Rivulet by Jamie Magee Read Free Book Online

in his arms.
    “Why is that?”
    Ben was one of the first children the Falcons took in. He was almost twenty years older than me and one of the best lawyers in practice. He was helping me weave through all the roadblocks Rasure was throwing at me. It was his brilliant idea to have everyone in our rather large family write letters on my behalf. Considering that each of them were well known in their fields, leaders of the communities they lived in, it was a good play. The judge would be a fool to block me this time. I’m sure that judge was not only weighing my future, but also his. The Falcon children are peaceful—that is, until you cross one of our own. Then we only know one word. Vengeance.
    “He doesn’t trust Rasure any more than you do. He found an amendment that states that if you perish, she will gain all of your inheritance. He said he was hiring security for you.”
    “Yeah, he told me the same thing,” I said faintly as I thought of earlier today, when Ben told me if I died Rasure got everything. The sad part is, I wouldn’t put it past her to try something like that. “I told him I just wanted the house and my things, for him to get her out of here, even if he had to pay her.”
    “And she said the same, according to him.”
    “Why does she want my house?” I said, almost to myself.
    Rasure had been trying to destroy it from the inside out for years. Not only did she add that addition on, but she kept adding other things, small and large. I hated that because it placed voids in the rooms. Instead of everything opening up a dream for me, there was nothing. I almost thought she was trying to make me insane, that she knew I depended on the memories I unlocked and witnessed over and over, each time finding something that I’d never seen before.
    “I don’t know…was your uncle Jamison always a space cadet?” Mason said with a hint of disdain.
    I had to think about that for a second. When I was a kid, he traveled a lot. Even though he had homes of his own, this was the one place he always came to for month-long stays. He used to be the fun uncle, the one that would catch us sneaking ice cream, and instead of telling on us he’d make himself a bowl and tell us stories about all his travels, with added details to keep our suspense. He had a medical degree and used it in third world countries. When he wasn’t off doing that, he was building schools or raising awareness and funds for the less fortunate. Typical Falcon.
    That all changed when he came home with Mrs. Rasure. Apparently, they had eloped abroad, and at that point he no longer wanted to help save the world or travel. I knew my mother and grandmother were more than furious with him, but he was family, so they accepted Rasure. He was never the same after marrying her. Cadence and I called him a puppet behind his back. Since my grandmother’s stroke, I hadn’t really seen him. He stays in his wing and only comes out when social occasions demand that he does, when Mrs. Rasure does.
    “No, he’s under her spell.”
    “Interesting.”
    I looked up at him. “What does that mean?”
    “Just odd that there is no record of her before she married him, yet she has all of this stuff in the manor that came from her imaginary family.”
    “Did you guys take that stuff to the charity auction today?” I asked him.
    His grin told me he did, and that he enjoyed every second of it.
    I was counteracting Rasure in our silent war. I’d decided to take all of the things out of this house that were not attached to me or my family and donate them to charity. At least, I’d started to do that. Mason and Gavin took the first load of things I’d found. Rasure was going to be furious, and I could not wait to see that in her eyes.
    I did have the foresight to check with my brother Ben first; the items were not on her wing, but in the area that was designated to be mine after our last war when I was eighteen. I was in the clear to give them away. I had Mason and