by Gloria Craw
Katherine looked at her hands. “We’d like to send you on a ski vacation. Yvonne, Robert, and a few of the others are staying at a luxury resort in Colorado called the Ledges. They have a seventeen-year-old daughter, Phoebe, who will be with them. The Ledges caters to a more mature demographic, and since you and Phoebe are the same age, we hope you can befriend her. If you spend time around her, you should be able to get close to Yvonne and Robert. Maybe they’ll let something slip about Nikki, if they have her.”
“So, to recap,” I interjected, “if I agree to do this, I won’t get to spend Thanksgiving break with my family. I’ll be spending it with some guy I don’t know, watching a bunch of Truss who may have helped murder my clan. All while looking for someone I hate.”
“We know this will be difficult for you,” Katherine said in a voice full of regret. “If we could do it another way, we would.”
“We’ll probably need you to do the same with the other candidates, too,” Spencer added.
I laughed. “How am I supposed to do all that in one week?”
“You can’t,” he replied. “We’d like you to look at the others during Christmas and spring breaks. We can get your parents to agree to you vacationing with us during those times.”
I could hardly believe what they were asking of me. I had limited time left with the McKyes. Every holiday and every break was precious time I could spend with them. Time I would never get back.
“There’s a problem no one has addressed,” Ian said. “She’s been told more than once how much she looks like her mother. One of the Truss might recognize her.”
“I really don’t think you will be recognized,” Katherine responded, looking at me. “The people who have commented on the resemblance knew who you were before they met you. They were expecting to see a resemblance.”
“Whether they recognize her or not, they’ve killed human spies before,” Ian said. “They’d probably kill her, too.”
I saw real sorrow and regret in Spencer’s eyes as he looked at me. “If I could do this myself, I would,” he said. “You’re smart; you learn fast. You’ve proved you’re resourceful. You’re also the most powerful thoughtmaker I’ve ever met. I believe you have more energy bottled up inside you than even your mother had. I don’t like the position this puts you in, but you’re more likely to be able to do this than anyone else. We need your help. And when I say we, I mean all the descendant of Atlantis.”
In the silence that settled around us, I heard a voice say, There is more to this than they think. What happens to your parents, your brother, and your brother’s children depends on what happens to the descendants of Atlantis… The two worlds are connected and will be until—
No one else heard it, but I recognized the voice. It was my dead mother speaking to me. Her warning that my brother was in danger felt like a knife cutting me deep.
I put my head in my hands. “Until what?” I murmured.
“Did you say something?” Ian asked.
I shook my head. Telling him that the dead spoke to me would take too much time to explain. Ultimately, it didn’t matter what I said. If both humankind, including the McKyes, and the dewing, including Katherine, Spencer, and Ian, needed my help, I had do it.
“When do you want me to go?” I asked without enthusiasm.
“I’ve booked a flight for tomorrow,” Katherine replied.
“There’s no way my mom is going to let me leave for Colorado tomorrow. She’ll need a few days to adjust to the idea.”
“She’s already agreed,” Katherine said. “We had a nice conversation over lunch today. It came up.”
“Of course it did.” I sighed.
Chapter Four
I was finishing my food when I felt another dewing park in front of the Thanes’ house.
“Donavan is here,” Spencer said.
“Fabulous,” I grumbled. “I’m a little stiff from training, and now he’s going to beat me up some more.”
Ian put his arm around my shoulders. “You can tell them you won’t practice tonight,” he said.
“I wish,” I replied, shaking my head, “but I’ve got to learn to essence-fight. I need to train with someone who doesn’t care about hurting me.”
“Hey,” Donavan said, swaggering in. “It smells like food poisoning in here. Processed food will kill you.”
“Not really,” Ian replied. “We can survive a lot worse.”
Donavan had a military-type bearing. He shook Spencer’s hand, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if he saluted him.
“How did it go today?” Spencer asked.
“Good. I think the guys you hired to watch the McKyes are going to work out great. They’re all experienced, and you’re paying them enough to make it more than worth their while. They’ll report to me if anything seems the slightest bit off.”
“Good,” Spencer said.
“I came by to give you my first report.”
He pulled a carefully creased and folded paper from his pocket and handed it to Spencer.
“Thanks, I’ll check it over tonight.”
Donavan looked at me. “Are we going a round tonight, Alison?”
“Sure,” I replied, trying to sound excited about it.
It was a familiar drill. Ian and Spencer moved the sofas off the Persian rug, so I could fall without hitting my head. I took up my position in the middle, and Donavan stood across from me.
“Put your fists up,” Ian suggested.
“Why?” I asked. “We aren’t going to hit each other.”
“Maybe it will make you feel strong,” he said, but he didn’t look very hopeful.
“Fine,” I said, taking up a fighting stance and preparing for the energy Donavan was going to pound me with.
My body began to warm as I pulled together all the energy I could access in my mind. When I felt it start to boil under my skin, I was ready.
