No Peace for the Damned

thundered
.
    And not just anyone
, Mallroy added smugly
. Maxie’s little press secretary, in all his painful colognes and sprays. Oh, he got a nice look at our precious Magnolia, didn’t he? Wants her in the family pictures now. Won’t that be fun?
    “Then kill the bastard!” Father bellowed. “Erase his thoughts!” Then the tearing sound of flesh told me his mouth was otherwise occupied
.
    “I will not!” Uncle Max growled in response. “His West Coast connections are too valuable right now, and his mind is worn from all the alterations I’ve already made. Much more and the man will be totally brain-dead. Besides, I shouldn’t have to do cleanup on this. It was your responsibility to control the child before she risked any further exposure.”
    “She will be controlled!” Father roared
.
    For a moment, something flickered among the three of them. Fear? It was gone too quickly to really sense. And I was too numb now to care
.
    I had been spotted by an outsider. There had been a slip in their tight control. No one was supposed to know about me. Ever. That way when Father finally succeeded and I stayed dead, there wouldn’t be a need for explanations. But now…they wanted me in Uncle Max’s family pictures? I could already feel the punishments after I smiled the wrong way or did the wrong thing
.
    However horrible my life had been up until this moment, I knew without a doubt that it was all about to get much, much worse
.
    “And Mallroy?” Jon asked, pulling me back to the here and now. “You mentioned the telepathy you share with each other, and strength you all have, and the, er, mindclean that Senator Kelch can do…”
    “Mindsweep,” I corrected as I took another drink. “Malcolm coined the term. Basically, he uses his telepathy to rip inside your head and scrape away whatever he wants, in the most painful way possible.”
    Jon’s eyes narrowed. “Mindsweep, then. What special, um, abilities does your other uncle have?”
    “Mallroy has the strength and speed, but his real power is in the way he can alter his appearance. He can do subtle things like change his eye color, or widen his nose, make himself taller or fatter at will. It’s totally creepy to watch, but…that’s Mallroy. Creepy comes with the package.”
    I took another drink. Against my will, I envisioned the clouded, swirling madness that lived in my uncle’s mind. Nothingness, emptiness, a complete loss of humanity or control—it was the most terrifying thing I had ever experienced. More than any threat of my father’s, that was for sure. A shiver crept up my spine as I pushed the image away.
    “Mallroy doesn’t leave the estate,” I explained slowly, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “He is…not like other people. Not even like the rest of my family. If we were normal, he would probably be considered retarded or deformed or something. But as it is, he is simply…maintained.”
    “What do you mean, ‘maintained’?” asked Jon.
    I hesitated, rotating my drink between my fingers. Major family secrets were on the horizon of this conversation.
    “I’m not sure how to explain.”
    I spun the glass faster.
    “It’s like, to be able to do the things we do, there had to be something
more
to us. Something…other.” The glass whipped around, a blur now, the whiskey rising up perilously. “That otherness is what gives us certain powers, and it’s rooted in something very much
not human
. In Mallroy’s case, the ‘otherness’ is more dominant than anything else.”
    The liquid spiraled, a cyclone hovering in the center of my glass. I let it spin for a moment longer, then abruptly stopped it. The whiskey fell, splashing around my hand. I licked my fingers and took another drink.
    They all stared, faces slack, minds reeling with fear and amazement.
    Thirteen broke the pregnant pause. “The source of the Kelch’s abilities appears to be a paternal relative, but what caused the powers to develop in the first place is unknown. Understanding the strength and nature of what Magnolia has described, we have to assume that we are dealing with something other than the simple genetic anomalies we’ve come up against in the past.”
    Theo cleared his throat and leaned in. “What about you, Mag?” he asked. The tremor of his voice had my abdomen sinking. I scooted toward him automatically.
Mag
. My new favorite nickname.
    “What about me?” I whispered.
God, was that really my voice?
    “What all can
you
do?” he said,