CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

"Tell me," she says as Rand walks off to talk to someone else. "How exactly did that window smash?"

I recall the day it happened – back when I still thought my disease was an actual disease: science class; ghost out the window; countless pieces of glass raining down on me. Was that the first time I had ever used my powers or had I unknowingly done it before?

"Telekinesis," I say. "I smashed the glass with my eyes."

"Impressive," she replies.

I change the subject. "Just to clarify, is your name Ethel or Edith?"

"It's both. I have many names."

"So, like, Edith is your first name and Ethel is your middle name?"

She laughs. "No. I just have a lot of names. Different people call me different things. I like to change my name every fifty years or so."

I frown. "But there's no way you're older than thirty."

"It's my ability," she says. "Well, one of them."

Caden leans over and whispers, "She's immortal," while Ethel watches on expectantly.

With wide eyes, I send a look her way. Young Ethel with light brown hair, brown eyes, and a kind smile, is immortal. My head starts to spin.

After all I'd been through in the past week, I seriously didn't think anything could surprise me anymore. But here I am, shocked beyond words. Surely immortality is a bit too impossible. Surely that's not an ability anyone could possess. But the living proof sits before me, watching my face intently.

Suddenly, a hand clamps down on my shoulder and I jump. I snap my head to the right and there's Sarah, smiling.

"God, you scared me," I say, putting a hand to my chest.

"I didn't realise it'd be so easy to make you jump," she replies.

"You must be Sarah," Ethel interrupts, a bright smile adorning her face.

Sarah turns her head to see her and nods. "And you are?"

"Ethel. Head of the council."

Sarah's face lights up with recognition and awe. "My mum told me about you. Are you actually...you know...?"

Ethel nods and Sarah's eyes grow wide with admiration. "It's an honour to meet you," she says.

"The feeling's mutual," Ethel replies kindly. She looks down at her watch. "Well, I have to go. The meetings gonna start soon and there are still some people I need to talk to. But it was nice to meet you all."

"You too," Sarah says.

Ethel walks off and Sarah and I both turn to watch her go. She approaches a group of people, all of whom are unfamiliar, and starts chatting.

"Wow," Sarah says beside me. "I never thought I'd actually meet her."

"I don't get it. Why is meeting her such a big deal?"

"She's been around since the eighteenth century," Caden says from my other side. "She's seen and fought in two world wars, was there for both the French and American Revolutions, and has met countless historic legends like Benjamin Franklin, Marie Antoinette, Thomas Edison and Amelia Earhart. Plus she has the ability to create and manipulate electricity."

"Electricity manipulation?" I say, taking a guess at the name.

Caden nods.

"But was there even electricity in the eighteenth century?"

"Of course there was. Electricity exists and always has; it wasn't invented."

"So she's immortal and can manipulate electricity. Anything else?"

"Mind control."

I roll my eyes. "Of course."

Sarah huffs beside me, pouting. "Sometimes being me really sucks."

I look at her and raise an eyebrow.

"What? Everyone here has all these cool superpowers and my only claim to fame is the fact that I was swapped with you."

I shake my head, a tiny smile slipping onto my face. But that's when I notice him, entering on the far side of the warehouse, and my hearts starts to pump unnecessarily large amounts of blood around my body.

"Shit, he's here," I say, turning around in the hope he won't see me.

"Who's here?" Sarah asks, looking over my shoulder. I pick the moment she's sees him, her breathing suddenly becoming sharp.

Caden doesn't seem affected by his arrival. "It's just Patrick," he says. "We knew he was coming. It's not like he's going to try anything – he's surrounded by people, and all of them have powers."

I nod and allow myself to relax partly, a small part of my mind remaining on high alert, just in case. "Let's go take a seat," I say, pulling my friends over to a line of empty seats in the inner ring.

We sit down in silence, but it's not long before Caden and Sarah start chatting away beside me. I don't feel up to joining in their conversation, and instead find myself following Patrick with my eyes as he greets numerous people with a smile on his face. I don't think I've ever hated someone so much.

"Alright," Ethel says loudly from the centre of the room. "Everyone, take a seat. We'll be starting soon."

The talking dies down at once as everyone who isn't already seated walks over to the ring of chairs. Someone slips into the empty chair beside me and I look to my right to see my mother, a smile on her face.

"How are you?" she asks quietly

"Not the best," I say honestly, but I smile anyway.

"You haven't been to one of these before, have you?" she asks.

I shake my head.

"The last time I attended one you were four years old."

I swallow, the reference to our shared past painfully reminding me of how much I've lost. I push all thoughts of it away. "That long ago, huh?" I reply, my voice a bit too soft to achieve the casualness I was aiming for.

She doesn't notice – or at least pretends not to. "Yeah. Life got a little...busy after you turned five."

"You mean after Sarah turned five," I correct her.

"No, I mean you."

Confused, I go to ask her what she means, but Ethel chooses that very moment to start the meeting, and I turn back around in my seat.

