Evelyn tried to ignore the shouting from downstairs, both hands blocking her ears and her face shoved into her knees, but still the noise continued. She only moved one of her hands when she felt Morgan slide onto her bed next to her, and then it was just to clasp her twin's hand tightly in her own. Morgan seemed calmer, but Evelyn knew her sister well enough to know when something was bothering her.

"Something bad has happened," Evelyn whispered, keeping her face hidden. Another shriek from downstairs.

Morgan let go of Evelyn's hand and wrapped both arms around Evelyn's shoulders. She watched the smaller girl continue to stay curled in on herself. "Eve, nothing bad happened."

"They're screaming," Evelyn sobbed.

"No one is screaming, Eve."

"Yes. They are." Her voice caught in her throat, and she raised her face from her knees to look at her sister. "Why can't you hear them?"

Morgan pursed her lips and, after a moment of deliberation, left Evelyn on her bed to go and close the bedroom door. She sat back down on the bed, this time facing Evelyn, sitting criss-cross at the edge of the mattress. Evelyn slowly uncovered her ears, chewing heavily on her bottom lip as she looked around her bedroom. Morgan wasn't sure what she was looking for, but she allowed her to continue uninterrupted. When she finally stopped, Morgan noticed that her twin looked about ready to cry.

"Are they still screaming?" Morgan asked, and Evelyn shook her head, pursing her lips. "What's wrong then?"

"They've stopped," Evelyn said.

"But that's good, then, right?" Morgan asked, stroking her sister's dark hair. Evelyn shook her head again, and pulled her hair away from Morgan, pulling it quickly into a messy bun. She sat up quickly, jumping off the bed and rushing to the door, pulling Morgan along with her.

"Something bad has happened, Morgan," Evelyn muttered as she dragged her along, throwing open the door and storming down the winding staircase. "Something very bad."

"There was no screaming, Eve," Morgan promised, stealing a hair tie off of Evelyn's wrist as they descended and pulling her own blonde hair into a sloppy ponytail.

"But something bad has happened."

Morgan sighed. "So you keep saying."

When they got to the ground floor, Morgan allowed herself to continue being dragged about by her sister, though she could easily have refused. She had at least ten kilos on the shorter girl, but it wasn't in her nature to use that against Evelyn. She only used it against anyone else who felt like trying to pull her off somewhere. Evelyn was too much in a fright for games right now, Morgan was sure, so she cooperated. They first headed to the backyard, where Evelyn came very close to falling face first into their pool.

"Eve, deep breaths. What happened up there?" Morgan asked. Evelyn watched Morgan's face closely as she spoke, eyes darting to the side a few times like she might try to run off by herself. Morgan might have made a grab for her if she did that, seeing that she nearly took a swim in the middle of September and something worse was definitely possible when Evelyn was in such a jumpy mood.

Evelyn took a deep breath and met Morgan's eyes. "There was screaming somewhere, I swear I heard it. Like someone about to get murdered. Sounded like Michelle's haunted house scream."

"You can't get mad at me, okay?"

Evelyn looked at Morgan distrustfully, but Morgan held out a pinkie for Evelyn to shake, and after a moment she did. She wasn't happy about it, but she agreed.

"Okay, I won't be mad. What is it?" Evelyn asked.

Morgan looked at the ground for just a moment before shrugging. "Evelyn, there wasn't any shouting. Do you think you might have been dreaming again?"

"It wasn't like that."

"It's not possible that it might have been like that? A little?" Morgan pressed on even though Evelyn was starting to look ready to break her pinkie promise. "I know it's hard to tell, but this does seem a lot like that sleep paralysis stuff."

"I don't have sleep paralysis," Evelyn argued, clenching her jaw and pulling on Morgan's arm. "I wasn't dreaming, something is wrong, let's go."

"You were dreaming last week." Morgan didn't go along with her twin this time, standing her ground until Evelyn finally gave up and stopped.

Evelyn shook her head. "Look, I know that it's hard to believe after that whole thing..."

"You woke up screaming at three in the morning. Couldn't move your bloody arms and thought that someone was dying. And all you managed to do was make mom upset and wake up half the house." Morgan was getting to the end of a short fuse.

"And now I know that I was hallucinating, or something," Evelyn murmured, embarrassed. "But this is different."

"How?" Morgan crossed her arms and dug her heels into the ground as Evelyn began to bounce one leg up and down nervously.

Evelyn bit her lip. "If you would please just let me show you, Morgan, then you could see."

"Or we could go back inside and see about Mom taking you to the psychologist again," Morgan suggested, her face softening as Evelyn started to shake.

"I'm not crazy. I'm not hallucinating. Not now. He's in the garden."

"Who is in the garden?"

"Whoever screamed," Evelyn said, letting go of her sister so she could clasp her hands together. "Please. Please let me show you."

Morgan hesitantly allowed her twin to tug her in the direction of their family's garden. She would have guessed that Evelyn would bring her to the big gardens, to the mazes of shrubbery and sweet-smelling flowers that were kept up by men in heavy gloves and boots. It would have been no surprise to Morgan if someone had collapsed there, not with the towering plants and archways. Instead, they wove between the trees partitioning a small herb garden from the rest of the estate.

