Of Links and Laws

Of Links and Laws

The Beginning

James Evans was preparing to pull a prank on a classmate when an emotional twinge from Rose made him stop. He looked over to where she was sitting, an abstracted expression on her face. He crossed over to his twin's side and sat down next to her.

"Rose?" he said, making the one word a question.

She sat there for a second, and then shook her head as she looked at him. "Vision" was all she said and all she needed to say.

Over the last few weeks, Rose had experienced a couple of these visions and many more nightmares. They all showed her different scenes, and one of the scenes had come true when a classmate had broken his arm on the playground. After that, they had averted another scene. In her vision a younger child had followed a ball into the street and been hit by a black car with gold rims. In reality, James had stopped the ball from rolling into the street, and watched as the black car came by just seconds later.

James frowned at the increasing turmoil in Rose. "Tell me."

Rose looked around the playground until she saw the person she was looking for. She indicated the quiet blonde girl sitting under a tree reading. "Mary will be dead in a week."

James froze as he absorbed what she had said. He looked at Rose again, reading the emotions she was keeping off of her face, and made a guess. "Dead, or killed?"

"Killed," Rose confirmed, and looked at James. "Family."

James turned to stare at her. James was intensely loyal to his family and friends, and what Rose was suggesting was nearly impossible for him to imagine.

Rose gave him a bigger shock. "She's been hurt for a while now."

Nobody growing up in this day and age could mistake what she meant, and Rose felt James's anger flare. She looked at him quickly, but he damped it back down, studying the young girl with the look he usually reserved for injured animals. Rose watched him while he thought about it.

"Authorities," he said finally. "This is too big for us."

Rose relaxed, agreeing with him. "How do we tell them, without mentioning visions?"

James shrugged. "Carefully," he said flippantly, turning his thoughts to the problem. He looked around, checking that they were alone, and lowered his voice. "Magic," he said, "Something to make your voice older, and an anonymous call."

Rose frowned at him. "The Law," she reminded him. Rose meant the American Code of Magic, the rules that governed the conduct of Wizards, Witches, Medicine Women, Shamans, and the other practitioners of Magic in the North American Federation. Covering Canada, the United States and Mexico, those rules regulated all the uses of magic. One of those laws restricted the unregulated use of magic by minors. What James was proposing to do would break that law as well as the one forbidding the use of magic to file a report with the Muggle authorities.

James grinned at Rose. "Calculated Risk."

Rose rolled her eyes. "Dad should never have taught you that phrase," she complained.

James smiled as he ruffled Rose's hair. "It's a sound principle."

Rose reached out and poked him in the ribs. "Used for making business decisions, maybe, but not when you're about to enter an animal's den, or climb a cliff."

James smiled and held up his hands, acknowledging the hit. He sobered then, and turned his attention back to Mary. "We've got work to do. Go find Michael, Flower Child, and see if we can use his room and potion stuff right after school."

Rose got up and left as James pulled a piece of paper and a pen from his pocket and started making notes on some things he'd want later.

"Hey, wait a minute," Lisa protested. "You hadn't gone to any Wizard schools yet, so how could you do this?"

James scratched his head. "Rose and I had started training with Rolling Thunder and White Owl in the Indian magic nearly a year earlier, and Mom had started teaching us even earlier. Mom doesn't believe you should have to wait until you are eleven to start learning control and technique. She thinks that lessons learned early are better."

Melissa nodded. "My family does the same thing, and we agree with her. The earlier you start learning the rules and practices, the easier it is for you."

Rose continued the story.

After school, the twins were home with their cousin, Michael Evans. In Michael's room, James went to his potion equipment. After looking it and Michael's supplies over, he scratched out a couple of things on a list and handed it to Rose. "Supplies."

He then turned to Michael. "I need your copy of the Family book."

Michael chewed his lip, looking at James. He'd seen the twins in many moods, but this intense concentration was new, and given how well he knew them, slightly worrying. "You're not going to get me sued, are you?" he asked, trying to ask for an explanation subtly.

James flushed. "No, and if anyone asks, I did the whole thing. You and Rose can go play video games. In fact, you are going to play video games, until I am done."

Michael sighed. "One of these days, cousin, you're going to jump into something too hot for you to handle."

He got up and pulled the Evans Clan spellbook from the top of his closet. James took it with a word of thanks and began flipping through it, looking for a particular spell. By the time Rose got back, James was ready, and gently but firmly pushed both of them out of the room.

Rose looked at Michael and shrugged. "The mad scientist is at work again," she said with a smile as the door closed behind them.

Michael's smile turned to laughter as James replied, "I heard that."

An hour later, as Rose and Michael were playing Super Mario Brothers 2, she looked up, staring toward the back of the house. "Darn him," she said, annoyed.

"What?" asked Michael, confused.

"James slipped out the back. He's gone to run an errand I should be doing."

Michael shook his head. It was downright spooky, how close the twins were. They played the game awhile longer, but Michael finally shut it off, because Rose's attention was elsewhere. He watched her, noting that she still chewed on the ball of her thumb when she was worried.

"Would you care to tell me what's going on?" he asked, in an effort to distract her from whatever James was doing.

Rose looked at him, measuring him. Michael Evans was a typical member of the Evans Clan, being tall and dark haired, with the emerald green eyes that marked a member of the clan as clearly as a sign. Rose hesitated, and then shook her head. "It's better if you don't know about this," she said quietly.

