Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (11 page)

I looked at the mass of papers on the floor.
Kieran’s explanation made sense in some terms, but there were
several places where files were stacked onto others.

“And the clusters?” I asked.

“Those are areas where we couldn’t quite
figure out exactly what he had done,” he said. “Most likely, the
transfers were between your mother and him, or were perhaps
political in nature, but were not insignificant.”

“Don’t you sleep?” I asked him, treading over
the papers slowly.

He barked a laugh, “Yes, just not that much
right now. I’ve been Rip Van Winkle for a while.”

“Really?” I asked, glancing up as I picked my
way through the mess, idly reading papers.

He nodded, saying, “My body was in a stasis
as I traveled, basically sleeping for weeks.”

I stopped and stared at him, slack jawed.
“Weeks?” I asked, astounded. “How far away were you?”

“Distance really isn’t the issue here,”
Kieran said, squinting at me. “It’s more like how deep was I and
even then the only answer is ‘pretty deep’.”

Ethan and Shrank came in then. Ethan plopped
down on the floor near the door, one of the few clear spots. Shrank
flew around the room, peeking and poking at things.

“So all of this is a bust?” I asked, happy
for their arrival to divert us from that strange topic.

“Well, there is much here that you might need
in time,” said Kieran, “but I don’t think it will help now. I
started making a list of recurring names, but only one came up. A
Colbert.” He said the name as “cole-bert.”

“Coal-bear,” I corrected him. “Artur Colbert,
our family attorney.”

“Artur is your attorney?” he asked,
grinning.

“I take it you know him,” I said.

“Yes, I know the old pirate,” said Kieran,
still grinning. “His name is all through these files. Does he have
Father’s power of attorney?”

“I imagine so, at least in some
circumstances,” I said. I looked down at the floor and picked out
several company names I recognized. “I know he can sign as
Comptroller for this company and as legal counsel for those two.” I
pointed out three rows of papers on the floors.

“Can you get in touch with him?” Kieran
asked.

“Think so,” I answered. “He’d be the first
I’d try anyway. Let me get my phone.” I hopped through the piles
and left the room. When I got back, the floor was clear and Ethan
and Shrank were re-binding the last two years together. Kieran was
standing before the bookcase peering intently at the top
shelves.

“Ehran McClure,” he said to the shelves.

The spell reacted to him. A sheet of red fire
blossomed out of the three top shelves like it was gas fed. Three
words bloomed equally as explosively seconds later in vibrant
yellow, one word to a shelf, “Ehran Find Seth.” The flames stayed
on the shelves for twenty, maybe thirty seconds then evaporated. On
the shelf behind my name sat a book. Glancing at me, Kieran took
the book off the shelf.

“So that’s how you spell your name?” I
asked.

“Yeah,” he answered, sitting down in the
middle of the floor. “My mother preferred the older spelling, said
the other way was a stuttering vowel and that was confusing. Let’s
see what Father left for us to find, shall we?”

I sat down beside him in the floor as he
opened the book, a picture album. Ethan came and sat in front of
us, looking at it upside down. The first item we came to was a
handwritten letter from Dad to Ehran:

Ehran,

That you’ve found this means that you’ve come
home and for that I am grateful beyond words. I know we can
reconcile and I hope you will give me the chance when I return.
Until then, please find Olivia and Seth, your brother. Help them.
Protect him.

I love you both.

December 3

“Short and sweet,” said Kieran, placing the
note back in place and turning the page. The first picture was of
Mom and Dad’s wedding, a portrait of the two of them.

“You and Dad were on the outs?” I asked as I
looked at the picture.

“Yeah,” he murmured, leaning in to look
closely at the picture. “I’d prefer not to talk about it until he’s
here to tell his side of the story, though. He’d come out really
bad, otherwise, and I’m sure there are things I don’t know. Your
mother is a beautiful woman.”

I thought so, too, but I was prejudiced. The
next picture was of me as a newborn. The next, me a few months old
grabbing at a floating rattle. The next page switched to instant
camera pictures like the previous album. Where the first album
hinted at something, this album showed magic outright. Well, showed
something outright. Page after page of floating balls and toys gave
way to half-formed colorful cartoon characters that couldn’t exist.
One showed what looked like a hole in the wall with Dad raising his
hands near it. His face strained with concentration. You could see
a small sprite twice the size of Shrank peeking through
uncertainly. Kieran stared at that picture for a long moment before
turning the page. It was the last picture.

