Rebecca Royce
Nathan, one a real estate broker in Atlanta, and the other a
doctor in Des Moines, had better luck with the fish but had
still not caught anything today.
"Need some help, bud?" He didn't want to wound
Doug's ego but he also wanted to eat dinner in the not too
distant future. It wouldn't do to be the one to catch their
meal for the third day in a row. That would be pushing
things, or at least he was sure that's what Veli would say.
"I'm fine, Mister Reporter." Doug wiped sweat off
of his brow.
They had all been calling him that during the whole
vacation. He rolled his eyes. He'd recently been getting a
lot of publicity as his career seemed to finally be taking off.
Given the current state of things in the world, he was never
out of work. He had also been told his dark good looks
played well in front of the camera. He wasn't sure what that
meant and he wasn't particularly interested in it.
Leonardo had felt it was dangerous to be so out in
the open, contenting himself with research and spells to
find their missing kinsmen whilst he worked as a teacher
and he earned his doctorate in history and ancient cultures.
But in the thirty years since they had arrived on Veli's
floor, it was only Charma who had located anyone—
Marina, she had called herself, five years old and sitting on
the floor of a Russian orphanage. Charma had seen her in a
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dream and woken up insisting that Veli take them there.
Under-fed and not properly stimulated, Marina had
taken longer to come into her powers. Even today she was
quiet and dreamy, preferring to assist Veli with his tasks in
searching for others rather than to venture out on her own.
Kal couldn't blame her. He had been one of the lucky ones,
found and guarded till he had grown old enough. What
must it be like for his lost family connections to have no
one to communicate with telepathically? Sometimes he
thought he could hear them in his dreams.
Charma, or Char as they called her, had been their
rock. She was a healer, in the best sense of the word.
Unaware of her special abilities, people flocked to her
home in Manhattan hourly to have her make them tea and
listen to their problems. Somehow they simply felt better
when they left her, unaware that she had probed their minds
and eased their pain, unaware that every time she did it, it
ate a little of her soul up. He wasn't sure she slept at all
anymore.
In his own way he helped, putting himself amongst
the public, traveling to the war torn places and daring the
people who did the dirty work for the Evil One to come out
and get him. It kept everyone else off of the radar. He knew
he was silently hunted and normally he would invite the
fight. Two would-be assassins had lost their lives trying to
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trifle with him when he was a teenager. But nothing
happened in the presence of his college buddies. He saw to
it. No matter what he felt or who he encountered, he didn't
engage in front of the people who mattered. He wouldn't
risk them. A shiver travelled through Kal's body. At least
so far.
"Hey guys," Kal cut into their conversation. He
thought they had been discussing a girl that James felt was
"the one." James felt that a girl was "the one" every other
week. "I think we need to get moving. The weather is
changing."
"It's been nice all day," Nathan interrupted, pulling
out his personal digital assistant. "The weather report is
good all week."
"Don't believe everything the weathermen tell you,"
Kal replied quietly, manipulating the clouds above them, a
power every Outsider had but that he was only moderately
good at attempting. "It looks like rain to me."
"Let's not argue with Mister Reporter." Doug
laughed, obviously happy to be off the hook from fishing.
"He's lived all over the world with that weird uncle of his.
He can probably sense these things."
His friend had no idea how close he was to the
truth.
"Very funny." Kal laughed. "Let's go." Mentally he
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tried to compel them to listen, a power he tried very hard to
not use on friends and not surprisingly they complied with
his wishes. How did you know if your friends really liked
you if you were always pushing away their free wills to
follow your orders? In his deepest soul, he believed that
mortal human beings had the right to make decisions that
might screw up their lives and on frequent occasions he let
his friends destroy themselves if they wanted to. But in this
case he had a feeling what was coming for them wouldn't
be anywhere near here if it weren't for his very unique
presence in the world. Pushing again, he kept moving
everyone forward.
His senses became more aware and he could hear
someone running towards them. Footsteps sounded in his
eardrums as if they were right next to him instead of a
distance away. Two people were in a chase.
