The Twin Prophecies: Rebirth - Special Edition Read online

  “Well, shouldn’t is different than can’t. It has been done then?”

  Dr. Tesla sighed. “It has been attempted, of course it has. But the results were disastrous. Unnatural. And you’ll just have to take my word for it.”

  Violet silently made her way up the stairs. She’d heard enough to know they’d been discussing bringing their parents back from the dead.

  Chapter Seven

  What a Pair We Must Make

  Jack was convinced he was evil. There was no other explanation for his visions. In his limited experience with girls, he thought Violet was acting as moody and standoffish as girls their age were supposed to; not that he thought she wasn’t hurting. It was clear she was. Shutting down, putting up walls and barking at anyone that dared showed you kindness were all moves from his playbook - tactics he’d deployed out of fear and protection. It was easier to maintain his secret no touching policy when he made it so that no one, not even his parents, would want to be around him. It was his biggest regret.

  If he’d had just been honest and explained about the horrible vision he received the last time he saw Bobby, when Bobby had touched his arm, they would have understood – more than he could have ever dreamed possible. He’d done such a great job at pushing them away and making them feel as if he didn’t want to be bothered because of something they’d done, he was sure those were the thoughts of him they took to their graves. The fact that he had no way of knowing this for sure did little to ease his guilt and shame.

  When he asked Dr. Tesla about the possibility of using magic to bring his parents back, it wasn’t because he bore any illusions that they could truly live again and go back to life the way it was. But he’d just hoped that there was some spell that could make him see them again, if just for a few moments, so he could tell them that he was sorry.

  Once Dr. Tesla shot that down Jack decided he had no use for magic, but that didn’t mean he was any less curious about his parents’ involvement with The Alliance and his grandfathers’ roles as Hunters. Though their sessions had resumed, Jack never felt like they were the right time or place to ask questions about his family and Dr. Tesla seemed more interested in getting Jack to talk about Bobby than sharing anything he knew. Holding on to his secret and the details surrounding Bobby’s accident hadn’t really worked out for Jack before, but there was no way he was opening up about them now. If he was right about what his visions meant, how did he know Dr. Tesla wouldn’t turn on him? They’d been willing to kill three people to protect The Alliance and the world. Jack couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t send Hunters after him.

  Jack had every intention of keeping his mouth shut.

  Dr. Tesla summoned Jack and Violet into his office. Jack had been called to the principal’s office enough times over the past six months to sense when the news wasn’t good. Dr. Tesla’s grave expression didn’t help matters. Seated behind his desk, he gestured they should take a seat on the other side.

  “I need to ask your permission for something… both of you. As I explained, The Alliance has many human allies, people in unique positions to help us remain hidden. The police investigation concluded that your parents’ death was nothing more than a tragic accident, but we’d like to conduct our own investigation. If magic was involved in their deaths, human investigators wouldn’t know what to look for. We have ways of performing our own tests on the bodies to look for remnants of spells or potions. We’d like your permission to have your parents’ bodies examined. “

  “But they’re already buried,” Jack said.

  “I know and I’m sure this seems macabre, but trust me, this would be done with the utmost care. The sacrifice your parents made and the chances they took to protect us were much appreciated. We need to find out what happened to them not just for our sakes, but out of respect.”

  Violet looked to Jack and their eyes met. Jack nodded. Dr. Tesla noticed this silent consultation. “I want to know, don’t you?” Jack asked Violet.

  She did. She felt she owed her parents that. “OK. Do what you have to do,” she said.

  “Thank you, children. Like I said: utmost care. I assume you’ll both be retiring soon. Big day tomorrow.”

