“I guess we should pick all that up. I don’t think Malcolm will have time to finish today.”
James reached out to squeeze my hand. “I’ll get everything gathered up. There was only one light left to install anyway.” He trotted over to the tool box and closed it, locking the catches with a click.
Kara and I continued toward the porch, and the sun reflected off of something in the grass. When I bent to look closer, I saw it was Malcolm’s screwdriver. I picked it up and continued inside.
I still felt a little tired, but not fall down and die exhausted anymore. My ruined dirty socks made it in the trash and I left the screwdriver on the table. Kara tapped her fingers absently against a chair back, full of nervous energy.
All I could think about was the girl in the grass. Would she live? Had I been in time? Where had the signal to find her come from? Why had I dreamed about different variations of dimensions? At least, I thought that was what the dream was trying to tell me. How had Silver been locked out of my mind? Nothing that had just happened seemed plausible or possible, but here I was.
“I don’t know either, Sister. I wish I did because I never want to feel that alone again. It was awful.”
“I promise you we’ll figure this out together, Silver.”
“You’re talking to Silver again, aren’t you?” Kara asked.
Right at the wrong moment, James came inside. “Who’s Silver?”
Silver laughed hysterically in my head. “Let’s just tell everyone today, shall we?”
To Kara, I asked, “What time is it?”
She leaned to the side and looked behind me at the digital clock on the stove. “About twelve forty p.m.”
“How long did I sleep?”
Kara held out both hands and wobbled them. “I don’t know…maybe an hour and fifteen minutes—why?”
I shrugged. “Just curious.”
James got tired of waiting for us to answer and set the toolkit plus the light boxes next to the door and stepped inside to begin unlacing his boots.
“I’ve had three run-ins with a Harris now, and I still don’t know their first names. Can you tell me about them?” I asked.
James entered the kitchen, and I heard his stomach growl.
Kara looked at her brother then at me. “I’ll make some sandwiches for lunch. Cassandra, do you want another one?”
I said, “Yes, thanks,” and Kara busied herself snagging all the desired ingredients. James sat down to rest his elbows on the table with his chin in one hand.
I didn’t think he was going to answer my question about the Harris family, but after a moment, his hand dropped from his chin. “Cora Harris is in charge of this compound’s finances—somewhat like a CFO for a corporation—so she has power over the purse strings to an extent,” he informed. “She’s a widow. Her husband died of cancer about ten years ago, and I overheard my parents talk about how Cora was a different person before that, much nicer.
“Her two children are Calvin and Corinne; both of which she lets do whatever they like, so long as it doesn’t interfere with her position on the Council. The gossip is she finds Calvin unacceptable for leadership, so she’s grooming Corinne for her Council seat, even though she isn’t the oldest. So, are you going to tell us why you ran out of the house like your feet were on fire?”
This was going to be tricky. How did I explain about a having a dream and then feeling the invisible push to find the girl in the grass?
Silver suggested, “You could always just blame it on me? Tell them I woke you up because I sensed Harris was up to no good from the Web or something.”
I thought back, “I hate to lie, Silver. It just doesn’t seem right. I guess I would rather sound like a loon.”
I focused on James again, and he had a curious bent to his brows. Perhaps Kara had a point about how I looked when Silver and I spoke.
“Maybe I should start from the beginning, James. Kara already knows some, and now you need to know, too.” I explained about chimerism and Silver.
I watched his face for a reaction with equal parts dread and hope. James was too quiet. I made myself busy getting us all glasses of ice water. It was too nerve-wracking to sit and wait while someone decided whether or not they were going to believe you, especially if you happened to care what that person thought.
Kara almost ran into me as we both turned from the counter at the same time, me with an armful of drinks, her with three plates of messy sandwiches. I let her go first since I was afraid all of our food was about to end up on the floor. Once we were all settled, I dared a glance at James. He stared at me as he bit his lower lip in thought.
