"I need to talk to you," I said to Gerrard when he met me in front of Elijah's mansion.

Today was the day of my last real lesson on magic. I had mastered all of the battle spells I needed to. The only thing left was finishing how to manipulate the various elements, and I was nearly half-way there. After I completed my training today, I would be able to use the magical knowledge I had in a more practical and everyday kind of way. This basically meant that I was ready to go on missions with Gerrard and the others.

"About?" he asked.

"Something I just learned," I replied.

"Vague..." he commented.

"I can't tell you right now," I said.

"I'm intrigued," he said.

"Oh, you'll be more than intrigued when you find out what it is I need to talk to you about," I said. He chuckled and held the door open for me. I stepped inside the familiar dark foyer.

"It's quiet," I noted.

The past few times I had gone in for training, the place was bustling with people. Sometimes it was people coming in for meetings with Elijah or people that had just been recruited going in for training. It was obvious that a movement was well under way, although it was only the beginning.

"Everyone's out. There was an...issue..." Gerrard replied.

"An issue?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Elijah and Gianna had to go meet with Isaac in Italy at the Government building. Some of the others went to kidnap one of Long's kids," he explained. I gasped.

"Those girls are so sweet, though!" I exclaimed. He shot me an annoyed glance.

"It's a really good thing Elijah wasn't here to hear you say that," he said.

"What good is kidnapping one of his kids going to do?" I asked.

"It's leverage," he answered.

"How so?" I asked.

"Our primary target right now is to take Long down. From what you've told us, he has a lot of pull in not only the Government, but also in the Order. He's a strong and really important figure and he needs to be taken out of the way. So the only way to do that is to hit him where it hurts: his family," he told me.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"The daughter we plan on taking was a miracle baby. The wife he has now is not the mother of his first child. The mother of his first child died in the previous Trinity War. The kid was born right before she died. Somehow, it survived. There's nothing more valuable and precious to Long that his first child," Gerrard said.

"What are we going to do when we get her?" I asked.

"We'll just keep her locked. We're not going to torture her or anything. Just hold her hostage until Long gives himself up or until he agrees to do what we say," he replied. I frowned and then sighed.

"Well, as long as we're not going to hurt her," I said.

"So are you going to help me finish my training? Since Gianna's gone?" I asked, changing the subject. He nodded. I groaned and he smirked. I hated it when Gerrard helped me train. He was much stronger than me and he didn't go as easy on me as Gianna did. I suspected that he still held a grudge from the first time I had fought him, more than six months ago.

I followed Gerrard downstairs to the training room. In front of me was the same set up that I used for the past few times I had been there: a bucket of water, a lit torch, a tree branch, and some rocks. They were the elements that I was told to work with. I had been practicing how to manipulate each one, although my main element was water.

I found, over the course of my training, that it was easier for me to manipulate fire than any other element, excluding water of course. I figured this was because my mother had these intriguing pure, amber colored eyes. Amber was, of course, the color for fire and light masters. My mother must have been a fire master, which explained why I found it easy to manipulate the element.

"So, I'm technically not a one hundred percent water master, am I?" I asked Gerrard.

"Technically, you are. Biologically, you aren't," he replied.

"I don't understand," I said.

"Biologically, or genetically I should say, you should be half water master and half fire master. But unlike non-magic users, genetics isn't the determining factor in what a magic user's element is in the magical world," Gerrard told me.

"So, if it's not genetics, then what is it?" I asked.

"We don't really know. It's more like an innate ability that's determined before you're born. It's still something that geneticists in the magical world are trying to work on," Gerrard answered.

"But the fact that I can manipulate fire more easily than the other elements? What does that mean?" I asked. He shrugged.

"Over time, they've found that the magical ability of Magii has become more and more relient on genetics. But some believe that there are people who have pre-determined paths for themselves," he said.

"By some people you mean..." I trailed off.

"Seers. People like Valenya," he answered. "You may be able to manipulate fire more easily than other elements, but water is still your forte. The skill with which you can manipulate water is unmatched by all except for your father and Elijah," Gerrard continued.

"And you," I added. He shrugged.

"I'll deny this if you ever bring it up, but I think that if given a few more years, you could become a lot stronger than me when it comes to mastering water," he said. I felt my lips tug up into a smile.

"Really?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. I clapped my hands gleefully and he rolled his eyes. "All right. Enough chit chat. We need to get to work. And you need to tell me what you needed to talk to me about," he said.

"Oh, right," I said, focusing my mind.

We went through all of the spells and I tried--and successfully--manipulated all of the elements that were before me. As an added bonus, I wasn't even tired after I was finished. This impressed me more than it impressed Gerrard.

"You're getting stronger," he said to me as we put all of the things away.

"Finally," I replied.

"You have to remember that you've only been using magic for a little over a year now. And you've only practised difficult magic for about half that time. The fact that you've learned that much in so little time says a lot," Gerrard told me.

"It seems like so much longer, though. And I guess being around all of you--you, Gianna, Elijah--it just makes me feel like I'm the weakest link and I need to be strong if I'm going to do my job right," I said.

"Your job requires you to seem as normal as possible. If you get too strong too fast, they'll know what's going on. We already think that Long is suspicious because he ran an energy check on you. But we want him to continue thinking that you only have that capacity and that you don't have that power yet, even though you do," Gerrard said.

