by Rain Oxford
“Glad to see you made it here okay,” I said. I hadn’t really expected her to return to the school, so I wasn’t upset. I was glad that she was here with me and not at Veronica’s mercy.
She laughed. “Don’t make jokes about it until you get your vision back.” She leaned over me to kiss me, and I tried not to groan in pain as her breasts were pressed against my wound. For the first and last time in my life, I wished my girlfriend wasn’t so well-endowed.
“He’s injured,” Amelia said quickly.
Remy jerked back, as if she suddenly remembered. I tried to sit up, but the pain of the wounds was a lot worse. When I touched my chest, I realized a bandage had been put over them.
“We sterilized the cuts and used butterfly stitches,” Darwin said. “Fortunately, there was no poison on the blade.”
* * *
By dark, my vision returned. We had dinner with the entire pack. They mourned Beth’s death as well as celebrated Amelia’s survival, so it was bittersweet. Nevertheless, being with his family helped Darwin recover from nearly losing his fiancée.
We ended up spending the night because Henry wasn’t ready to drive home when he did finally wake. He was disappointed he missed out on the battle, but Darwin told him that if it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t have made it there in time to save Amelia.
After dinner, Remy and I were given a private room in the den and told that no one would disturb us unless the house was on fire. Unfortunately, because of my wound, we couldn’t take advantage of our privacy.
Chapter 23
Tuesday, December 6
We had a pleasant breakfast and then got on our way quickly, because we still had an enemy to defeat. Amelia went with us, so the truck was a bit cramped. Remington had been dropped off with the truck. I was instructed to “take it easy” which meant that I wasn’t supposed to drive. Since Darwin and Remington didn’t know how to drive and Amelia’s father believed cars were bad, that left Henry to do all the driving. As Henry drove, I skimmed through the diary, which I learned belonged to a girl named Edith Miller.
The first third of the book dealt with typical teenager drama, amplified by the fact that she could read minds. She hated her ability because she couldn’t control it. She would hear someone speak and answer them, only to realize they had only been thinking the question. She would get overwhelmed in large groups and start crying. People thought she was creepy and weird, and she heard every nasty thought about her. This power got even worse if she touched someone.
She should have been one of our students. Nobody at the school would have thought poorly of her. Hell, kids thought I was a freak when I was a kid, too, but at least I couldn’t read minds yet. She had tried to talk to her parents about it, only to be punished and threatened.
Then things changed for her very suddenly.
Tuesday, November 15: Today, the cheerleaders trapped me in the supply closet. I didn’t even try to get out. I was so tired of this shit that I was searching in the dark for something to finally end this hell. And then an angel came. Her name is Veronica, and she said that she can do magic like me. I couldn’t read her mind! That was how I knew she was telling the truth. She was beautiful, too. She said that she could teach me how to control my magic. I said yes, but asked to say goodbye to my parents and get my stuff. Mostly get my stuff. Actually, I wanted to tell them that I hated them and that they would get what was coming to them. Mom was doing laundry. Dad was mowing. I realized that they both hate their lives and each other as much as I do, whereas I’m going to get an amazing life because of Veronica. I didn’t say anything to them.
Wednesday, November 16: The wizard council is awesome. There’s a whole world of paranormals that I didn’t know about. Veronica goes by another name here, but it’s cool. Ashton is cool because he has visions of the future. Veronica says that she has a plan to take over the council soon. It sounded mean at first, but she’s so smart. She showed me what the world is going to be like. Right now, it’s scary and a lot of the paranormals are bullies to each other, especially the vampires. Veronica is making it worse, but it’s okay because that’s the only way for them to realize there’s something wrong. Then she’ll take over and show all of them how to live together peacefully. I’m excited. It’s dangerous, but my life is finally going to get better.
Friday, November 18: Ashton and I were given a very important job today. Veronica gave us a list of people that might help her, and we have to explain to them how great it’s going to be with her in charge. We have to do it without telling them who she is, though. I’m supposed to use my mind reading and Ashton is supposed to use his visions so that we can figure out which ones are trustworthy. A driver took us to an old man named Grayson Adams who used to work on the old wizard council. Ashton looked at him and shook his head. He pushed me back in the car and said that Grayson wouldn’t agree. Instead of being angry, Veronica was happy that Ashton didn’t waste our time.
Monday, November 21: Today, we saw another person on Veronica’s list. Harold Showalter was another old member of the council, but he was really excited about the idea of making humans work for paranormals. He said he agreed that we needed someone in charge who wouldn’t let humans rule us. His thoughts were really creepy and gross, but Ashton and I knew that he would support Veronica.
Thursday, November 24: We’ve been working hard, and Veronica keeps giving us gifts and everything we could ever want to thank us. I love being appreciated. I had a dream last night, though. It weirded me out. I was in a room with fire and there was a man that said he wanted to help us, but he couldn’t hear me. I think he meant to help us out of the fire. Veronica said it was just a nightmare, but I’m afraid to go back to sleep.