Kieran closed the album and stared blankly at
the cover, deep in thought. I didn’t know what to think. It wasn’t
like I could do what the pictures showed. That wasn’t my doing. It
couldn’t be. Something else had to be going on. It had to be. I
just couldn’t do those things. Yet here was a book of pictures from
my father, a witness, telling me I did them. My life is getting
weirder by the minute.

“Quite a precocious tot,” said Kieran,
slapping on my back and knocking me out of my reverie. He got up
and started collecting all the books, stacking them in front of the
bookcase.

“What does all this mean?” I asked. “I mean,
I can’t do that stuff now, so why could I then? Assuming that was
me, then.”

“Would you mind?” Kieran asked, waving at the
bottom of the bookcase. I said my name and he slid the shelves
upward and started loading the books onto the second shelf. “Well,
the short answer is that it was you doing it, otherwise Father
wouldn’t have been taking pictures of it and insinuating it.” He
finished loading the shelf and slid it back into place. Then he
stood and waved Ethan over to his side.

“Take this as an example,” he said, pointing
out a chair next to the window. “One of us will move that chair
across the room. You tell me which one of us did it.”

They look at each other, communicating
somehow that I couldn’t see, then the chair whisked across the room
next to the stacked tables from last night. I felt the tug of power
clearly from Ethan.

“Ethan,” I said, “but how?”

Kieran smiled and said, “Now turn around and
try again.”

I turned around so that I couldn’t see either
one of them. Again, I felt the slight tug of power and heard the
chair slide lightly behind me. This time it was…

“Kieran,” I said, turning back around to look
at them.

“It takes a bit of effort to hide the use of
magic,” he said, smiling. “At that age, I doubt you could do it.
They knew you were the cause.”

“So why can’t I do that now?” I asked, a bit
frustrated.

“I bet you can, you’ve just learned not to,”
he said.

“What?” I said deadpan. That didn’t make any
sense to me.

“Think of it in terms of potty training,”
Kieran said after a moment, grinning. “You were taught at an early
stage of life to wait for an appropriate time and place to use the
potty instead of just going in your drawers. You just weren’t
taught when the appropriate time to use magic was.”

I felt like one of those bobble heads while I
thought about what he said, my head just waving in the wind, back
and forth, up and down. It sort of made sense, I guess.

“So why didn’t they ever teach me?” I asked.
“And why don’t I remember them teaching me not to do it?” That was
a pretty big hole in the argument.

“That I don’t know,” he said, “But I’d be
willing to bet it has something to do with why they’re missing
now.”

Kieran held his hand out for my phone. “May
I?”

I powered it up and handed it to him, telling
him to give it a moment, then sat down at the desk. Watching him
use the cell phone like he’d had one for years, he called the
attorney’s office. Kieran didn’t ask to speak to Mister Colbert or
for an appointment, he merely informed the secretary that “Mister
McClure” would be stopping by his office around 2:00 p.m. and he
would like to speak to Mister Colbert if available. It was shortly
before nine, which was cutting it very close—his office was in
Atlanta, a four-hour car trip. I wondered if Kieran knew that.

I pulled the address book out of the top desk
drawer and the three maps we’d need off the bookcase behind the
desk. Dad was a fanatic about maps. He had a whole room of them at
the house in Savannah, some dating back centuries. Here, I had road
maps for the whole country, parts of Mexico and Canada, and just
about every major city you could name. We’d really only need
Atlanta, but it never hurt to be prepared. There were three routes
from here and I knew all three without a map. I went to change for
the trip.

When I got back in the office, Kieran and
Ethan had already changed and come back to pore over the maps I’d
left. Shrank was at the windows, flitting back and forth
aimlessly.

“Shrank,” I said, “We’re gonna be in the car
for a long time. You just wanna stay here for the day? Explore the
yard?”

“May I?” he asked, shooting from the window
to hover a foot in front of me, excitedly sparking red and gold
dust in his path.

