“Your blood is an enigma. Your magic is concentrated in your blood stream, but you can push it out unlike most mages. There’s no way to extract it from the blood cells. It’s like a magnet, except there’s no way to pull the two apart.” He points to the glitter. “Your blood is overwhelmed with the magic. You have more magic in you than blood, but it’s not affecting you physically which is amazing. I don’t know what to think of it,” he tells me.
“So my blood is an anomaly?” I ask.
“Pretty much,” he tells me. While he’s looking down at his clipboard, I study him. As much as I hate to admit it, we do look a lot alike. We have to same dark curly hair and light eyes. We share the same straight nose and full lips. I watch as he scrunches his features when he’s concentrating. I know for a fact that I do because Colton can always tell when I’m over thinking something. Jedrek tears his eyes away from the clipboard and looks over at me.
I bite my lip and look away, bringing my eyes back to the papers in his hands. The bright lights shine off a piece of glossy paper clipped in the back. As I look closer, I realize that it’s actually a photograph. The familiar tingling sensation starts again in my stomach the longer I look at this photo. I need to know what it is. I reach forward and pull it out. A tiny white cat is staring back at me. Seeing the light blue eyes in the picture causes my stomach to tighten.
“What’s this?” I ask him while showing him the photo.
“Umm,” How much should I tell her?
“The truth.”
“I sometimes forget that you can read my mind.”
“Why do you have a picture of this cat?”
“After we started the magic extraction process, we needed to test to see if we could inject magic into other beings. If we couldn’t, the extraction would be useless. We didn’t want to just inject magic into anyone’s bloodstream, because we weren’t sure what the repercussions were going to be, so we started off with animals.”
“You mean you didn’t want to inject magic into anyone. Dravin doesn’t care about what happens to anyone but himself.”
She’s smart. “You’re correct. I didn’t want to cause any harm to anyone where it wasn’t necessary.”
“So you injected magic from mages into this cat?”
“Yes, but the results were inconclusive. The animals didn’t act any different. There were no identifiable results. They didn’t react to the foreign blood in their bloodstream.”
“So, you’re the reason why I can read her thoughts,” I mumble as I look back down at the small Polaroid.
“What?”
“This is my cat, Olive.”
“And you can read her thoughts?” I look back up at him. Now I’m the one who doesn’t know how much to tell. “Amazing.”
I open my mouth to tell him to keep it quiet when he stops me. “I’m not going to change anything. The results were still inconclusive, Ryanne.” I let out a sigh of relief. I don’t want them performing anymore tests on anyone else: animals or mages.
The room descends into silence. I hand the picture of Olive back to Jedrek. He clips it back under the stack of papers. She’s so beautiful. Reminds me of Maureen.
I flinch and bite my lip. I thought I could handle talking to him, but I can’t. I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes. “Ryanne, I wouldn’t have left if I knew about you. Maureen never told me she was pregnant,” he states.
“When did you find out about me?” I ask. I glance toward the door. Liam and Adam are standing on opposite ends of the hall. Both are trying to be discreet, but I know they are watching me. I look back to Jedrek.
He diverts his eyes and glances toward the door as well. Turning around, he leans against the counter and hugs the clipboard to his chest. “When you were two,” he answers honestly. He’s known about me for sixteen years and never once tried to contact me at all?
I can’t…I try to keep the tears at bay as I turn to leave the room.
“Ryanne, wait,” he reaches out and grabs my forearm. “You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it,” I yell. “Explain why you abandoned us. Explain why my mom had to raise me all by herself. Explain why I had to watch all the other kids grow up with a mom and a dad and always wonder why I didn’t have that. Why I thought there was something wrong with me because my family was different. Explain why you knew about me and still didn’t want me.”
He just stares at me. I can feel the tears streaming down my cheeks. Jedrek reaches forward to wipe them away, but I take a step back, not giving him the opportunity to comfort me. Sadness and confusion washes off of him, but he doesn’t say anything. There’s no excuse for what he did. I turn around and exit the lab, leaving him there to watch me walk away from him. I rush past Liam and Adam in the hall and go straight into my cell. I’m not hungry anymore and don’t care if I don’t get food anytime in the near future. I want to see Colton. I want to cry on his shoulder and feel him wrap his arms around me as he tries to comfort me, but that’s not possible. I don’t know if it will ever be possible again.