"Learning that I could physically visit the places that I read about, inhabit the worlds of the characters in my books, anytime I pleased, instead of just imagining them in my head, was a powerful discovery."
Those aren't my words, they're those of my thirteen-year-old niece, Kaydence, in her diary after her trip to Oasis Landing. As book-crazy as she is, you could imagine finding out the family secret was quite the revelation for her. But she doesn't know the whole of it.
She doesn't know the whole story of our relationship with the supernatural.
She doesn't know about my mom being an ambrosial or about my dad's encounter with the Reaper itself when he was a very young man.
I have told her about my forays into the cemetery when I was a child, and that my friends back then were practically all ghosts.
We've closely guarded our secret, though. No one except for us really knows it. Bassy, when he learned it in Bridgeport, got so afraid of it, he tried to duck from it. So he distanced himself from it - and, in a way, us. He forgot who he was, and instead chose to try to reinvent himself.
Had Bassy not try to dodge the truth, he would be much better off now.
Neil, my nephew and the son of my older half-brother Noah, was actually the first to deal with the family secret. It drove him crazy, quite literally.
AJ learned it in Moonlight Falls. He's not entirely comfortable with it, like Andy, but he deals with it.
Neither, to be honest, is Sage, but she deals with it. I do think the ambrosial part intrigues her, as it involves cooking, fishing, and gardening, things she loves.
Sierra loves it, though, and has fully and completely embraced it. When she found out she went full-stop, studying alchemy for a brief while (I think she still does) and hanging out at Aleister's the supernatural shop in Moonlight Falls.
- a story Kaydence has all but confirmed by visiting Oasis Landing herself.
Sierra even tried to resurrect someone at college, who'd died after a lightning strike. When I heard she'd tried that, it sent chills through every pixel I have.
And apparently, it wasn't the first time. She'd tried once before, in her teens.
No word yet on the younger two kids, although when Skylar was little she traveled with Sage and Sierra around Moonlight Falls.
A part of me thinks Kaydence knew something, though. If she didn't know the whole story on those starry nights in Starlight Shores when she wandered off, she knew something was different.
She's a sponge, soaking up everything, her eyes big as saucers when she sees something interesting. She has a vivid imagination and her curiosity is insatiable. I think that's why she reads so much.
And she pretty much has spent most of her life watching people. I have to think that she had to get a little kick out of watching her dad carry on like he does.
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