intense at first. I think what we are feeling is amplified by
the fact that we can't just be together and love each other
with no one to interfere. But when this is over, I want to go
somewhere just you and me and be quiet and eat great food
and love each other till it hurts. Does that sound okay to
you?"
"That sounds like heaven, baby" He stretched.
"Now you have a big day ahead of you and I need to check
the security of the house in the morning. Something isn't
feeling right and I'm not sure it's just my moon twitchiness
getting under my skin. Get some rest." He kissed her
several times on the mouth and lay down next to her.
What should have been a peaceful moment, felt
riddled in turbulent waters. Kal was thinking about death.
The thought was tangible to her even as she probed his
mind.
"Shush." Isabelle pulled her hand behind her head
to stroke his hair. "Your thoughts hurt. I'm never going to
leave unless you are coming with me. No bad thoughts."
"Serves you right for hanging out in my head."
"Can't help it. I like being surrounded by your love
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for me, even in my mind."
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Chapter Fifteen
"So what's the deal with you and Kal?" Isabelle
asked Veli bluntly. She was sitting next to him in the living
room having just attempted her longest time jump yet. It
was getting easier and each time she did it she needed less
and less down time but Veli had insisted that she have a
time out. The kid gloves that he treated her with were quite
different from the way he had raised her beloved.
They had opted to use the living room as the best
place to try the planned time jump to Abraxas. She had
tried to convince them to let her go back and warn her
parents and she was starting to suspect that she was enough
in control of her own powers that she didn't need Veli's or
Leonardo's permission to jump but she wasn't one hundred
percent convinced of that and she didn't really want to
screw anything up.
Besides, Veli had leapt into a monologue describing
the dangers of interfering with the past and she supposed
that she had to agree. Meddling with things past seemed
risky. After all, she could simply leap back and warn their
people that the end was coming weeks before it happened
and then maybe none of this had to happen at all. That
would mean, of course, that she would never have been
raised by her parents and she didn't want that either.
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Knowing that didn't make it any easier, it physically hurt
her not to try to visit her parents and warn them of their
death.
The living room had the most physical floor space
in the house and Leonardo felt that he could control the
magic streams better in there. He didn't want to be
encumbered by too much excess furniture and wall
blockages. Isabelle wasn't exactly sure what that meant—
they were travelling through time not space—but she didn't
want to tell Leonardo how to do his job. She was beginning
to see that each of them controlled their magic differently.
She had to focus her energy outwards and literally throw
her consciousness away from herself. It was disconcerting
but fun at the same time. Her powers had started to feel like
another limb in her body. If she could swing her arm
forward, she could swing her whole person forward
through time. It was becoming as easy as breathing.
Leonardo seemed to internalize his powers, almost
changing the way he perceived reality. His eyes became a
strange color, lighter, almost translucent. He was always so
intense, never seeming to relax or let his guard down. Veli
seemed very intense when he was using his gift, much as
Kal had seemed when he had shielded her on the street
from the bullets and incinerated the police officer who was
coming after them. Veli's powers flared up whenever
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Leonardo or Kal were in the room with him. He was always
feeling defensive, leadership obviously didn't sit well with
him. It was clear that Kal and Veli were both warriors,
which was why Veli felt threatened. But Leonardo's powers
were not aggressive so it made very little sense to her that
Veli would be so wound up around Leonardo. One problem
at a time, she kept reminding herself. Kal had to be her first
priority.
Marina still seemed like such a mystery to Isabelle
because she kept herself so removed from the time jumping
project. When she spoke she often came across as spooky
and otherworldly, like she wasn't really present in the room
with them. She bit her lip a lot when she spoke and Isabelle
suspected she had a constant internal dialogue going on that
she wasn't sharing with the rest of them—either that or she
was keeping herself from speaking her mind. Isabelle
wasn't sure which one was true. She had tried to peek in her
mind but the attempt proved fruitless. The other woman's
thoughts were a whirlwind, coming and going constantly.
Isabelle wasn't sure how Marina even functioned like that.
