by Leigh, Jena
A time when her family had still been whole.
She kept the few memories that remained locked away inside of her, to be brought out only when the darkness was at its worst… or any time she was feeling particularly masochistic.
The memories were few, but they were everything.
They were all she had.
She closed her eyes.
It was the smell of her mother’s perfume—the light, flowery scent of honeysuckle mixed with the heavy sweetness of orange blossoms.
It was riding piggyback, high on her father’s shoulders—so scared of slipping, but so certain that his strong arms would always be there to catch her, should she fall.
It was learning to swim in the chilly waters of the creek out behind their house. It was a picnic on a summer day. It was the smell of her mother’s pumpkin pound cake in the fall.
And more than anything, it was love.
Every other thing she knew about her parents—all of the facts and anecdotes she’d collected like valuable treasures over the years—had all come from Aunt Cecilia.
And they’d all been lies.
Anger.
Betrayal.
Despair.
Alex couldn’t quite name the feeling that had started to drain all the color and light from the world around her—that had caused her chest to tighten so painfully—but she thought that, perhaps, it was something entirely new. Some horrible combination of all three.
She glared at her aunt. “You said my mom was a school teacher… That my dad was an accountant! Now you’re telling me that they were spies? That they were murdered? Was there anything you told me about my parents that was true?”
Her aunt’s face crumpled. “Oh, Lee-Lee… Your parents loved you! They would have done anything to protect you! When they realized what was happening, they told me… They told me that if anything were to happen to them, that I was to raise you as normally as I could. They didn’t want you to know about any of this, if it could be helped. They didn’t want their life to be yours. They wanted you to be… normal.”
The word hung in the air like a guillotine a thread away from a fall.
Nothing about her life would ever be normal after this.
She wasn’t sure who was more deserving of her anger. The man in the bookstore for attacking her and forcing the truth out into the open? Declan for bringing her here? Her parents for insisting the truth be kept secret from her? Or her Aunt Cil for intentionally keeping her in the dark for so many years?
All this time… How had she not known? Not picked up on the clues?
“Am I normal?” she asked. “Or am I like you? Like my parents?”
Fear flickered in Cil’s eyes for the briefest of moments.
Was this why Alex had suddenly turned into a walking electro-magnetic pulse, frying unlucky appliances any time she got upset? Had that been part of one of her parent’s abilities?
Seemed pretty useless, if you asked her.
“Not all Variant offspring possess the traits of their parents,” said Grayson. “Some are born completely human.”
Her aunt nodded in agreement. “And some children who do inherit the variant genes from their parents never develop their powers, anyway. It just lies dormant.”
They were quiet for a moment as the news sank in.
Alex narrowed her eyes as another thought occurred to her.
“What happened to the others?” asked Alex. “The rest of the unit—where are they now?”
Grayson leaned back against the banister. “Masterson killed the majority of my team.” A shadow had fallen over his expression, seeming to grow darker with each word he spoke. “My wife. Your parents. All of our unit save for two: myself and one other, who I haven’t spoken to for many years.”
“So Kenzie, Declan and Nathaniel… ?” Alex couldn’t find the words to finish her question. This must have been how they’d come to live with Grayson. Masterson had murdered their families. Just like he’d murdered hers.
Grayson folded his arms across his chest. “Orphaned. Like you. I took them in because they had nowhere else to go. No family members left to take care of them.”
“And you?” Alex asked, her eyes narrowing. There was a poorly concealed tone of accusation in her voice. “How is it that you survived?”
Later on, she would look back on this conversation and wish like hell she hadn’t asked that question.
Grayson was quiet a moment. The look in his eyes suggested that he was no longer standing at the edge of that chasm…
The abyss had swallowed him whole.
“The last time I saw Masterson, he gave me two reasons for why I had to go on living. The first was that someone needed to look after the orphaned children.” He unfolded his arms and stood up straight. “And the second was that killing me would have been an act of mercy. One he wasn’t willing to provide.
“That night, Masterson died by my hand… And that is why I’m still alive,” Grayson then turned and walked down the stairs, leaving Alex alone with her aunt.
The silence that followed Grayson’s statement was absolute. She waited for the front door to close firmly behind him before she turned to her aunt.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “What did he mean by an ‘act of mercy’?”
Cil was still staring at the door through which Grayson had disappeared. “One of Masterson’s gifts was an ability to see the future,” she said. “And while Grayson can see the potential future of any person, any place… he has never been able to foresee his own. When Masterson finally confronted Grayson, he saw something of Grayson’s future. Whatever it was that Masterson saw… He felt that leaving Grayson alive would be a far crueler punishment than death.”
— 7 —
Kenzie sat down in one of the whitewashed Adirondack chairs surrounding the patio’s fire pit and glared at her brother.
“What, Kenzie?”
“You know what.”
Declan ignored her, his attention fixed upon the pile of ashes resting at the center of the pit.
This attitude of his was getting on her nerves.
“Dammit, Decks, it isn’t her fault and you know it.”
