Chapter Eight

Lillian was done talking after that so I took the German book to my room. Lying on my stomach on the bed, I turned the pages in hopes of finding anything more interesting than ugly calligraphy in a language I couldn’t read. I’d gotten close to the end and was almost ready to give up when I found something. It was a chalk drawing of the ugliest couple I’d ever seen.

Dewing weren’t big on photos of themselves. A few pictures taken ten or twenty years apart would show how slowly we aged. Before photos, they felt the same way about portraits. The ones I’d seen in old books always had the faces blurred out. So, it came as a surprise that the faces of the man and woman in the chalk drawing were finely detailed.

Every wrinkle around their eyes was discernable. The sagging skin on their cheeks and jowls was unmistakable. They had dark eyes that stared expressionlessly from the page and mouths so stern it seemed impossible they could ever have smiled. They were holding their palms up. The V marks in them were large and grotesque-looking, as though they’d lived several lifetimes longer than normal.

The creep factor was made worse by the rough brown robes they wore. Their gnarled, bare feet poked out at the bottom.

Behind them was a tree with a thick trunk and bare branches. Brown leaves lay rotting all over the ground.

A phrase had been written at the bottom of the page. I had no idea what it said, but Enjoy your future nightmare seemed like a possibility. I closed the volume and put it on the end of the bed, wondering what twisted mind came up with that horror scene.

I was trying to decide what to do next when I sensed a familiar signature.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I concentrated to be sure I’d identified it correctly. Then I jumped up and hurried to the other room.

Lillian had moved her things and disappeared somewhere, so I didn’t have to worry about stepping on her as I hustled to stand behind the painted door. I did a little dance of excitement and then when I was sure he was about to knock, I pulled the door open and shouted, “Hi, Theron!”

Startled, he paled and stumbled back.

My cousin was six foot five and had the physique of a NFL linebacker. He reminded me of a startled grizzly bear. I laughed uncontrollably.

“All the reasons I can’t stand you have come flooding back,” he grouched as he recovered.

Grabbing his hands, I pulled him inside. “I didn’t miss you, either,” I teased.

He pointed to my head. “What have you done to yourself?”

Realizing my newly cut hair had come out of its ponytail and was hanging in several lengths around my ears, I patted it down. “Do you like it?” I asked. “I did it this way especially for you.”

He chuckled and rubbed the top of my head like I was ten.

His eyes widened as he took in the mess in the living room. “It looks like a storage unit threw up in here,” he remarked. “Make that two storage units.”

“Just wait,” I said, pulling him through a couple of crates. “Your bedroom is even worse.”

I showed him into the room next to mine. Never one to waste time, Theron took a look around, put his huge hiking pack and two canvas bags on the floor, and began to push crates out of the way.

“Did you have a good time schlepping around South America?” I asked, watching him work.

“I wouldn’t call it a good time,” he replied, “but I got a lot of thinking done. Riding rusted-out buses with chickens roosting on the seats is hard on the nose but good for the mind.”

“What did you think about?”

“Moving on. It will be a year in May since Amy and I…”

I knew the story, so he didn’t need to finish. Amy was Theron’s former girlfriend. Things had been going great between then until she likenessed with his brother. It happened right in front of him. As you might expect, he was a little screwed up over it.

I was glad he’d done some reflection while he was away. Theron didn’t deserve what happened to him. I believed, in the beginning, he thought he did. He was a dewing without joining and battled a lot of insecurity because of it.

I pretty much loathed Theron when we met a few months ago. He was grouchy, sarcastic, and stubborn. Once you got to know him, though, you could appreciate all the great stuff underneath it: his intelligence, loyalty, and kindness.

There was an odd bond between us. Theron hated destiny for making him without joining and then having his girlfriend likeness with his brother. I hated destiny for putting me in a position to grow up loving humans and then ripping me out of it to serve the greater good.

We got a little solace knowing there was another dewing in the world who despised destiny with a white-hot, flaming passion.

“Moving on is good,” I said, giving him a smile. “I could set you up with Phoebe when she gets here.”

“Ah, no thanks,” he responded. “I’ve seen pictures, and she’s not my type.”

“That photo wasn’t flattering,” I replied. “She has a distinctive nose, that’s all. I think you’ll like her.”

He looked up from a crate he’d been pushing. “Don’t play matchmaker with me, Alison. Especially with girls you consider friends. They might never talk to you again. Anyway, it would be a waste of your time. I’ve got plans, and there’s no room in them for a relationship, at least not for a while.”

Theron had graduated with a master’s degree in computer science from MIT when he was sixteen. Because he had boundless energy and an insatiable drive to learn new things, he enrolled in art school afterward. He’d been studying at Columbia University when Amy likenessed to his brother.