"Welcome, everyone, to the fourth council meeting for the year. First-off, I'd like to send out a special welcome to all those who have joined us for the first time and for those returning after many years. It's pleasure to have you here." For a second, her eyes flick to mine, and she smiles. I find myself shrinking into my seat as people follow her gaze.

She continues: "A lot has changed in the month since we last met. Some of those changes have been good...and some have been bad. But the past will always stay in the past, and what has happened will never reverse, so I encourage those of you who have faced hardship – and many of you have – to move on, to push through the fog of bad times and step into the sun. Ultimately, only you can control your future, and if you dwell in the past, that is where you'll remain."

Once again, her eyes meet mine, but this time there's no warmth or happiness. There's just an honest, stripped-back seriousness that chills me to the bone, and I get the distinct feeling that she is talking to me especially. Even though she can't possibly know all that's happened to me in recent weeks, I find that I can't hold her gaze, and I look away, feeling, for some reason, guilty and ashamed.

"Now I'd like to invite up the various operation managers to talk to us about their progress and to discuss where to go from here." She looks around the room, eyes skimming the sea of faces before her. Her gaze lands on someone and she smiles. "Mark, would you like to begin?"

A man with greying brown hair and old, frameless glasses nods and stands, using a walking stick despite the fact that he's probably only in his late forties. He moves to the centre of the room and offers up a small smile to Ethel who responds in kind before retiring to a seat.

He turns to us and starts. "So I've spent the past month in western Sydney where a group of teens with abilities have been causing trouble..."

Mark spends around ten minutes explaining to everyone what has happened in the month gone by. I try my best to follow, but my mind keeps wandering to thoughts of my father and to thoughts of the clock that rests in my chest, its obnoxious ticking reminding me each and every second that my – and Sarah's – time is slowly running out. And of course, there's Patrick.

Seated to my far left, he listens intently to Mark, as if he actually cares about everything the man says. Somehow, no matter how hard I try to focus on the man before me, my gaze always ends up on him, watching for hints of the truth that lie beneath his false persona. I feel my stomach churn as he nods at something Mark says. He's probably listening out for opportunities to sabotage the poor man's operation.

I catch myself staring for the thousandth time and force my gaze back to Mark just as he finishes up.

"...and that's where we're at the moment."

The moment he finishes speaking, someone else pipes up from where they are seated. "Have you tried searching for a way to get rid of the ability?"

"I have, but there are no known ways to do that."

"What about Dorothy? Have you gone to see her?" someone else asks.

"No, I haven't, but I'm not sure how she could help."

The questions and suggestions continue for another five to ten minutes, and I sit in silence, trying to follow the conversation after not having listened to the recount. Eventually, they reach a conclusion – or as close to a conclusion as possible – and the man returns to his seat.

The rest of the meeting continues in this way, with a person explaining the events of the past month, closely followed by an open-discussion on what to do next. I listen to recount after recount until the words start to mix together and boredom sets in. At one stage, I even close my eyes, feeling tired from staying in the same seat for so long, and when I open them again, I realise that a new person is speaking and that I've missed two entire recounts.

I'm not particularly phased.

Then, suddenly, the dark skinned woman who had been speaking returns to her seat and up stands Rand, crossing casually to the centre of the circle. All at once, I awaken from the waking-sleep I've been in for the past several hours and my ears become tuned for every sound. The boredom vanishes, as if it were never there, and in its place I feel anticipation, coupled with the certainty that what Rand says next will be about me.

Out of nowhere, I hear a voice. But it isn't Rand who's speaking – it's my memories.

"Basically, a group of us – us being people with abilities – meet every now and then to discuss things, and we call that group of people the council. I met Patrick through attending the meetings," Rand says.

"So...what? You told these people about my situation and they decided to help out?" I ask.

He shakes his head and half-smiles. "Actually, it was the other way round. They noticed you and since I live in your area, they told me to help out. So I enrolled Caden in your school and told him to get to know you so that we could tell you the truth if you didn't already know it."

"Well, most of you probably already know much of what's happened with my operation this past month," Rand says, and I have to double-check that his mouth is actually moving and that it's not just my imagination chucking voices and words at me. "But for the few of you who don't, and for the ones who didn't attend the previous meeting, this is what happened.

"It had come to the attention of the council that someone was interfering with the weather in this part of Sydney, and that the interference was strikingly similar to the temperature drops that occurs when someone has been swapped. Through the media, we soon learnt that this interference had a name – Melissa – and that she attended a school not far from here." His eyes drift over to me for the briefest of seconds, as if checking to make sure that I don't mind being spoken about. But he doesn't give me time to answer and I find myself focusing on the ground in the hope that I'll melt into it and disappear.

"It was unlikely that she knew what was going on seeing as she hadn't learnt to control her heat attacks yet," Rand continues, "and we knew that we had to get her under control before too many lives were lost or too much damage was caused. So my operation was formed.

"The aim was to get familiar with her before slowly introducing her to the true reasons for her 'differences' and for that, I sent Scott's son, Caden to her school to get to know her."

