“Thanks, Andrew, for that rousing show of solidarity.”
Andrew smirked. “Anytime.”
I shook my head, but I couldn’t help but match Andrew’s smile. I knew that he was allowing himself to be Person Andrew instead of Soldier Andrew for my benefit, and that spoke to the strength of our friendship. Even if he had been letting that side of himself show more and more since he and Elaine started dating, he was still careful about it in public or in front of people he didn’t know really well. So I knew he was making an effort to make me feel better, even in front of Tara and Theresa, and I appreciated it.
“Besides,” Elaine put in, “we don’t know what the specifics are if the prophecy is proven to be true. I make it a point never to let Time dictate my life.”
“No kidding,” I said.
Elaine grinned at me. “It’s absolutely worth it,” she swore, though her tone was probably sharper than she meant it to be. I knew she wasn’t directing that sharpness my way—she was only expressing her anger with Time—so I didn’t say anything about it. But that force was still there in the way she held herself straighter and tipped her chin up. “If I can fight Time, I can fight fate.”
“So you think the prophecy says we’re going to lose this war, too?” Aaron asked, one eyebrow raised.
Elaine pursed her lips as she turned Aaron’s way and then slowly shook her head. “That’s not what I said,” she replied.
“But you’re trying to fight fate,” Aaron reasoned. “Doesn’t that mean you think fate wants you to lose?” He held up one hand before Elaine could say anything further. “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I’m just saying that for someone who doesn’t put stock in prophecies, you’re sure putting a lot of stock in prophecies.”
Elaine bit her lip, and I snickered, knowing no one could argue with Aaron when he had such a good point. I had made Elaine’s exact expression myself many times while Aaron and I had been living on the streets together. He had a way of saying exactly what I didn’t want him to say and cutting through my own smoke screens—so of course he’d do the same to Elaine.
Finally, Elaine shook her head and let out a breath of a laugh. “Wouldn’t you do the same thing?” she asked Aaron. “If you knew about a prophecy concerning something you’ve spent your whole life fighting for, wouldn’t you at least listen and worry about it?”
Aaron shrugged. “Hey, if I knew something like that, yeah, I’d be worried. So maybe you should stop acting like you aren’t.”
For a long moment, Elaine simply stared at Aaron, unable to come up with anything she could say in response, not when he was so right—again—but she hated being wrong, too.
Theresa broke the silence by clearing her throat and turning my way. “You didn’t come down here just to hear my sister’s prophecy,” she said. “Tony was telling me about the issues you’ve been having with what your father did to your mind.”
I nodded quietly. “I’ve been working on it with my friends, Lila and Sarah,” I explained. “We’ve been able to chip away at pieces of memories, but so far, the biggest gains we’ve made were with the help of a double agent.” When Theresa looked surprised, I shrugged. “Yeah, I know. But he did help. He marked all my memories so that I know that if I’m surrounded by a smoky haze, I’m probably not in the present reality.”
“A trail of breadcrumbs,” Theresa said, leaning forward, showing her unconscious curiosity with her body language alone.
I leaned forward to match her and dropped my voice lower. “It’s not much,” I admitted. “Even if I know I’m stuck in my memory, it seems like my father and brother always pick memories that I want to get lost in, things that I want to know. And as much as I hate to admit it, with a trap like that, I’m not as likely to fight back.”
Theresa nodded slowly. “That makes perfect sense,” she said. “It’s not a trap unless it’s hard to get out of.”
“The frustrating part is that I can’t get this spell to show me the memories I want to find without my father or brother dangling them in front of me,” I admitted. “I barely remember my mother aside from the vague things my father said about her—or pieces that I told other people in the past. I don’t even remember much about the family my father used against me, but I know I had other family before them too.”
“You will understand one day, but things are never given to you, Balance. Charity is your poison, and your thirst for knowledge a weapon to be used against you. To understand is more important than to know,” Tara said softly, breaking into the conversation with a serene look that seemed to completely ignore the questioning ones the rest of us wore.
Except Theresa. She had obviously been dealing with this kind of pronouncement from her sister often enough that she took it in stride, even nodding along. “She has a point,” she said, turning her attention back to me. “If you’re defined by your curiosity and kindness, King William would design the trap to use those things against you.”
“I already knew that,” I said, looking between the two sisters with a frown. “I know my father tries to use everything good in my life and turn it against me. I just want to know how to get rid of his influence.”
Theresa let out her breath before she extended a hand to me. “Then we should get down to work. You know what’s at stake now, and there’s no point in moping about it.”
I regarded her hand carefully. “I know,” I said softly. “I wasn’t trying to cause drama. It was just—”
“I wasn’t criticizing you,” Theresa promised. “I was trying to offer my help.”
“Sorry.” I brushed my hair behind my ear. “I’m still processing.”
“You have every right to be emotional. Your father hurt you,” Theresa said, her tone gentle.
“So hurt him back,” Elaine put in, a sharp light in her expression that spoke to how badly she wanted to win this war. That light was part of the reason I’d joined the Rendezvous in the first place—I could see how much Elaine believed in her cause and in her people, and I wanted to help.
