Tangled Read Online Free

was no one here to break the quiet or pay attention to the run-down little house. It truly was as sorry looking as it had seemed at first glance.
    It totally didn’t fit Luc. Luc, with his perfect, nonchalantly elegant clothing, so carelessly gorgeous you knew it must have cost a fortune. Luc, with his charming, luxurious townhouse in the French Quarter, filled with art from around the world and some very nice, very potent bourbon. Luc, who made me furious and made me want him, usually within the same minute.
    Luc, who wanted the girl he believed me to be, not the girl I actually was.
    I pulled my knees to my chest and watched the windows with their twisting, flapping gingham curtains. He couldn’t expect me to sit out here forever. My teachers would mark me absent. The school would call my mom. Mom would run to my uncle. And then it was all over. Because I’d learned how to lie to my family in the last few months, keep secrets bigger and more dangerous than anything they’d ever held close. They’d taught me, after all. But when I turned up missing, my uncle would call the one person I couldn’t lie to. The person who knew me so well, he practically had a road map of my soul. Colin, who would know immediately that whoever had taken me was more magic than Mafia.
    And he would be pissed.
    I tried to envision what to tell him: Verity’s sister was attacked by magic, so I called Luc, not you, and he took me someplace hot. I glanced up, taking in the mossy vegetation and the damp, decaying scent of the air. Hot and swampy. Louisiana, I guessed. Luc’s home, though he was more suited to the glamour of New Orleans than the bayou.
    The peeling green shutters slammed against the walls. A splintering sound rent the air, and I expected to see the shack fall down, but in the silence that followed, a couple stepped around the edge of the shack. They strolled across the clearing, flames edging their path like an awards ceremony carpet, extinguishing harmlessly when they’d passed. Important people, I guessed, and the kind that wanted everyone to know it.
    The woman wore a dress the color of wine, simple lines in beautifully rumpled linen with a gauzy scarf wound around her neck. Her fingertips rested lightly on the man’s arm as he guided her across the scrubby terrain. Despite the oppressive heat, they both looked cool and fresh. The man doffed his hat as they approached, and I stood, trying to straighten my shirt. My filthy, bloodstained, slightly singed shirt. I discreetly tossed my ruined sweater behind the tree stump.
    “You must be the Vessel,” drawled the man. His skin was the color of pecans, dark and shiny, his features strong and aristocratic. “Yes?”
    I was a lot more than the Vessel. It would be nice if one of the Arcs would notice. I didn’t bother to keep the edge out of my voice. “I’m Mo Fitzgerald.”
    “The Vessel,” he said again, his expression faintly amused but his tone expectant, a bit challenging. I had the sensation I was being tested for more than just my identity.
    The woman, delicate and birdlike, with her dark hair in an elaborate chignon, tugged his arm. “Dominic,” she chided. “Of course it’s her. Who else would Luc bring here?”
    Dominic. The name stirred a whisper of memory, and I followed it back through events I’d tried to forget. Yes, Dominic cleaves to the old ways, doesn’t he? It’s certainly cost him enough, Evangeline had said, mocking and triumphant.
    I stared, mortified at the realization I’d just mouthed off to one of the most powerful people in the Arcs’ world. It was like having the president of the United States drop in on a student council meeting. Dominic DeFoudre stopping by meant that something had gone very, very wrong. “You’re Luc’s dad? He called his dad? ”
    We were in bigger trouble than I thought.

C HAPTER 4
    F athers were an area I had almost no experience with. None good, anyway. Luc’s father was a member of the Quartoren, the council