoughts. Although that doesn’t make it right for him to keep things from me. I don’t want him to have to run off every time I’m around. Even being a loner, that’s a depressing, isolating life ahead of me.

My phone rings in my room, Topher’s ringtone. I race to the ladder and jump down, straight to my dresser and answer it.

“Are you angry at me?” he asks.

“Yes, no, not really.”

“Can you hear me think through the phone?”

Good question.

“I don’t know, think of something,” I say. There’s a short pause.

“Did you hear that?”

“No, nothing.” I sigh in relief.

“Good,” he says. “I am going into work today. I think you should stay home and rest.”

“You mean you don’t want me around?” It’s sad, but I can understand. I would hate it if someone could hear what I was thinking.

“Yes, but that’s not the only reason. It was a rough day for you yesterday. You need a day off.” I really could use a day or five to recover. Plus, it’s not that appealing being around other people, especially after what happened leaving the hotel. “I have to give Tony the footage from yesterday. It should be enough.”

I had forgotten about our assignment. Topher’s right, he needs to go in. Tony lives for his company. It’s surprising he hasn’t rocked up at our door last night wanting to know where we stood on the case. Normally I would do a quick check in with him.

I hear rummaging in the kitchen. “Ok, sounds good. Hey, put on a pot of coffee for me while you’re there,” I say.

“Already have, E. Oh wait,” he pauses. “We have a few messages.” He presses the play button on our old school answering machine and I hear a familiar Prussian accent.

“Elita,” he says. “You better come down here right now.”

I reach my old hometown of Tanunda in record time. Just under forty-five minutes but it still wasn’t fast enough for me. I was worried every second of the drive. Franziska had sounded panicked. She never asks for me to return to her so abruptly. Something must be wrong.

The large white stone arch welcoming travellers to the small town feels smaller than I remembered. When I arrived on a charter bus as a child, I thought this place was huge. The main street, filled with small businesses, cars lining the road, townspeople and tourists huddled at the small cafés. Everything was unknown, I hadn’t even known where I was going to be living, or who I was going to be dropped off to.

Navigating the familiar streets, I pass through the town onto Smyth Road. I see the steel rusted letterbox, marking the entrance to the first place I ever felt safe. I slow the car when entering the pebbled road, winding through the dead grass and stale trees. Summer has always been dangerous in the hills, water was sparse and the normal luscious greenery wilted away. As I pull up to the front of Franziska’s house, I notice the twenty metre clearing circling her house and the clear and pruned surrounding area as always for this time of year. Already prepared for the bushfire season.

The first summer I was here, Franziska pulled me out the front, waved her hands and said, “One spark,” in broken English. “Poof. All gone,” she clicked her fingers for effect. That is when she put me to work, and we both spent a week getting the house ready. Clearing the space around the house and on the street just in case firefighters needed to access the area. We cleaned the gutters and hosed them down once a week, pruned all the trees and removed the dry shrubbery. Anything we could do to be proactive against the threats. I worked tirelessly wanting to please her, I wanted to make sure she didn’t leave or want me to.

The bluestone cottage stood perched on the elevated land. Franziska is waiting, sitting on the white wooden swing chair we had purchased together from the annual town fair in Tanunda when I was ten. I stop the car and race toward the old Prussian woman that had taken me in.

“Elita,” Franziska welcomes me with a warm embrace. I squeeze her tight, I have missed her. I should come back more often.

I pull back, holding her at a distance to survey her. She looks ok. Healthy. “You had me so worried!”

“Dear, you are the one that has me worried.” She pulls me in for another tight hug.

I was anxious on the drive up, wondering if I could hear her thoughts? Standing in front of her and nothing, silence follows. Maybe I couldn’t hear her thoughts, either. It’s strange, I heard the attendant at the service station when I stopped for petrol on the way out of Port Adelaide. The customers behind me waiting, too, but nothing with