CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

I feel sick. My insides are churning, mixing together like food in a blender, and Rand’s one-worded reply acts as the blade.

“Let’s just go to the hospital,” I say.

“Too late now,” Rand says, putting down the phone. “He’ll be here any minute.”

“What if he tries to kill me?” I ask weakly, knowing that I sound like a complaining child.

“He won’t. Besides, he doesn’t know that we know he’s working for the nameless group.”

The nameless group, I repeat in my head bitterly. Somehow, without ever talking about it, we’ve taken to calling them that for lack of a better name. It sure does make it easier than saying ‘the people who swapped me’ every time I speak of them. But they aren’t nameless – not entirely anyway.

We have a name now: Patrick. And he’s on his way here. Somehow, I don’t think anyone believes me yet when I say he’s a traitor even though they pretend that they do. The thought hurts.

What’s the point of prophetic visions if no one believes them?

There’s a knock on the door and I go still.

“That was quick,” Sarah says from behind me, seated on the couch now that we’ve finished mopping up the blood and bandaging the bits we can.

“He can teleport,” I say bitterly.

“Not teleport,” Caden says, “translocate. His ability is Translocation.” His words barely register, my mind focused on something else as I move to stand behind the couch Sarah’s seated on. I place my hands on the top of the sofa, squeezing as Rand goes to open the door.

This is a bad idea. 

Voices sound.

Patrick’s working for the people who want me dead.

Footsteps approach.

What will happen when he sees Sarah?

I focus on my breathing.

And then my uncle comes into view and I realise just how much he looks like Sarah; like me – the real me.

His eyes connect with mine and he smiles. I fight to keep my expression neutral, my mind wishing to accuse him, to ask him why he wants to kill me. At the same time, I wonder if he knows – if he has already realised that I know who he is and who he works for. Could the smile just be a show to trick me into thinking that he’s ignorant to the fact that I’ve already discovered the truth? My head spins.

His eyes travel from my face to Sarah sitting in front of me. I know the instant his eyes lock onto hers that he knows who she is, but he doesn’t seem surprised by her presence. Or even worried. Wouldn’t someone who wants to stop us from swapping back be worried that we’ve been reunited? “You must be Sarah,” he says, a fake smile plastered to his face, looking as natural as a second skin.

When he says her name, I’m pulled back to the day I first met him, when he addressed me by the name I was born with. Strange that he messed up my name when meeting me but not when meeting Sarah. Maybe the mess up was intentional.

Sarah looks surprised and the slightest bit fearful. “How do you know who I am?”

“How could I forget the face of my niece?” he says and his eyes flick to mine, seemingly daring me to say something or to act surprised.

So he does know.

Well, at least partly. In my mind, I send out a prayer, hoping that he doesn’t already know the very thing I’m trying to hide.

“Caden’s on the couch,” Rand says from beside Patrick, breaking the short silence that had wormed its way into his house.

Patrick nods and walks over to Caden, kneeling down. “I’ll have to take off these bandages,” he says.

No one says anything.

As much as I want to stay away from the man, I can’t help but feel curious as to what he’s about to do, and I find myself edging closer in order to get a better view.

The bandages are off in just over a minute and Patrick stares down at the cuts covering the majority of Caden’s back, arms and legs, still seeping blood. “What happened?” he asks.

As if you don’t know, my mind accuses, but I don’t have the courage to say it out loud.

“He was attacked by a ghost,” Rand says, repeating what I told him. “It had been watching him for a month, so we knew it was going to happen, we just didn’t know when.”

Patrick nods, and then he says to Caden, “This might hurt a little.”

Caden just grunts in reply, his face buried in cushion. If the circumstances were different, I probably would have found it humorous.

Patrick touches a hand to Caden’s skin and we watch on in utter silence. At first, there’s no change. I stare at the cuts on his back, straining to see even the slightest hint that they’re healing. Time goes by slowly, seconds ticking over like minutes as I wait for the healing to start. It’s probably been only ten seconds when I start feeling restless and impatient. My thoughts, which had once been so focused on seeing the miracle, turn on Patrick. Maybe he’s not a healer; maybe this is just another trick and any second he’s going to strike out, killing me on the spot. My heart starts to beat that tiny bit harder in my chest.

Twenty seconds and still no change. Around me, I notice the expressions on everyone’s faces leaning towards doubt. Sarah’s features are contorting into a frown; Rand’s emotions are slowly being overtaken by confusion and uncertainty. Still, no one says anything, and I let the quiet hang over our heads, a small piece of familiar that I grip onto like a life-line, worried that if I let it go, it will float up into the air like a balloon and I’ll be unable to get it back.

Half a minute, and suddenly the balloon’s string itches in my hands, tempting to me to loosen my grip. My mind calls for my mouth to move and break the silence, desperate to just get the words that everyone’s thinking out into the open. And I’m about to, when suddenly, something shifts – a tiny movement along the border of a wound, as small as two cells swapping places.