“Are you going back to school in New York?” I asked.

He shook his head and rubbed his eyes. “Change of plans. I’m training at a culinary institute in France. I’ll start next month.”

The mattress on his bed sunk as he sat down on it.

“So, you plan to be a computer-hacking, canvas-painting chef now?” I asked.

“There’s a growing market for them,” he joked. Then, yawning, he brushed a hand along his dark hair. “Do I refer to you as Jillian Laurel now?” he asked.

Jillian was the name my biological parents gave me, but I had no memory of being called by it. For some reason, I could never get comfortable with how the name sounded. He’d used it once when I was in a bad mood, and I’d reacted poorly.

“I’ve decided to stick with Alison,” I remarked.

“You’ll have to officially change your name,” he told me. “That means getting permission from immediate family, requesting the clan chief’s approval, and having the genealogist change it in the clan records.”

“Considering I’m my own clan chief, and the genealogy book is in my closet, it should take me about thirty seconds,” I replied.

He smiled like he suddenly remembered I was going to be a clan chief, put his arm around my neck, held me in a headlock, and messed up my hair even more. “That’s right,” he said. “My little cousin is all grown up.”

I pushed him off, laughing.

It felt nice to laugh and joke, but I knew it was coming to an end when his brown eyes began to regard me with concern. “How are you doing since…everything?” he asked.

I looked away from his steady gaze. “If you mean how am I doing since faking my death…fine.”

He waited for me to say more. When I didn’t, he remarked, “You’re taking the stiff upper lip approach. I can respect that.”

I looked at my hands, grateful that he seemed to understand.

He patted the space on the bed next to him, so I sat down. “What are you planning to do after the roundtable meeting?” he asked. “Are you going back to Australia with Ian?”

“No,” I replied with a sigh. “I’m still planning to live with Lillian in Sweden. I’m going to buy a Volvo and learn to make meatballs. Ian might register for some classes at a university not too far away. He’ll live close enough that we can see each other a lot, but I’ll also have some personal space. I think I’ll need that for a bit.”

“Hm,” he said, “the flight time from Paris to Stockholm is about two and a half hours. I could fly over and try some of those meatballs.”

“Okay,” I replied with a smile. “I’d like that.”

“Has anything exciting been happening around here?” he asked.

I’d momentarily forgotten about my new enemies and “the offer” I’d overheard the Vasitass talking about. Those worries came crashing down on me again.

“Wow,” he remarked, probably observing the change in my expression. “You better tell me all about it.”

I wondered where to start and settled on something only he would understand. “My mother talked to me today,” I said.

He blinked. “I hoped she’d stop doing that for a while…and by for a while, I mean a decade or so.”

As far as I knew, Theron was the only other dewing who heard voices of the dead, specifically my mother’s. He was a giant of a man but freaked out like a little girl when it happened.

“I know I’m going to regret asking,” he said. “but what did she say?”

“That I should eavesdrop on a conversation between the Vasitass clan chiefs,” I replied.

He rubbed his eyes. “And how did that go?”

“They didn’t catch me, but what I overheard was troubling,” I answered. “They’ve got some offer to discuss at the roundtable. Apparently, it has moral implications. Helen said it could be…and I quote, our salvation. Still, they think they’ll have some difficulty getting the other chiefs to go for it. Valentine thinks I’ll be a particular problem. He’s a futureseer and had a vision of me talking at a roundtable meeting. I was scaring the crap out of everyone there.”

He chuckled. “That doesn’t surprise me. I wonder what the Vasitass have been up to, though.”

“I don’t know,” I replied, “but I think my mother wants me to stop the chiefs from accepting the offer they’ll present.”

He breathed out a long breath. “I’d like to argue,” he said, “but I doubt she would have spoken to you otherwise. What are you going to do?”

“Find out more about it before the roundtable,” I replied. “I need to thoughtmake one of the Vasitass into explaining what’s going on. The problem is, they aren’t staying at the Arx. They have their own place in town.”

“They’ve got to come back sometime, right?” he asked.

“I spoke briefly to Helen. She said they’d be back for the reporting ceremony. That’s tomorrow night, but all the clan chiefs will be there. I’d need to get Valentine or her alone to use my joining without giving myself away.”

He nodded. “We’ll figure something out. But I need to get some sleep first.” He made the go-away signal with is fingers. “Go find someone else to bother for a while. I must sleep…maybe until tomorrow.”

Feeling better to have told someone about the Vasitass, I leaned over to hug him. “Thanks for coming, Theron.”

He gave me a tired smile. “That’s what cousins are for.”