Evelyn stopped suddenly when they passed the first row of trees. "He's there."

They hadn't gone beyond the second row of trees, so Morgan had no way of knowing who Evelyn might be talking about. If there was anyone at all. She was still convinced that her sister had been subject to another break, and needed to get help from their family's psychologist. But Evelyn was convinced otherwise, staring wide-eyed at the last tree between them and the garden that their family members would sometimes go recreationally.

"Who?" Morgan asked, and Evelyn frowned.

"I don't know. All I heard was a shout," Evelyn said. Then she squared her jaw and pulled Morgan along with her through the final row of trees.

The garden looked exactly as it always did, albeit a bit neater than after Morgan and Evelyn had been working in it. The nearest bed was covered every inch in sprouts of spearmint, a plant that none of them adored much except for Morgan, but was next to impossibly to banish from the garden after Morgan had planted it. After Morgan and Mom had an argument over killing all of it, which Morgan rejected entirely, they ended up simply installing another bed beside it for the rest of the herbs.

The second bed was divided nicely into rosemary, thyme, sage, basil, and at least a dozen other plants Morgan couldn't recall the names of. The only person who actually knew their names apart from Evelyn was their grandfather, or rather Evelyn's grandfather, Henry Windsor. He was an old man, as old as Morgan knew anyone to be, though certainly not the oldest ever. Unlike Mom and Dad, who left gardening to gardeners, Grandpa Henry tended to the place with a green thumb.

There was one difference to the garden and its perfect contains of perfect rows of perfect plants. The difference was an man, unconscious though his eyes were open and glassy, staring up at the murky blue sky. His cheeks were slack and completely devoid of color, and his body was as motionless as his pupils. Evelyn let out a breath the moment she saw her Grandfather lying on the angry green grass.

Neither girl screamed or shouted when they saw Grandpa Henry, because both were suddenly very busy with other things. Evelyn dropped to her knees in an automatic response to begin CPR. She had been trained every year since first grade because of her family's history of heart failure. Morgan had also been trained in first grade, then fifth, then eighth, and then their parents mostly gave up on getting her to the classes. Evelyn made her promise she wouldn't forget it in case something happened to her, but Morgan found that missing tennis or basically anything to get her certification renewed sucked.

Morgan pulled her phone out while her sister was trying to restart Grandpa Henry's heart, dialing 999. She spoke quickly but clearly, as she always did, before taking a deep breath and calling Dad.

"You need to get to the garden, now. Grandpa... I'm not certain, but something happened. He's unconscious, I think he had a heart attack because Eve is doing CPR," Morgan said, watching the serious expression on her sister's face as she took half a moment to look up at the clouds. "I called an ambulance, but get over here."

"Of course." There was a shuffling about on the other end of the line as Dad stood up from a table, probably some meeting or another. It was always some meeting or another. "Call your mother, Morgan, I'll be with you and my dad as soon as I can." Then the line clicked.

Morgan called Mom, to the answer of a voicemail. She muttered, "Damnit" before the the recording started, then rushed through a message of what had happened. Then she tossed her phone on the ground, only barely remembering to hang up, and rushed to Evelyn's side. They always said to keep doing the beats and breaths until the ambulance arrived. They said to trade off with a partner if you had to, but not to stop.

Morgan shoved Evelyn out of the way when her sister didn't immediately give up her place by their Grandpa's side. Then she started where Evelyn had left off, forcing herself to ignore the fact that her grandfather did not so much as still in the ten minutes it took to get an ambulance to their estate. Evelyn took over whenever she could get the leverage to force Morgan out of the way, and then they would switch again a bit later.

"Morgan, Morgan, Morg... Morgan, what does this mean?" Evelyn sobbed into her twin's shoulder as they sat on the edge of the garden, the ambulance already rushed their grandpa and parents away. Mom had told them to stay put. Morgan had agreed with her jaw clinched, while Evelyn simply stared forward emptily. Then she finally broke. "Morgan. I heard him shouting, screaming. I heard him."

"I know, Eve," Morgan whispered, rubbing Evelyn's arm and placing her chin on the top of her head.

She couldn't finish with what she wanted to say. I know you thought you heard him. Because the word thought changed everything. She knew that Evelyn thought she was fine. She knew that Evelyn thought she heard their grandfather screaming. But she still thought that Evelyn was hearing things. It was perfect timing that Grandpa Henry had cardiac arrest at the same time that her break was, furthering any ideas that she had about it being the real deal. But Morgan didn't finish what she wanted to say, instead running her fingers through Evelyn's hair.

"People don't scream when they have heart attacks, Evelyn. I'm sure this doesn't have anything to do with... that," Morgan said, voice clear. There was no connection. "You don't have anything do with this beyond bloodline."

Evelyn took a breath from her deep breaths and occasional sobs to let out a hesitant laugh. "And you get out of that one, at least."

"It's not like that, Eve. You know that. I love him as much as you do, just like I love Dad. You wouldn't say I don't love Dad, would you?" Morgan asked, shaking her head.

