{Tour} Atlantis Rising by Gloria Craw (Excerpt + Giveaway)

***One Wish Away Excerpt***

(At the Park)Then nodding in the direction of my mom and dad, he added, “Those aren’t your parents, are they?”

“Not my biological parents…how did you know?”

“Your parents would be our kind. They would have known it was you making the boy scratch himself like that.” He paused a moment before continuing. “If I told you there were others like you, others who could do things with their minds, would you believe me?” My answer was no and yes at the same time. He didn’t wait for an answer. “You probably never get sick,” he continued. “You likely remember all sorts of things most people don’t. I’ll bet you’re in the accelerated learning program at your school, aren’t you? Your parents and everyone else probably call you gifted.”

“Yes,” I said amazed that he knew so much.

“Humans think we’re brilliant, but it’s normal for our kind to remember, learn and understand faster than they do.”

“Our… kind,” I repeated.

His eyes met and held mine while he raised his left hand so his palm faced me. Through the space that separated us, I saw the familiar outline of the letter V in his palm. The lines were faint in my hand, barely noticeable unless you saw them every day. The lines in his hand were a deeper blue, but the shape was a perfect match.

“There’s not much difference between humans and us,” he said. “Human medicine hasn’t advanced enough to see the difference between our species. But make no mistake, the children of Atlantis are a separate people.”

At this point, a normal girl would have concluded the man was delusional. But I wasn’t normal.

“The Children of Atlantis?” I asked.

“We call ourselves the dewing,” he continued. “It’s an inside joke. Like dew on the grass in the morning, our elements are always present but seldom visible to humankind. We all have certain…abilities. I can join a mind to see emotions as clearly as words on page. This ability is fairly common. Yours is not, which makes you valuable.”

I snorted at the idea that my “itchy thoughts” were valuable to anyone.

“You don’t know what you’re capable of,” he insisted.

My mind whirled. A part of me wanted this conversation to be a figment of my imagination.

Another part of me couldn’t deny he knew way too much about me to be accidental.