Malignant Transfiguration (Endeavor Series Book 2) Page 4
Josef popped up quickly. “Charlotte, what is it?”
She leaned back on the desk, looking at the briefcase suspiciously. David quickly moved it out of reach. “This man tells me that he is my brother and that you can confirm that.”
Josef sighed and settled into a chair. “He is your brother.” He rubbed his temples and shifted a couple of times before looking back at Charlotte. “Isaac had a first wife when he was about your age. Her name was Florrie. She was a little bit of a mystery and a whole lot of pain.” He looked at David. “Have you had any contact with her at all?”
David shook his head quickly. “Never seen her in my life, and I’ve never received any correspondence.”
“Susan?” Josef asked with a twitch of his lips.
David smirked. “Nothing that I know about. I went through her things when she passed, and I didn’t find anything. You knew Susan well. If she had ever gotten anything from Florrie, she likely would have held a bonfire soon after and danced around it.”
Josef snorted. “She was a good girl.” But then a smile spread across his eyes and lips and he howled with laughter. “In a bad girl kind of way.” David joined him in laughter and memories for several minutes while Charlotte and Vincent quietly looked around the room. Their eyes met for a moment and she wanted to slap the smug look off his face. He wagged his finger at her. She opened her mouth, but what would she say? He couldn’t read her thoughts. She turned away from his face quickly. Josef caught her eye and looked over at Vincent. “He’s much taller now.”
“Yes.” David said. “It’s been a while since I’ve been here, eh?” He strummed his fingers on his pants. “I’m thinking about taking on a second apprentice. It’s a little unorthodox. What do you think?”
Josef stroked the arms of the chair. “These need a good washing. We’ve fallen behind lately.” He looked back up at David. “I think that will be the hardest thing you have ever done. Will the Weaver Council back up your decision? I believe one at a time is the limit.”
“Technicality. I think I can persuade them to grant me an allowance.” He sat down across from Josef. “Especially since I’m on the council now. Do you agree with me that it needs to be done?” He asked, almost impatiently. “I think it’s what Papa would have wanted.”
Josef snorted. “You’re on the council now?”
“I’ve been next in line for some time now.” David said.
“I forget your age.” Josef admitted. “But shouldn’t you be done with apprentices now that you are on the council?”
“Again, technicality. I won’t always have Vincent, and what’s one more apprentice before I retire from that part of my life?”
“You’ve certainly gone longer than most, I admit.” Josef said. He patted the armchair and looked over at Isaac’s desk. “It would be what he would want if he couldn’t do it himself. I don’t like the idea of you all running across the country searching for trouble, though. It’s not the same as when your father and I ran around the country.”
“Josef, I know some of the scraps you got yourself into. You can’t fool me, and I’m much older and experienced than Papa was.”
“There’s trouble brewing.” Josef insisted. “Unlike any we have seen before.”
“Trouble came to us.” Charlotte interjected. She was tired of being left out of the conversation. Secrets. She could feel the presence of the words that hid underneath the words being said out loud. And why did David know some of Josef’s adventures when she did not?
“Then you have agreed?” Josef asked her.
“Josef, you already know that I intend to be part of this search. It’s why I’m going to the meeting. Did you think I’d change my mind?” Charlotte asked.
David shook his head slowly at Josef and cleared his throat. “I haven’t had time to discuss it with her.”
“Discuss what? I already know you plan to go, too.” Charlotte looked back and forth between David and Josef. “You won’t get him to change my mind. Is that why Alcott called him here? Did you all think I’d change my mind if you called my long lost brother into the picture?”
“No, of course not.” Josef said firmly.
“Firecracker?” David asked Josef with a laugh.
“You would know one.” Josef answered.
“I knew she reminded me of Susan!” David said.
Josef grinned. “It drove Isaac crazy sometimes to see it. He was always a calm boy. Audrey was calm and collected, as well. Fortunately we had Ebby. The two of them were a pair, I tell you.”
David chuckled. He nodded at Vincent, who got up and took the book recorder back. David tossed one leg over the other and focused back on Josef. “I miss Susan. It will be good to see a little of her personality again.”
“What did happen to Aunt Susan?” Charlotte asked. She was curious about the woman who had died long before she was born, and eager to be included in the conversation.
David pulled at his collar. “I was apprenticing with Father when it happened. I went home to check on her and she was gone.”
“I’m sorry.” She said. “You must have been young when she passed.”
“Thank you. I was around your age when I lost her. She raised me when I was younger, and then she was in and out during my apprenticeship.” He paused and looked off in the distance. “She would have liked to meet you.” He turned back and smiled. “You remind me of her so much it hurts.”
“I guess that makes us even.” She said. “I can’t look at you without feeling desperate for you to be Papa.”
“She gets her looks from Susan.” Josef said. “I hadn’t thought about it until now, and of course, we didn’t know what she really looked like until after the transformation.”
“Oh, you’re right.” David smiled. “She does take after her.”
Charlotte’s heart beat faster. So that’s why she didn’t take after her parents. She took after her aunt. She smiled. “Do you have a picture of her?”