  Violet found that the only way she could fall asleep in a new house was to make sure she was as exhausted as possible when she got into the bed. Otherwise, she’d lie there, trying to fall asleep, her mind racing with visions of her mother and father in the car before they died. Also, this technique had the added benefit of ensuring that she didn’t dream or at the very least, that she didn’t remember them. She’d had recurring dreams about the things Dr. Tesla had shown them in that virtual history. In the most frequent, Violet was the ailing Edi girl covered in blood. When the rest of the tribe awoke as vampires, she was still human and they converged on her, fangs bared, eyes bright red. The first vampire to reach her was always Kalina.

  Violet was unable to reach the exact level of exhaustion guaranteed to produce a quick fall into a coma-like sleep. She kept thinking about Dr. Tesla’s request that a magical autopsy be performed on her mother and father. Violet wandered to the kitchen in search of a distraction. Although they hadn’t met, she sensed Ms. Sweet was aware of her late night visits to the kitchen because she’d find light snacks waiting for her. This night there was a pint of her favorite ice cream, mint-chocolate chip, on the top shelf of the freezer. Violet didn’t know how Ms. Sweet did it, but she was grateful. After finding a spoon, she followed the sounds of the television into the living room.

  Jack was on the sofa in the dark, watching a movie. Violet sat on the other end of the sofa, tucked her feet under her legs, and dug into the ice cream. Jack cast a sideways glance and said, “My mother used to hate when I ate ice cream out of the carton like that.”

  “Mine, too. Not much they can do about it now, huh?”

  There was a brief, shocked moment of silence as each considered the insensitivity of Violet’s comment. Violet looked at Jack cautiously, ready to apologize. It was one thing to make light of what had happened to her parents as a defense mechanism; it was entirely another to include Jack’s.

  Jack had his head down and his shoulders shook with laughter. “I guess not.” Violet grinned and then laughed, too. “You can’t sleep either?” she asked.

  “Not really. Dr. Tesla offered to have a colleague write a prescription, but I said no. You?”

  “Same here. Mainly because I couldn’t tell what kind of colleague he was referring to. A psychiatrist? Or an elf with magical sleeping potions?”

  They laughed again, this time more loudly. “Shhh,” Jack said, bringing his hand to his mouth to mute his own laughter. Once he’d recovered, he asked, “Seriously, though, bad dreams?”

  “When I can remember them, yes, they’re bad.” After a moment, she cut a quick glance at Jack. His eyes remained fixed on the television, but she didn’t think he was really paying attention to it. “What do you think they’re going to do to them?” she asked.

  Without looking at her, Jack replied, “I don’t know.”

  “What do you think they’re going to find?”

  “Nothing, I hope.”

  Violet stuck the spoon in a hill of ice cream. “Well, I guess I better try to get some sleep.” Violet stood and offered the carton to Jack. “You want this?”

  “Sure,” he said, reaching up to take the ice cream.

  “You should try to get some sleep, too.” Violet turned to leave. When she reached the door she turned back to Jack and said, in a perfect imitation of Dr. Tesla, “Big day tomorrow.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Jack said.

  They had tried to put it off for as long as they could, but two weeks after moving in with Dr. Tesla, Jack and Violet returned to school. Because she now lived in East Rosemont, Violet would be attending Carter High with Jack. While Dr. Tesla and Violet went to the office to handle her enrollment, Jack headed for his first period class.

  He didn’t see Violet till later that afternoon; they had fifth perio
d English together. Their conversation the night before would go on record as their longest and most pleasant to date. The few times they had spoken before that, Violet had been short and sarcastic, like she blamed Jack for the situation they were in. But it wasn’t just the bonding over ice cream that eased things between them. Without having to discuss it further, they knew they were both afraid of what would be found once their parents’ bodies were examined.

  Violet was assigned an empty seat in front of Jack in English class. They had a substitute so they were expected to read quietly for the period. Violet turned in her seat so they could share Jack’s copy of The Odyssey. Jack flipped through the pages and whispered, “Sorry. I’m a little behind everyone else. Haven’t had much time to read lately.”

  “It’s okay,” Violet whispered back. “I’ve read this already. Well, it was read to me.”

