“Jack?!” Sabrina shouted, running down the upstairs hall frantically.

She had heard Jack yelling, then Nikki’s scream, then the jolting crash somewhere at the bottom of the stairs. She had tried to get into her husband’s mind through their mental link and find out what was happening, but she was getting nowhere. His mind seemed to be completely frozen. The last thing she’d heard was him yelling her name out, yelling with an emotion she wasn’t quite able to make out, which terrified her even more.

She reached the stairs and grabbed the railing, her mind racing, trying to figure out what could be going on. Where they under attack from old enemies? Again, after all this time? If so, she had no idea what she, now powerless for years, was supposed to do about it, but her husband and daughter were down there, and that meant she would do whatever it took. Had Nikki hurt herself? Had she done her usual emotional Hiroshima at the end of their yelling match and stormed up the stairs, only to take a fall and tumble back down?

She saw the mess on the landing at the bottom of the stairs as she rounded the corner—what looked to be what was left of her entryway table, and the remnants of her vase and drooping lilies in a long puddle—and the terror really gripped her heart. She bounded down the stairs, her hands holding to the rail, and desperately ducked her head to get a view of the den as soon as she was able.

She stopped, finally seeing the room, and stared into it with frozen confusion. With all that was seemingly going on, the sight didn’t seem to make much sense. Jack was still in his recliner. Nikki was there, too, but now in Jack’s lap, with her arms wrapped tightly around his neck. Was she attacking him? Had her fits of teenage rage finally reached the physical point, and would they now have to medicate one of their twins and become one of THOSE families?

In the passing of another moment of standing, she realized Jack was not being attacked. He was being hugged. Which, strangely, seemed to make even less sense.

And then she noticed.

She stopped breathing.

Nikki’s short tee shirt had ridden up from her outstretching of her arms. Between her too-low jeans and the hem of that shirt, Sabrina finally processed what had been wrong with that picture.

She saw fur. Brown fur. All over Nikki’s back. And, she quickly realized, all down her arms as well.

“Oh, shit,” Sabrina whispered.

And though she was all the way across the ground floor, Nikki somehow heard her. The girl turned her head around quickly, and Sabrina could see that her now-hairy face was alight in joy and excitement.

“I have powers!!” Nikki screamed happily back to her.

“Oh, God,” Sabrina barely croaked.

She saw Jack’s face now, next to Nikki’s, and he looked up at her with something of a painful, frozen smile—one that was at once lost, bewildered, scared, and just plain said ‘help me’. His arms were around Nikki’s back as he hugged her in return.

“I have powers I have powers!!” Nikki felt the need to scream at her again.

Not having the slightest idea what to say to that yet, Sabrina simply swallowed and quickly finished her descent down the stairs.

Nikki went back to enthusiastically hugging her father, and he made a noise that was half painful grunt and half laugh.

“I have powers, Dad! I have powers just like you! I KNEW I’d have powers!”

“Okay, okay,” he laughed, holding her. “I noticed, kiddo. Powers are what you got, all right.”

She jerked back from the hug and sat straight up, facing him, her smile still stretching almost to her now-slightly-pointed ears (a smile that now included fangs). “I always thought if I got them then Monique would get them first like she gets everything else first but she didn’t and I did and I got YOUR powers!”

Sabrina made it to them and sat on the recliner arm and put her hands on her daughter’s furry face, trying to hide her fear. “Honey, are you…do you feel okay?”

“I feel great!” Nikki yelled, throwing her arms from father to mother, hugging Sabrina and almost pulling her into Jack’s lap. “Oh, Mom, this is best thing that could ever happen!”

Like Jack, unable not to laugh (though she felt it came more from temporary insanity than amusement), Sabrina hugged Nikki back, very tightly, and held her. “Oh, sweetie. I’m so happy for you.” Yet another of a mother’s necessary lies in the long journey of childrearing.

Nikki pulled back from the hug, then quickly looked back over her shoulder toward the entry landing…then back to Sabrina. “Mom, I’m so sorry about the table. I didn’t mean to. I swear.”

