Hey readers,
How has your day been?
If it's been good! Great!
I you've had a rough day. The sun will come out tomorrow and if not tomorrow the next day, but I bet your bottom dollar it'll come out one day in the near distant future.
So here's a chapter for all you lovely people who read, and even awesomer people who leave comments. This chapter is dedicated to dropsofjupiter1999 (drops of Jupiter is a song and I love it!) and PrettyPearl123, I'm sure you're gorgeous PP123.
Please leave a review! If you do, I will dedicate the next chapter too you.
Loves,
EJ x
Friday came around quite quickly, until it was Friday and then it dragged on. Every second a minute, every minute an hour. I ran my hands along the piano ivory hitting random notes to make a song, turning it into the Aladdin theme tune.
"Never took you…" I swung around. Will stood back with his hands in the surrender position.
I sighed, dropping back to the stool. "Do you walk into everybody's house uninvited?" I asked. He laughed.
"Only yours." He smiled. "I know I'm welcome."
"One of these days you'll get killed by one of us." I warned.
"I'll announce myself every time I walk in then." He looked at the piano. "Didn't know you played."
I turned back and showed off. "Well I had to do something when I wasn't killing people, I finished my education at twelve, college by 16; I had to get another hobby; I took up piano, Eris learnt about fifty different languages and Chase learnt to be an obnoxious twat." He laughed.
"Can I help you with something?" I asked.
"Yea, my family are putting up the Christmas decorations tonight and dad thought it would be nice if you came." He smiled.
"Hmm." I started on not only mine but Greta and Eris's as well. Thomas Newman 'Any other name'. One of great things about Will, is he's active and athletic but he can listen. He sat next to me, watching my hands glide along the ivory, intently listening. I always feel like different person playing this piece in particular; something about it brought a calming feel to me, like standing in the middle of a meadow on a summer's day with a slight breeze blowing around.
I sound like Ghandi or mother Teresa or Jane Austen.
"I'll come." I announced, when I finished. A big smile spread across his face.
"Great."
Darkness had fallen by the time Will and I arrived at the Benedict household. Twinkling icicle lights already hung from the roof. From the shadows of the forest, a group of seven dragged a tree towards the house. I started laughing as Victor trying to get the tree through the door. Will started laughing too.
"What happened to the tradition of synthetic trees?" I asked, shaking my head as the Benedict's shoved this tree through the front door, Karla ordering them about from the warmth of the house.
He shook his head. "Never had that tradition." He smiled.
I exhaled. "Am I going to regret this?" I asked.
"Well…it depends how you see 'happy family' time." He smiled. I pushed open the door and climbed out of the Benedict family jeep. He took my hand as we started towards the house. The front door opened and Karla stood, hanging a wreath on the door. At first she was a little surprised, probably because I'd agreed to come and then she smiled warily at me.
"Don't worry mom, she hasn't come here to kill anyone." Will said. She inhaled looking away from me to Will.
"I know." She replied happily. "Come in. Come in." And just like that her aura about me changed from wary to bouncy and bubbly. All the boys looked up as I walked in and for the first time in about a decade I was feeling self-conscious. What have the Benedict's done to me?
"Jasper, you actually came." Trace said astonished.
I nodded. "Yes, I thought it be nice to do Christmas decorations." Karla looked at me in horror.
"You don't put up Christmas decorations?!" She gasped.
I nodded. "Some years we do but we haven't for a couple years." I smiled awkwardly, shrugging my hands into the pockets of my jeans. We couldn't really put them up, we spent last Christmas in a hotel so the hotel
"Well this'll make up for it. When we're finished you'll feel like you're standing in a store selling Christmas decorations." Zed laughed, pulling some lights out of a box and throwing them towards Victor and Trace. Karla frowned at Zed as Saul walked in from the kitchen.
"Jasper! You're here." It's like a massive surprised to everyone that I'm socialising with people instead of killing them.
"Yes I am." I nodded. Then the strangest thing happened. He hugged me. "Welcome to the family."
"Thank you." The boys cheered.
"Right then, my littles…"
'Are you kidding me?' Will snorted beside me. We recovered holding innocent smiles on our faces when she looked at us.
"Vick, Uriel, lights, Trace and Will with your father to get the decorations down from the attic. Jasper make yourself comfortable anywhere." She said drastically gesturing to the room with her hands. Will kissed my head before running after Trace and Saul, climbing the steps two at a time. I sat down on a chair, folding my legs beneath me.
Trace, Will and Saul returned with the decorations whilst Victor and Uriel – Victor mainly – were swearing over faulty lighting. Saul and Trace added to this when they went to help the two. Will sat back with me, happily watching them try and wrap lights around a tree. A very big tree. From floor to the ceiling this tree was all natural and very big – have I mentioned that?
