Chapter Twenty-Nine
It was a lot harder to explain than I thought. After all, I had seen it, felt it, heard it, and (in the case of some of the odder creatures) smelt it. Sarah was coming to this cold. Although she had to admit the existence of her own powers, taking the leap from that to Grimm’s Fairy Tales was a pretty big jump.
It helped that she remembered the vampire that had been sent to check her out. When my powers had been discovered, the USB had periodically sent agents to see if anyone else in my family would manifest an ability. What they failed to take into account was that Sarah could alter memories. She didn’t know that the substitute teacher at her school was a vampire, but she had been caught using her ability by him and had, in turn, cleared his memory of the event, and sent him on his way thinking that she was completely normal. It had obviously worked.
In the end, I had her at least partially understanding and believing that this wasn’t some sort of elaborate prank. She didn’t quite come to the same conclusions as I did.
“So,” she tried to recap, “aliens are coming that no one knows anything about. Certain people want to be able to harvest humans for power before the aliens arrive. You and I are the only humans we know of that have ‘magical powers.’” She put the last two words in finger quotes. “Since there are two of us, we can petition to join this big magic group and gain protection for ourselves and probably the rest of humans on the planet.” I nodded as she frowned, started to speak, stopped, rethought, and then decided to say it anyways.
“Piper, am I missing something here? Why is this such a big deal? Why not join as our own species?”
I stared at her, “Because we’re human!”
“No we’re not! We’re some kind of genetic freaks! Freaks with awesome mind control powers! Think about what we could do! Anything we want! We can be rich! Crazy rich!”
Cecily cleared her throat, “Actually, you can’t. Or at least, you can as long as you do not endanger other supernatural creatures. We work very hard to stay undercover and completely off the radar. Anyone who threatens that security is dealt with. Permanently.”
Sarah shrugged, “Okay. So we do it quietly. But I still don’t get the problem. You tell people what to do, I alter their memory so that we’re all safe. What’s the catch?”
I heard my voice rising in anger, “The catch! Did you not hear me earlier? You use your power too much and you could turn immortal!”
“Yeah. So?”
“So?” I was hitting upper octaves at this point, “Immortal, Sarah! As in, never dying, as in, never growing old, as in, watching everyone you know and love grow old and die while you are still young, as in, having to move all the time so that no one notices that you don’t age, or risk the government locking you up in a laboratory and being studied like a rat!”
“Yeah, yeah. I know what immortal means, Piper. I just don’t see what the big deal is.”
Were this a cartoon, my head would have turned bright red, rotated 360 degrees, while my eyes popped out in anger and frustration and steam poured from my ears. As it was, I think I managed the color and the steam.
“Do you want Mom and Dad to be killed and eaten by something? Do you not care what happens to your nieces? How can you not think about the rest of the world out there? We’re human! And I intend to die a human as well.”
“That’s just it, Piper. I don’t want to die! I think living forever sounds great! And no, I won’t let anything happen to our family. We protect our family, of course, but who cares about everyone else? Would they think about us? It’s every woman for herself, Piper, and we hit the genetic jackpot!”
I shook my head, “No, you’re wrong, Sarah. You haven’t seen the things I have seen in the last few days. There are things out there that cannot be allowed to do whatever they want to people. And right now, you and I are the only way to keep them in check. Cecily?” I turned to her for support.
She thought for a long minute. “Piper, I see Sarah’s point.” She held up her hand to silence my interjection. “You both have a gift, you should use them. Whether you use them to protect other people or not, that’s up to each of you. Morals, ethics, argue those out later. Right now you are both weak and in danger from stronger species. There are only two of you. You join as a new species and someone else is going to try to wipe you out.”
“I thought this magic thing protected everyone?” Sarah asked.
“The USB’s primary job is to police the magic community, yes. But a crime is something that risks humans discovering supernatural beings. I could go on a killing spree and kill everyone in this town, and as long as I covered it up so that it looked completely ‘normal,’ then the USB would have no problem with me.”
Sarah and I both stared at her with open mouths.
Cecily grinned, “Ok, bad example. There is no way I could kill everyone here and not have someone be suspicious, and the USB and the vampires don’t like people running around as mass murderers. You might be able to cover it up once, but if you tried it again there would be greater risk, and generally we don’t wait for future risks. We take care of problems before they arise, if you know what I mean.”
“So what are you saying?” Sarah asked.
“I’m saying this. You need to join as humans. Piper here has done a good job of insuring that the Synod will vote you in. If humans are members of the USB then they can’t be mass hunted for power. Things will have to stay as they are. We stay hidden, humans stay mostly safe, but completely in the dark.”
“What about the aliens?” I wanted to know.
“Who knows? They could be friendly beings looking for galactic trade routes. Or they could be coming to wipe us out and set up house here, in which case, none of this really matters. We’ll all have to deal with that when the day comes. For now, my advice to both of you is to join as humans and let tomorrow take care of itself. I would also recommend finding more people like yourselves.”
“What?” I said surprised.
“You can’t be the only two out there. If there are two, then, chances are, there are more of you. The more there are, the safer you will be. The witches do not think kindly of you and, as long as it is in their best interest, they will kill you without mercy.”
Sarah and I looked at each other. “What do you think?” I asked.
She shrugged, “Okay. I agree for now. I’ll come with you and we can join this thing. I’ll keep under the radar, but I’m not going to stop using my ability.”
I grinned and sighed at the same time, which pretty much summed up how I was feeling, “Deal.”