AN: This is really, really, really short. :DD Sorry! Oh, and I'm putting up a little thing on the next book on my profile. Right after this goes up.

Part Three: Hidden

Chapter Nine: Miranda

Miranda Ormand was confused about her family situation. Well, not exactly about Chris being adopted and Torrence being his long-lost twin. That she understood perfectly well. That wasn't difficult for anyone to understand.

What was confusing to her was they all acted. Chris was always strange, even before he met Torrence. It seemed that he could read her mind sometimes, like when she was being defiant in the safety of her head, and he would shook her looks. Ever since moving to California, he got even stranger. There was some man who visited Chris at night, a man not much older than her brother, a man he called Stanton... And once, she heard him call the man, "Dad".

She didn't know what to make of that. Chris never mentioned this guy. He hardly kept secrets from the family. When she thought about it, he would send her veiled look, as if trying to tell her to not say anything to Mom and Dad.

Then there was Torrence, one of the coolest girls she had ever met. She didn't think Torrence would be so willing to accept her as a sister... She did, though.

Torrence was strange, too. She was always in some ind of trouble. Once... Once she saw Torrence go into some kind of a trance when she spent the night at her house with Chris. Ice formed over her hands and filled the floor, and Torrence was staring off into the reflective surface.

Miranda held her breath as she watched her. She tried to creep forward, inch by inch, to see what Torrence was seeing. Fear struck her as she got too close. Shadows seemed to swirl around Miranda, and the oppressive energy of the room was choking the child. She ran away and hid in her roomthe rest of the night, huddled in a corner.

Most odd of all was her own father. Everybody thought Catty was eccentric and kooky... But it was Kyle that Miranda found enigmatic. He was always watching her with a sad look, like she would just disappear soon.

There was something her father knew that she was sure nobody else did. Miranda only wished that she knew.

She hoped that when the time came, she didn't hurt her loved ones by what she was. Just because she didn't know didn't meant that she wasn't destined to be something more than she seemed to be. And there was no dount in her young, thirteen-year-old mind that she was special.

She dreamed one night, about her mother. She was in a place of darkness, and her mother was crying. Other people were there... One looked like her brother's real mother--she had seen the pictures--and that lady Jimena and Aunt Vanessa. There were others, but she didn't know them. She just focused in on her mom, who was reaching for some boy.

She couldn't hear anything, but there was something about this dream, something completely important.

What did it mean, though?

Next Up: Robert muses over all the mothers in his life.