"Okay, lights done." And with that announcement the entire family was around it, hanging beautifully ornate decorations. They weren't the normal crap, they were each hand made from different places all over the world.
"Why do hang them all?" I asked after she'd finished telling me the story of the wooden nativity.
"Because it would be an insult to the giver not to hang them." She announced with most of the boys miming it behind her. I was told various versions of funny Christmas stories from various boys. I traced the carvings on the wooden nativity.
I went out into the kitchen with Karla when an argument broke out between the boys and the star at the top of the Christmas tree. She looked up. "Everything alright?"
"They're fighting about who puts the star at the top of the Christmas tree." I informed. She laughed.
"You'd think they would've grown up by now." She smiled. "Did you ever have that problem?"
"Umm…" I started. "It was more complaining, the tradition was Martin would put the star on the tree on Christmas Eve," Karla gave me a curious look. "We never have a chimney, so the Santa coming down one didn't ever fit."
"So what was the story instead?" Karla asked, checking the cooking biscuits that smelt wonderful and the mulled wine heating up on the stove.
"The star would magic Santa into the house from the roof." Karla smiled.
"Zed never believe Santa coming down the chimney as well, we had to think up all sorts of explanations." Karla laughed.
"How long did you know before we told you?" I asked.
"You two found each other the night you broke in." I couldn't help wincing at the memory – however funny – I nodded. "That night." I raised my brow.
"Seriously?"
"Well…" She started the oven pinged and she paused briefly to retrieve the cookies from the oven. "we had our suspicions, Will was different and coming to your house every morning so that kind of gave it away."
"You just seemed so surprised in the hospital." I breathed.
"I think it was the realisation that one of my babies had found his true love." I couldn't help but laugh at that. Karla stared at me, going a little distance whilst she stirred the wine. My eyes flickered around the room as bobbed my head to silent tune; the silence getting heavily awkward. "Such a dark life you've lived."
"I beg your pardon?" I asked the silence having shattered.
"Abandoned at such a young age…" I felt my dead emotions rise up in me.
"MOM!" Will came to my rescue, I breathed out releasing my muscles and unclenching my jaw.
"How do you know that?" I asked.
Will circled his arm around my waist and led me back to the living room. "Mom can read people."
"Right." I. Should. Be. Un. Readable!
Karla brought in a tray of mulled wine and cinnamon biscuits. "Thank you," I smiled warily helping myself to a biscuit. Trace had just finished telling a memory-story when my phone started playing 'the death march'. All eyes suddenly on me. "That'll be my father." They laughed. "Martin?"
"Jasper?"
"Eris?"
"Where are you?" She asked.
"Why do have dad's phone?" I asked.
"He's using the secure line," That wasn't good.
"Hang on…" I got up and walked into another room, locking the door. "What's happened?" I asked.
Jasper? Will's voice came into my head like a butterfly's touch.
Not now. I felt bad pushing him away. Even if it was just a phone call.
"I don't know but Greta's not answering her phone and dad has asked us to come back to the house immediately." She informed. There was muffled fighting at the other end.
"Jasper, where are you, you need to go home now. We all do."
"Yes, Chase." I said sarcastically. "Put Eris back on I like talking to her."
"This isn't a joke, Jasper." He practically yelled. "Get home as soon as you can." The phone cut off. I exhaled, unlocking the door. Yanking it open, I sent Xav flying across the room.
I sighed in frustration. "Jesus Christ, I thought you guys at the least would know not to do that!" I said.
Xav stood up, rubbing his back. "What you mean stand by a door in our house."
"No, make me jump. Bad things happen when you make a Shadow jump." I replied. Yves and Will agreed remembering the incident with Chase. "I have to go." I announced.
"You do?" Will asked, sadly. It was almost 10, I'd been here since 7.
I swallowed the worry coming up my throat. "Yea," I replied, pushing my hair over my head with my hand. "Something's happened; I need to go home...right now." I grabbed my jacket.
"I'll drive you…"
"No!" I said. I turned around looking up at 9 suspicious and nervous individuals. "I mean, Martin's had to contact a few certain people, if they catch a Benedict…all hell breaks loose."
Will grabbed his jacket, standing his ground. "I'll still drive you."
I sighed. "You're not gonna budge are you?"
He shook his head. "No." I side-stepped him.
"Thank you, I've had a really nice evening and I do apologize for my abrupt departure." Wow, I have been reading too many Jane Austen novels. Mentally face palming myself and sighing. "But it was great to meet you guys on good terms instead of breaking into your house and being caught." I said, mainly to Karla. The boys smiled at the memory.
"It was nice to have you here Jasper." Saul nodded.
'This is getting awkward and our family needs us back' My conscience – who I'd recently name Renee after about an hour's argument – reminded.
"You're welcome anytime," Karla smiled, for the first time I felt like part of this family as she smiled genuinely at me.
