Right Here Waiting-Book 2 Of The Mad Mad World Series

Part 5

Our little party ended early as Nele and Khira Li had to be up early to make the first leg of their flight back to Germany. As we went our separate ways, Nele caught up to me and whispered, "Khira Li told me that you're moving to Berlin? That's great! Does Uncle Richard know?"

I looked over my shoulder to make sure Richard was still talking to Paul and Ollie and nodded. "I'm going to tell him tonight before we go to bed. I wasn't so sure about telling him yes or no till the end of this leg of the tour but I can't keep putting it off forever."

"Hey, Lilly? Paul, Ollie and I are going to hang out in Flake's room for a while and watch the game," Richard called over to me. I waved to let him know I'd heard him and turned back to talk to Nele. "I've got a surprise for him too."

"Is it what was in that little bag from the lingerie shop you spent so much time in today?" she snort-giggled.

"That and a couple more things. It's a good thing we don't have to travel tomorrow because when I get done with him..." I replied, wagging my eyebrows. "Ahem. Your father is on his way over. In case I don't get to see you before you leave, I'm very glad to have met you and Khira Li."

Nele hugged me and said, "I'm glad to have finally met you too. Between Vati and Onkle Richard, I feel like I've known you forever. When you get settled, give me a call and we'll get together and do something, just us ladies." Returning the hug, I said, "Thank you Nele. I'm going to scoot so you can talk to your father, and I have some paperwork to do before I go to bed. Have a safe flight back home."

By the time I got back to the hotel room I shared with Richard, the need to fall flat on my face and sleep was having a war with a stack of paperwork as tall as me that needed taken care of, and at the moment the need to sleep was winning. I'd been an idiot not keeping up with the various paperwork I had to do as the tour doctor which included wading my way through several kinds of insurance, both American and German. I was very glad for a fast Internet connection and several search engines; else I'd never gotten through the German forms without tearing my hair out.

Before I did anything else, I updated the journal on the changes we were still going through. Till's empathy had gotten so strong he was able to influence several thousand people at one time, which frightened everyone. We'd found that out at one tour stop where the audience was a bit rowdy and itching for a fight; Till calmed them down without breaking a sweat. When he realized what he'd done a few hours later, the panic attack he'd had was almost strong enough to influence people with no talent at all. Drawing on every fantasy novel I'd ever read, plus some things from the dusty corners of the Internet, I helped Till get his talent under control before it went wild and drove him insane. He was already one of the best front men in their music genre; a mere breath of his gift boosted that natural skill as well as his confidence. He still had his moments onstage when you could tell he would rather not be in front of thousands of screaming fans but they were getting fewer and further apart.

Flake was developing something like psychometry, where he could "read" the past of an object just by touching it. He'd been paging through an old book that Paul had found in a used bookstore one evening not long ago and suddenly yelped and shoved it aside. I'd been standing behind him, reading over his shoulder, and got a burst of fearpainbloodondeaddeaddead from him. Turning, face white and blue eyes wide, he whispered, "Someone touched this book right before they died. How do I know that? Lilly, what's going on?"

"Did this just start?" I asked, chafing his cold hands in mine and feeling the residue of what he'd felt falling through my fingers like sand. He shook his head, sending strands of bleached blonde hair wiggling out of the ponytail he'd put his hair in. "No. I noticed it a couple weeks ago when I was going through some stuff at home and came across these music scores that Paul and Ollie got me for my birthday. Whoever owned them before me lived a long, happy life. The books were in a house full of happy people."