This was it—this was what he'd been waiting to
happen all day long. Whatever, or whoever, was up ahead
ran fast, putting a distance between himself and the person
behind them. This left Kal no time to make everyone go
away. He had no choice but to handle it in front of his
friends and hope that Char could fix it later. He turned to
meet his destiny, knowing there would be more than one
person to handle. He raised his hand, ready to call down
electricity as his first defense.
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Chapter Two
Earlier that same day
Isabelle Listora stood in front of the creepiest cabin
she had ever seen. It didn't look deserted, not really, but it
didn't look lived in either. It hadn't been occupied for at
least several days, she was sure about that. The door hung
open and it looked like the local wildlife had taken what
was left of the food from the cupboards. At the very least,
Isabelle was relatively sure that she wasn't going to be
finding any neglected children occupying the cabin today.
If they were there—and her instincts told her they were
not—then they were well hidden and not likely to come out
just because she asked.
Everything about what had happened since she had
woken up this morning had seemed so bizarre to her. Why
was she being sent out into the woods to investigate child
abuse? Where was the local agency and why were they not
looking into what was happening? She had, in fact, asked
her boss those same questions several times before heading
off into the middle of nowhere, driving four hours from
home to an unknown destination where she would ha
ve no
police help or known local resources to call upon in case of
an emergency. Once again, inwardly, she groaned at the
absurdity of the whole thing.
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Her boss had smiled the strange bland smile that no
longer reached his eyes and told her that because of budget
cuts they were all being asked to stretch their legs a little
bit. She had wanted to scream that this was more than
stretching her legs, this was running a marathon, but she
kept those feelings to herself. She really didn't want to get
fired and so she didn't point out that she hated the woods
and everything to do with nature; that the most outdoorsy
she ever got was heading into the sporting goods store to
purchase fleece from their ski department.
Truth was, she would travel to the ends of the earth
to help a child in need and the file she had been handed had
certainly shown a child in need. It was rumored that the
father had kept his son tied to a chair for up to a week
before releasing him and letting him go back to school. She
was going to have to go and find the teacher now, which
would mean finding her way to the town and given that her
GPS system didn't even know this little town existed on the
map, she was going to have to rely on her nonexistent sense
of direction.
Hurry up Isabelle, it's time to leave. It's finally time
to begin the journey you were born to take.
Isabelle spun around quickly, grabbing the door for
support as she tried to find the person behind the voice she
had just heard.
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"Hello?" she shouted. "Is someone there?"
No one responded and Isabelle quickly tried to scan
the area with her eyes to see if she could see anything. She
couldn't make out anything, but she noticed the clouds
above her were starting to look ominous. The last thing she
wanted was to get caught out in the rain. She ran quickly
back to her car, her baby since she had bought the thing a
year earlier. Both she, and the car, were getting pampered
when they got back to civilization.
Some of Isabelle's girlfriends had made fun of her
near compulsive need to care for her car. Most of them
used their cars like a substitute garbage can and/or closet,
leaving them dirty with all kinds of odd and disgusting
things that varied from old lipsticks to guiltily eaten fast
food wrappers, but Isabelle really treasured her car. It was
midsize and not anything that would cause a commotion in
the auto industry, but she loved owning it. Not once had
she found herself broken down on the side of the road
calling for help. It got her where she needed to go and she
was hugely grateful for it. It wasn't like she was spending
her money on other lavish things. Her closet was filled with
comfortable clothes that she had picked up quickly when
she had a need for them—work clothes mostly, fitting for a
person working in her type of profession. Mixed in on them
were jeans, sweaters, and exercise outfits that admittedly
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she didn't pull out enough, preferring to sleep in on
Saturdays and read after work.
Of course, she couldn't forget about the back of the
closet that held the seven bridesmaid dresses she had worn
in the last year. They ranged in color from a respectable
lilac to an obscene marmalade color that she still cringed
looking at six months later, both from the memory of how
terrible she had looked in the dress to what it said about her
personal life that she had worn seven bridesmaid dresses in
the last year and had gone out on exactly three dates.