Donavan threw his energy at my neck. The force of it made me suck in a breath, but I was decent at protecting myself. I pushed back with my own energy until it equalized between us. He aimed at my ribs next. I anticipated it and pushed back before his energy could connect.
It went back and forth like that until Donavan surprised me by sending his energy against my shins. I crumpled to my knees. Next, he hit me upside the head, and I rolled from my knees to the floor.
Ian who had been pacing the entire time, said, “That’s enough.”
I sat up and shook my head in an attempt to stop the ringing in my ears. Donavan extended a hand and helped me up. “Sorry, kid,” he said.
“Don’t be,” I replied. “This is like eating eggplant. It’s good for me and will make me stronger in the end. Even if I nearly choke to death swallowing it.”
He gave me a tight smile and walked away.
Ian guided me with his hand on the small of my back. “You have no idea how much I want to beat him to death right now,” he whispered as I sat on the sofa.
Katherine brought me a glass of water, which I gulped down. The room was warmer than normal from the heat Donavan and I put out during our sparring.
“You’re improving,” Spencer said. “You lasted for five minutes that time.”
Five minutes sounded pretty pathetic. The problem was I couldn’t throw my energy out at an opponent like the others could. I was constantly in defense mode, and with no rest between punches, I tired quickly.
“Well, I gotta git,” Donavan said on his way out the door. “It’s going to be a busy day tomorrow. Good to see you, Alison. I look forward to next time.”
Spencer sat next to me. “Do you want me to work some of the kinks out?” he asked.
I nodded. He was a healer and could join my mind to trigger a release in my muscles and soothe my nerve endings.
I felt a small jolt as his mind joined mine, and then it was like he set butterflies loose. Their wings touched the places I hurt and gently eased the pain.
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, letting the magic work.
&
nbsp; When I was relaxed and pain-free, he asked, “Better?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“What do you need?” Katherine asked. “I’ll get it for you.”
“I just want to lie down,” I replied. “On the floor.”
Ian snorted. “Why on the floor?”
“The tile is cold. It will help me cool off.”
He smiled at me and helped me down. Getting a pillow off the sofa for my head, he said, “You’re so weird.”
I wasn’t offended. Ian called me weird a lot. It had sort of become a term of endearment.
“Will you be okay down there while I go over a few things with my parents?”
“I’ll be fine,” I replied.
It had been a long and exhausting day. As my body cooled, I fell asleep.
I awoke to find Ian’s face inches from mine. “Are you still alive?” he asked, smiling at me.
I yawned. “I am. I think.”
“We’re going to make a late visit to Bruce and Amelia,” Katherine said from across the room. “We’ll be home in an hour or so.”
Ian helped me to my feet while she pulled her jacket on. Coming to hug me, she said, “Have a good night.”
She let me go, and Spencer thumped me across the back a few times. “You’re doing great, Alison. Your mother would be proud.”
When they’d gone, Ian pulled me close. I rested my head on his shoulder and breathed in the clean minty scent that was unique to him. “Bad Thai food, agreeing to look for your mortal enemy, and a fight that didn’t end well,” he said. “Thanks for coming to dinner.”
I smiled, thinking it would have been a lot worse if he hadn’t been there.
“Speaking of my mortal enemy,” I said still hugging him in a friendly sort of way. “She’ll grow her fingers back, right?”
“Yeah. It’ll take some time. Maybe a year to restore them perfectly. But at the moment, I don’t really care about Nikki’s fingers. I care about you. Are you going to be okay after your day full of sparring?”
“It depends on what you mean by okay. Physically, I’m recovering fine. What I’m not okay about is the Truss. I just can’t get away from them, and thinking about it makes me want to hit something.”
I felt his breath on my cheek as he chuckled. “I think there’s a big wrench in the garage. Do you want me to get it for you?”
“There’s nothing in this house I wouldn’t feel terrible about breaking. Do you have anything else to distract me?”
He hugged me tighter. “We could make out,” he said, teasingly. “That would be distracting.”
I pulled back enough so I could see his eyes. He smiled down at me expecting my reluctance. We’d kissed before and it was…amazing. I saw fireworks and the whole bit. Not exaggerating. But we’d talked about it afterward, and I told him it wasn’t going to happen again.
Like always, Ian was up for a challenge and kept nudging me toward another kiss, or two, but I knew we’d never likeness, and I didn’t want to make things more difficult for either of us in the long run.
“What would your parents say?” I asked.
“At this point they’d probably cheer.”
Likeness was a pairing between a male and female dewing. It wasn’t a phenomenon based on love. It couldn’t be controlled or stopped. It was permanent and connected the two so strongly that if one died the other would, too, usually within the year.
You could be in love with someone one moment and then bam…attach to someone else the next. Almost as strangely, you could be platonic friends with someone, have zero attraction to them, and then in a second be locked to that person for the rest of your life. You could even be walking down the street minding your own business, randomly come across another dewing, and likeness to them without even knowing their name.
Laughing, I pushed him away and went to get a soda from the fridge.
“I think I have something else to distract you,” he said, leaving the room.
I took my drink back to the sofa and stretched out my legs.