“It’s okay…”

“I just got mad then this thing happened and I just kind of lost it and I hit it and I didn’t know I’d gotten so strong—”

“Sweetheart,” Sabrina smiled, touching Nikki’s face again, “it’s OKAY. The table is the LAST thing on my mind right now, I promise you.”

Nikki then turned her face to Jack, suddenly, and looked even more remorseful in the midst of her manic state. “Dad, I’m really sorry. I’m sorry I got mad and yelled at you and acted like that…”

Jack smiled and stroked her now interestingly wild short hair atop her head. “It’s okay, Nikki. I’m sorry I lost my temper, too. I shouldn’t have. I’m supposed to be the grown-up. I know better. And, hey, I’ve broken some furniture in my time, too, believe me.”

“Why did this happen now?” Nikki asked, back to being excited. “Why today?”

“I guess it was just your time,” Jack said. “Mine happened under a full moon, but it took a few years to figure out that was just coincidence.”

“A mirror!” Nikki said frantically, starting to get up. “I need a mirror!”

“Woah, woah,” Sabrina said, and both she and Jack held Nikki down—which was startlingly tough to do. “Stay.” Despite all that was going on, Sabrina realized what she’d just said, in context, and blurted at an involuntary laugh. “I’ll get it. Just stay right here, okay?”

“Okay,” Nikki said, almost shaking with impatience. Sabrina quickly got up and ran to the downstairs bathroom.

“Dad, what I can I do?” she asked her father, breathlessly. “Am I as strong as you? Can I jump like you? Can I do everything you can?”

“I have no idea,” Jack said. “We’re going to have to figure that out. Slowly. And carefully.”

She suddenly jerked her head back over her shoulder, toward the staircase. “Oh, my God!” she said, jerking her head back to her father. “I heard Mom say ‘shit’! She whispered all the way over there and I totally heard her say ‘shit’ like she was right next to me!” She suddenly realized what she was saying. “Oh. I’m sorry, Dad.”

“It’s okay,” he said, grinning. “You just need to calm down, okay? This is a shock to all of us. Just take it slow.”

Sabrina came running back with the round mirror they kept on the bathroom counter, and Nikki was barely able to wait for it to get to her. She grabbed it from her mother and stared into it, wide-eyed and fascinated.

“Oh, my God,” she said, running her hand over her face, hypnotized. Jack and Sabrina watched her as she opened her mouth and felt and stared at the reflection of her short fangs, making faces with zero regard for vanity. “Ugh!” she said, turning her head left and right. “What is this? I have sideburns!”

“They’re not sideburns,” Sabrina laughed, touching them. “And they look kind of cool.”

“Really?” Nikki asked, doubtfully, looking at them carefully as she swiveled her head left and right.

“Really,” Sabrina assured her.

Nikki got to looking at her hair and touching it with her hand. “My hair is AWESOME!” she said happily. “Look at this!”

Suddenly, without warning, she dropped the mirror between her and Jack and her face froze in terror.

“What if I can’t change back?”

“Honey, you can change back—” Jack told her.

“What if I can’t?!” she exclaimed, panicking. “What if I’m stuck like this? What if I can never go back to me?”

“You CAN—” Jack tried to assure her.

“I’ll have to quit school,” she went on, seemingly not having heard him. “I can’t go to school like this. Everyone will know. And I can’t stay at home! If I do everyone’s going to figure out who you are and the secret’s going to be out and it’ll all be my fault!”

“Nikki—”

“I’ll have to move into the Forte base,” she said, her mind racing. “That’s the only place I’ll be able to go. I’ll have to join Forte! Can I join Forte?”

Jack took her fuzzy face in his hands and locked eyes with her. “You can change back,” he said, slowly. “I promise. I’m going to show you. But it takes some concentration the first few times, and you need to be calm, and you’re NOT calm right now. You are not stuck like this. Okay?”