“Yeah, we’ll leave the kitchen window cracked
open for you. But just you and stay within the ward,” I told
him.

“Thank you, Master Seth,” he said,
disappearing through the doorway, humming as he went.

“We need to get moving if we’re gonna make it
by 2:00,” I said, moving to the safe to get some cash. Twisting the
dial, I thought about what we’d need and realized I had no clue, so
I counted out three grand and stuffed it in my wallet. When I
stood, Kieran and Ethan were by the door waiting. Uncanny.

“Are you guys telepathic or something?” I
asked.

“Huh?” said Kieran with a funny look.

Ethan chuckled and said, “No, I have merely
spent many years watching him. I can anticipate his actions.”

“So you’re telling me not to play poker with
you,” I said. Kieran chuckled this time. Ethan smiled.

We filed out of the office to the car with
Kieran in the lead. I made sure the kitchen window was cracked and
bellowed out to Shrank that we were leaving. My cell phone had shut
down again. Aggravating, I guess the battery was dying. I shoved it
in the charger in the car and pulled out of the garage.

I decided on the northern route since
Colbert’s office was on the Northeast side of town. Twenty minutes
to the highway, forty minutes to the interstate, we’d spent an hour
driving. I had the stereo on Jazz. Lounge singers this time. Mister
Colbert always put me in the mood for the Rat Pack. Peter Lawford,
to be exact. He always wore the same kind of suit Peter Lawford
seemed to wear.

Once we hit the interstate though, we made
better time. It took me about forty minutes more to realize we were
actually making better time than we should. I was about to switch
interstates. That shouldn’t be happening for at least another forty
minutes. Something was wrong. I had to think about this. Neither
Kieran nor Ethan seemed to notice anything. The Night sword isn’t
protesting, so there’s no magic present. Wait. No, there’s no magic
attacking. There’s a difference there.

I drove through the interchange, moving onto
I-75, south to Atlanta. I pressed out my senses as far as I could,
but Kieran and Ethan were still virtually invisible. At home, the
ward increased the feeling of their presence monumentally. Here,
they were like a whisper in the wind. The traffic was moderate so I
safely sped along humming to the stereo. I felt it then, a little
tug, like the car needed alignment, but just for a split second.
And again, the road seemed to change just a little. And again.

“You’re skipping rocks!” I exclaimed, looking
into the rearview mirror at Ethan. He was moving the car forward
small increments at a time so fast you couldn’t tell. Sort of like
a movie, frames moving so quickly past a light they look like
they’re moving. Skipping the car like a rock on a pond. And it had
to be Ethan. He had the perspective to know how I would drive and
literally see the world enough to fake me out.

He grinned back at me in the mirror. “Told
you he’d get it.”

“I didn’t think he’d get who, too!” exclaimed
Kieran, smiling at me. “Did you feel it or figure it out?”

“Littl’a both,” I said. “I can’t feel you two
outside of the ward very well.”

“A very good way of doing things,” said
Kieran.

“So, telepathy?” I asked.

“No,” Kieran said, chuckling, “We planned it
out at home while you were changing. I realized I didn’t give us
enough time for the drive. Doing this can be tricky. I had to hide
both of us and push avoidance spells in front of us so other
drivers wouldn’t pull into our path. Ethan was watching you and
moving the car. Here, try it without me covering the magic.”

They both did their tricks again a few more
times, just as seamless as before. If I hadn’t known it was coming,
I wouldn’t have seen it, but I did feel it this time. Not a big
slap in the face kind of feeling, it was more like
the kind of relief you feel when you find an empty spot in a crowd
of people. That “breathing room” kind of feeling. They kept doing
it until we were almost there, less than a minute. I didn’t even
have time to object before our exit signs started showing. They’d
cut more than two hours off the driving time. With the time change
from Central to Eastern, we were going to be early, not late.

I pulled off the interstate, and into the
first gas station off the highway we came to. After gassing up, I
pored over the map of Atlanta to find the best route to Mr.
Colbert’s offices. I was expecting an inner city address but the
map showed the office was on the outskirts, almost residential. It
took another forty minutes to find.