Friday, November 25: Veronica stayed with me last night until I fell asleep. I didn’t have another one. Ashton had a vision today that we were siblings, but that had to be wrong. Maybe someone is messing with us. If he was my brother, that would be weird. Our powers are different. I’d be more likely to believe Veronica was my sister than Ashton was my brother, because at least her magic is more like mine.
Monday, November 28: It’s getting a little weird at the council. Ashton had a vision that Veronica is talking to a dozen other kids. He says they’re all our siblings! I told him that was crazy. He said that some of them are helping Veronica like we are, but if they don’t help, she puts them in comas so that she can use them later. Like they’re hamburger or something. I asked him where she would be keeping the bodies. He said that she gives them several chances, so there are only a few, and they’re somewhere in the dark, far away from us. He’s probably tired. Veronica would never do that.
Tuesday, November 29: The dream came back again. It was really scary. I woke up with a burn on my leg, in the same place I got burned in my dream. Ashton was gone this morning and I’m afraid something happened to him.
Tuesday, November 29: Veronica told me that Ashton missed his parents and went home. I was sad at first, but I mostly feel bad for Veronica. She needs our help and she’s been so nice to us, so it’s unfair that he just left. She said it’s okay, though, because she’ll find more special kids who can help her. I asked her why she needed me at all when she can do so much more than me. She said that we made good pets. I knew she was joking, but it still made me feel bad for asking. I don’t want her to think I’m not trustworthy. She saved me and I’ll do anything for her.
Thursday, December 1: Today, I had another assignment. She said that her monkeys made a mess of things and it was time to get the ball rolling. She ignored me when I asked what she meant. She gave me a letter, which I had to make sure every single person in the mansion touched before sliding it under Becky’s door. I like Becky, but she’s a little paranoid. Veronica said it’s because Becky is not allowed to see her baby and husband until she learns to behave. I wonder what Becky did wrong.
That was Edith’s last entry, and the cliffhanger made me grind my teeth. I desperately wanted to turn around, go back to the council, and ge
t Becky out of there. She was being tormented and used at Veronica’s expense.
Veronica was so like John that it wasn’t even funny. Actually, it struck me as strange. We stopped at an office supply store and got copies of the pages made, both for my peace of mind and so that I could highlight important parts. Then I pulled out my notebook and wrote everything I had known about Veronica before arriving at the council.
Veronica can appear and disappear out of thin air, take over people and animals, and disguise herself as other people. She caused chaos in the paranormal world and could have killed me easily, but didn’t.
That was it. Fortunately, I had learned quite a bit more at the council.
She was causing chaos to tear apart the paranormal world, but there was more to it than that. She kept messing with me and my friends. I thought at first that she was trying to keep us away from her, but then she came to me at the council. Causing these scenes not only got my attention and kept it on her, but it also gave me clues to catch her. She was risking getting caught. Once she got caught, she planned to get out, as she said so herself, but she had to know there was a chance that she couldn’t escape. She was a thrill seeker.
I considered Darwin for a moment. He was constantly getting into danger. When he wasn’t risking his life with me, he was hacking into computers and collecting information that could get him killed. He didn’t do it because he wanted to get killed; he did it because he was bored as fuck.
Veronica had to be intelligent to get this far, but maybe I underestimated how smart she was. That would explain why she wanted an opponent. Unlike Darwin, however, she wanted an opponent in magic.
I thought she was after Remy, but when we were in the cells, Veronica didn’t even look at her; she was focused entirely on me. She wanted an opponent, and for some reason, she wanted me to be that opponent. Remy was better at wizardry than me, but her father was better than her. What made the most sense was that she wanted me to be her opponent because John Cross was my father.
Taking a moment to see where that led me, I considered the letters Veronica wrote to encourage other teachers to attack Remy. This was the first sign of Veronica, so I assumed someone had been after her. However, that was when Remy and I first started dating, and the teachers who attacked her were not really a match for her. Sure, they could have killed her, but there were much easier ways to achieve that goal. Perhaps those letters were Veronica’s first attempt to get my attention.
I had what I needed to defeat Veronica, but not the knowledge or experience to use it. So, magic. I had a powerful ability that gave me a huge advantage over most of my enemies, but in retrospect, I’d only been learning and practicing magic for a few years. Although it felt like decades, it wasn’t. Most of the wizards I knew, like Remy, studied it their entire lives.
I thought I was pretty good with what I’d learned, considering regular wizardry would never be my focus because I had my mind control, visions, and intuition. I had basically learned magic that would help me in my job as an investigator; I could use energy shields, open locks, track people, make pretty decent healing potions, and cause distractions. Of course, I could hold my own in a magical duel, which we often had at Quintessence, but I didn’t get regular practice in that anymore.
Veronica didn’t naturally develop the ability to appear and disappear, but she also didn’t steal it. There weren’t many other options unless...
Unless I was looking at it wrong. She walked through the bars into my cell. We were able to walk right past council members because Remington’s illusion was so good. People rarely doubted their own eyes, even though sight was the easiest sense to trick with magic. I could make an illusionary fire that would have everyone running and screaming out of a building, when it wasn’t actually burning or hurting anyone.
