Induction, T.K. Eldridge [read aloud books txt] 📗

>“Okay. I’ve got my silver dagger already. I’ll take a Glock 9mm.” Sin handed me the gun, three clips and a box of ammo. He pulled out a 45, three clips, ammo, and a throwing ax. We both headed up the ladder and I left it to Sin to lock the door behind us while I sat on the couch and loaded up the clips. It had started to get to me. We didn’t know if our parents were alive or dead, or who had taken them and wanted us. We were loading up to go after our own kind and it, honestly, had me sick to my stomach.

“Stumpy has left three voicemails on my phone. Has he called you?”

Sin looked up from loading his clips. “Yeah, I talked to him about an hour ago. He said Benny had asked him about cleaning up the house before we went home. They sent a cleaning crew over this morning.”

“That was nice of them. I wasn’t looking forward to cleaning that up.” I hadn’t thought of it much, to be blunt. It was way down the list of things on my mind. “Did they say anything about the case?”

“No news, no leads, nothing,” Sin said.

“Figures.” I could feel the anger rising. Not having the SPD on the case was an insult and meant the best paranormal officers were being kept away. “When I talked to Grandma Fortin, she said Aunt Cosette had taken some of her best students to the house to see what they could find. They found both shifter and witch traces, but couldn’t tell if they were from us, our folks, or some strangers. With all of the BPD traffic, it muddied any clues.”

“So we still don’t know anything. I guess we just have to go to the park tonight and hope Mom and Dad are okay, and that our friends can help us take down whoever took them.” Sin snapped a clip into his gun, slid one into the chamber and flipped the safety on. “One way or another, we’ll get answers tonight.”

I did the same with my gun and clipped the holster to my belt, snapping the extra clips into belt holders. Our jackets would cover the weapons and clips. The treated leather would help hide the smell of gunpowder and silver. “Does any of this make sense to you? The children of Belle Cove Academy’s two founding families – kidnapped – and the SPD refusing to do something about it?”

Sin got to his feet and went to the window to stare out at the lake in the late spring sunshine. “No, none of it makes any sense. Why Mom and Dad? Sure, they were both cops for a while, then Dad went into teaching and Mom started her herbal business when we came along. They’re not outspoken members of the community – in fact, they do their best to stay under the radar. Don’t want to rub the whole ‘not supposed to be’ witch with a shifter thing in people’s faces. They’re not even the only shifter/witch couple out there.”

“Just the only one to have living children,” I reminded him.

“Right, I forgot that. Wasn’t there another couple up here in Syren Lake that had a baby?”

“Yeah, and it died within a month. Most of the moms miscarry, but some come to term and die within the first couple of months.”

“So, there’s something incompatible in the genetics?”

“You’re the pre-med, not me. I have no clue. Makes me wonder why we survived. Maybe something to do with us being twins,” I told him.

“Maybe. With two of us, the power could balance better? I’d love to do some genetic research on it. Someday,” Sin said. He got that lost in his thoughts look that usually ended up with ten notebooks full of ideas and three days of no contact.

“Sin, you can worry about that tomorrow, okay? Right now, we have to focus on this mess.”

A deep breath and a shake of his head had Sin refocused. “Right, you’re right. We should get going, so we can be at the park when the backup starts showing up.”

We headed out to Sin’s car, the cabin locked up tight. Together, we cast a ward around the house to protect it and alert us if trespassed.

The ride to the park was mostly quiet, with a stop for burgers and coffee that we’d eat when we got there. Within an hour, we were sitting on a bench near the pond in the center of the park. I tried to choke down my burger, knowing I’d need the fuel but not really wanting to eat. I tossed the last bits of the bun onto the grass for birds to enjoy, licked the ketchup off my fingers and wrapped them around my cup of coffee.

“What if whoever it is shows up without Mom and Dad?”

Sin kept his gaze on the comings and goings around us as he answered. “Then we grab them and make them tell us where they are.”

His leg kept bouncing, so I reached over and rested a hand on his knee. “Not alone, Sin. Never alone.”

“Never alone,” he replied and looked at me, voice dropped to a faint whisper. “Benny and friends are here. Auntie and some of hers are mixed in.”

A glance at my phone showed two minutes to sunset, so I pushed to my feet and grabbed our trash. “Let’s get in place.”

I pulled on fingerless leather gloves, tugged my jacket down in the back and sat on the edge of the fountain. Sin stood beside me, fingertips tucked in the tops of the front pockets on his jeans. I’d braided my hair back out of the way and couldn’t stop playing with the end of the braid. It was my tell, like Sin’s was his jiggling leg or tapping foot. Once I realized I was doing it, I stopped – then reached out to lightly squeeze Sin’s knee.