Suddenly, I’m transfixed, frozen, and I swallow my words. Again, on Caden’s arm this time, something twitches, moves, heals. A second later, it’s happening for the third time, but in two places at once. And then it’s all happening at once, a chain reaction of cells disappearing and being replaced by healthier versions.

My eyes go wide as the changes step away from subtle and into drastic – whole cuts closing up, wounds turning pink. A quick glance at Sarah reveals that she’s as amazed by all this as I am.

As the single minute draws to a close, so does the healing. Caden’s skin looks almost flawless now, not a single scar or line on his body – even the deep wound on his left calf has healed, leaving normal, unblemished skin and small flakes of dried blood in its absence.

Abruptly, Patrick removes his hand and stands up, staring down at Caden. “Alright, try moving. Do you feel any pain?” Caden does as he’s told, sitting up.

I focus on keeping my expression neutral as I realise he’s shirtless, recalling having to cut it off in order to clean his injuries. But a blush creeps up onto my face anyway as I take in his toned body. I didn’t realise he worked out.

“No, nothing,” he says, searching his arms for hints of past injuries. Eventually, he lets his arms drop to his sides, smiling slightly. “Thank you.”

Patrick smiles in return. “No problem.” He turns to Rand. “As much as I’d love to stay and chat, I better go. I have some things I need to do.”

Rand nods in understanding. “Of course.”

Patrick smiles a tight-lipped smile and turns to Sarah and I. “It was nice to meet you, Sarah,” he says.

She gives a small nod, swallowing.

Then his eyes move to mine, and for the slightest fraction of a second, I swear I see his eyes narrow and his stare turn cold. But it’s gone quickly, leaving me to wonder if the hatred adorning his face was the work of my imagination. He smiles widely. “Be good,” he says, and I swear I hear a threat underlying his words. An involuntary shiver coils down my back.

And then he’s gone, vanishing into thin air just like the first time I met him.  

For a minute everyone is quiet and still, the ghost of Patrick’s last words swirling around us. Then Rand says, “Well, that was nice,” and the ghost scatters.

“Nice isn’t the word I’d use,” I say, and in the moment, I swear I know what everyone is thinking. It’s as if I can see the words vision and traitor written in the air above their heads.

“What word would you use?” Sarah asks.

“Unsettling, confusing, uncomfortable.”

“Kind of freaky, right?” she says.

I nod, glad that I’m not the only one who thinks there’s something not right about the way Patrick acts.

“Oh, come on, it wasn’t that bad,” Caden says. “He seemed pretty nice to me.”

“Says the person who was healed by him,” I counter. “You’re biased.”

Caden rolls his eyes but I ignore him and look to Rand. ”You saw how strange Patrick was acting right?” He just stares, obviously unwilling to agree with me.

Looks like it’s two against two.

“Fine,” I say, standing up. I leave the room, heading down the short hallway to the front door before yanking it open and stepping outside, the door behind me closing with a satisfying slam. I drop down onto the steps and rest my head in my hands, breathing out a sigh.

It’s been no longer than a minute when I hear the front door open and shut behind me. “You alright?" It’s Sarah.

I look over my shoulder. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I say, turning to face the road as she takes a seat next to me.

“I believe you,” she says softly. “But it’s hard to accept that someone’s a traitor when you know that person well. And obviously, Caden and Rand know Patrick well. I wouldn’t worry about it – I’m sure they’ll come around eventually.”

I nod. “Thanks for believing me. Everything would suck a whole lot more right now if it weren’t for you.”

She smiles. “You’re welcome.” After a short pause, she says, “Look, I was thinking that maybe we should meet up with my – uh, your real mother.”

Something inside of me freezes. My real mother?

“I don’t think I can,” I say honestly.  “I don’t think I want to.”

“You don’t have to, I just thought it would be good. She knows a lot about the whole swapped thing and I think she could help us.”

I shake my head. “You can talk her. I don’t – I’m not – I…” I sigh.

“You’re gonna have to meet her eventually,” she points out and I know that she’s right. “Better sooner than later.”

Better before we’re swapped than after, the silence that follows seems to say.

Eventually I give in, but with reluctance. “Okay, fine. When do you think we should meet?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

I nearly back out when I hear how soon she wants us to meet, but I take in a steadying breath and say, “Okay.”

After maybe a minute, Sarah says, “You ready to go back?”

I sigh. “I guess. We’ll have to go back eventually, right?” We stand.

For a while after re-joining Caden and Rand inside, I find myself wondering whether Sarah, when asking about going back, was talking about going back to everyone else in the living room, or going back into the life that was stolen from us at a young age.

And I wonder which one I was thinking of when I answered her question.