Moon Diamond, Anna P [epub e reader TXT] 📗

Prologue
On the evening of September eleventh, a change rippled through the perpetually dark streets of Verendetta. It passed harmlessly through most. Only three people noticed it.
A dark haired teenager sat bolt upright in bed, sensing the difference. Her face, framed by dark brown hair became a mask of confusion and her mind tumbled with dark thoughts of revenge. Her deep set eyes hardened as she contemplated what her next move would be.
A princess dressed in sparkling silver jumped with the electricity of the change, slicing her finger on the knife she was sharpening. Her crystal blue eyes went up to the dark, clear, moonlit sky with some trepidation, wondering how everything would change.
A raven haired elven girl sensed the change resignedly, knowing that there was nothing she could do to stop it.
However, in Lance Creek, Colorado, a family would also remember that evening. In both places it was caused by the same thing. Twins Seamus and Mariah Snow were born. Their lives were already destined to be as tumultuous as the storm around them.
In Lance Creek, it wasn’t an unusual storm. The wind whispered its hello to the newest members of the Lance Creek community, its wispy fingers caressing the leaves and branches of trees, tossing the hair of a few passersby as they scurried to find shelter from the rain, the same rain that pattered out its welcome on the window panes of everyone’s homes as anxious faces peered out, wondering if their possessions were safe. The thunder rumbled menacingly, daring anyone to argue that these children were special.
Lightning lit up the sky. People looked up nervously, hoping that it wouldn’t be their home that was struck by the ominous jolt of electricity flying through the sky like an arrow, its next target unidentifiable.
As for the Snows, had they known in the hospital what would happen to their twins, perhaps they never would have let them leave the house after dark.
If Mrs. Snow knew what was to happen to her, maybe she would have told her husband her secrets.
Perhaps Mr. Snow would never have let Mariah bring home any sort of sparkly item, or never would have brought Seamus out to fix a hole in the chicken coop.
Either way, that’s not the way it happened.


Chapter One
A little over fifteen years later…
The moon was bright. Not quite full, it shone its silvery glow down on the fog misted yard, making each little bump in the uneven landscape a hill, each little blade of grass stand out on its own like a marble pillar. It distorted everyday objects and gave an eerie light to the small farm.
A slammed screen door below broke the mystical silence like a gunshot. Two mist blurred figures emerged from the old farmhouse, one walking at a faster pace than the other. The moonlight reflected off of the girl’s hair. At first, the two figures whispered together, and then the girl said something a little louder, and then ran gracefully, at least until she stumbled and nearly fell flat on the ground. She quickly rebalanced herself, and continued running, pushing the ghostly fog away from her as she did so.
The boy seemed to say something, and then ran after the girl. After a few moments, the girl shrieked and the boy went running over to where the sound came from, calling her name. As he approached the large pine tree, towards the edge of their property, he called her name again, a little quieter, almost cautiously. He heard something moving on the other side of the tree.
Mariah was there, sprawled face first on the ground. Seamus figured she must have tripped on a hole in the ground. Not that it was much of a surprise; she had quite the habit of falling down, despite all of the dance classes she took.
“Not one word!” she hissed, apparently unhurt, then sprang to her feet and ran over to a short but sprawling bush.
“Mariah!” Seamus called after her into the dark. “I told you I was sorry. I told you I wouldn’t do it again. What else am I supposed to say?” He was trying to keep the frustration out of his voice, but he knew that it wasn’t working. He had already apologized several times and his patience was running thin.
“How often have you listened in on my phone conversations? A lot?” she yelled back, almost hysteric with anger from the bush fifty feet away. Seamus shuffled his feet, uncomfortable.
“Well,” he said, drawing out the one syllable of ‘well‘ into as many as possible. “How would you define ‘a lot’, precisely?”
Mariah yelled back a stream of insults, coming too fast for anyone to pick out individual words, besides ‘jerk’, ‘idiot’, ‘stuck-up’, and a few other words that Seamus wasn’t quite comfortable saying out loud.
