Chapter 18 #3
“She was protecting me,” Sidney said, and her voice trembled for just a second before she got it back under control.
“Both of them, really. I remember how my mother would tell me to stay calm, how my grandmother would always say that getting angry and lashing out wasn’t the way to solve a problem.
They weren’t trying to make me a ‘good little girl.’ If I’m right about all this, then they were teaching me to control abilities I didn’t even know I had. ”
Had her mother and grandmother also been taught those things? He assumed they must, or they wouldn’t have known how to keep Sidney’s inborn powers from getting out of hand.
An idea popped into his mind. “Did you experience any weird power fluctuations when you were away at school?”
“Not really,” she replied immediately. “I mean, every once in a while, we’d lose power during a particularly bad storm, but nothing strange.”
That seemed to confirm a theory Ben had already begun to formulate. “What if there’s some kind of synergy between your gifts and Silver Hollow itself…or at least the portal? If that’s the case, then that would explain why you never had anything strange happen when you weren’t living here.”
Her brows drew together as she considered that possibility. “I suppose it makes some sense,” she said, voice thoughtful. “So…could it be as easy as just not being here? Should I leave?”
Maybe once upon a time, that might have been an option. Now, though, with the portal’s energy seriously out of whack and shadow stalkers running around in the forest, Ben had a feeling Silver Hollow needed Sidney, needed her extraordinary gifts.
“I’m not sure that would really help,” he told her. “For now, I think we should keep going through these journals and see if there’s anything else we can find.”
They spent another hour looking through the journals, although they didn’t find a whole lot.
Or rather, while Ben saw accounts of magical creatures wandering in the woods mixed in with more commonplace observations of the goings-on in town, there was nothing to show that any of the women’s abilities had caused much trouble.
But then Sidney opened up the final journal, the one Emily Thompson had been keeping at the time she disappeared. In entries from just a few months ago, she’d begun documenting new patterns of electromagnetic disturbance.
“She knew something was changing,” Sidney said, and read the aloud, “‘The portal is becoming unstable, and I’m seeing an increase in otherworldly creatures crossing over.’” She paused there, then shook her head. “She was tracking all of it.”
Ben reached up to run a distracted hand through his hair. He realized it was getting toward seven o’clock, a time when they normally would have started thinking about dinner, but this was too important. “Did she say anything about why it was escalating?”
Sidney flipped to the very last entry in the journal. “Not really, although she also found some of the Ogham carvings and was trying to figure out what they meant. But she also says….” The words trailed off as she appeared to read the final paragraph.
“What is it?” Ben prompted her.
A breath, and then Sidney replied, “She says the instability was awakening dormant abilities in the bloodline. That the electromagnetic chaos could be acting like a catalyst, forcing me to develop powers that might not have manifested for years, or maybe not at all.” She looked over at him, her face pale.
“But…how is that even possible? Nothing went weird when I was away at school.”
He reached over to take her hand. No matter what was going on…no matter what they learned…she needed to know this didn’t change anything between the two of them.
“We already know that these electromagnetic waves can travel far,” he said. “Otherwise, DAPI would never have detected anything strange going on in this part of the world. So it’s possible they were still affecting you, even at such a distance.”
Sidney was silent for a moment, clearly turning over the notion in her head, trying to come to terms with what he’d just told her.
When she spoke, her voice was tight, worried.
“Ben, I think my grandmother — and probably my mom, too — knew this might happen to me. They knew, and they disappeared before they could help me understand it.”
“But now we know,” Ben said, trying to sound as encouraging as possible.
He couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to learn something so earth-shattering about yourself, but he needed to make her understand that she wouldn’t have to face this alone.
“We understand the pattern, the history, the reason you’re so powerful. That has to count for something.”
Sidney nodded, but her expression remained troubled, graceful brows drawn together and her mouth taut.
“It also means that Dr. Rosenthal was right about one thing. If my abilities are this strong and still developing, I really could be dangerous. What if I can’t learn to control them?
What if the electromagnetic disturbances get worse instead of better? ”
Ben tightened his clasp on her hand, and he could feel the way her fingers wrapped themselves around his, hanging on for dear life.
“Then we’ll figure it out together,” he told her.
“Your grandmother’s journals prove that the women in your family have been managing these abilities for generations. If they could do it, so can you.”
Even as he spoke, however, Ben couldn’t shake the feeling that they didn’t have much time to get this figured out. Dr. Rosenthal was still lurking somewhere in town, determined to capture Sidney and use her abilities for God only knew what.
The question was whether they could stay ahead of the federal agents long enough for Sidney to learn to control her strange gifts…or whether DAPI would find them first.
Right after they returned the journals to the box where Sidney had been keeping them — and stowed the box in the closet, just to be safe — they headed back out to the living room. By then, the sun had begun to set, casting long shadows across the street outside.
However, those shadows weren’t long enough to hide the sight of a black SUV cruising slowly down Sidney’s street, its tinted windows making it impossible to see who was inside.
“We need to go,” he said in an urgent whisper. “Now.”
They left through the kitchen window as quickly and quietly as they could, retracing their path through the neighbors’ yard and back to the forest trail.
But as they disappeared into the trees, Ben couldn’t help but wonder if they’d learned enough to save themselves…
or if the knowledge they’d gained would only make them more dangerous in Dr. Rosenthal’s eyes.