The Heir Of Dreams And Curses

Where I come up with a plan, and it might even work

"I always knew this was going to happen," my grandfather said.

"What?" Jeff was so enraged he talked back to the Professor. "How can you possibly say that?"

"I know my own family. I had seen the curse destroy it once. I knew your father, Jeff, so single-minded and stubborn like you. And I knew your father, Ryan, always acting like he was high and mighty. From him you inherited your saviour complex and your mindset where nobody can help you lift the weight off your shoulders. They were my sons. That was why I put one of you in a human orphanage and I raised the other not to be anything special. I know you would have it in your blood, to be tempted by those kind of things."

"You're wrong about Ryan!" Jeff said. "He will never become like my father! My father had killed people and he was remembered as the worst dark Enchanter the modern world had known. Ryan will never become like that. And you hadn't been right to raise him far away from his real family. He saved the world, and nothing will change that."

"You're wrong about the both of us," I added. "Jeff did grow up to be something special. And he's always been special -- you're just too narrow-minded to see it."

Jeff looked pleased. Mr Winter looked enraged, but at that point it didn't really make a difference to me.

"I have a plan," I added when the old man stormed out of the room. "I know how I want to proceed."

"That was about time," Edgar smiled.

"Okay, we all know Jake wants to be cursed and has been trying for a while to get to me?" I asked. "It was a rhetorical question. I think we all know. I have no idea whether it could work, to transfer my magic to him. But I can pretend I have a hunch, and contact Jake. I will give myself up, let him kidnap me. I need most of my friends with me, however, and you must find a way to crash Jake's headquarters when I send you a mental image of the place."

"There is another person in all this scheme that we can't figure out," I added. "Jinn. He disappeared during our quest, and we hadn't heard from him since. However I recently saw him in a vision and I have reasons to believe he really is still alive. What you will need to do, is try to find a way to track him down."

"That won't be easy, considering we know nothing of him," Jeff tried to reason.

"We will know a great deal more if we work with Vitaly Malinov," I smirked.

Seeing Vitaly and Brady after months was a little healing salve on my soul. I hadn't even admitted to myself how much I missed them. Vitaly always looked the same --- not even worry or grief changed his beautiful face and relaxed appearance. Brady was the sandy haired handsome man I remembered, though there was sadness in his eyes, and I remembered it was because something was weighing on him. According to Edgar he was still in love with Severina, the woman I met right before I space-shifted.

"We have a plan, and we wanted to talk it out to you," I explained.

"I'm not sure I'm interested in war or battle schemes anymore," Vitaly replied. "Though if you really needed my help, I would give it."

"Well, a few months ago, it was you who came up with the most organized revenge plan I'd ever seen in my eighteen years of life," Raegan laughed. "So what changed now?"

"First of all, I was doing it for love, you were doing it for revenge," Vitaly seemed mildly amused. "Second, I decided that I didn't want to be the person I was in the Reapers anymore. I wanted to be more like I was as a young kid, when I believed in an utopian vision of the world without meaningless death or violence."

"I see why you would want to," Raegan pondered sarcastically. "Because that obviously had worked out so well for you once."

I gave her the stink eye. Vitaly barely considered her.