I put my hands on my legs and rubbed the sweat from my palms onto my pants. If he didn’t say something soon I was, going to throw my sandwich at his head.
Kara looked at James then to me and gave a dramatic sigh. “James, snap out of it and say what’s on your mind. You’re making Cassandra nervous with all of your thinking.”
At the word 'thinking,' she waved her hand in a circle over the top of her head then leaned over her plate and took a big bite of her sandwich. A piece of mayonnaise-covered tomato squeezed out the side to fall with a wet splat.
James finally seemed to come back to himself and his eyes refocused. “So you’re telling me you share your body with a twin sister and she’s the one who found Kara in the Web?”
My tension ratcheted up a few notches at his detached tone. “Yes.”
At the same time, Silver put in sarcastically. “He’s an utter genius; he is.”
“Not to be rude, but have you spoken to Maggie about this? It could be a PTSD reaction from your captivity. The mind can find ways to cope when confronted with too much stress.”
His face was drawn long with an expression of concern, and I wanted to slap him. I wasn’t entirely sure if that was my reaction or Silver’s.
Kara spoke up in my defense. “She’s not crazy, James. I met Silver in the Web while you were outside putting up the lights with Malcolm. How do you explain my physical changes? My birthmark is gone. My eyes are a different color. All of my scars have disappeared. Stop trying to be so rational and scientific. We’re Weavers. Everything we do in the Web is instinctual.”
James turned instantly angry. “You went into the Web without me? What were you thinking? I just got you back, Kara!”
I slammed my hand down on the table and shouted, “Enough! Don’t you yell at her just because you’re worried! Silver promised me Kara won’t ever get lost again. She’s taken precautions. If you aren’t willing to believe me when I’m telling you the truth, then there isn’t much point in continuing this conversation. Is there?”
I didn’t have anything else brilliant to say so I ate and stared at the cabinets while I chewed to avoid seeing his face.
Kara gave a disgusted grunt that was almost a growl, and I heard a smacking sound like someone got hit.
“To be such a smart person, you are such a freaking moron sometimes!”
James yelped. “Hey, you just got mayonnaise on my arm!”
“Are you sure we need him?” Silver asked. “I know you like him, but he’s a tool.”
“Shut up, Silver. I’m not in the mood.”
Not until it got silent did I realize I had said that out loud.
James squinted his eyes at me and cocked his head. “Okay, say I believe you about Silver…then I need to know why my sister’s body is different. What does restoring balance to her soul and mind have to do with the changes to her body?”
When I breathed in it felt like a weight was on my heart. “In a nutshell, Silver noticed some things in her physiology that would have led to cancer later on in life, so she copied parts of my DNA and replaced the bad bits with my good bits. It may be why her eye color is different. It may be why her skin changed. I’m not certain.”
James straightened in his chair. “The fact that what you did should be impossible aside, what right did you have to mess around in my sister’s DNA? What if what you
did causes more harm than good?”
I opened my mouth to tell him I had made the same statement to Silver, but Kara beat me to it.
“I was dying, James. I may have lasted a little bit longer as I was, but I was dying. I could feel pieces of me floating away, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Cassandra and Silver saved me. I don’t care if what they did causes problems down the road because I’m here right now with you. That’s all that matters to me.”
Kara stretched to rest her right hand on James’ forearm and then reached across the table with her left to touch my hand with her fingers. I shifted my legs under the table, uncomfortable with the amount of intense emotion displayed between them. As I drew my bare foot toward my chair, I hit James in the leg with my toe. An electric charge went through my body, bringing with it a pleasure so intense it was almost painful.
The feeling made me freeze, and Silver whistled in my head. “What was that!”
My eyes rose to look first at a frozen puzzled James, then to a flushed and panting Kara. I let go of Kara’s hand and rubbed my thigh over and over. I could still feel an echo of the sensation in my fingertips.