“Not with me, but I’ll show you a painting of her soon.”
Josef stood and cleared his eyes with a handkerchief. “If you all don’t mind, I have preparations that need my attention.” He turned to Charlotte and gave his best fatherly smile. “Read your father’s journals. David can do his scan thing and put them on one of those table things. Why do you call them tables?”
“Tablets.” Charlotte corrected.
“The magical version is called a Quire.” David said.
“I’ve heard.” She confessed. “Zorach showed us, remember, Josef? One of our hobs, Tobias, wanted to get one for the castle.”
Josef shrugged. “Hmph.”
David grinned. “Tobias! A hob after my own heart! Did he get one?”
“I don’t know if he did yet or not. I should probably look into one for myself.” Charlotte admitted.
“Oh, sister.” David lamented dramatically. “I’ll make one for you and for the castle.”
“I hope lessons come with that offer.” She did want to know about magic and technology. How strange that her brother was so opposite of her father.
“I figured it would be a necessity.” David smiled.
Charlotte turned back to Josef. “Josef, why wasn’t I ever told about David?”
He paused for a long moment. “I think you will understand once you hear the full story, or as full as we can tell you. Your father’s journal may shine more light on the matter than what we know second hand.” He paused again and said in an apologetic tone of voice, “Florrie wasn’t known for her honesty, so unless she shows up with a change of heart, or somehow she left behind honest documents, I don’t think we will ever know the complete truth. I’m sorry, David, but I don’t think you will ever find the answers you seek.”
David stopped what he was doing and grinned. “Those aren’t the only answers I pursue.” He answered happily. “I keep myself open so I don’t unhealthily attach myself to one mission in life.”
Josef walked over to David and held out his hand. David shoo
k it and smiled again. “It’s good to be around family hobs again.”
Josef’s eyes glistened for a brief moment. “It’s good to see you.” He coughed and wiped his nose with the handkerchief again and then cleared his throat. “Nasty allergies. Okay, children, call me if you need me again.” He said before popping back out of sight.
Charlotte shifted uncomfortably. She needed to check on the progress of the castle, speak with Basil, and she call Beau and find out if he was going directly to the Alliance meeting or if he might drop by first and travel with them. Her plate was already full, and here she was presented with another large task. She might as well get things moving. “So what’s the story?”
David hesitated. She wondered if it was difficult for him to speak of his past, despite the years that had passed, but he overcame whatever he was thinking in that moment. “Papa married very young. He was about your age, which was unusual because most weavers like to wait until they are at least one hundred or so. Some wait even longer depending on their profession, a strong desire to travel, or a passion to aid society. He met Florrie and they fell in love hard and fast.” He turned to face her more. “Now this next part is part hearsay. I’m going to tell you what Aunt Susan told me. Susan was younger than Papa, but I would argue more mature even at her young age. She never liked Florrie, and felt like father was being manipulated. Florrie apparently bounced in and out of his life. She was never content with things, but she also never really left him alone long enough to move forward.”
“Anyway, at some point in their marriage she became pregnant with me. Susan said she was livid most of the time. She stayed with him for the longest time she ever had at that point, but once I was born, she left. The very day I was born, I’m told. Papa couldn’t handle Florrie leaving him again and this time with a child. He didn’t want to be reminded of her at all, and he left with no contact information so she couldn’t bounce back to him. It’s why he spent most of his years traveling. It wasn’t until he found your mother that he dared risk love again.” He paused and fumbled with something. “I’ve asked him for his side of the story before, but he refuses to speak of Florrie at all. The one time I pushed him for more information about her, I didn’t hear from him again for five years.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Charlotte burst out. “It doesn’t sound like him at all!”
David shook his head at her disappointingly. “May I remind you that he was your father later in his middle years. He was much more mellow and terribly secretive.”
“It’s only been recently that I’ve known for sure just how secretive he was.” Charlotte looked at him for a long moment. She struggled with these images of her father leaving his first-born. There was a time when she would have argued that there wasn’t an irresponsible bone in his body. “Do you hate him? Do you hate that things were so much more different for you?”
“No.” He said quickly and tapped his shoe against the floor. “Susan was wonderful. I had a happy childhood roaming the woods. She was mad about the whole situation with my parents and wanted me to feel loved. I believe Florrie did actually inquire after me at some point, but it was flippant and only after she found out that Papa was gone and couldn’t be reached. I didn’t meet him until I was nine, nearly ten. He sent money to Susan all the time, though. When he finally came home for a short time, he realized that I was long overdue to start an apprenticeship. He demanded that I go with him. Susan wasn’t ready for that, and she felt like I could learn to control my magic by myself.”
“What do you mean?” Charlotte asked.
“As you probably know, weavers have an apprenticeship from somewhere around seven until the early to mid twenties. It varies some, but it’s crucial to learn early how to control and use your magic. Susan’s magic was weak. The strength of magic depends on a lot of things, mind you; but Susan never did more than very basic magic. She had been released early from her apprenticeship. I don’t fully understand what she was thinking, but I’m not sure she ever wanted me to pursue an apprenticeship.” He shrugged and shook his head. “I was too young and immature then to find out what was going on in her head.”