Next to me, I feel Caden shift awkwardly in his seat, turning his head to the left so he won't have to look at me. I forgot that I hadn't told him that I knew our initial friendship was a set-up and it's almost funny now to watch him squirm uncomfortably beside me. When he does look my way, I'm laughing softly and he frowns. I don't respond to his silent question, instead turning my head back to the centre as Rand continues onwards.

"But things didn't exactly go as planned and she ended up finding out unpleasantly and all at once. It seemed that she was more than just a girl who had been swapped, but the daughter of Katherine."

Suddenly, an abundance of whispers fill the empty spaces in the warehouse, so many that they blur together into one hushed wave of sound. All I can think is: my real mother's name is Katherine? Rand waits for silence before continuing. "Melissa had inherited many of her mother's powers, along with a few unique ones, and despite being swapped, she was still able to use them. It was around this time that we started to think that she might be the girl from the prophetic vision that Maxwell Eller received over fifty years ago."

Again, the whispers start up, but louder this time, the hushed wave turning into an echoing tsunami of questions and answer, denials and acceptances. Rand holds up a hand and the talking dies down.

"And then, less than a week ago, Sarah, the girl who had been swapped with Melissa and had been missing for years, turned up at Melissa's school. Since then, we've had run-ins with a ghost, a meet-up with a long lost parent, a car crash, encounters with a group that goes by no name but is set on ensuring that Melissa and Sarah never swap back, and the death of someone dearly loved. At the moment, we're trying to figure out a way to swap the girls back before they run out of time but no known way exists."

Rand stops talking and suddenly people are giving voice to their opinions, suggesting things we could try and asking for details. I push my back into my chair and focus my eyes on my hands sitting uselessly in my lap. Unexpectedly, a fair hand slips into mine and I look right at its owner. My mother offers up a comforting smile and I do my best to mimic it, but my attempt fails from the start. I still can't get thoughts of my father back home out of my mind, and now I can feel thirty pairs of eyes watching my every move as if I'm a specimen for a science show. Sometimes I'm disappointed that invisibility isn't one of my abilities. God, I'd trade that for Chrono Vision any day.

At some point, my eyes drift to Patrick, and I feel my pulse quicken as I notice what no else is noticing: a small, smug smile that hovers across his face, barely noticeable, especially from my distance. He's almost laughing at the suggestions people offer up, as if he knows something we don't. And that's when it hits me that, of course, he does know something – he knows how to swap Sarah and I back.

Suddenly, speaking to him is more important than ever. He is my key to surviving, the one person who can prevent Sarah's and my death. It's kind of ironic, seeing as he's also the person set on ensuring that never happens.

As I have a million times before, I start to question his motives. Why is he doing this? What does he get out of my death? What does the nameless group even want? Why do they even exist?

Still, so much of my life makes no sense. Even after all the discoveries and answers, I'm still trapped in this fog of questions, with no end in sight. If I do somehow survive all this, will I finally be question free? Will it all make sense?

I want to believe that it will, but something tells me that it'll only get worse.

Fifteen minutes later, the discussion is still going strong and no solution seems to have been unearthed. Eventually, Ethel stands up and Rand returns to his chair. "Alright, alright, I think that's enough discussion for one day," she says, and the talking ceases at once. "Unfortunately, not all problems can be solved in one meeting, even with the combined brain power of over forty of us, so we're going to have to leave it there for the month.

"I thank you all for coming today and I hope that you'll all be able to come next month," she says, her eyes meeting mine. "Until then, I wish you all the best of luck with the hardships you'll have to face and the challenges you'll have to overcome." She smiles and steps away from the centre just as the sound of scraping chairs and chattering fills the air.

I stand up and stretch my legs, knowing that I should feel tired but being unable to produce a yawn when others around me can. I chalk it up to the image of Patrick's smile lurking in my mind, keeping me strung-tight and on high alert.

"Well," Caden says from beside me. "That was boring."

I look to him, wondering if he's gonna bring up Rand's talk – after all, he does think that I just learned that our initial friendship was fake – but his face shows no signs of being uncomfortable or awkward, and I assume he's just hoping that I won't remember. No point in reminding me, I guess.

"Not to mention completely uneventful," Sarah says with a sigh. "I was watching Patrick practically the entire time – he barely even moved."

"That's probably a good thing," I say and she shrugs.

I suddenly remember my mother, who had been seated beside me. I turn to look but quickly realise that she's no longer there. Like pretty much everyone else, she's disappeared from the ring of chairs in a matter of seconds. I scan the room for sight of her, turning in circles in order to see everyone but I can't spot her anywhere. Didn't she say she'd stay back to teach me how to make my abilities stronger?

But then I spot her, standing at the back of the warehouse, arms crossed, already in conversation with Patrick.

"What are you looking at?" Caden asks, making me jump.

"Katherine," I say, using her name. I nod in her direction.

They both follows my gaze and immediately the atmosphere in the warehouse feels a hell of a lot scarier. "Shit, this is actually happening," Caden says under his breath.

I just nod, my eyes fixed on the pair as I wait for the fatal subject to be reached.

Because, well, shit, this is actually happening.