James came to himself and said rather breathlessly, “Did you just do that?”
I could feel my whole countenance turn a bright flaming red from the blood rushing to my head. “Maybe.”
Kara laughed out loud. “That was great! Let’s try again!”
James and I scowled in her direction.
She squealed back incredulously. “Are you guys serious? You can’t not want to try that again. It felt so good. I feel like a million bucks.”
I drew my limbs in as far from the Lees as I could. “Change of subject. James, you asked why I ran out of the house earlier. The answer is, I don’t know. I was asleep having a dream then I woke up with an urgent need to run. When I got on the porch, I couldn’t figure out which way I needed to go until I saw some movement outside the fence and then I ran. When I got there, something moved in the grass, and Harris was stalking it, uh her.”
My voice was even as I entered a rhythm in the retelling. The fear I’d held inside for the injured girl released a tiny bit as if every word had power. “Now you know everything I know.”
“What did the girl look like?” James asked.
“Hard to say, she was in really rough shape, though. Her face looked sunburned or beaten. Mud or dried blood covered her. I asked Gerome to tell me how she is; he said he would.” I shuffled my feet under the table again but made sure not to touch James.
“Do you think she’s one of the missing girls from town?” Kara asked.
“Could be, but I don’t see how finding her by the compound could be good for us. I think Gerome told Malcolm to call nine-one-one, and I get the feeling Cora Harris was none too happy about it.” I motioned to James’ sandwich and said, “You better eat that before it gets soggy.”
James looked down obviously lost in thought. He wanted to ask me another question I could tell. I intentionally ignored him and focused all of my attention on eating. This was a strategy I couldn’t take credit for since I had learned it from my aunt and uncle just recently.
When you find yourself unsure of what to do or say next, distract the other party with something normal and eventually the moment will pass. We all ate as the wind grew stronger outside the house. It sounded like another storm could be blowing in, and I worried about the girl, hoping they had covered her up so she wouldn’t be cold. It was a silly thought because she was probably already on the way to the hospital. When we were all finished eating, I rose, gathered the dirty plates, and carried them over to the sink. I noticed the stove’s digital clock read one fifteen p.m.
“James, did you need to run your errand still?” I hated how weak and hesitant my voice sounded when I asked the question. Vulnerability was for the birds. Maybe it was better if James and I stayed away from one another.
Kara popped out of her seat in her Kara way and blurted, “I have to pee.”
She made eyes at James and then in my direction after which she proceeded to smack him on the back of the head as she passed him. I very much doubted she needed to use the bathroom. Even I wasn’t that dense.
I decided to clean off the dishes to distract myself as I heard the bathroom door click shut. I could hear James move at the table, but I didn’t turn around.
His voice was right next to me when he asked, “Do you need me to dry?”
I almost jumped out of my skin. This whole thing was ridiculous, and I decided I would say so. “James, I’m not sure whatever it is we keep doing is going to work. You apparently think I’m nuts, and I’ve got too much…I don’t know, just too much whatever right now for anything with you. Besides, as everyone keeps telling me, I’m only thirteen and apparently that’s too young for…whatever this is.”
I handed James a wet plate, and he grabbed a cloth off the countertop to begin drying it.
I wasn’t sure if he was going to respond, but he put the plate down and dumped the drying cloth on top of it in a heap. Hands immersed in the running water, I almost dropped the wet dish when his fingers curled in the crook of my elbow. James had an intense look in his eyes as he turned off the tap and took the dish out of my nerveless hands.
“I may have hurt your feelings by expressing doubt when you felt vulnerable, but I’m not the kind of person who will ever be afraid to tell you what’s on my mind. Would it have been better if I lied? What if I’m right, and you do have post-traumatic stress disorder or even multiple personality disorder? Does Maggie know any of what you told me yet?”
I sighed. “She will tonight when I mend her nose.”
