They asked me if I wanted to play. I didn’t. As soon as I said that, it was like I didn’t exist anymore.
I laughed to myself and decided to go explore the house. Caleb had given me a mini tour when we first got there but I wanted a full on exploration. I made my way through all the bedrooms and found my way back to the library upstairs. In there was a wall of nothing but shelves. On those shelves were books and about thirty different picture frames and holders.
I went down the line and read the book titles as I glanced at pictures in between them. I didn’t recognize most of the faces but some stood out. Most seem to be from a long time ago, when Peter and Max, Kyle’s father, were younger. They were close then too. There were a couple of Kyle, Jen and Caleb as kids, on a tire swing, in the pool, on four wheelers.
The books were mostly photo albums or fictions novels. Sometimes I’d run across a book on architecture. Then I saw an older book. Leather bound, wrapped with a leather string of some type. I got a creepy feeling that it was an enchantment tome or spell book of some sort.
It wasn’t.
It was the historical account of Raymond Jacobson on the Jacobson family line. I was instantly fascinated. I mean, this was Caleb’s grandpa, the one who died strangely and unexpectedly. The one who looked so much like him that I had to double take at his picture. This was his family. As I turned the page, I saw a picture of him and Gran, in their slightly younger years. The bottom of the picture had a hand written date on it. 1998. They stood, side by side, their arms together as they were lining up their wrist tattoos, laughing.
I realized this was the birthday that Caleb had told me about. The day Gran got her tattoo for him. I smiled and felt oddly connected to them. They were so in love, in was plain as day. I turned the page and saw that he had cataloged all the births, deaths, marriages, ascension dates and abilities of every member of the family.
I read through them all, every page so carefully written and handled. Each name was perfect in its presentation. I saw Peter and Rachel’s marriage. Kyle’s parents marriage. I saw so many of their cousins and kin marrying and starting lives. Then there was Caleb’s birth. The last thing written was Kyle’s birth. There was nothing after that. I realized Maria’s birth wasn’t even mentioned. I wondered why.I turned the next page, it was blank but as I ran my fingers down it I began to see flashes in front of my eyes. Then a vision flashed, took over and at first I was scared but my body understood what was happening. This was ingrained in me now. I calmed down with a deep breath that my lungs demanded on their own accord and let it happen. I was a Seer. And this was my first vision.
~ Five ~
I saw people. People I didn’t know but understood who they were, Aces. I got a feeling of words and actions. An odd salty and metallic taste, like licking a penny, on my tongue as a word made itself known.
Greed was the first one.
I saw them working so hard to have their mansions built, to drive their fancy buggies down the street, parading themselves as self proclaimed royalty and prophets. I didn’t know these people but I knew they were Aces from long ago. Then I was shown them passing others in the street, others who were poor and hungry and not privileged like we were. They laughed and one used her ability to spill a man’s cup of shillings to the ground. They laughed harder as the vision faded.
A new word formed and my tongue tasted bitter air, pride.
I saw more Aces, beating slaves and workers, smirking as they used their magic on others in torture and to scare them into submission of their ways, feeling they had the right to do so. Then different Aces. One who, horrendously, killed a servant maid for burning a piece of her hair with an iron as she tried to curl it. She held her throat in her hands without touching her until the servant stopped moving. She threw her down to the expensive rug as if it were something that could be replaced, as if she was nothing.
Another new word formed, ignorance, and my mouth felt like paper and grit.
I saw Aces playing and running, going to school for things only to earn money and be important. They were abusing their gifts to get ahead and claim fortune, never learning, or striving to keep record of their kind or keep family close. They never felt the need nor wanted to learn from past mistakes nor had a desire to avoid making new ones.
A man became a senator by tricking his voters and using glamours. A magician at a vaudeville house using his control of earthly objects to throw food, leaves and other objects into the air and juggle without touching them causing people to call him a messiah or wizard. A woman who lured men away with her charm and then stole their money, leaving them penniless and unknowing of what had happened to them when she used her magic on them.