  “Lucky you,” Jack said sarcastically, but with a smile. They laughed softly.

  Jack noticed they’d attracted the attention of several classmates. What a pair we must make, he thought, both orphaned by the same accident and now living together. He could tell by the look on their faces they hadn’t yet decided what to make of it. Join the club. He was used to stares and whispers since Bobby’s accident, especially after he’d made it clear he wasn’t interested in talking about it and had isolated their mutual friends.

  Violet was also used to stares and curious attention; she’d received her fair share whenever she used the laptop or was excused from taking an exam the way everyone else did. If she’d wanted to, Violet could have pulled out her laptop now and downloaded a copy of the assigned reading, but she wasn’t interested in drawing any more attention.

  Jack and Violet sat together at lunch where a few students stopped over to offer Jack their sympathies. They would only offer Violet a tentative smile and didn’t stick around long. As sad as it was to know a kid who’d lost both his parents in a car accident, it was even more bizarre to find out the kid was now living with his psychologist and the girl whose parents died in the same accident. What did that make them? Siblings? Of course, only Jack and Violet knew that they were, in a sense, exactly that.

  Their isolation had begun to feel like its own brand of normal. Even though it felt good to have company, Violet missed her old school. She missed her old life. More than anything, she missed her parents. Carter wasn’t a bad school. Since she was a kid she’d heard of the differences in the schools and houses in the different parts of town. She knew that where she used to live, people were considered rich. The way she looked at it, Carter was supposed to be her high school. If her parents hadn’t been able to buy their dream home, she’d have stayed in East Rosemont and gone to Carter just as Jack had. She didn’t miss her old house and school because they were better; she missed them because they were all she’d known.

  She and Jack had formed a silent alliance; the two orphans with secrets so amazing, they’d both be locked up if they discussed it. So, they didn’t. Which was why it was surprising when, while sitting in the school’s cafeteria one day, Jack asked whether or not she felt any differently.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, they’re apparently worried that some day we might get powers or something. I just wondered if you ever felt like that. Like something was happening to you.”

  They were no longer snapping at each other every chance they got, but that didn’t mean Violet was ready to tell Jack about her ability. There was still so much that she didn’t know about it, it seemed best to continue pretending it didn’t exist. “No. Have you?”

  For a moment, she thought Jack was going to say he had. He seemed to be sizing her up, deciding if she was trustworthy. If that was the case, she failed. Jack didn’t share a dark confession. Instead, he shook his head and looked away.

  “No. I haven’t felt anything.”

  One afternoon, two weeks into her time at Carter, Violet left school early. She walked down to the bus that deposited Little City commuters into South Rosemont. The bus turned left after the bridge and proceeded down Maclean Road. It made one more stop at the foot of the Newton before it turned left onto the bridge and headed back into the city. It was the only form of public transportation that connected the west and east sides of South Rosemont. The only buses the residents wanted to see in their neighborhoods were school buses.

  While the bus motored down Maclean, Violet thought about riding over the exact spot where her parents had died. She was thankful she didn’t know where that was, but found herself looking for indicators – broken glass, skid marks – anyway. She didn’t see any. She was thankful for that, too.

  After she exited the bus, Violet walked the rest of the way to her old neighborhood, passing neatly manicured lawns until she arrived at her old block. She crossed the street and entered the yard of the house directly across from hers. Violet knew that the Pierces would be at work and she could sit under the giant oak in the front lawn, watching her house uninterrupted.

  The house looked the same as it had a month ago, when they still lived there as a family. Violet pretended the For Sale sign wasn’t there and that the dried leaves all over the lawn were indicators of her dad being too busy to tend to them. She pretended she still lived there and it was a Saturday afternoon instead of the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, when her parents were dead. Her mom was at the hospital and her dad was playing golf; his last time out before the weather got too cold. Later that night, she’d be meeting Liza at the movies. There were no vampires or fairies and her soul was her own.

