Hey guys... I know it's been a while, but I have good reasons! I was travelling and then I came back to school to a flood of end of year assignments (I live in New Zealand) so I just couldn't update.
I have the next chapter ready so I hope you like this one. Please remember this is set in an AU to Misty Falls because I didn't read that until I started writing this story. :)
"Who's John?" Karla asks.
"Jonathan Grey, my adoptive father of 13 years. He was nice. Until about six months ago." I say, about to delve into secrets. "He... Ummmm... He started abusing his wife, Katie. I reported it and he's in jail now, but when I accidentally arrived while he was hitting her, he just hit both of us. I'd gone to tell them about my transfer to New York, I didn't want to go, but after that it became the best option. Katie went with me after the trials and the divorce case."
"Has she met your parents yet?" Will asks.
"Yes." I say shortly. "Can we move on, I don't like talking about this."
"What are your tattoos?" Uriel asks.
I laugh, stretching my arms out. "Jeder tag ist ein geschenk means 'every day is a gift'" I say, pointing to my right wrist, "'Veni vidi vici' means 'I came, I saw, I conquered,'" I show my right index finger. " I have 'brave' on my elbow for forgetting fear. And the daisy is for hope of a better day." I shift my shoulder so that they could see it, lifting my shirt sleeve slightly. Shifting to my left arm to expose my wrist, "'miles to go' is to remind me to think of the future. It was my first tattoo on my eighteenth birthday. The birds coming from the forest is hope, escape and independence." I gesture to one of my largest tattoos that slopes up my arm on all sides. I then pull up my sleeve to show the only colour on my arms, on my shoulder in red, 'M'aimer pour qui je suis' "This one means 'to love me for who I am'. It was either this one or 'la vie est faite de les petits bonheurs' which means 'life is made up of little pleasures'." I say, not mentioning the tattoos on my back or the two on my ankles.
"What about your back? I saw a lot on there," Uri grins, teasing me. I just roll my eyes.
"Later, creeper." I laugh. "Now that you know my entire life story, I believe some introductions are necessary." I look around at the accumulation of girls amongst the family of boys.
"Well, I'm Diamond, Trace's wife," an elegant woman says, she looks almost like Cleopatra.
"I'm Crystal, Di's sister," the tall girl sat next to the tallest of the Benedict boys, Xav, says.
"I'm Sky," the little blonde girl says, looking a picture of innocence.
"I'm Phee," a girl with a dark pixie cut says, looking slightly wary of me.
"And I'm Kirsty" a reasonably tall girl sat next to Victor says, swatting him away as he tries to kiss her cheek, "Oh, time for our news now. This loser finally grew a pair and popped the question." She grins and holds up her left hand, with an expensive looking ring on it.
"I knew it!" Phee, who can't be much older than nineteen shrieks, "Yves, I told you so! Totally saw that!"
Yves, who is sat next to me mumbles, "Not all of us have freaky mind reading, Phee." He then sits bolt upright and stares at me, scared that I heard.
"Wait... Mind reading?" I blurt, staring at Karla and Saul. "But you... You aren't... No! You can't be!" I stare in shock, not comprehending. "Oh for god's sake! I missed that! How the hell did I miss that!" Closing my eyes, I feel with my gift, feeling the swarm of many powers around me.
"Cass–" Uriel starts, only to be cut off by me.
"No! How could you! Why would you lie to me as a kid!" I cry, still not making any sense.
"Cassandra, what the hell are you trying to say?" A voice booms out, laced with persuasion.
I turn blindly towards it, to come face to face with Victor, who has crouched in front of me. "You're all savants! Like me," I yell into his face, panic building inside me. I look around and see the shocked faces of the Benedicts. "And now you all think that I'm crazy. Great."
To my surprise, Karla starts laughing. "You're telling me in the forty years I've known your parents, they've been savants this whole time?"
"Yeah," I laugh with her. How couldn't my parents notice? "How did you manage to hide the terrible toddler phase with gifts?" Mine was easily hidden, I just hid myself.
"You missed out on Yves' phase, we got it over and done with before summer." Saul says, "How'd you hide yourself?"
"I can manipulate other peoples and my own gifts and abilities, I can enhance, project, minimise, steal, duplicate, prevent, and so on, I just prevented my own gift, with Mom and Dad's help." I shrug, playing it off. "So gifts, seeing as I'm here for a month, I don't want to be freaked out."
"Zed and Mom are number seven, so that's obvious, Sky can read emotions, Yves is fire boy, Phee can read thought -patterns and freeze them, Xav is the healer, Crystal is our gold dust, soul seeker, Will and Dad danger sense, like our own personal alarm bells, Vicky here manipulates minds, so keep your shield up, he'll try to get you to do his chores, Kirsty and her twin are teleporters, she's people, Naomi's big stuff, I can read memories, but they have to want to see them, Trace tracks things and people by touching them, and Di peace keeps, she won't let us tear each others throats out. It's no fun." He winks at me, grinning.
I laugh and roll my eyes at my childhood best friend, "I've always thought your family was different, mainly because your parents were crazy enough to have seven kids."
Everyone has gone into their own conversations, leaving Uri and I in our own little world. "So, Doctor Cassie," he teases, I snort, "What are your twenty nine languages? That's an impressive count."
"Well, I grew up speaking English and French, seeing as my parents were second Gen French. then I started with Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Icelandic and Japanese for my first year at college, then second year was German, Indonesian, Turkish, Italian, Polish and Ukrainian. Third year was Romanian, Swahili, Dutch, Greek and Swedish, fourth was Cantonese, Catalan, Nepali, Afrikaans and my Prof conned me into Latin. Masters year was Czech, Thai, Vietnamese, Bengali and Punjabi. For my PhD I studied how peoples backgrounds made them more or less intuitive to identifying and using languages."
"So you learnt about five languages a year and can speak a dead language?" Uri said, partially in awe and partially amused.
I hope you enjoyed it, the next chapter is a bit of a filler, just to give you warning, but i ges more exciting after that.