“Father saw the strength of my magic, and he felt that I needed more than I or Susan could do on our own. He was right in the end, but Susan was livid with him. I don’t blame her. She raised me when Father refused to. She had every right to have some say in my life, but Father wasn’t old enough or mature enough to think of her, either. Anyway, I completely get why things happened the way they did, and I don’t envy what you have gone through recently. We all have different troubles, little sister.”
By then Vincent was back with the book recorder. David looked over at him. “Would you finish that up? And get all the journals and put them on a table, as our dear Josef suggested.”
Charlotte walked over to a cabinet and entered the passcode. “I’ll get the rest of them for you.” The stack of journals was dusty and large.
“You know, Charlotte, there is something else I’d like to talk to you about.” David said. “I’d like to work with you so you can stop hiding away. That’s so fourteen years ago for you.”
She put the journals on the desk. “I’m not sure what you can do about that.” She said. “I was able to drain the heat away once, but I haven’t been able to replicate it again.”
David sat down in the one of the wingback chairs against a window. “Come and sit with me for a moment. Let’s talk about your situation.”
“How much do you know?” Charlotte asked nervously as she joined him. She hoped she wouldn’t have to tell him much. Her emotions were already on edge today.
“Alcott filled me in on a lot.” He said as he tried to catch her eyes.
She kept her gaze out the window. “Good. I’d rather not go into it right now. So why ask me if you already know?”
“Because you are the one going through it.”
She leaned back in the chair before speaking softly. “It’s all happened so quickly, but my main concern right now is the burning thing. I leave scars on people. Did you know that? Also, I somehow absorb parts of them in the process. But I know nothing about it and it seems to fluctuate.” She fidgeted. “Everything used to fit in my life, and now nothing fits. I don’t fit.”
David reached over and held her hand. “You don’t burn everything all the time, you know. Otherwise that chair you are sitting on would be wasted by now.”
“Well, that is true,” she admitted as she looked down at the chair. “I haven’t figured out the key to it all, so I try to be as careful as possible.”
David sat forward. “I saw the field. Were you trying to burn off energy when you burned those items?”
“Yes.” She stood up and turned to look out the window. “Although it happens occasionally on accident, too. Mainly when I’m sleeping. The hobs have formed an unofficial fire department.”
David sat back and crossed one leg over the other. “Listen, I have a theory and I’d like you to give me a chance to find out if I’m right.”
“Run it by me.” She said as she traced the windowpane with her finger.
David stood and crossed to stand on the other side of the window. “It’s my belief that you need to learn to control your magic.”
Charlotte laughed and smiled up at him. “I don’t have magic, David. Not in the weaver sense, anyway. Whatever I do have is twisted and unusable it seems. If I had weaver magic, it should have presented itself by now.”
“Oh, it’s presenting itself.” David said sternly. “And if you don’t start training soon, you are going to be endangering your life and the life of others.”
“Lives have already been in danger.” She fumed. How dare he show up one day and act like he knew exactly what was going on in her life!
“I think you should be my apprentice.” David said calmly.
Now it all started to make sense. So that’s what he was speaking with Josef about. “For your information, it’s my opinion that counts, not his or yours.”
She frowned at him. “How dare you. You don’t know that. I don’t know that.” She crossed back to the desk where Vincent was closing the briefcase.
David followed her and put a hand on her shoulder. “I know this is a lot, but, yes, he would have wanted you to work with me. I trained under him, Charlotte. You’ll be learning from him through me.”
She shrugged him off. “You are absolutely crazy. I would know if I had magic.”
“And how exactly would you know? Was Papa even around after your change to have noticed it in you?” He asked quietly.
She sucked in air, begging her eyes to remain dry while she glared at him. The truth was that her father hadn’t been there for her at all. A tear slipped down her cheek. She wiped it away furiously and stayed silent.
“I am getting too old for this.” David said under his breath. “You apprentices always cry in the beginning.” He started towards the door, but turned and pointed at Vincent. “Convince her. I must conference with Alcott, Wilhelm, Tobias, and Josef now. When I get back I expect her to be ready to accept. Work it out.” He snapped his fingers and the main doors to the library opened in time for him to stride through.
“He’s a bit of a show off.” Vincent said as the doors slammed shut.
“Tell me about it.” Charlotte answered.
3
The Apprentice and the Girl
David sat in his chair, hands in his head.
The small boy was finally asleep upstairs in his room.
It had been the longest day of his life, and it was only the first day.
But this time he would not fail.
No matter what it took, this time he would not lose a child’s life.
“Charlotte, please take off your gloves and hand them to me.” Vincent asked as he left the desk to stand by her.
Charlotte looked up at him, half surprised at such a long sentence and half surprised that he had made a request. She opened her mouth to protest, but he shook his head slowly at her and placed his open hands out in front of her. She stalled. She didn’t say a word, and he didn’t repeat his own or offer any new ones. They stood there, neither one offering an inch. She glared at him to see what he might do or say. He persisted in staring back calmly, his expectations not wavering.