  Being able to feel someone else’s emotions was, Violet thought, a sign that her soul hadn’t ever been her own. It was just waiting - waiting for her to be old enough and then the power emerged. She worried that other changes might be coming. She hadn’t tried to connect to anyone since trying to access Jack’s feelings at Gervais’ office. She didn’t know why it didn’t work on him. More than that, it felt wrong to even try. As scared as she was, the ability intrigued her and she wondered what the limits were. Violet was too afraid to experiment with it at the house. The last thing she needed was Dr. Tesla using his warlock Spidey senses and calling her on it.

  Across the street, in the yard of the house next to hers, Ms. Harkin came out to check her mail. Violet considered trying to connect to her, but thought it would be too easy. Two houses down, Mrs. Nelson would be settling in to watch her soap operas while her toddler, Jamie, napped. Violet closed her eyes. Having babysat for the Nelsons dozens of times, Violet easily pictured the inside of their house; the family photos hung along the foyer walls, the plants in the living room and the cooking magazines on the coffee table.

  She imagined Mrs. Nelson sitting in her husband’s easy chair, feet up and having her afternoon cup of coffee and slice of lemon danish – her secret guilty pleasure. The connection made, Violet was bathed in emotions; tired from housework and running after a toddler all morning, frustration over something going on in the television program, annoyance because the phone just rang.

  Violet’s eyes snapped open. Not only had it worked from such a distance, but because of it Violet was able to tell what caused the emotions without any visual clues. It was like she was in the living room with Mrs. Nelson. No, it was more than that. It was like she’d been in her mind, in her body, experiencing everything around her.

  “Violet?”

  Violet had been so caught up in testing her ability that she hadn’t noticed Ms. Harkin crossing the street.

  “I thought that was you. What are you doing out here?”

  Ms. Harkin stopped where the Pierce’s wooden fence met the sidewalk and rested her hands on a post. Her hair was pinned on top of her head and she wore a brown knit sweater over a white dress with red flowers.

  “I just wanted to…” Violet tried to think of a rational explanation for why she wasn’t in school.

  “Oh, sweetheart, I get it. You’re homesick. Come on in. It’s chilly out here. I’ll make you some cocoa and I just took some
oatmeal cookies out of the oven.”

  Violet pushed all thoughts of evil souls and supernatural powers to the back of her mind as she took Ms. Harkin’s hand and walked across the street.

  It was dark when Violet let herself into Dr. Tesla’s house. She’d planned on heading straight to her room, but as she entered the foyer, Dr. Tesla called from the living room.

  “Violet, would you come here for a moment, please?”

  Dr. Tesla sat on the sofa with several textbooks open and spread around him and the coffee table. Jack sat on the loveseat looking bored. Violet guessed that he’d already had a preview of the lecture she was about receive.

  “Where were you?”

  “Wow. You’ve only been our guardian for a few weeks and you’ve already got the whole overprotective, nosy, parent thing down.”

  “I would appreciate an answer much more than I appreciate the attitude.”

  “Fine. I met with Kalina after school.”

  Dr. Tesla sighed. “Sit down.”

  Violet sat next to Jack, folding her arms across her chest. She was prepared to stick to her story no matter happened next.

  Chapter Eight

  Magic Leaves Markers

  “Is this like, a family meeting?”

  Jack wanted to nudge Violet, give her a heads up to not take the sarcastic road, but Dr. Tesla was watching them both intently. He hadn’t seen Dr. Tesla this serious in all the time they’d lived there - heck, in all the time he’d known him. Whatever was going down was serious.

  “Excuse me, Dr. Tesla. Sorry to interrupt.” They all turned towards the door. The children stared; Jack’s mouth agape. Ms. Sweet stood in the doorway, wearing a pale blue dress and white tennis shoes. Her silver hair, tied in a ponytail that fell to the middle of her back, reminded Jack of Christmas tinsel. But that’s not why they stared.