"You ready?"
Machaela blinked and looked up from the engine she was tinkering with. "Now? But it's—," she glanced at her watch. "Oh."
Grace chuckled. "Lose track of time again?" Machaela nodded sheepishly. This engine was being tricky, and she'd lost all track of time long ago. "Dad's almost ready to go," Grace told her, turning to leave the workroom. "Hurry!" she added over her shoulder.
Machaela hurriedly organized all the tools she had gotten out, grinning all the while. She had been looking forward to this day since she and Jesse had found Grace at camp last summer.
It was Christmas Eve, and today she would be reintroduced to the rest of their Dad's side of the family.
Their presence wasn't a complete secret, of course. With dinner hosted at Uncle Roger's this year, Dad had had to provide a number of how many were coming, but she didn't think Roger, or Austen, as they knew him, would expect to see the two teens he'd met at the range months before.
As much as she—and Jesse—wished otherwise, they hadn't had the chance to see any other family, what with keeping up with school, training (in three worlds, no less), and, for her, work. With a year off school to let her siblings catch up, she had been working at the local hardware store and loving it. Grace and Jesse were both halfway through their last year, and they all planned to attend college in New Rome together. She had taken the part time job as something to do for the day while her brother and sister were at school and Mom was working.
Hurrying up the stairs to change into cleaner clothes, she grinned as she passed Jesse doing the same. They were both stoked to meet aunts, uncles, and cousins again, to put faces to the names they had both worked hard to figure out.
"Ready yet?" Dad asked as he heard her pass, making to get up from the chair in which he was waiting.
She halted him, though. "Not quite. I lost track of time. Give me a minute."
She hurried into the guest room they were borrowing for the night. Just last night, the three of them had left Camp Jupiter to make it for the family dinner. Originally, they were supposed to leave for Austen's early this morning, but weather had come up and plans had changed, which had given them the free time Machaela had lost track of.
Soon enough, the four of them were bundled into the car for the two-hour drive down to Pueblo.
"So how do you think he'll respond?" Jesse asked after a long silence.
"Who?" Grace answered. "Roger?" Jesse nodded, and Grace grinned in response. "I doubt he'll have much of a visible response," she told him. "I've yet to see him express any real emotion. He'll be surprised, though. No doubt about that. Everyone else," she shrugged, "I don't know. Only Dawn really knows much about you, and I don't think she'll be there."
Machaela nearly asked why Dawn wouldn't be there, but then memory kicked in. Grace had said Dawn and Cameron divorced, and Dawn had moved to Texas. Last they had heard, she was looking for a place near Parker, but she hadn't mentioned a moving date the last time Grace had called her. If she was still looking for a house, she likely wouldn't be in town for the holiday.
Machaela let out a small sigh of relief as they pulled up to her uncle's house: they were among the first there. Good. If everyone came in after them, she and Jesse wouldn't be bombarded with twenty people's reactions at once. Jesse caught her eye and grinned, thinking the same thing.
"Remember," Grace said as they walked toward the door, "only Dawn knows the myth part."
Machaela and Jesse nodded. They had gone over this before: only the mortal version for tonight, because Dad didn't know about Egypt, and nobody else knew about Greek. There would be enough revelation for today. The world of classical myths would keep.
Excited, Jesse bounded up to the door, hand poised to knock.
Before he could, though, the door opened from the inside.
"Ellen!" Grace squeezed between Machaela and Jesse to give their aunt a hug.
Ellen grinned, glancing at Machaela's sister while returning the hug, but her gaze rested on Machaela and Jesse.
"Hello," she said with a grin, polite, welcoming, but without recognition.
Machaela noticed that Grace quieted and stepped closer to Dad, letting Machaela handle this as she'd promised.
Pulling her brother closer, Machaela looked at the first extended family member she'd seen in ten years. "Do you remember me?" she asked. "The last time I saw you, I would have been about seven."
She remained quiet as her aunt stared, but whether the gaze was searching or stunned, Machaela couldn't tell. She was about to speak up when Jesse said, "'Len?"
Machaela glanced at him, surprised he'd remembered the nickname he'd given their aunt.
Ellen's eyes snapped to him. "Only…" he voice trailed off, not believing her eyes. "Jesse? Machaela? But—" She cut herself off and gave them each a hug. "Come in! Come in! Get out of the cold! Roger!" she called to the kitchen, "Lee and his crew are here!"