James looked me square in the eyes and said, “Just like that, huh? You’re going to ‘fix’ Maggie and tell her about Silver then everything will be hunky-dory?”
“What would you suggest, James? Do you want me to pretend I can’t do the things I can do?”
“No, that’s not what I want or what I meant. I don’t know what I’m saying. You bend a person to the limits, you know? First you hit Malcolm in the chest at the infirmary with enough force to make him catch his breath, and now you tell me you can bring lost souls back from the Web, meddle in another person’s DNA, and heal people? We won’t even get into the girl in the grass incident or chimerism. How am I supposed to be handling this, Cassandra? I’ve got Kara to mind and no parents in sight. You may only be thirteen, but I’m only fifteen. A lot of people think I’m too young to take care of Kara by myself. I’m doing it because I don’t have a choice.”
I threw the sponge at the sink and put both of my hands on my hips. “So I’m too much for you and you don’t need all my mess, is that it?”
James cupped my cheek as he ran a thumb over my lower lip and sparked a slow burn low in my gut. His voice was rough as he mumbled, “I don’t know what I think.”
The electric tingle was back on every part of my face James touched. I couldn’t function coherently while his skin was in contact with mine. I tugged his wrist down then dropped his arm as quickly as I could.
“I guess that’s my answer then.” I turned to the sink and started to wash the plate again, determined to ignore him altogether.
Kara swung out of the bathroom into the hall with a hand on the doorframe and saw my stony expression. She looked at her brother in exaggerated disgust. “You are such a…boy!”
He snorted. “Somebody has to be the adult around here, Kara.”
“You two should probably head out if you’re going to get groceries or whatever.” Kara cast a sidelong worried glance at me but didn’t argue, which was a relief. James sighed, and began putting on his boots.
I listened to the wind howl and realized Kara still didn’t have a coat. I suggested, “Kara, why don’t I lend you something warm to wear.”
I turned off the tap and dried my hands off with the dish towel then headed to my room. The sound my bare feet made on the wood floor almost covered up Kara’s soft sock footsteps as she followed me.
The sky outside my bedroom window had turned a light orange color and plant debris plastered the glass, but no rain fell. I opened my closet door and started to push my clothes side to side on their hangers, not paying attention to the here and now.
Kara put a hesitant hand my shoulder before she said, “Hey, I’m not sure anything of yours would fit me. Don’t worry about it. I’ll survive.”
I wiggled from under her touch. “We’ll look in Maggie’s closet then. Too big is better than nothing.”
I started to go into the hall with Kara on my heels, but it didn’t seem right for her to enter my aunt and uncle’s private space without permission. I turned around and said, “Wait out here.”
She frowned but obeyed. My aunt’s chest of drawers yielded a thick black sweater. The thing would swallow Kara and seem like a dress. It was the best I could do.
Kara held my hand and spoke in a low voice, “Don’t be mad at me because of James, okay? I do believe you, and I don’t think you’re suffering from a mental disorder. Don’t be too mad at James either if you can help it. When he’s worried, he turns super analytical. And don’t think I’ve forgotten that zap at the table either. I want to know what that was, Cassandra.”
I slipped free of Kara’s grasp and flexed my fingers against the electric sensation. “I’m not mad at you. If I knew what that was at the table earlier, I would tell you, but I don’t.”
Kara pulled the sweater over her head. I was right, it did look like a dress and the sleeves drooped over her hands by about five inches. She held up her hands and eyeballed the hanging sleeves then looked to me with raised eyebrows, and I laughed. The short bark of laughter startled me, and I covered my mouth to muffle the sound. Kara rotated her hands in circles, sending the extra material swinging like the broken propellers of a prop plane and giggled.
James called from the entryway, “Let’s go, Kara before it gets much worse outside.”
Kara crinkled her eyes, and I smirked at her reaction as we both walked out into the living room. James was standing impatiently by the front door, all business and ready to leave.
Chimera (The Weaver Series Book 1) Page 19