Salient Secret 2

37

Kai

"Kai," Avery says my name over the phone like I'm dying. 

"Yes," I respond laughing.

"We were ambushed by George, where are you? Chances are they are there too," she says and I look around and see nothing strange. 

"We're walking out with the books now, we're by-" I get cut off when my phone flies out of my hand and against the wall. 

"Really? Was that necessary?" I ask the muscular guy blocking our way out. 

"Where is Vada Vacarri?" he asks, his voice is a lot deeper than one would expect. 

"She's here," Palmer says while twisting his neck with her powers. 

"Wow, okay then. Killing is not okay though," I pick up my phone and then step over the dead man lying there to get out. 

"Oh thank God," Avery says when she sees us appear in the house. 

"It was just the airbender, we took care of him," I say. 

"We?" Palmer says. 

"Okay Palmer snapped his neck and I taught her the valuable lesson that killing is not okay," I say and Avery rolls her eyes and giggles. 

"I'm just glad you're okay," she says with a smile. 

"What is this?" I ask walking towards what looks like a detectives board with Cynthia's name in the center, and her seven dwarfs are connected to her with red string. 

"Tanith thought it would be a good idea to map everything out and keep track of what we know in order for us to figure this all out," Avery explains. 

"Well yes, we're forgetting what we know when new things come along," Tanith says defending her idea. 

"I think it's a smart idea," Enzo adds and Tanith exchanges a weird look with him. Is there something going on between them? I brush it off and walk to Avery. 

"We never got a chance to finish that training session," I whisper to her. 

"I guess we should get to it then," she says and then grabs my arm and teleports us to the training room. 

When she doesn't let go of my arm I say, "You know you don't need to use teleporting as an excuse to touch my arm." 

"Get over yourself," she says and walks towards the training area. 

"She says as if she isn't blushing," I say which makes her blush more. 

"Just come here so I can kick your ass," she says picking up two training sticks. 

"Sticks really? When do you ever fight with sticks?"

"Never but that's not the point. The stick teaches you control, restraint and improves your awareness," she says moving the stick around her body like it's a ribbon.

*****

After what feels like 100 hours of training with sticks, hand to hand and then powers, I am exhausted, and of course she is fully energized ready for more. 

"Let's do blades next," she says as if she is completely blind to my suffering. 

"Avery, I am tired, we've been at this for 5 hours straight, I appreciate your help but I need rest and so do you," I say leaning on my knees and panting. 

"Exactly, it has only been 5 hours, I have so much more to teach you," she says with puppy eyes. 

"5 hours is a lot for normal people. You can teach me the rest tomorrow, goodnight" I say kissing her forehead and teleporting to my bed.

Vada

I forget that people need sleep, now I feel bad for overworking him. In my defense, he needed it, he has improved a lot in these 5 hours. I'm not tired at all, I put the radio on and continue training. 

"Vada!" Imelda yells after turning the radio off. 

"What?" I ask looking at her in her blue pajamas.

"It is 2 am, this training room is not soundproof, go to sleep," she complains and teleports away.

I thought all the training rooms were soundproof. Oh no. That means she and Rik heard the whole fight between Kai and I the other day. That's embarrassing. 

I teleport upstairs into the kitchen to get a bottle of water and walk into the living room and just stare at the board Tanith made. I'm not tired, I may as well spend some time trying to figure this out. Hmmmmm, Cynthia Wilder and her seven demon children. Who tapped that seven times? Wait who is the father? And do they all have the same father? Surely not, they all look so different. Is their father mentioned in any of the books?

*****

I spend the entire night reading every single page of the books we gathered from both archives. Nowhere do they mention any of Cynthia's partner/s. There's also no pictures of Cynthia and her children. It's always Cynthia on her own and her children on their own. There's also no record of when she had the kids or how old they are. Something isn't adding up here. 

I stand up and go to the board, I feel dyslexic looking at it, everything is just all over the place. It doesn't make sense.

Ambrose, Heska, Niko, Clover, Idris, Tasia and Yvonne, I look at their seven names in big black letters and then look at Cynthia's in even bigger black letters in the center of it all. 

Wait a minute...

Clover

Yvonne 

Niko

Tasia

Heska 

Idris 

Ambrose 

...

CYNTHIA

There's no record of a father, or when she had them because she didn't...

She is them.