Birthrights Read Online Free Page B

her private line. Caislyn stopped
out of curiosity and pushed the play button on the machine.
    “Ms. Vadoma, this is Edgar Whitney, of Whitney,
Bryce, and Jones. I have some urgent business to discuss with you
about your parents will. You see, they had a clause in their will
because of their other than human status that would allow me to
petition the court to have them, well, err mm, declared deceased if
ever they were to go missing for a length of time, and under the
circumstances of their disappearance, it is highly likely. I know
that I explained this to you before, but that time has come and
gone and despite your lack of, shall we say, grace, on the subject,
I do need to follow through with my client's wishes. The courts
have been petitioned and I expect they will have the decree for us
by the end of the week. You need to come see me, Ms. Vadoma. We
have to go over the rest of your parents wishes. You know...”
Caislyn never heard the rest of the message. She pushed the delete
button before he could finish.
    “How dare that bastard! How could he do this? They
aren't dead! They can't be dead, I can still feel them.” Caislyn
tossed herself on her bed and cried and screamed until exhaustion
overtook her and she fell to sleep. Her sleep was a fitful one. She
lay there tossing and turning, amidst grunts of displeasure, and
sometimes tears would escape her hold over them, flowing freely
down her cheeks and puddling up on her pillow. A few hours after
going to bed, Caislyn sat bolt upright. She reached across to the
nightstand and grabbed a sketch pad and pencil. It was a mechanical
gesture performed while she still slept. She knew where everything
was situated. Caislyn began sketching, her eyes opened, but
unseeing. She sketched out several scenes over a few sheets of
paper. When she was done she simply placed the pad and pencil back
where they had been and lay back down as if nothing out of the
ordinary had occurred.
    Caislyn woke the next morning and looked at her hands
immediately, as was the norm for her. She saw the telltale signs of
graphite on her fingertips and immediately picked up the sketch pad
to see what she had done in the middle of the night. There were
five pages of sketches this time. That was a bit unusual. Normally,
when she had an auto sketching session in the middle of the night
it would only be one page and she would be back to bed. Five was a
record for Caislyn. She looked through the pages.
    One of the pages struck her as odd, she was on top of
a building, and judging from the previous sketch she knew exactly
which one. It wasn't far from her apartment. The page she was
looking at though showed Caislyn grabbing onto another woman. From
the looks on their faces, they were both scared. Caislyn was
looking over the edge of the building while the other woman was
looking straight forward. She looked as though she feared for her
life. The fear in her dark eyes seemed to draw Caislyn is as she
looked. They had to be either darkest brown or black. The woman's
hair hung just past her shoulders in thick, dark, curling splendor.
Caislyn couldn't tell what color her hair was, because the lighting
was all wrong. Either way, the girl looked as pale as a vamp, but
she didn't seem to have that undead air about her, “A mystery
for another day,” Caislyn said to herself.
    If Caislyn thought that the spell would work itself
out within short order, she had been mistaken. She had been busying
herself with store inventory and sketches for almost two months.
The disappointment that nothing had come of her spell was wearing
on her and she felt she needed a break from her personal reality. A
break would not come anytime soon though, it was nearly time to
open the store again today, yet another tedium tying her down to
this town, this apartment, this store, so that she could not be out
actively looking for her parents the way she wanted. She had no
doubt that her parents had been moved from this town. As small
towns go,