15: Dark Little Lies

                                    

                                          
FIFTEEN: DARK LITTLE LIES
FEBRUARY 2
KATE DIAMOND
                          
Jan 12, 1999: 
                          
I think Eva is in over her head. Jess says I'm overreacting but our friend is getting herself mixed up with things that she doesn't understand. Alchemy is the gift of the gods. Eva isn't trained. She has no business messing with it.
                          
Jess says she can handle herself but this is the same Eva who did a month's worth of Potions labs so that Adam Rogers, Marcel's brother, would date her. Eva acts on impulse. Not logic. She's reckless. No wonder she and Bernadette got on so well.
                          
The World of Magic hasn't had an Alchemist in ages & Eva doesn't even seem to understand how much responsibility this is. What if I'm right about Bart? We'll need an Alchemist more than ever and I'm not sure Eva's up for the job.
                          
        KATE PULLED THE RIBBON DOWN the page and shut her mother's journal. The spell she'd purchased from the Shadow Shop revealed the private thoughts of a then-seventeen-year-old Clarion Diamond (at the time, Roseburn). It was weird reading about her mother before it all—before she became a wife, a mother, and a Queen. She was just a girl. A girl with friends and a boyfriends and classes to get to. She was just like Kate—give or take a mysterious blood knot.  
                          
        So far, Kate had only read enough of the journal to a point where Clarion learned her friend Eva Athos was an Alchemist—the most powerful kind of wizard. They were rare; so rare that Kate hadn't even heard of one in her lifetime. But in all Clarion's writing about Alchemists and her friendships with Jess Miller (Cam's mom), and Eva, there was nothing about blood knots, tattoos, or the Eight. In fact, Kate was beginning to think her mother didn't know anything at all.  
                          
        "Katie Cat!" an all too familiar voice called from outside in the hall. Kate immediately shoved her mom's journal between books stacked on her desk to disguise it and her cerulean eyes darted over to the door which was open just a crack. She lunged forward to shut it but her efforts were stopped by a very stubborn Hunter boot wedged between it and the frame.
                          
        "Crap," Kate said under her breath and then her eyes worked their way up a pair of lean legs to a pair of sparkling green eyes.  
                          
        Smiling, Wil adjusted her tee which exposed most of her midriff. Then she crossed her arms and asked,
                          
        "Were you going to shut your door on me?" 
                          
        Kate surrendered her hold and reluctantly welcomed her twin inside, watching as Wil carefully shut the door behind her. 
                          
        "What are you doing here?" Kate asked, exasperated (partly because she was eager to return to the journal and partly because never in the history of time did Wil Diamond ever arrive anywhere without some kind of trouble accompanying her. 
                          
        "Can't a girl drop by and visit her baby sister without the judge-y tone?" snickered Wil as she tossed herself onto Kate's bed and kicked off her boots. Kate almost mentioned that being the younger twin hardly qualified her as a baby sister but bit her tongue.
                          
        "No. Because you don't just drop by," she replied instead, strategically leaning against her desk to hide the pile of books behind her back. "Not without dropping some huge, life-altering bomb with you." 
                          
        Wil scoffed and opened her mouth to protest but even she must have known Kate was right. 
                          
        "That's fair. I'll get right to it then. I saw your tattoo."   
                          
        Kate opened her mouth. 
                          
        "Let me stop you right there," Wil interrupted before Kate could even speak. "I know it's a blood knot. I know that eight of us have it and I know it appeared in the middle of the night a few weeks ago." Then she rolled up her sweater sleeve to expose an identical rope inked on the inside of her wrist. "And I have one too."