Chapter 10 #3
“Let us get him comfortable with us first,” I teased.
I knew Noah was getting anxious about being separated from me for long. Since we had seen the future, he was determined to stay by my side the most, especially since he may be able to save me. Gavin and Sierra had also volunteered to come along just in case Noah needed mimicking or amplifying.
“Imagine having to get reassurance from a ghost. Will you like anything to drink? I have beer, water, coffee, tea, Dr. Pepper, and milk.”
From our research we discovered Jacob had recently gone through a breakup with his girlfriend of two years.
Darren had gone down the rabbit hole and appeared as if she had cheated on him and was quiet bitter that he wouldn’t forgive her.
It appeared as if his town home had some feminine touches to it, but it was mostly a bachelor pad. Albeit a clean one.
Jacob was looking at us with a mixture of expectations and something akin to distrust. I’m sure he was wondering why we had shown up out of the blue and why. I could “feel” the emotions emanating off of him. I knew we had to reassure him.
“Just water for me, please. Sorry we showed up here unannounced, but we attempted to call you, but you kept declining our calls. When we attempted to call your work, we discovered you were just injured. How are you feeling?”
Lincoln looked around the open concept kitchen, dining room, and living room with interest as he distractedly stated. “I’m good. Thanks, man. Sorry if my agent wouldn’t take any messages from you.”
There were several moments of silence and my eyes widened as I realized Lincoln’s faux pas. Lincoln slowly turned to see Jacob’s eyes in suspicion. “Would you believe me if I told you we also met you in the future and you told us that little tidbit.”
Jacob made a show of returning his Dr. Pepper to the fridge before pulling out a beer. The seconds seemed to tick by slowly as he took a long drag of his drink. “My analytical side wants to believe that that’s not possible, but I learned long ago that there really isn’t anything new under the sun.”
“I did attempt to call you after I didn’t hear from ya’ll. I got as far as your manager, Lincoln but he didn’t take me seriously.”
“This life isn’t for the faint of heart and my introduction to it was just as jarring, but unlike your mother my stepmother took it far less lightly. I had a short stint in a mental health facility when she caught me talking to my connection.” I added.
Lincoln seemed to realize I had only thrown more suspicion at us. Afterall, it wasn’t every day that someone admitted to being institutionalized as if they were casually discussing the weather.
“Sorry about my manager not giving me the message,” Lincoln sincerely stated. “We kind of had some family issues arise since we last saw you.”
Jacob handed me my water after taking another bottle of beer out for himself. Then he sat down in his oversized container. “You weren’t pregnant the last time I saw you. Is that the family issues that arose?”
He grimaced as he sat and I remembered his injury. He stretched his neck from side to side before readjusting the sling over his shoulder. For a moment I wondered if I should offer to heal him. Then I decided I would wait until we got most of our serious discussions out of the way.
I decided that honesty was the best policy.
I wasn’t going to pull any punches. “This pregnancy was a surprise but not the reason why we didn’t get in touch.
I’m a very powerful gifted person and my biological father abducted me.
He’s not a good man and he wanted to use my gifts for his own agenda.
Needless to say, I was incommunicado for a while. ”
Jacob was about to take another drink from his bottle but seemed to think better of it before setting his beer back down. He muttered to himself. “Maybe I should be sober for this.” Then louder. “What are gifts exactly and what do they entail?
“Have a seat,” Jacob insisted. “Something tells me that you’re not just here to just to tell me more about the…gift I have and why it seemed to have amplified since I met ya’ll.”
There was a loud knock at the door and Lincoln smirked knowingly at the same time Jacob’s eyes knitted in confusion. “If my guess is correct, the rest of our entourage got impatient waiting on an invitation from us. They get antsy when our girl is out of their sight for too long.”
Jacob looked both gob smacked and hesitant before dryly stating. “By all means let them in. You know, it’s not really polite to invite yourselves without warning.”
I took a seat on his large sectional. I decided to tease him, hoping to make him feel more at ease. “Well, we did try to call you.”
Lincoln got up to answer the door, so I began to give Jacob a condensed version of the gifted community.
“A very small percentage of the population are gifted. Those gifts cover a large range of supernatural abilities such as healing, empath, fire, mental, water—just to name a few. The abilities we gain, typically as an adolescent seem to have a wide variety and no two gifted are guaranteed to have the same strengths or range as others. I’ve exhibited my gift at a very young age but for many years I thought it was phenomena or figments of my imagination when they occurred.
“Typically, people that are gifted are born from one or two gifted parents. There’s a deeper nuisance to it all, but it’s the condensed version of the ‘norm.’ In rare instances, the gift may have been recessive so even if your parents weren’t necessarily gifted a grandparent may have been.”
“I didn’t know my dad and my mom never listed him on my birth certificate,” Jacob frowned. “Could he have been gifted, because my mom was too weirded out to be?”
“It’s a strong possibility,” Drake stated. He pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose before holding his hand out. “Thanks for seeing us. I’m Drake and these are my brothers, Troy and Noah, my brother-in-law, Gavin, and his connection Sierra.”
Jacob seemed disconcerted for a moment, looking over Drake’s shoulder before composing himself. “I’m Jacob Perry, but I know you know that. What exactly is a connection, because I’ve heard that more than once today.”
Lincoln unbuttoned the top three buttons of his top. “Some people are marked, indicating that they have—a fated person out there for them. I tattooed mine, but typically it looks like a scar. In most cases connections are comprised of two people, but some are gifted with more than one.”
Jacob looked momentarily horrified as he absently rubbed his right hip. I realized then he was probably marked. “What do you mean more than one?” His eyes narrowed as Troy took a seat next to me and drew me into his side.
I ruefully smiled. “I have more than one.”
“And I have three,” Gavin smirked, after shaking his hand. “Again…we aren’t the norm, more like the exception—” his eyes glazed over and a cold chill went down my spine.
I shivered and burrowed into Troy.
Gavin cursed softly before saying. “Okay, seeing ghost are kind of creepy, and Drake…your dad is here.”
It took me far too long before his words sank in and I understood what was going on. Gavin had mimicked Jacob’s gift and when he did, he had noticed Damon. I was glad I was sitting down because knowing what Jacob could do and knowing what he could do finally struck me and yeah, it shook me up.