The Dream Thief by Kari Kilgore (books for 10th graders txt) 📕

"We can indeed," she said. "I'm not going anywhere else tonight. I have no reason to. Six in the evening, perhaps? I'd invite you to dinner, but I have a feeling you'd decline."

"Make it seven. And dinner won't be necessary." He put the club and the syringe on the chair and held up his hands. "Will I be getting out of here with or without a fight?"

"Without. I'll inform Bess if you'll wait here for a moment."

Loretta could easily have called her guard inside, but that was far too much for Karl or anyone else who was going to live out the night to see. She stepped out onto the porch. Bess was beside her in a few seconds.

"Mr. Gilmore is leaving," she said. "There's no need to follow him. He'll be back this evening. He may be able to help solve more than one of the little problems we've been dealing with."

Loretta leaned in the door. "It's fine now, Karl. You won't be followed."

"Never even considered the possibility," he said as he walked past her.

He left without another word or a backward glance, leaving Loretta wondering if he was being sarcastic. She decided he was. Karl Gilmore pleased her more than anything or anyone had for a long while.

Chapter 15

Karl turned up the sidewalk toward home, the tense muscles in his arms and shoulders relaxing the slightest bit. If the woman or her guard were planning to attack him, they wouldn't have waited until he was so far away.

He still had no idea what was going on or what he was going to do about it, but it seemed like he was going to survive the night.

Could any of this be true, or even possible? Loretta showing up at the correct house on the correct night, and in the middle of the night dressed all in black, didn't leave much room to doubt she was involved in the pattern Karl and George had spotted. And he had to admit forcing Builders to work all night long might very well lead to insanity. Enough of them ended up at the Columns without being used like that.

He shook his head and closed his eyes for a second. That was another part he couldn't ignore even if he wanted to. What Mrs. Labine had said about the thief, about stealing, breaking everything.

If any of the rest of this turned out to be true, Loretta was the reason that poor woman was one of Karl's patients now. Who knew how many others as well? What he needed to do was turn her in, no more questions asked or answered.

Sure, that made perfect sense.

Turn her in to the soldiers who worked at Parliament. Or maybe haul her out to Stensue and turn her in to the military. Perhaps drag her out to the Columns, see if his new supervisor knew how to handle it.

Oh no, the best option had to be his own mother. After all, even if stealing from Builders wasn't inappropriate, Loretta herself believed the things she Built were. Surely a woman as highly placed at the Ministry of Decorum as Klia Gilmore would be the perfect choice.

Karl wished even more that he could talk all of this over with George, see if anything he was thinking made sense outside of his own head.

His relentless mind kept trying to turn back to what she'd offered, no matter how much Karl tried to resist, no matter how he concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as quietly as he could.

This strange woman claimed she was no Builder herself, but she could direct them. She could hijack that incredible power somehow, trick them into Building the things they most wanted. Karl knew his father, brothers, and sisters weren't free to Build whatever they wanted.

He'd known that for years, since long before any of them suspected he would be the only one with the look to lack the talent.

They Built what was sent to them, delivered in the Aether, and that was that. Some insecure and heartbroken part of him had long believed they only told him that so he would feel better about not being able to do it, to find out the truth for himself.

Assuming Builders truly had no power over what they made, that only made what Loretta was able to do that much more enticing.

Could it be possible that Karl's lack, the missing part of him that had always made him so much less than, was what let him have a power none of the rest of them did?

He clenched his fists, wishing he could dig that idea out of his brain. He'd seen suffering with his own eyes, cleaned wounds and waste with his own hands, suffered various scrapes and scratches and bruises with his own body, at least in part because of whatever Loretta did. He couldn't stand by and let her continue, much less get involved in creating more misery.

He turned the last corner toward his parents' house, looking down the street to where all this craziness had started when he first spotted Loretta. That felt like days ago.

Craziness, yes. But what if her idea about him helping her learn how to do it with less damage was possible? Used for good, Building consciously could be an incredible power for all of them.

And what if one of Karl's long-held and long-concealed ideas were true?

From his earliest days out at the Columns, he'd wondered if not Building made the insanity worse. Not being able to Build certainly had a huge impact on his own life. If these people were born with such a great ability and then forced to never use it again, that couldn't help how their minds and bodies deteriorated over time.

No one ever got better once they came under Karl's care, his or anyone else at Joffrey Columns. They only ever got worse. The one time he'd dared mentioned his idea, barely a couple