Kal's was the only mind she could move in and out of at
will.
Charma's powers seemed to flow out of her into
someone else. Now that Isabelle was aware of them she
would almost swear that they had a vague color. She was so
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quiet most of the time that she could slip in and out of
rooms without anyone noticing that she was even there. She
seemed sad and Isabelle knew that she must carry a huge
amount of other people's personal baggage on her very
slender shoulders.
During one of their mandatory breaks, Leonardo
had explained that these very distinct differences between
personal powers were one of the reasons that familial
relations had always been so strong among the Outsiders. It
was only your own individual parents who could help you
learn to understand and control the powers that manifested
in their children. If she had been raised by her biological
parents, they would have known how to teach her to jump
from time period to time period better than Veli or
Leonardo ever could. Isabelle thought they were doing a
pretty good job considering that the lack of biological
relatives had placed the current group at a huge
disadvantage. Veli believed that Abraxas had recorded the
powers of each of the families.
They desperately needed Abraxas' journals and
Isabelle felt the pressure acutely, which was maybe why
she was breaking all of her personal rules about politeness
and respect and asking Veli point blank what his issues
were with Kal. If he could put pressure on her, she could
provide it right back. She hadn't known Veli as a child, she
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didn't still hold a child's unreasonable fear of a threatening
adult.
"What do you mean?" Veli seemed uncomfortable
and he started fiddling with the fabric on the couch next to
him.
Subtle signs of guilt and stress, she thought. If she
had him in her office at home she would have immediately
started pressing her questions about his parenting skills.
She tried to imagine him in a therapeutic session, with all
of his charges sitting around him. He didn't seem quite so
intimidating that way. He was overwhelmed and under
qualified for the job that had been handed to him. In a lot of
ways he had really screwed it up, Isabelle thought with a
sigh. But he was still just a man, not a monster, and she
hoped she could get Kal to see him this way.
"You guys are obviously very tense around each
other." Isabelle had decided that she could temper her
bluntness a little bit without losing her authority. There was
no point in acting delicately, the full moon was twenty-four
hours away, but she sincerely hoped that she could find a
way that they could all have a healthy relationship with
Veli when this was all over. She was going to have to start
feeling and acting like an Outsider and she suspected that
none of her ancestors would ever have been afraid of
confronting Veli. She was a woman who could jump
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through time, a force to be reckoned with.
"Tense?" Veli looked confused. He was acting like
she had asked him his opinion on nuclear physics or beauty
products. They obviously hadn't spent a lot of time talking
about their feelings in this household.
"I'm not tense around Kal. I've taken care of him
and the others since they were babies. I was entrusted with
them." He threw his hands down on the table in front of
him in a gesture meant to end the conversation.
She sighed heavily, knowing that she was going to
get no verbal answers from him. Should she invade his
mind and take a look? It seemed the only answer and she
happily chose to act on it. The way she looked at it, she was
choosing to be a little nosy and invasive but ultimately they
all might be able to benefit from it. She closed her eyes
and, not even sure that she could do it, she looked a little
bit into his mind. Was it possible to invade Veli's mind
uninvited?
Images flooded her mind suddenly and she tried to
let her conscious mind catch up with the new images that
were pushed through her. Slow down, she begged her mind,
slow down and let me see.
Veli stood face to face with a man she didn't know
but Kal resembled him a great deal. Isabelle suspected that
it must have been Kal's father. Kal was going to grow up to
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look just like him. They had the same high cheekbones and
the same intense eyebrows that slanted down when they
were focused on something. It was obviously not a pleasant
conversation between the two men. They were screaming at
each other and a tall, greying man stood behind them trying
to break up their fight.
"Nepotism may have won out today; Veli you
disgusting pig, but it will be the death of all of us. Weak!"
Kal's father screamed in Veli's face. He held up his finger
and he was gesturing wildly with it. "My wife would serve
you better, Abraxas. She has no aggressive skills and she
would keep us safer than this short-sighted, weak-minded
fool. My family has always served our leaders! He is
nothing but a peon." Kal's father turned on Abraxas, who
Isabelle realized must be the greying man who stood
between the two others.
