EDITOR’s NOTE: If you haven’t read Chapter One of this story, read it HERE!

Lily McClellan

     Perhaps I should attempt to explain the situation. Rachel and I have been falsely accused of theft.

Not only that, but the Council has discovered the existence of the Palace. My stress levels skyrocketed with this news, and I felt less control than ever over my powers as a result. I felt my thoughts flying out of my head (and heard Rachel shouting at me to let me know that). As my control continued to fade, I began to feel myself losing my form, as feathers began to sprout from my arms and a cat’s tail from my back.

This began to subside, however, when I began to hear music. I looked up, through the eyes of what was most likely my wolf form, and saw Rachel leaning against a tree, her mind-voice singing to me (trying, and succeeding, to halt whatever horrible transformation I was involuntarily making), unlike any voice I had ever heard before.

“You never told me you could do that,” I told her, now starting to return to my normal human form. “How did you do that?”

“You’ve never changed your mind-voice before?” I could have sworn I heard a bit of surprise in her new voice, a soft, soothing soprano tone, not too far off from the sound of a flute. It contrasted with her body’s voice, a flat, slightly nasally sound that she would normally use to drive me insane. But it was exactly what I needed to calm down.

“Never mind,” I said, finally, “We need to figure out what we’re doing about this.”

“How?” she asked.

“We can’t show our faces at the hearing,” I told her, speaking out loud now. “Hell, we can’t even safely show our voices at this point.”

“Then they’ll keep on pretending that we’re criminals, and everyone will think I’m having mental problems,” she said. “No, we have to make it look like we weren’t there at all. I could copy your form so that nobody will recognize me, but that won’t work, because everyone will know who I am. What’s left?”

“This is going to be tough long-term,” I told her. “It would be easier if I were a bird or some sort of animal. It would be easier if we both were for a while. We’ll hide in plain sight until they forget about us.”

“What you just said makes no sense. We can’t run from them. They could be listening to us right now. What we need to do,” Rachel suggested, “is disguise ourselves as regular people. No more magic in public places.”

I reluctantly accepted the idea, with no better choice but to do so. We entered the Palace as Lily and Rachel McClellan, Sorceresses. We left as Luna and Ruby McCallister, teenage commoners.

~~~

“Luna and Ruby McCallister,” I mocked, “You couldn’t come up with better names?”

“That’s not what’s important right now,” Rachel replied calmly, playing with the ponytail that she had never had before. I noticed that she had further disguised herself by changing her body’s voice to match her mind-voice. I took a mental note to ask her how she does it. “We need to put together some evidence for this hearing.”

It was bound to be discussed at some point. “What do we know?” I asked, as any sane person facing legal prosecution would.

“Where do I start?”

“It’s your choice. Any information that we can use against the Council.”

“But that’s basically my entire life, I’ve served the Council for as long as I can remember.”

“Then we’re about to have a recap of twelve years in ten minutes,” I insist, jokingly taking out my phone and starting a stopwatch. “Your time starts now.” No pressure, I thought, just telling me your life story. Suddenly, I found myself transported to a world separate from my own.

“I decided it would be easiest to just show you, rather than tell you everything,” Rachel told me, “I guess I finally have a legitimate reason to attempt memory-sharing, don’t I?”

“Go ahead,” I replied, rather impressed by this. She had just come back after five years away from me, and her power had grown exponentially. The Rachel I remembered was weak, incompetent, defenseless. That’s why Sakura had taken her under her wing (literally and metaphorically). She began to replay history.

~~~

We started at Rachel’s recruitment into the ranks of the Secret Service. She was six at the time, and it was her first job. The Council had been observing the family for the past couple of years after her father resigned and disappeared shortly afterward. It’s a disgusting system, and way too common these days. The government hires hundreds of young, easily impressionable individuals as assassins, in order to eliminate political opponents. Rachel was only one of the hundreds, maybe thousands, that experienced this. After these people stepped down from their position, they would disappear, even important officials. They would disappear, never to be seen again. They usually are reported as dead, killed by any variety of methods, but nobody knows for sure. Maybe my father is still alive, maybe he isn’t. I have no idea.

The Secret Service knocked on our door on that fateful day, asking for my sister. Obediently, not knowing any better, she obliged, and they took her away. That would be the last time I would see her for five years, as she was trained for the exact job I hated. But we had no choice.

We had no choice because saying no would put someone with the kind of power that inheriting magic could give you in danger.

We had no choice because our mother was working three jobs and struggling to make ends meet.

We had no choice because of the danger of not choosing correctly.

We moved on to memories that were previously only Rachel’s. I saw the training with my own eyes and watched as she was put in a variety of scenarios, mostly involving her firing a bullet from various angles. It wasn’t like Rachel. Not the Rachel that I know. They taught her how to disguise herself, and she learned to shape-shift to expedite this process. She learned basic telepathy and image transmission to improve (albeit very one-sided) communication with the other people she trained with.

We moved on to memories that were previously only Rachel’s. I saw the training with my own eyes and watched as she was put in a variety of scenarios, mostly involving her firing a bullet from various angles. It wasn’t like Rachel. Not the Rachel that I know. They taught her how to disguise herself, and she learned to shape-shift to expedite this process. She learned basic telepathy and image transmission to improve (albeit very one-sided) communication with the other people she trained with. There were lots of cloudy memories during this time period (no doubt the punishments that she had blocked from her mind), but the clearer ones were usually more frequent. We moved on, past most of the final stares of the countless political candidates she had killed, moving on to her last assassination.

Her first and last failure as an assassin.

The reason why she resigned.

The reason why the Council wants her dead in return.

I realized that I was holding the current version of Rachel for some form of comfort.

I watched, helpless, as the past Rachel watched from an air duct in a restaurant. The method of stealth she had been taught over the course of four years.

I watched as she willingly pulled the trigger. She, after being brainwashed, wanted the man below her dead as well.

I watched the man turn and look her in the eyes.

The gun misfired.

I felt a split second of terror from Rachel, followed by a split second of pain.

And a very long second of nothing.

“That’s enough, Rachel,” I demanded, on the verge of tears. “I’ve seen enough, keep the rest to yourself.”

She stopped because she knew that I knew the rest of what I needed to know.

“Thank you,” I said.

“For what?” she asked.