Theresa shot a smile Elaine’s way as well before she turned to me and once again extended her hand. “I’d like to take a look in your mind. I promise I won’t touch anything or change anything yet. I just want to understand the extent of the spell for myself and not from secondhand accounts.”
At first, I hesitated. I knew that Tony used to be married to her, but now, she had a new family and a new life that neither of us knew anything about. People could change so much in so little time; I knew that from experience. Not to mention I’d definitely bonded more with Tara than I had with Theresa, which didn’t help with my initial trepidation.
But on the other hand, now that I had that prophecy ringing in my head, I felt angrier, somehow. Robbed of my chance to choose my fate. And if Theresa could help me fight against my father’s influence—even if she couldn’t help me fight against Time’s path for me—then I wanted to get down to business.
So, finally, I nodded, took Theresa’s hand, and closed my eyes.
Chapter 6: I Wasn’t Always Scared of Water
Theresa’s methods felt different, somehow, to what Ryan and I had done when he’d walked into my mind to help me. Then, my mind had already been cracked open by multiple intrusions from Christopher and my father, and Ryan had simply pulled me into my own mind with him.
This time, Theresa gave me more of a choice in the matter. This time, she seemed to simply open the way for me, and I could feel an almost gentle tug as she invited me to join her.
In the moments before I entered my own mind, I couldn’t help but smile in the physical world. It was nice to be given a choice, especially when that hadn’t been the case for so long when it came to my mind.
As I walked through my mind, I recognized the swirling yellow form of Lila before she took the shape of a person and walked alongside me to where Theresa was already standing in front of the gray monolith that represented my mind’s interpretation of the memory block. As Lila and I watched, she ran her hand
s across the surface of the monolith, pausing especially over the places where Lila and I had carved out what memories we could.
“You’ve made a lot of progress,” Theresa said.
I shrugged. “I’ve had help,” I said, gesturing to Lila, who turned a slightly darker shade of yellow in an approximation of a blush.
“That makes a difference,” Theresa agreed. She paused to give both of us an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry. We have the benefit of time. As I understand it, the markers Ryan left behind were just a quick solution with what little opportunity you had. Unless you have somewhere else to be, we have time to do so much more.”
“I don’t exactly want to be hidden away for too long,” I clarified. “I still want to fight and do what I can to stop my father.”
Theresa nodded. “I know. Tony’s the same way.”
I bit my lip, but since we were in my mind, I couldn’t easily temper my responses. We were treading on my every thought and memory, and while my conscious mind processed what was happening as physical, the truth of the experience was all mental—and that made it hard to censor myself. “What happened between you and Tony, anyway?”
Theresa paused, one hand still raised to rest on the monolith.
“Sorry,” I said quickly. “Sorry. I wouldn’t have asked that out loud if we weren’t in my mind.”
“No, it’s alright,” Theresa said, even if her tone and her smile were both tighter than before my outburst. “I’m sure you’ve been sitting on that question for a while.”
I nodded, knowing I couldn’t deny it or take it back now that my thoughts were out there. “It’s just that Tony is one of the best friends I have—”
“And you want to know how anyone could leave him,” Theresa finished for me. She paused for a long time, obviously thinking over her answer in a way that I couldn’t when we were in my mind. (I still thought that was incredibly unfair—that I had to be an open book while any visitors to my mind got to think over their answers and responses.) “I had to protect my sister,” Theresa said at last. “King William wanted her dead so she couldn’t tell anyone the prophecy. And Tony. . . .” She smiled sadly. “Tony was one of King Peter’s guards. I knew he wouldn’t leave Peter, but I also knew we wouldn’t be safe if we stayed with the old king, not when Elaine was gone and we saw no hope for any rebellion that early in the transition of power.”
I frowned at that. “I’m not sure I understand.”
Theresa’s smile turned somehow sadder. “Tony couldn’t leave the king. He had only just managed to rise up through the ranks, and that position—and Peter’s trust—meant everything to him. So when I told him I was running, he asked me to stay with him and the others loyal to Peter. We argued, and I left.”
“I can’t imagine Tony arguing.”
Theresa laughed. “I know,” she said. “He’s always been that way. He’s so full of light and life that it’s hard to imagine him disagreeing so vehemently with anyone. He surprised me too.” She shook her head. “We decided he would stay with Bianca and protect the king, and I would take Tara and run. I don’t think either of us expected to be apart for this long, but. . . .” She trailed off. “Well. War leaves its marks on everyone.”
I stared at Theresa for a long time. I couldn’t imagine having to face that kind of decision, especially when the more I learned about my family, the more I felt protective of them. If I’d been faced with a choice between risking the life of someone I loved and staying with the rest of my family, I wasn’t sure I would have chosen differently, either.
After all, I’d given myself up to save Angelica, hadn’t I?
Still, the next question tumbled out of my lips before I could stop it. “And Santo?”
Theresa closed her eyes, but when she opened them again, her expression clearly said that she’d been expecting the question. “I fell in love with a human here,” she admitted softly. “The longer the war went on, the longer Tony and I were apart, the more obvious it became that neither of us was going to budge. Before I met Enrique, I had already written to Tony and released him from any obligations to me. I dissolved our marriage—but not because of someone else. We had gone our separate ways long before I even considered falling in love again. I don’t want you to think poorly of Santo or his father.”
