attack,” she said. “They’re back in the common room. I’ll just shut down the wards. Come on.” She motioned me to follow.
I have to admire the glam atmosphere the EHJ have for their headquarters. They’re the biggest hero team in all of the United States, maybe even the world, and more than live up to their celebrity status. They’d been a bit of a joke for a while, more celebrities than heroes, until Wesley rejoined them and set things straight. No matter which life he was living, my father always was a take-charge kind of man.
We reached a doorway and Lainey said softly, “Apri I reparti.” The magic took effect and the door swung open as the wards surrounding the room broke, revealing comfortable living quarters with a widescreen television taking up one whole wall.
Inside the room I was greeted with an exuberant, “Fay!” the bizarre rendition of my name I was given by my two-year-old half sister, and then her chubby arms wrapped my leg.
I smiled in spite of myself. Emily is the only person on Earth who has that effect.
“Hey, kiddo,” I said, bending over to pick her up. “Are you driving Daddy crazy like I told you?”
She nodded, blonde hair like her mother’s bobbing as she did. “You come to play magic?” Her blue eyes—just like her father’s—sparkled with hope.
Emily was still young enough to be enthused by simple tricks, like making things appear and disappear or making her toys dance. Truth be told, she was powerful enough to do these things herself, if someone would teach her how. Usually a natural-born magic-user wouldn’t be able to access such powers until the onset of puberty, but Emily’s an anomaly. She’d started working small bits of magic at the tender age of one, likely to both her parents’ horror. You think normal kids’ temper tantrums are bad? Try telling a kid who can work magic that she can’t have a cookie. It’s even worse when that kid is prophesied to be the world’s most powerful magic-user who will either save the world or destroy it by releasing powerful creatures locked away since the dawn of time.
Everyone’s doing their part to make sure she comes down on the save-the-world side.
“Here ya go,” I said, sitting her back down. “Fai delle farfalle.” Brightly colored butterflies flashed into appearance and flew around the room. Emily laughed and clapped her hands.
“You shouldn’t be teaching her that.”
I narrowed my eyes at the speaker. “Lighten up. They’re just butterflies. Harmless.”
“You know better,” Wesley Charles said. He jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and glared at me. “It’s creating life out of nothing. That’s dangerous.”
It was weird seeing him as a twentysomething. So many years ago, practically the dawn of time, he was my father. His powers made it so that instead of dying at the end of each life, he reincarnates as a twenty-year-old—a twenty-year-old who remembers nothing about his previous relationships.
Since I don’t age and can’t die, I’d tried over the years to remind him. Over and over. Eventually, I got tired of rehashing that pain and gave up. That was around about the time he started writing down personal details in journals. He’d try to contact me. I’d ignore him. Eventually I grew bored with that and just treated him like he always treated me: a stranger with a few similar interests. Things had been awkward for his last couple of lives, but we’d come to an uneasy truce since Emily’s birth.
“She’s not going to get a God complex from creating a few butterflies,” I grumbled, watching my sister spin around the room.
“Why are you here?” Wesley asked. “Is something wrong?”
Something was wrong, but I wasn’t going to tell him. I’d known yesterday that this was going to happen, but I couldn’t help it. Today of all days I felt the need to be around family. He was all I had.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said, shrugging. “I just felt the need to spoil Emily. I thought I’d take her to get some ice cream, maybe visit the toy store, make a few butterflies appear and fly around the room. You know, normal big-sister stuff.”
Wesley frowned. “She doesn’t need to be out gallivanting.” He left the with you unspoken, but I could feel the words hovering in the air. I can always feel other people’s disapproval.
I put my hands on my hips. “So, I’m good enough to watch her when you want to go out gallivanting, but when I want to