He sent her a warning look. “Stay out of my head.”
“I don’t need to read your mind to know what you’re thinking right now.”
Nathaniel got to his feet. “I’m going to go finish chopping that firewood. You two try to keep it civil, would ya? There’s enough drama around here tonight as it is.”
Kenzie watched him disappear down the stone steps, then returned to her former activity of glaring at Declan. She kicked at the leg of his chair. “You can’t hold what happened against her, Declan. She was a victim, too. She was just as innocent in all of it as we were.”
“Innocent?” He snorted. “That’s a laugh.”
“That girl in there doesn’t even remember what happened. And no one’s told her. She’s been lied to her entire life. You can’t possibly hold her accountable for something that happened when she was four years old.”
Declan fell quiet.
Kenzie fought back the urge to read his mind. Normally she didn’t have to. Predicting her brother’s thoughts and moods usually came as naturally to her as breathing.
And while Declan possessed a stubborn streak roughly a mile wide… Something about this felt different. It wasn’t usually this hard to make him see reason.
“You weren’t old enough to remember it either, Kenzie,” he said bitterly. “You don’t have those images burned into your brain.”
“Oh, like hell!” she snapped. “God knows you replayed them enough times growing up. I saw them in your head whether I wanted to or not.”
“I’m sorry, Kenzie.” Her brother’s face twisted with an emotion she couldn’t identify. “I didn’t… I would have saved you from that if I could have.”
She sighed. This wasn’t about them.
“You can’t focus all of your anger on Alex, Decks. She didn’t do it. Masterson di
d.”
“It was her he was after, Kenzie. Not them.”
“No,” she said. “They were protecting an innocent child from a madman.”
“Yeah. And they gave their lives doing that, Kenzie. Eight people. Dead. And for what? What could possibly be so important about that girl?”
“It’s not her fault,” she said again. “Declan, it’s not Alex’s fault our parents are dead.”
* * *
Alex paced slowly around the spacious living room, unsure of what to do with herself and too wound up to sit still.
After their conversation, Aunt Cil had followed Grayson outside, apparently to discuss Alex’s situation. She had reappeared ten minutes later, intent on leaving once more to carry out some damage control back home.
Cassie was still out driving around in search of her and something like half the town knew that she’d gone missing already. Okay, maybe it wasn’t half the town, but it sure seemed like it after Cil finished listing all the people she had phoned while trying to find her.
Cil had also insisted that Alex stay at the cabin until she had things sorted and knew it would be safe for her to return home.
When she had asked how long that might take, her aunt’s reaction hadn’t been promising.
Alex sank into the corner seat of the tan leather couch, tilted her head back and stared up at the cathedral ceiling.
At this point, it wasn’t a matter of processing all these revelations. It was a matter of accepting them.
Alex let her eyes drift closed.
Mutant powers—which Alex had always assumed to be the stuff of sci-fi movies and graphic novels—were not only real, they also appeared to run in the family.
Her parents had been spies and were murdered by a psychopath.
Oh, and in an attempt to kill her, a crazy Scottish man had incinerated Mr. Ballard and burned his bookstore to the ground.
Alex fully expected to wake up at any moment and find out this whole nightmare had been just that. It had all been just a dream.
And you were there, and you were there, and there’s no place like home…
She opened her eyes to find a smiling face staring down at her.
“Hi, Alex.”
“Hi, Brian.” She smiled. She couldn’t not smile at the kid. His grin was infectious.
“Are you going to be staying with us for a while?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I guess it looks that way, doesn’t it?”
The boy’s smile grew wider.
At least someone was happy about the arrangement.
The door to what Alex thought might be an office opened and Grayson stepped through it.
“How are you, Alex?” Crossing the room, he took a seat across from her at one end of the immense flagstone hearth.
“I’m alright,” she said. “Just trying to sort through it all, I guess. Wondering where I go from here.”
He nodded.
Brian plopped down beside Alex on the couch just as a blast of cooler air reached them from the front entryway. Nathaniel had appeared in the doorway toting a leather firewood carrier overflowing with small logs. He dropped it beside the hearth and set about building up the fire, using a poker to stoke the pile of glowing embers.
The front door opened again. This time, Declan and Kenzie strode through it wearing identical masks of exasperation.
“Ah, good,” said Grayson. “You’re all here. There are some things we need to discuss.”
Nate paused in his work, stealing a glance in Alex’s direction. He sent her another reassuring smile. This time, she smiled back.
There was a sudden blur of movement off to her left. Declan had collapsed onto the love seat adjacent to Alex’s couch and was sinking back into the cushions.
“Hold up. If we’re having a family meeting, I need coffee.” Kenzie disappeared into the kitchen. “Talk amongst yourselves!”
“Girl’s already wired for sound,” Declan muttered. “She needs to do the rest of us a favor and switch to decaf.”
“I heard that!” Kenzie’s disembodied voice called from the kitchen.
“Homework, Brian,” said Grayson, noticing the boy for the first time.