Ian came back carrying an old book. It was leather bound, and the edges of the pages shone with gilding. I’d seen another book like it—the Laurel book that recorded my genealogy. Lillian kept it in a vault at the Shadow Box.
He sat next to me and opened it on his lap. “This was written in 1040 AD,” he said. “It’s pretty amazing.”
I moved his hand away from the delicate paper and handwritten words. “You shouldn’t touch it without gloves. Lillian would smack you down if she saw.”
“Settle down, nerd. The pages have been sprayed with a special preservative. Lillian knows all about it.”
“Oh.”
“How well do you read Old English?”
I looked at the written words in front of me. The ink had bled and blended some of the letters together. “I understand Chaucer, but this is almost unrecognizable as writing.”
“It takes some time to adjust to the calligraphy,” he agreed. “This is sort of like a history book about our origins. My mom wants you to have it for a while. It might answer some of your questions.”
His parents were concerned because I hadn’t asked a lot about our kind and our history. I had a reason for putting it off. In the time I had left with the McKyes, I wanted to concentrate on them and my human life. When that time was over, I’d have centuries to learn about the dewing.
Obviously sensing my hesitation, he said, “You can’t hide from this part of yourself forever.”
“I know. I am curious, but please let me decide when the time is right.”
He nodded slowly.
“I’d probably better get home,” I said. “It will take a while to convince my mom to let me go skiing.”
“My mom told you she took care of it.”
“We’re talking about Deborah McKye here. The woman who looked into getting a tracking chip put on my brother’s molar.”
“Right. I forgot about that.” He pushed a strand of my hair behind my ear, and continued, “You can change your mind about doing this thing.”
The worry line above his eyebrow was back again. I reached up to smooth it out with my thumb. He caught my hand. “Why do you always do that?”
“You have that mark because of me. You got it when you saved my life.”
His eyes softened, and he kissed the palm of my hand. I tensed up on the outside, but on the inside I was melting. “Well, I like the mark, so you can stop trying to make it go away.”
I had to sternly remind myself that my sanity depended on staying in the friend zone with him.
He leaned toward me and rested his forehead on mine. “Just so you know, Theron is great, but he doesn’t fight as well as me. I want to be the one there for you.”
I let my eyes close. “You’ll only be ten miles away.”
“Yes,” he replied without enthusiasm. “Staying with his human friend whom I’ve never met.”
“Maybe she’s really nice,” I suggested.
“What if she’s not?”
“You’re nice. She’ll like you.”
“I suppose you’re right,” he replied, with a joking twinkle in his eyes. “I am pretty irresistible.”
I smiled at him because he was only telling the truth. Getting up, I checked my pockets. “Where did I put my keys?”
“You dropped them when you were practicing with Donavan. I put them on the table next to the door.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Wait. I’ll get my shoes and walk you to your car.”
When he’d left the room I thought again about my mother’s words.
There is more to this than they think. What happens to your parents, your brother, and your brother’s children is dependent on what happens to the descendants of Atlantis… The two worlds are connected and will be until…
“Until what?” I asked again.
As I expected, there was no answer.
Chapter Five
On the drive home, I prepared myself for what awaited—my mom
was no one’s fool. Especially when it came to her children. She was controlling in an annoying but loving way, which was nearly bulletproof. It was going to take some effort to convince her I wouldn’t break a leg or fall into a mountain crevasse while skiing in a place as “dangerous” as Colorado.
It wasn’t only my safety that concerned her; she was also worried about my mood swings. Most of the time I was pretty happy, but then something would remind me why I had to leave Vegas soon, and I’d fall back into my old withdrawn self.
My dad was a physician, a really good one. Over the years, he may have been curious about why I never caught colds and how quickly I healed, but he’d gotten particularly interested when I’d come home with a head injury three months ago. A cut that should have scarred instead healed without leaving a mark. Several times, I’d caught him looking at the spot with a confused expression.
Whether it was my ability to heal quickly or something else, he had questions. And if he asked them, I wouldn’t be able to give the answers. Not honest ones.
I could thoughtmake him into ignoring my ability to heal, but not forever. Other people would start noticing and might say something about it. Not to mention that I’d stop aging in a pretty noticeable way when I hit twenty.
The best thing for everyone was for me to get some distance from the McKyes. That meant going out of state for college and then disappearing from their lives for good. Knowing that broke my heart.
I hobbled a bit when I walked into my house because I was still a little stiff.
The aroma of falafel hung in the air when I went inside. It was my mom’s new favorite dish…it was not one of mine. She’d gone from vegetarian to vegan a few weeks before and was determined to drag the rest of us along with her.
Super glad I’d eaten lots of MSG-infused Thai food with the Thanes, I went to join my family in the kitchen.
My dad was standing by the fridge with a bag of carrots in his hand. He noted the slight hitch in my step, and his brows drew together. “Are you okay?” he asked. “You look a little sore.”
“I went to the gym with Ian,” I lied. “I think I pulled a muscle in my calf or something. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine tomorrow.”