I grinned back. "I'm really sorry I have to go." I opened the door and followed Will out to the jeep.
"Call if there is anything we can help you with." Karla added as I opened the car door.
I paused. "Will do."
'Will not! That's stupidly dangerous and you're not stupid enough to do that' Will gave me an exacerbated look. 'If only I could give him a look back'
'Well you can't so quite whining' Will pulled away and shot down the mountain.
"Do you know what's going on?" Will asked after a while of silence.
We drove through the practically empty streets of Wrickenridge, turning onto the winding road that goes around the mountain and up to my house. "No." I admitted. "No I don't; but when Martin uses the secure line it's not good." The secure line was a network of untraceable cell phones that can't be hacked or used as listening devices. No one can get into the conversations, no matter how good. The network changes every six months, then the phones are destroyed.
A purple Nissan Rogue rocketed past us. "They're going to crash." Will said. "I thought you said you didn't put up lights?" Will asked as we pulled up to my house. The purple Nissan Rogue parked on the driveway.
"We don't usually. Thanks for bringing me, but I don't know who's in the Nissan so leave, now." I leant over and pressed my lips to his soft ones. Framing his face in my hands I looked into his eye.
"When you can tell me what's going on." He begged.
"I will." Quickly pecking his lips I climbed out of the Jeep as the door swung open. "What's wrong?" I called, looking over my shoulder as Will reversed slowly out of the driveway. I turned back, Martin was standing in the doorway.
"Someone broke into the house." He announced, I leaped up the front porch stairs and walked in. The house was completely upturned. The glass from the back door that was in the utility room adjoined to the kitchen, was shattered and the kitchen in a mess from people searching the cupboards. The glass dining room was barely broken, probably because you could see everything. Martin's office was turned upside down and the living room was an equal mess. The sofa fabric ripped open, the feather stuffing of the cushions everywhere. Greta was standing the chair upright and re-organizing the desk. Chase was elsewhere in the house, getting a vacuum to clean-up the feathers, Martin went back to his office.
"How was your evening?" Eris called from the stair case. I turned as she stepped down a step onto broken glass.
"It was fun." I replied as she bent down to pick up a frame photo; the glass half broken. It was one of just Chase, her and me. She placed it back on it's nail in the wall.
"Fun?" She inquired, walking down the remainder of the steps.
"Yep."
"Good," She smiled. "Chase got a new car." So it was Chase and Eris in the Nissan Rogue.
I looked at her. "Chase chose a purple Nissan Rogue?" I asked.
She shrugged. "I might have had a little influence." She said, holding up her thumb and index finger with an inch gap between them.
"Someone was looking for something," Martin announced, Chase walked in from the kitchen and Greta leaned in the living room doorway.
"Do you think they found it?" Chase asked.
Martin shrugged. "It's hard to tell."
"Who could it have been?" I asked.
Again Martin shrugged.
"DO you think it's because of us and the Benedict's?" Eris asked. "Do you think we've ruined everything we've built because we got involved with them?" Eris inquired.
"Possibly." Martin replied. "But the SOA will be coming around, we need to stay away from the Benedict's, and they have to stay away from us." I felt my heart sink.
Eris and Chase looked at me. "Jasper…" Chase started. All eyes came to me.
I scoffed. "I found him." I announced, baffling Greta and Martin. "My soulfinder. William Benedict." Greta's face lit up, suddenly the darkness of today's events blown away by the million to one possibility. She yanked me into a bear hug and kissed my cheeks.
"OH! That's amazing!" Greta beamed. "Finally you can feel how I have felt all these years." Of course! Greta and Martin were Soulfinders, not just a married couple. Duh.
"That is truly great." Martin smiled, joining in with the hug.
"Pressures on." Chase mumbled. Martin walked over to him and Eris who were standing side by side.
"You'll find them." He reassured. "Keep believing." He informed. "That was the one thing I never wanted to take away from you," Eris cocked her head at him with a quizzical look. "Your hope of finding your other half."
"Aw, Martin's in touch with his femine side." I sighed.
"It's a good job most boys don't have a feminine side otherwise they wouldn't stop touching it." Eris added. Chase punched her arm playfully.
"OI!"
"It's true, apparently a boy thinks about sex every 15 seconds." She stare at Chase waiting for an answer.
He paused. "That's not true." He stalked off into the kitchen followed by Eris who was cheering: 'That's a big yes baby!'
Martin and Greta turned back to him. "No wonder those boys have been hovering around the house lately." Greta smiled.
"And here's me thinking it was you." Martin said, circling her waist.
"Okay, whilst I'm happy with soulfinder love – which I'm also angry about you not telling us – I'd rather not watch my parents for all intents and purposes make-out." I informed going up the glass ridden steps. "They better of not gone through my room."