She idled down and nodded, believing him. “Okay.” She looked from him to her mother, and once more her emotional gears shifted easily, and she was back to excitement. “So what do we do now?”

Sabrina looked at Jack and blew out a breath, a shrug on her face.

“Well, first,” Jack said, thinking about it. “I think we need to get you over to Johnny and get some tests done. We need to make absolutely sure you’re okay—and I’m positive you are—and then see what we’re dealing with. Johnny’s good at this kind of thing. We can figure out exactly what you’re able to do, how strong you are, things like that.”

“Yes!” she exclaimed, bouncing once on his lap with a wide toothy smile.

“And we’d probably better have Stephen check you out, too. And after that…I guess we’ll just take it as it goes. You and I are going to have to go over a lot of things. As you saw with the table, you’ve got a lot of changes you’re going to have to get used to, and that you need to learn how to control. We’ll work on that and help you get a handle on it. I’ve got a lot of things to show you.”

She threw her arms around him and started hugging him again.

“Yes! I want to learn it all, Dad. I want you to teach me everything you know. I promise I’ll listen to you and do whatever you say. I want to be just like you.”

He hugged her back and suddenly found himself at a loss for words. Wrapped up in his emotional state from hearing those words, he didn’t even notice Sabrina looking at him and smiling and looking like she might cry.

The moment was broken by a high-pitched, ear-piercing scream.

They all looked back toward the staircase. There, near the bottom of it, stood Monique. One hand was covering her mouth. Above it, her eyes were bulging wide. Her other hand was flat against the wall behind her.

“I have powers!!” Nikki yelled to her, over her shoulder, her pearly white fangs flashing happily.

“Monique, it’s okay,” Sabrina said, trying to sound calm and like everything was normal, because it looked like Monique really needed to think that right now. Though she realized nothing was ever going to be normal again. The good news was, their family never had been, so on the Parker course this wasn’t too far from par.

Monique seemed too stunned to move and just stayed there with her back against the wall.

“It’s okay,” Sabrina assured her. “Your sister has powers. Everything’s all right. Sweetheart, come here.”

Still looking unsure, Monique finally took her hand from her mouth and slowly climbed down the last couple of stairs and stepped toward the den, not able to take her cautiously fascinated eyes off Nikki.

“When can we call Johnny?” Nikki asked, looking at both of her parents, excitedly.

“I’ll call him,” Sabrina said. “This ought to be an interesting conversation. I’d better get used that. We’re going to have a few of those the next couple of days.”

“Can I call Andy?” Nikki gasped. “I have to tell him I have powers now too! Can I? Please, please?”

Jack looked at Sabrina. “I don’t see why not. Everybody’s going to know soon anyway.”

“Yes!” Nikki beamed, bouncing again.

Monique had reached them, and she touched Nikki’s hair carefully, with a look on her face that said she feared it might be alive. “Look at your hair,” she said.

“I know!” Nikki said, proudly, looking back at her twin. “Isn’t it cool?”

“How are you going to get a brush through that?” Monique asked, feeling it gingerly.

“Okay, family,” Jack said, looking at all of them. He said it importantly, so all the women in his life stopped and listened.

He took a tired breath. “We’ve got a little curve ball here. It’s not the first time. We’re going to deal with this like we always do. As a family. We’ll take it step by step. And we’ll help Nikki with whatever she needs with this. We’ll handle it together. Okay?”

“Okay,” Sabrina agreed, helpfully.

“’Kay,” Monique said, nodding, but then went back to moving Nikki’s hair aside and checking out her elfish ear.

He turned his attention to the smiling and pleased Nikki. “I’m very happy for you, honey. I mean it.”

“We all are,” Sabrina added, rubbing Nikki’s back.

“This is a wonderful thing for you,” Jack went on. “And a big moment in your life. I want you to know we’re all here for you. For anything. Okay?”

Nikki nodded and get teary-eyed. She hugged Jack again, tightly (and, he tried not to show, a little painfully). “I love you, