A Touch of Madness (A Recipe for Disaster Novel 1)

It starts with a rattle

It’s never a good sign when your day starts with screaming, a face full of blood and the world around you shaking. At least, these are usually good enough omens to make me wish I could just go back to bed. But as I have yet to find a way to make an earthquake obey my wishes, I hauled myself up off of the floor and towards my vocally upset twin sister.

 

“Relax Cassie, I’m alright. The blood’s just from a cut. Stupid mirror fell off of the wall love. Calm down.” I curled around my sister and murmured other useless nonsense to help her stop freaking out.

 

According to geography and science, a strong earthquake is distinctly unlikely in Ottawa. However, this wasn’t a real earthquake though it feels close enough that it’s mainly a matter of snobbishness to deny it. Around about fifty some odd years ago the fabric of our reality opened just enough for our world to get absolutely tilted. Back in the day string theory stated that the belief used to be that many possible universes existed at the same time, entwined about each other but never intersecting. Turns out that theory was mostly right; different worlds and realities did in fact exist separately but now they all touched and were open to one another. It was unbelievable but I wasn’t yet around to tell you one way or the other. The thing is, these multiverses had existed separately for a reason, there was a lot of problems with this sudden melding. Giant tears ripped across the sky, the earth, the sea, just about everything actually and the Others started flooding in. Angels, demons, the boogeyman, any name someone would want to call it; suddenly all myths, legends and nightmares were real. And there was nothing to prepare people on how to handle this. At first panic was the only response that humans could mount and boy did we cover ourselves in glory doing so. Eventually somehow humans got our act together and huge negotiations later, a very nervous peace developed.

 

The Others wanted access to our reality because here was new to them, and some property of our reality led to increased fecundity. Through some quirk of multiverses physics, Mother Earth is apparently the place to be to get knocked up. What we got out of the bargain was knowledge and instructions; with the blending of realities, latent skills in humanity were brought to the surface. Most people like to call it magic, but some of it isn’t the stuff of Faerie Tales and it’s rather hard to explain because it varies on a case-by-case basis. Those that have it go out of our way to keep information classified; we’re outnumbered by the Normals, and we all to try and keep the Normals as in the dark as possible. They know we exist and our skills are registered and controlled but it would not take much for the vast majority of Norms to decide that we belonged on strictly guarded reservations, Human history being what it is and all. All of this overlapping worlds explains the massive earthquake in Ottawa; Energy floods. Throughout the years, Power spills through and we become saturated with energy. It shakes the walls of reality for a bit. Thus earthquakes- or actually more like sweet Mother the world is shaking itself apart shakes.

Out of the seven billion humans that populated Earth at the time of the Breaking, about less than three billion of them ended up Casters. That’s the broad term for any human that’s different; some of us shape change, some of us manipulate the elements etc, there are those who have more than one talent sphere as well, though it tends to be the more things you can do, the less strong you are in any of them. Of the three billion Casters, I’m a forgettable nobody and I like it that way. My full name is Callahan Orenda and my identical twin sister is Cassandra. Ironically, we look more alike when we are apart than when we’re together. I'm fairly easy to overlook but everyone sees Cassie; she’s stunning and one of the most famous Casters. Cassie is a Healer, she fixes people; their bodies, their minds, their souls. As long as the person isn’t an actual corpse, she can pretty much send them home as good as new. There are some things that she can’t fix; Vampirism is a demonic blood born disease that apparently just alters the base point so much that she cannot undo it, some Casters who go Wild and lose control of volatile gifts cause damage that she cannot undo either. I’m sure there’s more but we only find out her limits when she runs full tilt into them. She’s even had some amazingly impossible success at treat Others, something no one thought was possible. Like in everything else, Cassie seems to be the exception to all the rules; with her extraordinarily strong Healing gift she also has a second gift that is just as remarkable as her first; she’s an amplifier. What that means is that she makes other people’s gifts stronger; so a Caster who can teleport only himself for example, with her help could suddenly move a bus full of people. She has serious Power which makes her the poster child for all Casters because her gifts are so spectacular and so obviously made to help people. It doesn’t hurt that she was a born model too. And boy does she love it! The attention, the need people have for her, the responsibility, all of it just makes Cassie happier. I personally like being anonymous, Cassie’s gifts and her power make her glow with a serenity that I couldn’t fake even if I wanted to. That’s how you can tell us apart when we stand side by side. It isn’t a visible mark though, when we’re apart if I’m not careful people think I’m her but you can always tell us apart when we’re together.