Michael nodded. From the way James had been acting, he had thought that was going to be the response he got. The twins rarely asked for anyone else's help, a fact that had gotten them in trouble several times, and landed James in the hospital twice. "Family, Clan or Personal?" he asked.

Rose shrugged, thinking about it. "Personal, but serious." She added a short phrase in the family hand talk, and Michael hissed in surprise as he jerked upright.

"Damn," he said, as he thought about what Rose wasn't saying, and what she had said in the hand talk. "I really don't want to know about this, do I?"

Rose grimaced, and looked at him. "I wish I didn't know about it." The two of them sat in morbid silence until James came back.

He looked at Rose first. "Sorry," he said, "my responsibility."

Even Michael got that one. "James, no one that knows the two of you will ever believe one of you did anything without the other one knowing about it."

James looked offended. "We aren't joined at the hip, you know."

Michael snickered. "No, you might get away with something then. You two are joined at the mind."

James was about to say something when he closed his mouth. Rose was very familiar with the intense concentration James was displaying to their link. Despite her teasing, he did think about the things he did, even if his idea of an acceptable risk was vastly different from that of the rest of the world.

James was thinking about something and his goodbyes to Michael were distracted. The twins walked in silence to a local bookstore and slipped inside.

The BookWorm was a smaller store, and it appeared to be just another bookstore from the outside. It carried a selection of new books, and a larger selection of used books in the front of the store. All in all, it was just like a thousand other bookstores across the country.

Unless of course, you could do magic, and see the door in the back wall.

James and Rose headed for that door after greeting Dakota North, a local Witch who owed her name to parents that were more than a little eccentric. They stepped through the door and grinned at the tall man standing there.

He looked at them and smiled. "You two are running late today; you barely have time to get home for dinner."

James and Rose both smiled at their Uncle. "It's a Portkey, Uncle Alexander. As long as we have enough time to wash, we'll be on time," Rose said.

The Evans estate was several miles from town, and it was much easier for the twins to come here than for their parents to come and get them every day, especially during the Northern Montana winters, when people might have started wondering how they always managed to get into town, no matter what the weather.

James was still thinking about whatever had attracted his attention in Michael's house, and he looked at Alexander. "I need some research material. What's the best book on links, like mine and Rose's?"

Alexander frowned. "I couldn't say right offhand. It's not a common subject, but I can have Dakota look it up tomorrow."

James nodded, giving it a minute's thought. "I need the best two, and a copy of 'Bindings of the Heart, Mind and Soul'. I'll pay for it the next time I'm in the store."

Alexander wrote it down, and looked back up at them. "Talk to Dakota tomorrow after school. Right now, I think you have to get going, or Portkey or not, you're going to be late."

They said goodbye, and activated the Portkey. The large house that local Muggles called the Evans Mansion was nearly ten miles out of town, and presided over nearly eight thousand acres of land. Built by Elbert Evans in 1840, it was the house he wanted, the ranch headquarters, and the biggest place for nearly six hundred miles then.

In his life, Elbert Evans had exemplified three qualities. The first allowed him to indulge the other two. He had been a financial wizard; turning everything he touched into money. He had also been in love with the idea of being a big time cattleman, like the cheap novels Muggles wrote about the West. He had moved west, and bought the old Drainer place, adding onto it until he had the ranch he wanted. The minute he had his ranch, he started building his house, which had very large rooms since the third thing Elbert had been was claustrophobic. He had insisted that every room in his house be large enough to keep him from having panic attacks, and since he was a millionaire several times over, he got his way.

James and Rose joined their parents for dinner after changing into formal robes. Robert and Mary Evans took their children's education very seriously, and that included proper behavior in most social situations. James and Rose could get greasy at a barbeque or make polite small talk at a formal dinner with equal ease.

Elbert Evans had started the Evans fortune, and his heirs had been careful with his money. If they couldn't make more money with it, they didn't lose any, and now the Evans Clan was listed as one of the richest clans in America. Had anyone but the current head of the clan known everything that they were into, or about the other business they controlled, they would have been known to be among the richest in the world.

"You own more than Cumulus?" Emma was the speaker, but the question was plain on every face except Tiffany's.

James grinned and nodded. "But that does not go outside of Chimera, people. In fact, consider it covered by the Ice Binding Oath."

Rose agreed with her brother. "Cumulus belongs to the current head of the Evans Clan, but that company belongs to the person bound to the Codex."

A chill passed over Chimera as Rose mentioned the thing in the Chest, and most of them looked toward the tower where it sat. Lisa shook off the thought of the Codex, and looked at the twins curiously. "The other business must be well hidden if Jerrick hasn't found it by now." Chimera waited to see what the twins would say, but James only turned to Rose and invited her to continue.

James and Rose went to dinner and made the expected small talk, but their minds were far away, and they excused themselves as quickly as they could. After doing the dishes in record time, they went into the media room and turned on the television. Tuning to a local station, they waited for the news.

When the local news came on at last, the lead story froze their blood. Children Protection Services, acting on an anonymous tip, had investigated a local home. During the interview, the CPS representative had decided that there was enough evidence to act, and had called police to take the children away.

Before the police had arrived, the father had pulled out a gun and shot the representative. When they did get there, neighbors said the father had been gone for nearly twenty minutes. The police had taken the CPS person to the hospital, and he was in surgery, in critical condition.

The police were setting up roadblocks across the state, looking for the father. The mother was out of the state and could not be reached.

The last bit of the story was a description and pictures of the two little girls he'd taken with him.