Of The Devil And His Daughter (REWRITTEN)

PART ONE (DEAD MAN'S CHEST) Chapter One

My life up until this point had been what could be described as incredibly ordinary, filled with an ordinary family and ordinary friends. But truly, my life was completely unordinary—in the most unpredictable way. It's not that I was eleven years old and I magically received my letter from Hogwarts, or discovered I wasn't human or anything. The simple fact was just that at the young bright age of twenty two, I discovered I was adopted.

I had unfortunately discovered this shocking information one month into my first semester of graduate school. I had received entry to one of the top design school in the country. I had majored in art and graduated last year with a 4.0 GPA. I was everything that any set of parents could hope for.

While I was in design school I was working as an administrative assistant on the Federal Air Force Base. It was a fine job that paid well and perhaps it would help me get my foot in the door for a career either for them or somewhere else just by experience. When I returned home that night to prepare for the first day of classes, things started going in the unordinary direction.

My mother swung by the apartment, unannounced, which I hated. I opened the door to reveal her standing there with enchiladas in one hand a jug of tea in the other. I let her in and she went straight to the kitchen to set down her donation before coming up to me and taking both my hands in her own. She brought them up close to her face and inspected them.

"Care to tell me why you're so interested in my hands? Have you taken up palm readings?" I asked her, and Jennifer Bennett smiled apologetically.

"I was just looking for something," she shook her head.

I served myself some of the enchiladas and poured a glass of tea. My mother stared after me, eyes squinting like she was trying to notice something. However, there was nothing to be noticed.

"You're going to have to explain yourself," I told her as I began to eat. She crossed her arms and sat across from me at small dining table in my apartment.

"Has anything weird been happening recently?" She spurted.

"Let's see—Mrs. Grenaway one floor below me got a carpet shampooer, and her dog Raskal hates it. He's tried to run away twice since Monday. I watched him run into the parking lot."

"Besides that."

"Every single one of the kids on my floor came down with the stomach flu two nights ago."

"Anything else?"

"Claire's husband up and left her in the middle of the night."

"That's it?"

"What is it with you today? Why are you so invested in my neighbors' lives?" I asked. My mother took a sip of my tea. Her eyes darted up like an answer lay in wait for her across the popcorn ceiling.

"Not your neighbors, you I mean. I wanted to know if anything weird was going on with you," she explained.

"Well the answer is no. Why?"

I finished up my dinner and tossed the plate.

"I was just thinking about that barbeque we went to last Saturday and how all the kids were impressed with your water gift."

Oh. I could breathe underwater, or at least it felt like it.

The 'gift', as Jennifer Bennett described it, was something I had discovered when I was six. Our entire family was out camping, and my two older brothers and I were messing around as kids do out on the other side of the lake where the rocks were steep. Our parents were fishing around the other side and we were playing games trying to catch crawfish.