"...No." Evelyn's breathing finally evened out and she straightened up, looking her sister in the eye. "But at least you don't have to deal with the risk."

"The risk of the Windsor bloodline? A slight chance of a heart attack?" Morgan smiled and bumped Evelyn on the arm. "I guess I just lucked into being a part of all this." She motioned widely around the garden, and the trees and shrubbery. It all glistened as though nothing bad had happened.

"You're my sister."

"Half-sister," Morgan laughed, and Evelyn faked a frown. She wasn't truly upset, though. It was an old joke between them because of their strangeness. The doctor who delivered them had apparently never had a case like theirs before. Twins with two different fathers.

Evelyn stuck her tongue out at Morgan, who raised an eyebrow. "Pretty mature for someone who'll be an adult soon."

"Oh, I'll have you to be an adult for me," Evelyn said.

"Yeah." Morgan smiled. "Guess I'll have to try. Gotta take care of my baby sister."

"You watch your mouth," Evelyn spit back, crossing her arms and holding back a grin.

"And hey," Morgan told her twin, "You never know, I might have inherited something worse than a tendency for heart failure. Whoever donated the stuff might've been a vampire or something. There's always weird about kids of vampires, right?"

Evelyn rolled her eyes. "Yeah, in the movies. We're living in real life, where heart attacks are a much bigger threat than genetic vampirism."

"Ah, well, a girl can dream."

Reality set in when Evelyn finally stopped laughing and they were forced to walk back out of the garden-area. Nothing had ever seemed overly real when they were in the garden, and whatever was dying to be experience waited to sink in until they were back to the world of big trees and big people and big money.

Morgan had always appreciated that about the garden, but now it made her want to hole up in the place and never set foot in the larger world again. But it was a Sunday, and Morgan had never been the best about getting her homework done on time. She briefly wondered if they might be able to pass on school the next day, but the thought was quickly stomped upon and driven into the ground when Evelyn began scolding her about not doing her homework.

"We have finals in two weeks, Morgan, and not just freshman finals. Senior finals. The finals that are really very final!" Evelyn exclaimed back in Morgan's room, where Morgan was somberly retrieving her Calculus II work from her book bag.

Morgan allowed her to snatch the work from under her hands, aware that Evelyn was simply looking for a distraction. "That we do, and I will most certainly have this done by then."

"I would hope so!" Evelyn rushed to the best by the door to grab a pencil and a calculator. "But it would be better if you would do it now. Or I could help you."

"Why don't you read a book, Eve? Math makes you upset, and we really don't need more of that right now," Morgan suggested.

Evelyn tensed and dropped the calculator onto Morgan's bed. "No, math makes you upset!" That was not true. Morgan honestly didn't care at all even a bit about math, one way or the other. "I wouldn't be upset if you just did your homework before now!" Also not true.

"And I'll do it now," Morgan said, raising her hands in surrender. She paused. "They'll tell us everything they can, as soon as they know."

"Well, they can't know soon enough, because I'm already going mad," Evelyn groaned, falling back onto the bed and avoiding the calculator she had thrown down.

Morgan frowned. "You've not gone mad simply because you thought you heard—"

Evelyn cut her sister off before she could say anything else. "Not what I meant, Morgan. I just mean I need to know."

"Right, of course," Morgan whispered, mentally smacking herself. "And the longer it takes, the better chance it is that they were able to do something. So, I mea, it could be a good thing."

"That there's a Schrödinger's cat limbo happening with the state of Grandpa?" Evelyn asked, lips pursed. "I'd much rather know now than wait three hours before they finally tell us he's dead and—"

Morgan sighed as Evelyn broke off, covering her mouth with one hand. She leaned back against Morgan, who pulled her head into her shoulder.

"We don't know anything, they could just be busy signing his release forms from the hospital. He could be fine," Morgan whispered.

"It's been two hours. He didn't have a heartbeat."

"Whatever, who needs heartbeats?" Morgan shot back before wincing. That was bad. Why was she so bad at this?

Evelyn didn't say anything in return, only letting out a shuddery breath and hugging onto Morgan's pillow. Morgan cursed herself and pulled her homework close to herself and began the menial process of copying each problem onto lined paper. She didn't have the brainpower to deal with anything beyond that at the moment, but she needed something to do.

Integrals. Integrals and the most nonsensically absurd things filled her paper until it was five forty-eight in the evening and Morgan's phone rang from her bedside table. Morgan picked it up and moved a few steps away to the room's entrance. Evelyn watched her sister with an eagle's eye as she opened it and held it to her ear. She realized a moment too late that she hadn't check caller ID.

"Hello, this is Morgan Winds—"

"Morgan, sweetie, it's me."

"Dad."

"Is Evelyn there? I really didn't want to tell you over the phone, but I know it's been a while we've been gone, and I thought you two might want an update."

"Oh my god. He's gone, isn't he?"

There was pause long enough that Morgan could hear clearly Evelyn shifting from where she had been laying on the bed to get up and walk over to the doorframe. Her eyes were welling up with tears and Morgan would have hugged her but the silence ended.

"Sweetie..."

"He is."

"We'll talk more when your mother and I are able to get home." Then the line clicked.