“I don’t,” I assured her quickly, though I found myself smiling. “A human, huh?”
Theresa looked like she was startled into smiling as well. “Is that so surprising?”
“It is, actually.”
Theresa smiled a little more. “Not here,” she said. “Not everywhere. There are still so many places in the world where humans and witches aren’t as sharply divided as King Peter and his family believe they are. Just because some parts of the world killed every Halfsie they could get their hands on doesn’t mean that division and hatred occurred worldwide.”
“Yeah, I keep trying to get the witches in the Rendezvous to stop acting like humans are bad news,” I said.
Theresa smirked. “Well, I wish you luck,” she said before she turned back to the monolith. “But as my sister would say, let’s not focus on what happened in the past when the future still needs writing.” She paused and chuckled to herself. “Oh, that doesn’t quite work. We are focusing on the past. . . .”
“I know what you mean,” I assured her.
Theresa smiled and then gestured to the monolith. “You’ve been chipping away at this huge block, and that’s a good way to look at the problem,” she said slowly. “But I’d like to try to get to the center of it and break it down from the inside out. Let’s crack it wide open; it’ll be easier to chip away at the rubble than at one big block.”
“Makes sense,” I agreed. “But how, exactly, do we do that?”
“I need to pierce the block with something shattering,” Theresa said, pacing the perimeter of the monolith. “You said that the memories Christopher and your father have been peeling off have been the ones that you want to stay in and remember. Maybe we need to break it open with something you don’t want to remember.”
“I don’t know,” I said—and not just because I was nervous about pursuing darker memories (though that was definitely a big, big part of my hesitation) but because I had enjoyed remembering my old family. “One of the first things I remembered on my own was my father drowning me.”
Theresa raised an eyebrow. “That’s interesting,” she said, pursing her lips and drumming her fingers against her crossed arms. “I wonder if there’s anything else from your past related to water that’s hidden because of that trauma.”
I stared at Theresa—and then, all at once, I felt stupid. I should have realized that nothing my father did happened without several different purposes and plots! Of course his manipulations would have extended beyond simple torture. He could have hurt me any way he wanted to. But hadn’t he shown again and again that he wanted to take the pieces of me that defined me and turn them into weaknesses?
“You aren’t stupid,” Theresa said, and I remembered, belatedly, that my thoughts weren’t hidden from her. “You’ve been hurt. It’s not unusual to want to shy away from that.”
“But I should look harder,” I argued. “I know how important it is. I know I need to get him out of my head!”
“Michelle, it’s just a theory,” Theresa said softly, the gentleness in her voice convincing me to stop and look her way—and then I felt embarrassed all over again.
I hadn’t been around Theresa and her sister for long at all, and I’d already had three different emotional outbursts.
Lila rested a hand on my shoulder, and the moment I turned toward her, she pulled me into a hug. “This is going to be hard,” she whispered. “I’ll be right behind you.”
“Thanks,” I said, returning the hug briefly before I turned Theresa’s way. “Sorry.”
“It’s alright,” Theresa promised. “This kind of work is draining.”
“Yeah, well.” I shifted. “Lead the way, then.”
The f
irst memory that Theresa drudged up surprised me. When she’d mentioned that she wanted to more or less take a sharp memory to the monolith, I expected something traumatic. Something, well, shattering.
But the memory she found wasn’t any of those things. In fact, it was pretty nice—except for the panic attack I had at the very start of the memory.
When I went into my memories, I experienced them from my own point of view, reliving them like a passenger in my own body. So when the memory started out with me in the ocean as I swam out into the waves, I panicked.
I didn’t think I would ever get used to panicking without my physical body following my emotions. Before, when I wasn’t a passenger and my body was my own, when I’d been dropped in deep water, I could feel my chest tightening, my throat drying out. But since I was in the body of my previous self, it didn’t react to any of those intense emotions.
Yeah, it was pretty weird.
But I think the absence of any physical reaction to my panic actually helped me to control my emotional reaction. Which was good, because my past self seemed to be honestly enjoying her time in the ocean.
I wasn’t the only one in the water; several other members of my adopted family were out with me, swimming with surfboards underneath them as we headed out into the waves. I was physically the smallest of the group—most of them were teenagers—but I’d been doing this for much longer than they had.
The trip to the beach was a family tradition at this point. Every summer, we would all head down to the sand and surf, and that family trip would inevitably turn into a competition on all fronts. The younger kids would build sandcastles, the older kids would go surfing, and even the adults would get into a game of sand volleyball or do some surfing of their own.
Carol was the fastest swimmer, but Tim—he was the one to watch. He seemed to have a knack for finding the best waves, and the rest of us had learned early to stick close to him.
I knew Tim had the right idea as we headed for one wave in particular, and the two of us shared a grin as we got going to the right speed, waiting for the right moment . . . and then, I heard him let out a whoop of joy as we rode the crest.
Sister Seeker Page 6