Seirs, Soul Guardians Book 5 by Kim Richardson Page A

me. Admit
it.”
    “ You’re
deranged.”
    “ You looooove me.” David
started to dance on the spot. He met Kara’s glare and his smile
disappeared. Deflated, he looked quickly away and kept
walking.
    Kara’s face brightened, and she
pressed her lips together hard to stop from laughing.
    Jenny turned around and shared a look
with Kara. Giggling, she turned to Peter. “How much further until
we reach 1185 Queen Street?”
    Peter held a rectangular metal
contraption with loose wires close to his face and examined the
tiny red bulbs. After a moment he answered. “Not much. Should be
just after the next block.”
    “ Do we know what the urgent
meeting is about?” Jenny surveyed the group anxiously, “I just hate
not knowing where we’re going, or why we’re going. I wish the
legion had given us more info.” She looked over her shoulder at an
old Asian woman arranging piles of clothes on tables at the front
of a shop.
    Kara felt anxious as she studied
Jenny’s face. She knew Jenny was on edge, and she didn’t blame her.
Jenny had changed since she had come back from the netherworld.
Kara tried repeatedly to find out what had happened. But Jenny
would snap her mouth shut and walk away. Whatever had happened to
Jenny must have been terrible. Kara dug her nails into her palms.
Payback would be bliss.
    “ We don’t know what’s
waiting for us,” continued Jenny, with more urgency in her voice.
She scratched her purple spiked hair. “There could be a crap load
of Seirs. You remember what happened the last time we went looking
for the missing kids.”
    “ Yup. We almost got our
butts whipped by our dearest fans.” David dodged a kid on a
skateboard and nearly fell. He swung his fist angrily at him and
shouted a few curse words.
    Kara waited for David to compose
himself and gave Jenny a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, this isn’t
the same. We’re meeting Santo.”
    Peter stopped suddenly, and
Kara had to jump sideways in order to avoid crashing into him. With
his mouth open, he stood staring at a large shop window. A red
stenciled sign above his head read, The
Techie Shop, Featuring Geek apparel and Merchandise for the most
gifted nerds. She could almost see the
drool forming at the sides of his mouth while he stared at the
hundreds of gadgets on display. She grabbed his jaw and closed it
gently.
    “ Come on, nerd-boy, we have
a meeting to get to.” Kara seized Peter by the arm and hauled him
away. A middle-aged couple on the sidewalk pointed at Kara and then
turned away as if they were talking about her.
    “ From what Ariel told me
after the debrief,” said Kara, keeping her eyes on Peter, “we’re
meeting in an apartment building. Santo and a few other Sensitives
are waiting for us. But we don’t know the specifics.”
    “ I don’t like it. All this
secrecy...” said David, lowering his eyes. “Smells rotten if you
ask me.”
    Kara carefully stepped over a spilled
drink of orange goo. “I agree, but we don’t really have a choice.
The Sensitives are in bad shape. We have to help them and find the
missing children.”
    “ Could be another trap,”
said David.
    “ Maybe, maybe not. It’s a
chance we have to take.”
    A lanky young man in loose clothes
caught Kara’s eye. His scowl surprised her. She looked away and
checked herself in the reflection of shop window. She looked fine,
but a feeling of dread crept into her mind like an annoying
mosquito. As she suppressed it, she caught David watching
her.
    “ What did Ariel say about
what happened to the people in that village?” asked
David.
    Kara shrugged. “She said she’d speak
to the council. She doesn’t know how Lilith was able to control the
mortals like that. You should have seen her face though; she looked
completely freaked out.”
    “ A terrified archangel
isn’t a good sign. Did she say anything else?”
    Kara rubbed her forehead. “No. But I
could sense there was something she wasn’t telling me.”
    “ Like what?” More