“I think I can hear Tera,” he eventually said, when it seemed that Mariah had run out of horrible things to say about him, although he suspected that she had just paused for breath. “I don’t think that Mom and Dad would pay us as much if they knew that we let our sister scream her head off for us.”
Mariah must have agreed, but Seamus knew that there was no way on earth that she would admit it, especially to him. Mariah was fairly easy to read, and he could tell that she was analyzing the situation quickly. Sure enough, she turned, flicking her hair, and stalked inside. Seamus shook his head and followed her, not even bothering to try to talk to her. He was only grateful that she was smart enough to go outside instead of having a shouting match inside, which would quickly cause all of the Snow kids to wake up, which would just invite mass chaos into the home.
Luckily for them, the house was completely silent, besides their seven-year-old sister, Tera, calling them. She was the only other Snow sibling awake, and Seamus knew that if needed, or even not needed, Tera would happily wake everyone else up, and that would only start an uproar that Seamus didn’t want to deal with.
Mariah hurried up the stairs two at a time. Seamus began to follow, but she stopped him in his tracks with a withering glare.
The twins didn’t fight very often, and when they did, it was over something minor and was resolved fairly quickly. Usually it didn’t get this far, but Seamus figured that Mariah must have thought that he overheard something important. Which, of course, made him wonder what it was, and if it was worse than what he already heard. It always amazed him when he found new evidence of how petty high school girls could be.
It wasn’t exactly that he had been eavesdropping, they had simply both answered the phone at the same time…and he hadn’t gotten off. But he had heard something that her friend Nineé had said about drugs and after that decided to listen in more often. That was eavesdropping, he supposed, but it was for her own good…wasn’t it?
She only found out when he needed to sneeze and pressed the wrong button to turn it the phone off. She called him overly protective, but she couldn’t explain away what Nineé had said.
He heard Mariah upstairs talking to Tera.
“So will you get me something to eat?” Tera asked.
He pictured her in her yellow room on the upper bunk of the two younger Snow’s bunk bed. Her blankets were all wrapped around her just so and she was sitting there like a princess demanding food at all hours of the night. Seamus wondered where his parents went wrong with her.
“It’s nearly eleven at night!” Mariah exclaimed. “Go back to sleep and when you wake up it will be time for breakfast.” Tera replied something; Seamus couldn’t make out what it was, but it made Mariah laugh. “It won’t be that long. Besides, would Mom want you to eat something this late? No. And since I’m in charge, I say no, too. The kitchen is already closed,” she said. “Good night.” Seamus decided not to point out that he was in charge too, he didn’t want to start another argument.
Mariah didn’t come back downstairs; she must have gone into her room, because Seamus heard a door close. It was nights like this that made him wish that his parents didn’t leave every other Thursday night for dinner parties. But it was necessary for their dad’s job, so they couldn’t complain.
He went upstairs to get ready for bed. After all, he was regretting listening in on her conversations now, but it was important information.
There were those few things he had picked up about Nineé, like how her parents didn’t know where she went at night or how they couldn’t explain how their straight A student had gotten an D on the last math test.
He walked slowly up the stairs, passing the other four Snow siblings’ rooms.
He thought he could hear Mariah on the phone in her room. He could picture her, she would be laying on her back on the bed, her strawberry blonde hair around her, talking to one of her friends from school, telling them how mean and horrible her brother was. Seamus sighed. Not that he really cared what her friends thought of him, but he hated to be accused of something, even if it was something that he did.
Mariah had quite the temper, but she normally would calm down after a few minutes, and, luckily, she didn’t hold grudges.
But sometimes she didn’t calm down. Like tonight.
He, on the other hand, nearly always kept a control of himself and rarely shouted. His biggest fear was getting too angry and saying something that would later embarrass him. He ran a hand through his sandy blonde hair and stared into the bright green eyes of his reflection.
He quietly went to get ready for bed, and this time he could hear Mariah’s conversation without the other phone, but