Chapter Twenty-Three:

The Malloy home was very quiet in the early afternoon.

The twins had taken the Brotherhood into the city for a few hours. Oz and Lance had gone to gather their instruments and equipment from the nightclub while it was troll-free. Gambit had taken the rental car downtown to meet a 'business associate' for something. It was too early for the vampires to be waking and Nancy had not been around since before noon.

Fortunately, Mary did not mind having some peaceful time to herself after such an eventful night. The house was large, but not overwhelming. Each room seemed to have its own small library, shelves lined with enough old texts to keep any curious reader occupied for years. The variety of topics reminded her oddly of the Professor, with history and science on one wall and an encyclopedia of ancient chants on another.

Most of the open wall space was occupied by hanging art and scattered photographs. Mary smiled as she examined the pictures. As strange as their family was, the Malloys certainly seemed content in their lifestyle. She noted that some of the frames looked damaged, even singed in places, and she wondered if they had been salvaged from their destroyed home in Chicago.

In one corner of the dining room, Mary spotted a weathered scrapbook sitting openly on a corner table. A fine layer of dust had settled on the leather cover and Mary brushed on hand along it carefully before she opened it.

The first pages seemed to be the oldest, yellow signs of age creeping along the edges of the white paper. There were four photos mounted on the first sheet, each with a different view of a white farmhouse surrounded by fields of early spring corn. There was a large tree shading the rear porch, its branches outstretched beyond the home's roof. The next set of four photos was much of the same and included a few random shots of a small mid-western town.

As Mary paged through the book, the paper holding the photos was getting newer (younger) while the people in the pictures grew older. The timeline jumped as she reached portraits of the Malloys themselves. The first shot must have been taken less than six or seven years before, as both Rebecca and Sid seemed to be at least fifteen. Sebastian was standing behind them, a characteristic smirk on all their faces.

Mary felt herself grinning again as she moved on. There were pictures of birthdays, Christmas, summer vacations, everything any family might have in an album. However, Mary found herself wondering why there was such a time gap between the first pictures of the town and the later ones of Sebastian and the twins.

After a few minutes, Mary reached the end and was about the close the book when the final photo caught her eye. It was easily the oldest picture, creased down the center as if it had been folded, but obviously restored to its original size with care. She frowned curiously, not recognizing the two people from any other photo in the album. There was a young man and woman sitting next to each other on a wooden fence. They were both looking at the camera with annoyed, but good-humored smiles, as if the snapshot had been unexpected.

Still, they were oddly familiar and it took Mary a moment to realize who she was looking at.

"Their parents..." she muttered with surprise.

The couple in the photo was Rebecca and Sid's parents. The Professor had been hesitant to speak about them, at least to Mary, who had heard what Xavier knew about the family through Rogue. Somehow, the pair did not seem as dangerous as the others had insinuated. They were just sitting together, enjoying a sunny day, when someone came up behind them through the cornfield and took their picture...

Through the corn, Mary thought, unconsciously placing her hand down on the scrapbook's pages, That's where the danger is... that's where the fire is... stay out of the rows...

"Checking out the history of the moron twins?" a voice suddenly asked her.

Mary gasped and nearly dropped the album as she was startled out of her thoughts. She glanced to her left and saw Nancy walking toward her from the front hall. The witch was grinning and shaking her head as she stepped up beside Mary.

"Pathetic, right?" Nancy asked sarcastically, and glanced over the other young woman's shoulder, "Aw, mum and pop. Who knew such normal looking people were responsible for them..."

Nancy tone was scathing, but not without humor. The twins seemed to take any of the witch's insulting remarks with a nostalgic grain of salt, so Mary assumed it was just their established repertoire.

Mary nodded and grinned, "Did you ever know them? Their parents, I mean..."

Nancy shook her head as she took a seat nearby and lit a new cigarette.

"No," she replied, "They were long gone before I met Bec and Sid. Here, look at this..."

Nancy reached over and flipped the pages back to nearly the center of the book. She settled on a group of photos obviously taken in a classroom and at a graduation.

"You guys went to high school together?" Mary asked.

Nancy shrugged, "Sort of. It was kind of a preppy institution, if you know what I mean. Just outside of Chicago."

Mary nodded and examined the pictures. She spotted Nancy in a few of them, looking more or less like her present self, and glaring with irritation at the grinning masses crowding her into each shot.

"Looks like a lot more fun then my school back home," Mary said with a sigh, "There were only three of us in my graduating class."

"Oh, yeah, loads of fun," Nancy replied, taking a long drag before adding, "As long as you don't mind the ghosts..."

Mary grinned, "And the vampires and the witches and the werewolves..."

"Now you're getting the idea," Nancy said with a laugh and then glanced at Mary thoughtfully, "Doesn't freak you out too much, does it?"

"I think..." Mary replied with wary amusement, "...I'm getting used to it. They won't mind that I was looking at this, will they? I didn't mean to be nosy..."

"Nah..." Nancy said before getting to her feet again, "You would never have known that book existed if there was something there they didn't want anyone to see..."

The witch widened her eyes dramatically as she headed out of the room, throwing around the same insinuations that everyone else seemed to enjoy. Mary watched her leave, and then put the scrapbook back in its place on the table. She continued to find strange comfort in the fact that she was not the only one in the world with secrets.


After Nancy's brief conversation with Mary, the witch headed down the guest hall. Any good humor she had when talking about the Malloy's photo album had left her face.

She approached the rooms that had been occupied by the visiting members of the Brotherhood, and peered into each one cautiously to make sure they were both gone. She did not care so much about the Toad as the shape shifter. Nancy knew the blue skinned mutant's earlier questions had not been planned, but they had certainly not been random.

Once she was sure there were no eaves droppers around, Nancy walked around the house to Rebecca's room and closed the door. All of the windows were draped in heavy cloth to prevent daylight from bothering Harmony, who was still asleep on a guest futon. A dim light shone from Nancy's hand as she turned on her cell phone and hit the number 5. She waited patiently and on the fifth ring, someone answered on the other end.

"Wanda..." Nancy said quietly into the receiver, "It's me. I'm in New York. And you were right. He is trying to find you again..."