"Crew?" he asked from the other room, his voice coming closer. "What crew?" He walked around the corner into the entry hall and spotted Grace first. He grinned and started for a hug when he realized there were two others he hadn't expected.
At Jesse's nudge, Machaela spoke with him, a Cheshire grin stretching across her face. "Hello, Austen," they said in unison.
Grace got much more reaction than she had expected, and Machaela chuckled when her uncle's jaw fell open. "What are you doing here?!"
"You can't think I'd leave my brother and sister out of Christmas!" Grace answered from behind Jesse. She laughed aloud. "Your reaction is priceless!"
His eyes had widened at her words. "Brother and sister!"
"You know them?!" Ellen said at the same time.
"We ran into him at the range last spring," Jesse answered. "That was about three months before we found Grace at summer camp, and we'd gone there to remember and try to find a clue to the family we hadn't seen for ten years."
"I thought I recognized you that day," Machaela picked up, "but I couldn't pin a memory to it, so I disregarded the instinct. I regretted that not two hours later when Frank, after waving to your passing car, told us your relation to William Noland, a name I know. We tried to catch you at the gate, but we didn't make it in time."
"I never considered you might not just share the names," he told them, squeezing them both in a group hug. "I thought you died in that car accident."
Machaela chuckled. "The story will probably be told to death today, but we were found by hikers, who, failing to find our family, raised us as their own."
A tentative knock sounded at the door and an alarm sounded in the kitchen, interrupting whatever Roger had been about to say. He hurried back to check on dinner as Ellen opened the door.
"Dawn!" Grace called, "I didn't know you were coming!" She bounced across the room to give Dawn a hug before she could even get her coat off.
Looking behind her excited sister, Machaela saw a man waiting to be introduced. "You must be Randy," she asked him. He nodded in response, smiling at her in greeting. "I'm Machaela. He's Jesse. We're Grace's siblings that nobody knew were coming today."
Dawn turned at the new voice. "I knew you were coming," she told them with a gentle smile as she wrapped them in a hug.
"Why did no one else know?" Randy wondered.
Jesse answered this time. "We were separated from the family by a car crash when I was five and Machaela seven. We only found Grace at camp last summer and we've been too busy to make the other family gatherings."
A car door slammed outside. Everyone was arriving in such quick succession, Machaela noticed, there'd probably be a lot of unfinished conversations. Oh, well. The story will probably be told multiple times anyway.
Dennis and Sally wandered up the driveway, leading the rest of the family from the Springs. Cameron trailed behind, scowling in recognition at the sight of Dawn's car, maybe wishing he hadn't come. His expression cleared, though when he noticed one of his nieces frowning at him. Jesse couldn't figure out which one, but she must have told him off about being likely to see his ex at his ex's family functions. Jesse silently agreed—Dawn should be able to attend family gatherings without squabbles getting in the way. The house was plenty big enough if he wanted to be a grouch.
With most of the family arriving in one big group, Machaela and Jesse ended up getting a lot of hugs and telling their story many, many times. Everyone old enough remembered them eventually, but the siblings had a few cousins that weren't old enough to remember. They gained family without having lost it in the first place.
Several minutes later, as the chaos finally died down, people started dividing into groups and their own conversations. Some caught up on news, while others chatted with family they hadn't seen since July. Machaela, Grace, and Jesse found themselves in the midst of several conversations about how Machaela and Jesse had been found and what they were planning to do now.
Mealtime was…interesting, to say the least. Roger and Ellen had assigned seating, putting new couples near each other but otherwise separating nuclear family groups so that everyone could continue to catch up. Dawn ended up next to Randy on one side and Grace on the other. Machaela found herself next to Roger. They found machinery to be something in common, as Roger had an engineering degree, and talked about the makings of engines for much of the meal.
Jesse sat between Dennis' daughter Jaymie and her friend Derald. They didn't have much in common, but she did cause quite a stir about halfway through dinner.
As Jaymie reached for her silverware, Jesse noticed a glint on her left hand.
"Grace didn't tell me you were engaged," he said. His expression changed as something clicked, and he turned to Derald. "To you?"
Jaymie chuckled as the entire table fell silent. His question had carried through every other conversation, and now every eye was on her.
She grinned cheekily and held up her left hand, showing off the finger where a small diamond glistened. "Congratulations!" sounded off from around the table and conversations started back up, now a mixture of news and the two revelations of the day.