The image changed in Veli's mind and Isabelle
realized that only seconds had passed where she and Veli
were sitting in the present. The picture that Isabelle could
see now was from Veli's perspective. He was standing in a
doorway watching Kal and Leonardo play on the floor in
front of him. They looked like two normal small children
building with blocks. Veli laughed, scooping Leonardo up
to take him off for a nap and he was whining about it,
leaving Kal alone for a moment. He quickly returned to the
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room and the child version of Kal looked up to grin at Veli.
Isabelle could feel the unexpressed joy in Veli's heart as he
stared at the young child, knowing he would grow up to be
a great man.
Images swirled again and Kal stood, pinning Veli
up against the wall of his bedroom, the full moon large in
the sky outside.
"You do know I could kill you now, Veli. I could
kill you!" the teenage version of Kal screamed at Veli.
Electricity moved through the air and Kal panted as the
sheer force of it pounded on his still youthful face. He
looked delirious and terrified as he did his best to try and
seem grown up and sure of himself. Isabelle had seen this
kind of electrical presence with Kal when he had called
down the heavens to protect them from the onslaught of
bullets on the street. He was grown up now and it had made
him always insane for a few moments and filled with the
need for human contact. He was young in this scene and
not nearly as in control of himself.
He obviously needed some reassurance, a parental
touch to guide him through his newfound magical
dilemmas. He was pushing Veli but all Isabelle wanted to
see Veli do was put his arms around the young man and
hold him tight. She knew that wasn't going to be
happening. If anything like that had ever happened, they
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wouldn't have the relationship that they had now.
"You could kill me, Kal, if you were any kind of
warrior but just like your father you'll be weak and
untrained and useless. Your father thought your family
name was enough to carry him through to leadership. It
wasn't and anyone who gave a shit about that is dead now,"
Veli spat back at Kal. "Come back and see me when you're
actually a man and not just pretending to be. Get a hold of
your powers, little boy, if you are even capable of doing
that. Otherwise I'll take a gun to your head when you're
sleeping and end the misery that is you before you infect
any of the others with your weakness."
Kal backed off as if he had been physically struck.
Panting even more, he stalked from the room in a hurry.
Isabelle wished she could follow him but these were Veli's
memories and not Kal's. Veli turned to the wall and
pounded on it with his fist.
"Damn it!"
He screamed to the heavens. "Damn.
Damn. Damn." Agony washed over his body and Isabelle
found herself being pulled back to the present. Something
had changed in their current situation and her mind wasn't
going to let her ignore it and stay in Veli's head.
She turned swiftly to see Leonardo looking at her
with a raised eyebrow. Sometime in the last few seconds he
had appeared in the room and the expression on his face
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told her that he knew exactly what she had done, even if
Veli did not. Isabelle suspected she would never be able to
read Leonardo's thoughts, that he was too well guarded.
She waited, wondering if he was about to expose her to
Veli. A moment passed between them and he didn't utter a
word.
"I think she's ready, Veli," Leonardo broke the
silence. "She's as ready as she will ever be."
"Good." Veli cleared his throat. "We just found her,
we certainly don't want to lose her, not when she shows so
many unexpected abilities so quickly." He tried a weak
smile, narrowing his eyes at her just slightly so that Isabelle
began to question if, in fact, Veli had known exactly what
she was doing and allowed her to do it. Maybe he had
finally found a little relief at having gotten to share that
memory of sending Kal off with someone else. He had
acted in anger and confusion and it must have left him
feeling like an incompetent parent at exactly the wrong
moment. He had failed Kal but maybe it wasn't irreparable.
Isabelle stood, ready to go back to work on the task at hand
and leave musings of emotional health and parental
responsibility for another day.
She halted in her tracks, the room suddenly felt cold
to Isabelle and she looked to see if Leonardo or Veli had
noticed but neither one seemed to. Leonardo turned around