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Chapter 16

The next morning, I was outside watering my flowers when Kat ran by. She was giggling like a maniac, chasing some birds. A lizard or something distracted her and she stopped and studied the ground for a few minutes.

"Katerina," Matteo came jogging up behind her. "What is going on?"

"You're pretty," she said to the spot she was staring at. "Isn't it pretty?" She had something in her hand when she turned to Matteo. She shoved her hand into his face. "Tell it that it's pretty!"

Kat dropped what she'd been holding, stomped her foot and ran away.

"She's been like this since last night," Matteo sighed and looked at me. I walked closer. "She's been off ever since our vacation."

Without hesitation, I went into his head. Looking for anything I could find. There were a few holes, but finally I found the repressed memory: they'd been at my parent's house.

Of course I let him have that memory back.

I also reminded myself that I should get with Jace to put a new reality in Matteo's head.

"I've loved her since we were kids, and your..." he trailed off as he looked at me. "um, your sister isn't herself. I'm not sure what's going on."

I felt bad at that moment, but I put on a brave face. "If there's anything I can do to help, let me know."

"Sure," Matteo nodded. "I should go," he pointed the direction that Kat went. "I need to find her and get her home."

"What's going on?" Jace walked up behind me. Theo was with me, they'd been finishing breakfast when I came outside. "What's wrong with Matteo?"

"He's remembered that Dad had him and Kat at his house right after we moved were, and he's trying to track down his wife who is newly insane," I watched where Metteo had gone, then turned to look at the guys. "We should go. Given everything that's going to start happening, we need to lay low and look like the good children we are."

And that's what we did. We went to work and I watched the guys go off to start loading up some plants to deliver. I was called into the office to do some filing, and I was able to leave the list we'd found the day before in Selene's office. There was a file folder that I put it in, that way it was hidden, but not too hidden that it would never be found.

I shuddered at my thought, but I hoped my dad would take Selene into her office for another rendezvous.

Back in my greenhouse, Gabina came up to ask if we had any lemon verbena. I found the memory of my dad just asking how I was doing, her Gabina telling him I fit in so well and everyone loved me. I put it back in her head to come to me should he ask, this time to ask me about dill.

I had to mix it up, didn't want her getting suspicious or anything.

The rest of the day was dull and boring. Compared to how it had been the day before, it was sort of a let down that we didn't really learn anything.

I wasn't convinced that we could handle that much excitement all the time anyway.

After work I asked if we could walk around town. I wanted to listen to what people were talking about, and I also wanted to get an ice cream. Possibly go to a movie. Some places were getting more and more technology back. Getting the lights back on, and then life straightened back out had taken a long time. It wasn't like the lights came back on and everything went back to the way it was. A lot of things had been fried by the solar flare, and things like cell phones were the hardest to get back.TV and things like that were around, but the Assertives didn't like the way Hollywould had been, they couldn't control you that way, so there were no actors. Sometimes small communities had plays, but I'd only heard about those, never seen one.