Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God by Scott Duff Page A

some
restocking of some staples. Tonight’s dinner would be frozen pizza.
I wasn’t getting stuck in the kitchen tonight—I had work to do.

Chapter
4
     
    The drive back home was just as quiet as the
drive into town. It gave me time to think about how I was going to
go about finding my parents. It was depressing how little
information I actually had at my disposal. I didn’t even know how
my bills got paid. The card I use had to be attached to some method
of payment after all. I knew how the financial aspects of life
worked, but I had no experience doing them. Mom showed me how,
several years ago, using household accounts as examples and some of
her financial accounts and some joint accounts. It never occurred
to me to wonder why there were so many. Now that I can’t ask, where
am I gonna find a paper trail? How much could I actually find
out?
    “Pixie, we are about to cross a ward,” said
Kieran, holding out his hand for the pixie. I didn’t understand the
exchange, but apparently, the pixie did, flitting down from the
dashboard onto Kieran’s palm making as small a package as he could.
Kieran cupped his other hand tightly over the pixie as I made the
slight turn in the road just before the turn to my drive. I felt
the pull of the ward as we passed over its boundary, not exactly
for the first time. Just that distinctly for the first time. And I
could feel the presence of Kieran and the pixie. Ethan was less
sharp but still there. Kieran released his prisoner.
    “Wow!” squealed the pixie, shooting up to
almost bounce off the ceiling. “Was that your ward? That hurt even
with your protection!”
    “Not mine. His,” said Kieran, his crooked
smile gleaming as the garage door rose and the light kicked on.
“Just remember that you are under the Rules of Hospitality in his
home while you and he decide your fate. You’ve seen what Ethan and
I can do first hand. Just imagine what we will do should you break
Hospitality.”
    “Yes, sir,” said the pixie so high he barely
registered in my hearing. I didn’t see the look on his face as I
was idling the car into the garage. It wasn’t difficult, but this
was my baby and I was particular about her. She didn’t have a
scratch on her smooth, sleek black body and I intended to keep it
that way, especially in my own garage. I waited as Kieran and Ethan
gathered the weapons I wasn’t to touch and moved them into the
house, then started unloading the car. The pixie was too small to
help cart things around, so he flew around the house from room to
room. It was then that I noticed I could feel what rooms Kieran and
Ethan were in as well, though not as sharply.
    “How is it that I know where y’all are now,
in the house?” I asked Kieran when he came into the kitchen. I set
the oven to preheat while I unpacked the bags and put the groceries
away.
    “The see in truth spell attuned you to the
ward more strongly,” he said, flipping one of the pizza boxes over
to read the back. “You’ve been living under it for a while, even if
you didn’t know it was there. You should be able to tell if anyone
or anything is within the confines of the ward. It extends quite
far onto the property.”
    I paused, then asked, “Did you translate that
phrase or did I?”
    “You did,” he answered, turning to look at me
grinning. He did that a lot. “Try to say it.”
    “See in truth,” I said.
    “Good. Now try Kir du’Ahn and Eth’anok’avel,”
he said.
    “Kir du’Ahn,” I got out without too much
trouble. The universe pulled its weird little shudder and the whole
of my attention centered onto Kieran again. Briefer this time and
less shocking to me than when Ethan said it. “Eth-, Eth-, no, that
one still giving me problems.”
    “It is a deeply conceptual language,” he said
calmly. “Ethan is very high in the hierarchy of ideas, though
‘hierarchy’ is not quite the right word. I don’t recognize most of
these ingredients. Have people discovered new foods since