“But Dad…” Brian pleaded. Grayson shot him a look. The boy deflated. “Yes, sir.”
He leaned toward Alex.
“Save my seat! I’ll be back,” he promised in a low whisper, then got to his feet and trudged off toward the kitchen.
As Alex watched him go, her gaze fell on Declan. He was staring at her as though she were some curiosity that he was trying to make sense of.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said, but didn’t look away.
Nathaniel cleared his throat. “So Alex will be staying here with us, Grayson?”
“For the time being the cabin will be the safest place for her,” said Grayson. “I’m afraid, Alex, you won’t be going anywhere until we can determine how and why you managed to attract the attention of someone like Carson Brandt.”
Her aunt had basically said as much, but coming from Grayson the announcement felt like a prison sentence.
“There’s something I’ve been wondering,” said Alex. “How did you know to send Declan to follow me? What exactly did you see?”
Grayson’s thin mouth turned down at the corners. “The trouble with my gift is that my visions are sometimes rather lacking in specifics. At first all I could see was a glimpse of you and another young girl sitting on a restaurant patio. A few hours later, I saw a second image—one of you running through a burning bookstore.”
He rubbed his hands together. Just as he had in the hallway earlier, he appeared to be choosing his words carefully.
“Cil and I haven’t exactly kept in touch over the years. I knew you were alive and well, somewhere, but I couldn’t be sure that it was you I was seeing,” he said. “Eventually I got lucky and saw a flash of you and your aunt together. Once I knew who you were and where to find you, I sent Declan.”
“Why didn’t you just call my aunt and warn her? Stop me from going to the bookstore in the first place?”
“Doesn’t always work like that,” said Nathaniel. “Calling your aunt might have insured that you went, for all we knew. The best chance we have to change something is to actually be there when it starts to happen.”
“So you sent Declan to follow me instead,” she said.
“Yes,” said Grayson.
“Did anything in your visions tell you why Brandt wanted to kill me?”
Grayson shook his head. “None of this makes sense. You’d never seen him before? Never met another Variant before today?”
“No,” she said. “Not unless you count Aunt Cil. My life before today was pretty… normal.”
Well, as normal as you could get when you were a walking power surge, anyway.
Brian reappeared with a backpack and a laptop and settled back onto the couch beside Alex.
Grayson sent him a look of disapproval.
“What?” asked Brian. He hoisted what looked like a calculus textbook. “Homework!”
The older man sighed, but said nothing more. Brian smiled triumphantly and opened the book.
“There’s something to all this we aren’t seeing,” said Grayson, returning his attention to the group.
“You’re right.” Declan leaned back further into the love seat, folding his hands behind his head. “To start with, Brandt wasn’t trying to kill her.”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “Tell that to the wall of flames that chased me through the bookstore.”
Declan shook his head. “The man’s a trained assassin. He kills people for a living. If he wanted you dead, it would have taken him two seconds and a wave of his hand.” Declan gave her a look of appraisal. Alex felt her cheeks flare under his scrutiny. “You’re not exactly a threat to a guy like him. Or to anyone else, for that matter.”
She found herself wondering if there was a power out there that would allow her to melt i
nto the couch cushions.
“…No offense,” he added as an afterthought.
Kenzie sashayed back into the room, coming to lean against the back of the love seat. Her arms hovered above Declan, a steaming cup of coffee clasped between her hands. Declan eyed the mug warily and slid a few inches to his left.
“As much as I hate agreeing with my brother,” she said, “Declan’s got a point. Carson Brandt doesn’t toy with his victims. It’s just not his style. He’s ten shades o’ crazy, but he’s no sadist.”
Nathaniel tossed one last log onto the fire, crossed the room and then claimed a seat next to Alex on the arm of the couch.
“Alex’s parents were Variants,” Kenzie continued. “Maybe Brandt knew that her mom’s side of the family could teleport. Maybe he was trying to see if Alex was capable of jumping, too. You know, by frightening her into it.”
“But I can’t … jump.” Alex wondered if she’d used the verb correctly. “You said that not all Variants pass on the mutation to their children. And even if I could teleport like my mom, or move things with my mind like my dad… I’m almost seventeen. Wouldn’t I know about it by now?”
Grayson looked about ready to agree with her when Declan interrupted him.
“She’s a Variant.”
He said the words with such assurance that every head in the room swiveled in his direction. Even Brian glanced up from his homework with a quizzical expression.
Alex felt her stomach drop.
“What makes you say that?” Kenzie asked in surprise.
Declan pulled himself back into a seated position and looked squarely at Alex. “Ever had a problem with electronics?”
For a split second she wondered how he could possibly know about that… And then she remembered what had happened in the clothing store that afternoon when Connor had startled her. Declan had been standing right there. He’d seen the whole thing.
“Ever accidentally short-circuited a microwave when you realized you were running late for something important? Or scrambled the television reception when someone pissed you off?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Alex’s mouth had turned as dry as the Sahara.