Then, complacency was another word formed. The feel of my tongue was like water, tasteless but consuming, like I was drowning.
I saw old and new. It was everyone I knew and didn’t know. I saw the Watsons. Their Champion before Sikes standing by and watching his clan become something that went against everything he knew, yet he did nothing to stop it.
I saw another clan, a young girl and her cousins spending thousands a week on trinkets and parties, and giving their bodies and morals away freely to be popular and special in the world’s eyes. Their parents watching as they did so and thought it was common teenage behavior, as the times had changed.
Many more clans flashed before me, their transgressions laid open for me as if I were a judge. Then the Jacobson clan came to me and I held my breath. Their only transgression laid to me was not taking charge, not saying something and letting it all happen around them, though they held themselves in check. Many years ago, the Jacobson clan was the leader of all Virtuoso. They organized the meetings in London. They were the historians and record keepers for all. They watched over the years as each family was slowly destroyed by their magic, their use of greed for personal gain, their flaunting it in their pride, their ignorance of how to control themselves and their children...their ignorance of how to use a power that was given to them.
The power was a gift, not a birth rite. Not a power to parade and abuse for our entertainment and pleasure.
A gift that was taken away because of those reasons and now returned to the one family, the Jacobson’s, who were deemed worthy of redemption.
And that was the last word I felt. Redemption. The taste on my tongue was sweet and fluffy, like whipped cream.
It showed me that Caleb and I were the ones to put an end to it all and return the Virtuoso back to what they once were, a selfless, caring, outreaching, helpful people. They were people who were given gifts to help not to hurt, and to build up and prosper each other not tear down in power play and hatefulness. Caleb and I were to be the key, the new leaders of the new Ace order and keepers of the right way.
In the glimpses I saw Caleb and I fought side by side, sometimes literally. Hand to hand. Sometimes we mentally fought a battle of wits with others, sometimes, a battle of wills, always together. The last vision was of us, old and gray and blissfully wrinkled as we smiled at each other. He kissed the end of my nose as he sometimes did now and said he loved me. Still.
I gasped as I felt the cold air in the room and I came back to myself. I was oddly tired and drained feeling but it wasn’t in a bad way, just a productive feeling. I was still sitting in the library. I had no idea how long I’d been there but I felt a new sense of something. A purpose. I looked down and saw under my hand there were words written. The page that had been empty before the vision now held the words, written in an old antique pen, the words that I felt so much feeling for.
Greed.
Pride.
Ignorance.
Complacency.
Redemption
Then under that it read: The fate of all rest in the hands of all.
I knew it was a warning, I even felt heat go through my body. If we didn’t straighten this out, it would be bad for all of us, all clans, and all Aces. I knew my purpose now, to speak to the Reunification coming up in a few weeks in London. I was supposed to address them, warn them.
My heart beat steady in anticipation of it, and a scared but slow rhythm of having to be the messenger but nothing to alarm Caleb with it. I didn’t know if I was ready for all that. I was no one. I was a newcomer. How would they feel with a person who’d only been in the clan for a couple weeks and only a teenager at that, coming in and telling them to stop being greedy, prideful, ignorant people who take everything as it comes and doesn’t fight back?
I’m sure that would go over just swell.
I kept the book. I felt like I had some claim to it now. I didn’t know if anyone would mind but for some reason, I felt that it was supposed to be with me and Caleb. I set it on my bag in the upstairs bedroom and made my way downstairs. I was lost. Lost in translation. Trying to figure out how to decipher everything I’d been shown and where to go from here.I heard the doorbell. I was starving, I knew that, and I didn’t smell anything cooking so I figured I must not have been gone as long as it seemed. Maybe someone had called for take out but it had seemed very long. Every vision was detailed and precise. It was like it all happened in real time but that couldn’t be true.
As I hit the bottom step I saw Caleb make his way to the kitchen with boxes in his hands. Kyle was coming from the den and stopped mid-stride in a halt. He stared at me in wonder.
I was puzzled. Could he tell I’d had a vision? His mind was empty.