That was bound to change, though, because revelations usually come in threes. After everyone had finished eating, Laura stood from her place at the table.
"You all know I've been working towards a promotion," she said with a grin after everyone quieted. "Well, I got it, and it requires I move. In three months, I'm moving to Maui."
Machaela let out a chuckle as her sister sat back in surprise. The three of them would no longer be the ones furthest away. Hawaii beat out Tennessee and California by far.
Somehow, Laura's announcement turned into a run on the dessert table, and everyone started cycling through pies and other sweets as a crash sounded outside. When no one initially looked up, Grace and Machaela shared a look across the room. Grace huffed in irritation as she put down her pie and called Jesse from the other room.
"I knew this wouldn't last," Machaela mumbled, shoving one last bite in before following her siblings. A crash no one else noticed could only mean one thing: monster.
It was bound to happen. They hadn't been attacked in weeks, and they'd stayed in one area too long. Hurrying out the door as they put on their coats, the siblings didn't even bother watching behind them, so focused were they on reaching the monster before it reached the house.
The snowstorm had picked up, clouding everything in a haze of white as the three fighters hurried toward the noise. A shadow loomed, and they picked up speed, still trying to identify the monster through the blizzard.
Instinct sounded, and Grace ploughed Machaela out of the way of a falling paw. A moment later, a roar echoed through the storm and Machaela mumbled something in Egyptian.
"Was that what I think it was?" Jesse asked.
Grace nodded, grimacing. "Nemian lion! Split up and target the mouth!"
With the snowstorm making it hard to see anything, the siblings spread out as much as they could, trying to spot the lion while also keep each other in sight.
A shadow bounded towards Grace, and she reflexively shot it. They all heard the zing of the bullet ricocheting off the lion's fur.
"Be careful!" Machaela called. "You don't want to hit one of us with the ricochet."
Considering that, Grace changed to her Hunter's bow. She was the only one with a long-range weapon, as Machaela had a sword and Jesse a long knife, but they certainly didn't want any friendly fire.
Jesse was next, and the lion tried to send him flying with a back swipe of its paw. Jesse ducked just in time, but with this blizzard they were stuck on the defensive.
"We're not getting anywhere!" Grace called out. "Machaela, a word!"
They were too close to family for comfort in using Egyptian magic, but Machaela knew they didn't have much of a choice. They wouldn't last long just dodging.
She called up her staff in her left hand and searched for the word she wanted. I need to see through. Timing it to a gust of wind for the best result, Eiorh ptem burned in the air between her and the lion.
Immediately, while the blizzard didn't let up, they could now see through it to the Nemian lion preparing to pounce on Grace.
"Hey, you overgrown fur ball!" Jesse yelled, running around behind the crouching feline. He swung his knife at the lion's foot, sending up a cloud of sparks and distracting it from pouncing, but it turned on him. He spent a very tense minute dodging swiping paws while Grace and Machaela furiously tried to distract it, which led into the three of them tag-teaming the monster, trying to make it open its mouth so Grace could put an arrow in it.
Nothing was working, and they were running out of steam.
"Machaela!" Jesse called from across the monster. "Would open work?"
"Yes!" Machaela called back. "Grace, do you know that one?"
"On it!"
It took a few more minutes of tag-teaming to get Grace in front of the lion with her bow out and staff ready.
"W'peh." The glyph glowed in front of Grace, hovering just long enough for her to drop her staff and aim her bow. The spell connected, and Grace's arrow flew true, piercing the roof of the lion's mouth next to a second arrow.
"Why'd you fire two, Grace?" Machaela asked as the pelt hit the ground.
"I didn't."
Machaela glanced over to find her sister scanning their surroundings, weapon ready.
"Who's there?!" Grace called out. "Show yourself!"
"Easy, there. You think I'd hurt you?" Dawn's voice came from the white. "Quit aiming your weapons at me."
Machaela and Jesse start to lower their weapons, but Grace cocked her pistol. "Something's not right."
"Don't worry. It's just us. Are you hurt?"
Jesse spun around as Ellen's voice came from their other side.
"Quit imitating me!" came from a third direction.
"Cyclopes," Grace said. "Circle up."
Hello, everyone! Took a bit longer than I intended to post this, but blame the sketchy internet. This is the first half of a two-shot, and I'd love to know your thoughts. Hope you enjoyed, and don't forget to review!