If she was using illusion magic, someone could easily mistake her for appearing and vanishing out of thin air. Plus, it would be just as easy for her to disguise herself as someone else. I needed Remy to tell me how that magic worked exactly.
Veronica was trying to bring down the paranormal community by causing them to fight each other. Then she would basically take over. I didn’t know how she planned to do that, but it explained why she targeted so many people in so many different ways.
That kind of underhanded tactic was eerily familiar. John loved hurting people in twisted and sick ways, but when he wanted to bring down the vampires, he blamed a bunch of murders on them and even tried to use my own prejudice against them. I suddenly remembered where I’d heard that sound she made before; John made it when he was being condescending.
Veronica made Juliet poison me, but her eyes weren’t white, so it wasn’t through possession. I remembered how John made Flagstone attack Hunt and me. Of course, they didn’t remember doing it, whereas Juliet insisted she did it because she was terrified of me. I hadn’t detected any fear at all from her beforehand.
Veronica was not a vampire or shifter, and she didn’t have strong fae ties. However, she was somehow more powerful than Hunt. She could block my mind control and even my intuition. She had some kind of connection to John. She hated him, but she also didn’t want him dead…
Similar to Remy and her father. She loved him, but she felt like she wasn’t good enough. The harder he tried to protect her, the more she thought he had no faith in her. It created a unique resentment that often came across as her disliking him. She never wanted his help because she wanted to prove to him that she was strong enough to do everything on her own.
“What makes you think I don’t know for sure?”
She smirked. “The fact that you ask me that tells me you don’t know.”
Because she could read my mind. Edith said that Veronica’s magic was like hers.
Magic didn’t spring from nothing.
She had interrupted me when I started thinking about Remy and illusion magic, because I was on the right track and she knew it. Illusion magic didn’t actually fit, but I was on the right track.
“Holy shit.”
Remy stiffened next to me. She had been resting against me, almost asleep. At my soft expletive, she sat up and looked out the windows for a threat. Henry’s hands tightened on the wheel and Darwin turned to me. “What’s up?” he asked.
“I just figured out who Veronica is.”
“Is it bad?”
“About as bad as it could possibly be.”
“She’s your sister?”
I paused for a second before nodding. “Yes.”
* * *
The silence that followed was tense as everyone tried to figure out if I was making a terrible joke or just incorrect. Even without reading their minds, I knew they were tallying up all the reasons she couldn’t be my sister. I wish I agreed with them.
Darwin was the first to break the silence, as usual. “Yeah, that makes total sense; possession and appearing out of thin air is exactly what you can do.”
“She can block her mind from me.” My instincts were back in the game, but they couldn’t give me everything.
“Most wizards can block their minds,” Remy said.
“Not like she can. I can share my visions. Maybe Veronica can go even further; she can actually have a conversation with someone… in their head. Every time she came to me or my siblings, we were alone. You guys were with me, but asleep. Maybe she was only there in my head. She said she didn’t develop the ability to appear and disappear naturally because she never had that ability at all.”
“So we’re dealing with a child?” Henry asked.
I shook my head. “I was eleven when John told my mother that I wasn’t the first, that he already had others. That means I have siblings who are in their twenties at least. I’m the oldest, but he could have other children who are just a couple years younger than me, if that. Veronica even referred to me as the first. If she is the second, it would make some sense why she’d want me as her opponent.”
Silence again. Now that Darwin knew I was serious, tension grew in him.
I figured his brain was making new connections I hadn’t even considered. “We need Gale’s amulet,” he said.
“That was broken,” I said. And good riddance. “Besides, it didn’t work against my intuition.”
“I know. However, if we’re going to stand a chance against super-charged-anti-Devon, we’re going to need drastic weapons. I need the amulet. Maybe we can fix it.”
“No,” Henry said immediately.
They both had valid points. The amulet could steal the power of anyone around. However, Darwin wasn’t a normal person. With it and my power, he could take over everyone in the world at once and become instantly unstoppable. The problem was that it completely wiped his humanity and morality. When he was touching the amulet, he would kill anyone without a second thought or remorse, and he had a very sick mind when it came to experimenting.
“I have to agree with Henry here. I don’t want to fight fire with an atomic bomb.”
“Okay,” Darwin agreed easily. “We’ll have to figure out what the root of your power is and how to stop it. I’m going to need some blood, and we should stop at the nearest hospital for tools.”
* * *
The school was back on track and the elementals were in recovery. With Ahz’s help, the forest was already showing green and the wildlife was thriving. When we parked, Darwin and Amelia took off for their room. Remington went to relieve Murphy. Henry and I went to the North to check on Scott. Not to my surprise, the twins said he wasn’t there.
Instead, he had stayed in the Center. When we walked into Henry’s room, Rita was sitting on the floor, play-wrestling with the little jaguar while Ahz painted. Scott was having so much fun that it took him a few minutes to realize we were there.
