CHAPTER 12
Alice didn't find sneaking out of the house as easy as Saturday.
"Where are ye goin'?" Wilma asked, giving her a grumpy glare. She was not a morning person. And the morning was not a Wilma person.
"Work." Alice shrugged, deciding to just go ahead and make some tea for her journey since Wilma was awake, anyways.
"Even on Sunday?" Wilma's eyes softened a bit. Their father hadn't been a religious man, not really, but their mother was apparently. So, in honor of his wife, Fergus took the children to church every Sunday. Even if he was supposed to be working in miles high paperwork and solving cases about serial killers and rapists.
"Yeah," Alice barely muttered, almost finished with her tea. "I think he might forgive me this once. Or maybe I'll visit the church tonight."
"An' wha' aboot ma?"
"I don't know." And then she left the house, trying to get away as fast as she could without looking like she was running away.
~A little history about Alice's family~
Her mother died right after giving birth to Alice.
She only knew from the pictures that her mother had had dark blonde hair and bright green eyes, like Alice.
She was a witch.
Elizabeth Margery Breckenridge was a simple town girl with no father, and a sickly mother and two sisters to take care of. She took several jobs: Laundry girl, farm help, waitress and... Witch.
Her mother was obsessed with the black arts (And her sisters got involved, too).
She could see things. Dead people, magical creatures and she got lots of visions, too. But Elizabeth could communicate with the unseen things, unlike Alice and her siblings. Because of her...gift, her mother's health had suffered.
It was a miracle that she'd managed to have five children.
She moved to Scotland as a psychic for the police. That was how Alice's parents met.
Fergus Kirkland wasn't much better off in the financial situation than Elizabeth was. His parents died on a boat trip to India, and his uncle, a wealthy business man, hated Fergus and sent him to live in an orphanage. Fergus started working with the police as soon as he turned eighteen, since a friend managed to land him a job in the service.
The two met on a case and continued to work together for years, until Fergus finally asked Elizabeth to marry him.
They jumped around, looking for better employment for Fergus. Edinburgh was where Alistair was born and they'd lived there for three years. Dylan was born in Cardiff and they'd stayed there for two years. The twins were born in Dublin and they lived there for about five years. Finally, they moved to London, where Alice was born.
All of Elizabeth's children had seen something at least once in their life.
Alistair supposedly had a strange obsession with the Loch Ness that he didn't tell anyone about, Dylan used to talk to dragons, and the twins danced with leprechauns and elves. But they all grew out of it, one way or another.
Alice didn't.
She was always sick as a child and was bedridden for at least seven years of her life, under constant doctor supervision and then off and on for the rest of it. She was supposed to have died along with her mother.
They said that Alice was too weak, born too early.
But her father didn't give up on her. At least, that's what he used to say to Alice every time she came down with another cold or was forced to bed for weeks at a time. He used to say that he visited the hospital every day and managed to blackmail a priest into coming with him every Sunday.
Fergus used to say that he prayed and prayed every night for her to get better...and for her to stop eatin' up all his money. That was the story's punchline ending.
She used to hate those as a kid, but now she found herself missing those stories almost as much as him.
Her father was good at stories. He read to them every night, each of her siblings picking their own story. It took him hours before he finally got to her, but he still managed to spit out the words with such ferocious spirit that Alice found herself lost in the story.
She only wished he'd kept his secret to his grave.