Chapter Nine - Jacob

"You know, you didn't have to be so hard on him. You're her brother, not her father."

Jacob glared at Nicole in the moonlight. "What would you know about it?"

Nicole crossed her arms, her expression dangerously calm. "What would I know about what, Jake? Fathers? Brothers? I happen to know your sister, despite how it looked today, can take care of herself. If she wants to kiss her ex-boyfriend, I say you should let her."

Jacob whipped around. "Who says you get a say, huh? You're not family."

"The hell I'm not! You seem to forget that for the first eighteen years of my life, if my parents were off-world, I spent the night at your house. Besides, who says that as her brother, you get a say yourself? Hm?"

Jacob clenched his fists in the air, the build up that usually accompanied his telekinetic episodes starting at the base of his skull. He sucked in a breath and unclenched his fists. Fortunately, the hum of electricity that always accompanied his telekinesis seemed to dissipate without a display of his abilities. "Is there a reason you take special pleasure in aggravating me?"

Nicole turned a flippant eye to him. "You've met my mother. I like to live dangerously."

The door to the car opened, and Grace stepped out to Trevor's waiting hand. Jacob sank onto the sand and rubbed one hand over his eyes.

A headache brewed behind his eyes, like the ones his dad used to describe as a nail through the head feeling. Cassie had called them migraines and offered him a prescription to help. She'd also suggested he notate what precipitated the headaches in order to track his triggers.

Unfortunately, all his logging had told him was that he was prone to getting headaches anytime he suppressed his gift. Naturally, he'd started using his gift more often. At first, it seemed to work. That was until the headaches which did come became more debilitating than the first.

Cassie had theorized that whatever mutation had been responsible for his gift created energy that had to be discharged in some manner. She also theorized that expelling that kind of electromagnetic energy took a toll on his neurological system.

That had been about the time Jacob had turned her out and summed the whole problem of his physiology in one sentence. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

"You know, you look just like your dad when you do that."

Jacob looked over at Nicole as she sat beside him on the ground. "Do what?"

She waved toward his face. "That thing with your fingers where you rub your eyes. You even quirk your head the same way he does."

Jacob looked forward again, refusing to dwell on the fact that apparently, Nicole had studied him a lot more than she'd ever let on. "Is that a good thing?"

She looped one arm through his. "It's just a thing, Jake. Kind of funny, actually."

Jacob pulled out of her embrace, the words chafing him more than he could have explained. "Glad I could amuse you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Jacob was too tired for this argument. "Where's Trevor? Are we gonna go down to the dig tonight or wait until morning?"

"He didn't say. Don't change the subject."

Jacob leaned over and kissed the top of Nicole's head. "Look, I'm tired. We're all tired. Forget I said anything, okay?"

As Jacob went off in search of Grace's ex-boyfriend, he wasn't completely sure if he liked the fact that he'd finally found a way to shut Nicole Jackson up once and for all.

Grace studied her hand with a critical eye as Jacob approached her. "Everything okay?"

Grace grimaced and held her hand up above her head. "Hand's swelling. Trevor's gonna love that."

Jacob pulled her hand into his as he tried to recall what little he remembered of the first aid training his mom had insisted on teaching them once when they'd gone to the cabin. "Maybe we should go down to the camp sooner rather than later. Get this looked at by a real doctor—or at least the locals. You can't be the first person who's been stung by a scorpion in these parts."

Grace pulled her hand out of his and raised it again, apparently unhappy with the way the swelling was going. "I don't think that's necessary."

Jacob let her pull away as memories he hadn't thought about in over ten years washed over him. A sense that he needed to protect her. A dread that they'd never get home. The sick feeling curdling in his gut that had come when one of the scientists told him his mother was dead. The horror that had come when he had learned Samantha Carter was the scientist who had invented the device his captors had used to keep him from fighting back with his powers...

Grace touched his shoulder with her uninjured hand, her touch light and tender. "Jacob?"

He shrugged off his concerns. "Look, Grace, the last time we did this—"

"We've never done this before." Her tone was clipped. Irritated.

Though there was an argument for this particular excursion bringing up a host of bad memories, Jacob kept his mouth shut. "All I'm saying is that I'd rather I don't bring you back home sick. Again."

Grace softened a little. "Is that why you got all protective back there with Trevor? Because you thought I'd get hurt again?"

Jacob shifted, uncomfortable. "You were just supposed to clear the air so we could get back to the business of saving our butts. Not get back together."

Grace sighed as she looked back at the car where Trevor was changing into the linen robes Jacob and Nicole had gotten for him. "We're not back together. What you caught was a moment of weakness. It won't happen again."

Maybe he was clueless when it came to things of the heart, but there was a look in his sister's eye. One that said he knew more of how she was feeling than even she might have known. "What did come between you back then? You never said. I don't think you even told Mom or Dad."

Grace opened her mouth as Trevor emerged from the Prius with linen robes draped over him. He spread his arms out to the side as if to show off his new threads. "Whaddaya think?"

All traces of her anguish gone like it had never existed, Grace chuckled. "I think—"

The laughter in her eyes died suddenly as her hand shot out and gripped Jacob's arm. A sudden, paralyzing wheezing sound emerged from behind her lips. Like she was suffocating.

Her brown eyes grew wide in panic as she looked first at Jacob, then at Trevor, her blistered, sunburned hands going to her neck as if to loosen something's hold on her. Panic clawed at Jacob's throat. That old childhood fear that he would one day become Darth Vader and choke the life out of someone, even accidentally, came back to haunt him. He checked his reflexes. His powers hadn't come out to play. "Grace?"

Her mouth opened, but what little sound she managed was garbled and choked.

Trevor's reflexes were lightning fast. "She can't breathe. My bet is it's that damn scorpion. She must be having an allergic reaction."

He swept Grace into his arms as Nicole came around the corner. "What's going—"

Trevor was already halfway to the ridgeline, Jacob quick on his heels.

At Nicole's questioning look, Jacob called over his shoulder. "We're going to the dig site. Causality be damned. We're not gonna let my sister die here, seventy-five years before she was ever born."