looked into her eyes and I saw something I didn’t see in the others. I saw strength, like Camilla’s strength, Camilla’s power. I know she’s the one. I have to try with her, Rafer, I have to. It will still be possible, if the two of us work together, to find Camilla, finally. You do believe that, don’t you?”
Rafer swiped away the tears. Suddenly, he looked utterly calm, in full control of himself, and he sounded like the father, not the son. He said to his mother, his voice gentle, “No, Ma, none of those girls are going to be able to help you find out where Camilla is, not even Linzie Drumm. They aren’t going to add to your strength, none of them is going to help you hook up with Camilla. Don’t you understand? It’s impossible and Pa knew it, yet he did this for you.” He paused, then added quietly, “He was afraid not to do what you wanted, just as I was.” And now he’s dead hung silent in the air.
Cyndia was shaking her head. “You’re wrong. You make it sound like your pa was afraid of me. It isn’t true, your pa wanted Camilla back, too.”
Rafer shook his head. “Listen to me, Ma. Camilla’s not in Paris. She’s not in New York. She’s not even in bloody Florida. She’s not anywhere. She didn’t leave you when she was sixteen because she was angry at you. She didn’t leave you at all. Don’t you understand?”
Cyndia stared at her son. She whispered, “What are you talking about, Rafer? I always knew my Camilla was somewhere, knew it to my soul. And I was right, she came to me in my vision and told me exactly what to do. She was sixteen when she left, a rebellious age, and she was so independent, always defiant. Like every teenager, she wanted to do the opposite of what was good for her, what I wanted her to do. My perfect gifted child. She was all I could ever want. I must have her back, Rafer, or I’ll go mad.
“Don’t you understand? Once I connect with Camilla, I can go to her and bring her home.”
Rafer said quietly, gently, “Ma, in your vision, when Camilla came to you. Did she actually appear to you? Did you actually see her?”
“Of course I did. I saw her clearly, my beautiful Camilla, so talented, so ready to live life to the fullest. I love her, Rafer, your father worshiped her, everyone admired her. She will come to me, she’ll tell me why she ran away. Remember all those worthless investigators your father hired over the years? They claimed they couldn’t find any trace of her, the idiots. In my vision Camilla said she’d had to hide herself from them, from all of us, that she was in danger, but she needs me now.” She stopped a moment, searched his face. “Don’t you see? Linzie Drumm, she’s the key to finally seeing Camilla again.”
“Ma, how old was Camilla when she came to you in your vision?”
Cyndia stopped cold. She shook her head back and forth. “No, no, that doesn’t matter.”
“She was still sixteen, wasn’t she?”
Cyndia said nothing, kept shaking her head.
“Not everyone loved her, Ma.”
Cyndia’s head snapped back. “That’s not true. Camilla was magical, she’d come into her gift, she was testing her limits. She was so happy with what she was, ready to conquer the world. No matter why she left, no matter what she’s done over the years, she deserves to be happy, deserves to be someone important. She wants me to find her now, Rafer, she wants me to bring her back.”
Rafer straightened, taller than his father, but young and fit, strong. “You want the truth about your precious Camilla? Oh yeah, she was happy, you’re right about that. She was deliriously happy with her gift, with what she could do. She loved to rub my nose in it, me, the little brother who didn’t have any gifts, the little brother who didn’t count, who couldn’t protect himself, whose parents didn’t even see him. How could you not know how she made me her slave? That she tried out her powers on me? Experimented on me. On me, Ma. I was only eleven years old. She made me do things, stupid things, awful things. She made me hurt the boy who broke up with her—made me steal the car he loved and wreck it, and I almost killed myself doing it. She