Post by StoryGirl83 on May 7, 2010 20:56:50 GMT -5
Chapter Fifty-Eight – The Office
Wyatt stood next to Seth and looked across the street at a small but opulent looking shop. It looked high tech, but all it said on the door was, “Open 5 to 9. Only by appointment.”
“Makes you wonder how you make an appointment and for what,” Seth commented as he glanced at Wyatt.
“You sure this is where we can find Chris?”
Seth shrugged. “It’s where he holes up. I couldn’t say if he’s here. Let’s go somewhere else. Chris isn’t going to tell you what changed him, so you need some other source.”
“Do you know where I can find Aunt Phoebe?”
Seth shook his head. “I haven’t seen her in months. Apparently she went off on some sort of vacation with her husband and never came back. They were scheduled back . . .”
“Two and a half months ago,” Wyatt interrupted. “How can so much be the same and yet so much be so terribly wrong?”
Seth sighed. “I don’t know. Look, Chris kept this all a secret all the years we were growing up. He never let on that he had evil growing in him. I don’t know if that means it’s a sudden thing or if it just means he’s good at keeping secrets.”
“Chris is a master a keeping secrets,” Wyatt commented. “The brother I knew refused to lie and if he did you knew, because his face would turn all red, cause he didn’t want to do it. He got a whole lot better at lying when magic came back and he got all those memories of his other life . . . what if something happened then?
“I couldn’t say,” Seth admitted. “When magic came back I went straight to the underworld to see if I could learn anything useful.” He chuckled. “I freaked my dad out a bit because he was worried I was going to stay there.”
“He knows better,” Wyatt retorted as he gave a sad look at the strange building.
Seth shrugged. “It’s what manticores do, Wyatt. They try to blend in.”
Wyatt shook his head. “They try to blend in by having kids who are half human like you.”
“I’m not half human,” Seth informed him.
Wyatt gave him a weird look.
Seth laughed. “It’s more like three quarters as best I can tell.”
Wyatt rolled his eyes. “My point was that they don’t try to blend in by letting their offspring be raised by the human parent. You are too attached to your bed to ever make a good manticore.”
Seth chuckled. “And I suppose you don’t think I’d make it camping?”
“Not for longer than a week, no,” Wyatt agreed cheerily.
Seth shivered. “Look, why don’t we get out of here. Nothing will be accomplished here. You thought it might have something to do with you time traveling, so who was there then?”
“Mom and Dad, Aunt Phoebe and Aunt Paige.”
“That’s it?”
“Well, baby Chris and little me, but otherwise, they were the only ones who survived.”
“Survived?”
“Demon attack.”
“Demon attack?”
“Would you quit parroting me?”
“When I figure out what on earth you are talking about. Who died?”
“Who what . . . Oh. No one. Demons died. We were attacked by demons and the demons didn’t make it.”
“Then what are you talking about surviving?”
Wyatt groaned. “Look, I’m a little distracted. It was before either Aunt Phoebe or Aunt Paige married, so no cousins.”
Seth shook his head as he grabbed Wyatt’s sleeve. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
Wyatt sighed and allowed himself to be lead away. “Since magic came back, we’ve had several innocents in danger, as well as family. Can you tell me how any of the ones you haven’t mention, fared?”
Seth sighed. “Just keep walking while you ask questions.”
Wyatt nodded. “There was a demon back in January, a Soul Thief called Trae.”
“You and your parents stopped her. It was about then that Chris moved out of the apartment you guys shared.”
“So I still shared an apartment with him?”
“Until January, yeah. That’s when Chris started showing that he wasn’t mister goody-two-shoes any more. And I liked him that way. How’s a guy like me supposed to be good if a guy whose part angel can’t?”
Wyatt stopped and frowned. “Excuse me?”
Seth looked at him. “What?”
“Your being good has nothing to do with my brother. It has to do with you and with your dad, not with Chris.”
Seth shrugged.
“And I bet you when we find out what is behind all this we will learned that it really has very little to do with Chris, a spell or a curse or even a clone, but it’s not because he just decided to be evil. I refused to believe that.”
Seth looked at him for several seconds and then nodded. “Yeah. I know that. In my head, and I can’t see ever turning evil, but it’s really hard to see your brother turn into this.”
Wyatt cast a look back at the store front and nodded. “It’s not something I am ready to see either, but I am going to fix this. My brother is not a killer.”
“And if it turns out that he is, that you can’t fix this, that there is nothing to fix?”
Wyatt gulped. “There is,” he told Seth, determined. “This isn’t real. This can be fixed. It has to.”