“Anyone watching will know we’re nervous if they know anything about us. Stop jiggling and nudge me if I play with my hair, okay?”

“Yeah, good point.” He leaned into the fountain a bit more to keep from wiggling.

We shared the same hair, thick and dark brown to nearly black. His curled a bit where he kept it short, mine hung to my hips when it wasn’t braided. We shared the same hazel eye color that went from blue to green, depending on our moods or what we were wearing. Light tan skin, even in mid-winter, spoke to our Cajun/Acadian ancestry and gave us a slightly exotic look. We had both been offered modeling gigs when we were little and our parents, thank gods, turned them down.

The sun slid down past the horizon, the late spring light glowed peach into orange as we waited. And waited. And waited. Both Sin and I kept our gaze on the people roaming in and out of the park. We both saw shifter and witch friends, as well as a few family members. I felt the assurance that no matter what happened, we were covered.

An hour past nightfall and Auntie Sett came over and sat beside me. Her favorite worn leather jacket’s buckles jingled as she nudged me with her elbow. “I think y’all got stood up.” She slid her arm around my shoulders and snuggled me close. “Come on, darlin’. Let’s get you and your brother out of here.”

Sin turned and headed for the car without saying a word. I saw him stop near Benny’s truck and talk for a moment before he got into his car and started it up. I hugged my aunt. “Thank you, Auntie Sett, for coming and bringing people. If you guys hear anything…”

“Of course, darlin’. Call me if you need anything. Anything at all,” she said.

I slid into the passenger’s seat, shut the door and reached for the seat belt as Sin pulled away.

“Talk to me,” I asked.

“I don’t want to.”

“Sin…”

“Sid…”

I sighed. “Come on. We knew there was a chance this was a setup.”

“I know. I was just hoping…”

My phone rang. I saw it was Grandpa B’s number, so I answered with a “Hey, Grandpa, how’re they hangin’?”

“Girl, you’re going to get yourself in trouble with that mouth of yours. Put me on speaker.”

I could hear something weird in his voice, so I hit the speaker button. “Okay, Grandpa, you’re on speaker.”

“You guys headed back to the cabin?”

“Yes, Grandpa,” Sin said. “Why?”

“Call me when you get to the cabin. Promise?”

“Yeah, Grandpa, we promise,” I said. “What’s going on? You sound…weird.”

“Just a little frustrated that your parents didn’t get returned to us tonight. Call me when you get to the cabin and don’t stop anywhere on the way. Love you two.” He disconnected the call and I was left with a bad feeling.

“What do you think that’s all about?” I asked Sin.

His hands tightened on the wheel before he answered. “I have no clue, but you’re right, he sounded off.”

We pulled up to the cabin, the wards still intact. I slipped through them to unlock the door while Sin did his walk around. He liked to check the outbuildings and property boundaries now and then like Grandpa did when he stayed here. I got the oven going and pulled out a lasagna that Maria, Benny’s wife, had sent over. With that in the oven, I prepped garlic bread and opened a bottle of wine. Sin came in through the back and I turned to hand him a glass of wine before I saw his face. Something really bad had happened.

“Tell me,” I said as he took the wine glass.

“I called Grandpa while I walked the property. Sid, the house. It’s gone.”

“What do you mean, the house is gone?”

“While we were at the park, someone burned our house down.”

I blinked at him while I processed the news, then drained my wine glass before I turned to put the garlic bread into the oven.

“They made sure we were out of the way so they could do that, didn’t they?”

“It seems that way,” Sin said. “And no, there were no bodies found in the ashes. Our folks are still out there, somewhere.”

“We need to go and see if the chest survived.” I thought about the one that we’d hidden in the wall. We’d warded it well, but who knew if the wards would protect it from fire.

“It’ll be crawling with uniforms right now. Grandpa said he was on the scene and would retrieve whatever he could. I’m just glad you were so thorough with bringing the more fragile stuff with us. We could have lost so much more.”

“Call Grandpa back and tell him to look for the trunk?”

“Sure, and you want to rescue dinner?” He smirked at me as he headed into the living room with the phone. I turned to pull the slightly well-done garlic bread out of the oven, then the lasagna. My great-grandmother witch on Mom’s side had had the gift of precognition. Guess I’d inherited a touch of that, because of that feeling I’d had when we drove away, somehow knowing it was the last time I’d see the house. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t freaking out right now.

I dished up the food and set the plates on the island. Wine, silverware, napkins and a basket of the very toasted garlic bread were put out before Sin came back into the room. “He said he had one of the firemen clear a path and he got the chest. The garage was saved, so your car and Dad’s are still okay. We can go clear that out later this week.”

We sat down to eat, but I