But there was no time to dwell on all of the sad,
albeit tragically silly, aspects of her life. She might hate
standing out in the woods waiting for a rainfall but there
were children's lives at stake and that she took very
seriously.
She opened the car door up and the wind blew her
black hair off of her shoulders. She closed her eyes. Where
had the rain come from and why did it feel like it had been
sent just for her? A shiver ran through her, up her arms and
down her spine. Goose bumps appeared on her flesh and
she was suddenly very cold. Opening her eyes, she got into
the car and quickly put it in drive, pushing down harder
than she intended to on the accelerator and hearing the tires
screech. There was no more denying the internal tension
she held. Isabelle just didn't make driving mistakes.
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Breathe, she told herself. She wasn't used to being
in the middle of nowhere. Everything about this day drove
her crazy. She shouldn't be driving away in the car like a
lunatic when she had been sent to investigate living
conditions and potential neglect. The door to the house was
left wide open. She should be snooping inside and taking
her time to look things over. Any other day of the week,
that is exactly how she would be behaving but instead she
was hightailing it out of the countryside as fast as she could
without looking back.
The driveway, as she had noted on the way in, was
surprisingly long and curvy, which was exactly what you
would want if you had to hide child abuse from the
neighbors. Trees, most slightly falling over, drooped down
on top of it, adding to its unkempt feeling. How was it
possible that someone could travel such a short distance in
the state of New York and encounter such a varying degree
of living situations, she wondered out loud to kill the
silence in the car.
Drive, he'll be there.
Oh man, now she was really cracking up. As soon
as she got home she was making an appointment to have
her head examined. She had always heard that there was a
large burnout rate in her career path but she had assumed
that one day she would just find herself compelled to go
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into private practice or back to school. She never could
have predicted that she would start to show signs of
schizophrenia. Whose voice was that? Once again she
pushed down on the accelerator.
Turning left, she was on what they would refer to
now as a State Highway. The road was bigger but still
surprisingly empty without the signs and lights that were
usually present on the Interstates.
She turned on her radio and the CD that she had
been listening to on the way upstate came through the
speakers. She might not have been raised in Manhattan, but
almost everyone who had lived within a twenty-mile radius
of it was a closeted Broadway musical fan. Isabelle just
wore her obsession a little bit more out in the open than
most of her friends. Mus
ic from one of her favorite shows
filled the air around her and she took a deep breath. How
bad could a trip be if she got to imagine she was sitting in a
dark theater being transported to another time while she
took it? Her father had taken her to see that show for her
twentieth birthday. She had loved every second of it and
even if she knew her dad preferred sitting around listening
to the bands from the sixties and seventies to the belting
sounds of Broadway stars, he had loved watching her enjoy
it.
She needed to remember to thank him more often
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for the small things that he did for her. Even if she never
found the person she was searching for, she knew real love
existed, she needed only look at the way her parents loved
each other to see it.
Isabelle's anxiety reprieve was brought short by the
sound of a clunk and a hissing noise that could only mean
one thing. She had blown a tire. How was it even possible?
Hadn't she just been musing on the greatness of her car?
Was fate playing tricks on her? She sighed; maybe it was a
good thing that the road was strangely quiet today. She
wouldn't have to worry about the other cars not seeing her
and slamming into her as she attempted to change her tire.
Or better yet, she thought suddenly, she would use her auto
club card.
She pulled out her cell phone at the same time as
she took out her wallet. Taking a deep breath, she
composed herself so that she wouldn't sound like a lunatic
to the man on the other end of the phone but she never even
got that far. Out of range, how could that be? She wasn't
even in roaming range? She wasn't in Nepal; this was the
United States of America. Shouldn't she have cell service?
Shouldn't the fact that she paid a way too large monthly fee
for her unlimited nationwide calling have given her service
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