"I know. But I want to fight. I feel so useless just reporting information," I grumbled as we walked upstairs. We went into the kitchen to get something to eat. One of the maids, who was under magical control, started making us something as soon as we walked in.

"All of the information that you've given us has been extremely helpful, though. That new technology that Long is working on? If they had finished developing that and we didn't know about it, Isaac's position would have been compromised and so would our's. But now we know what to expect," he said.

"I guess," I said. Gerrard nudged me with his elbow and I looked up at him. He smiled at me and I forced a smile in return. The maid, whose name I still didn't know, put our food down in front of us before returning to her work.

"So what was it that you wanted to talk about before?" Gerrard asked.

"Before I tell you, do you have a key to the shed in the back?" I asked him.

"What shed?" he asked.

"In the back of the mansion," I answered.

"The one behind the tree?" he asked. I nodded. "I think the silver key should work. Why?" he asked.

"I just wanted to look at something in there," I said.

"Does this something have to do with what you wanted to talk about?" he asked. I nodded. "So are you going to tell me or no?"

"Let's eat first. I want to check something before I ask," I said. His jaw twitched in annoyance, but he didn't pester me for more information. We made small talk about random things, like school and his relationship with Isobel. After we finished eating, we made our way outside. As we approached the shed, I felt my stomach turning inside of me. I didn't know why I was nervous. Maybe it was because of the newfound information I had just learned about The Twins.

Gerrard tapped the door of the shed with the silver tree branch and the door unlocked. We stepped inside and turned the lights on, illuminating the dusty inside of the shed. I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to imagine my mother as a young woman sitting in there and pouring over books, looking for a countercurse.

"Caley?" Gerrard's voice brought me back to reality and I opened my eyes. He gave me a questioning look. I brushed past him and went to the center table that was littered with sheets of paper. I looked around for the sheet I had found the day I came here with Elijah. It was sitting right where I set it down. Pulling it out of the pile, I sat down on one of the stools, furrowing my brows as I scanned the page.

I couldn't make sense of any of the drawings, but the words at the bottom were clear as day: The Twins.

"Do you know who The Twins are?" I asked Gerrard. He came over behind me to look at the paper I was holding.

"Only the newer generation of Magii don't know who The Twins were. Everyone else has an incredible amount of respect for them. On both sides," he replied.

"How come?" I asked.

"They were completely inherently good. In all ways. And they were incredibly powerful. But that was the thing about them that earned them so much respect. Even though they had enough power to take control of the magical world, they didn't. Everyone on our side hated them because of that," he told me.

"I thought you side both sides respected them?" I asked.

"Just because you hate someone, doesn't mean you can't respect them," he replied smoothly. I frowned and looked back at the paper. "Why the sudden interest in The Twins?" he asked.

"They're dead," I said.

"Since the last war, yes," he replied. I looked up at him.

"What if they weren't dead?" I asked.

"That's not possible. Your mother killed them herself," he replied.

I looked at him, internally debating on whether or not to tell him that one of the twins was indeed still alive and that I had met him. I knew I could trust Gerrard. I told him everything. But the problem was, he reported everything back to Elijah. And I wasn't sure if I wanted Elijah to know if one of the strongest wizards of our time was still alive and in hiding, because if Elijah hated him and had wanted him dead in the previous war, then it was more than likely that he would want him dead if he found out.

"Where did you hear about them from?" Gerrard asked, curiousity burning in his eyes. I racked my brain for a lie.

"My father told me," I said. He raised his eyebrows.

"Really?" he asked. I nodded.

"They were his teachers," I said.

"That's true. They taught him everything he knows," he said.

"Yeah," I said.

Silence fell over us and I turned my attention back to the drawings above the words. It looked as if they were showing a progression or an ancestral lineage. At the very top, it showed some sort of odd marking. If I looked hard enough, I could see that--in a distorted way--the very top drawing showed the three parts of the Trinity. This then branched into a water droplet, a flame, a leaf, tiny dots which were probably air, and some disfigured circles that were probably earth. There were two other branches that stemmed from the top drawing, too. One was an orb and the other was the same as the top drawing, except drawn a little more clearly.

I assumed that the top drawing was the original witch and that the ones directly underneath were the different branches of elemental ability. The orb had to be the seers. But what was this last drawing? Why was there another Trinity drawing among the single elements?

"Why were you so curious about it?" Gerarrd asked, pulling me from my thoughts. I looked up at him and blinked.

"What made The Twins so powerful?" I asked him, ignoring his question.

"The fact that they could manipulate all of the elements," he replied.

"Can't we all?" I asked. He shook his head.

"They had all the colors in their eyes. They could become masters of all of the elements, just like the original witch," he replied.

Realization dawned over me and I felt my mind swirling with information and theories.

Were The Twins the answer to the countercurse?

__________________________________________________________________

A/N: Dun, dun, dunnnnnnnnnnnnnn!

I'm loving where the story is going. Now, all of the pieces are finally coming together. But it has to get bad before it gets better. You have to remember, I still have a Book 3 to write. So don't take anything I say for granted, because it's not set in stone. You should know that I like throwing tid-bits into the mix to spice things up a bit.

So I think Book 2 is approaching its end very soon. In the very near future, there will be an action chapter (haven't had one of those in a while) and then I'm thinking after that, I will write the long-awaited letter chapter.

You know the drill! Comment! Vote! Leave me comments with your guesses as to what you think the countercurse is and how the Twins play into it. I want to know what you're thinking.

XOXO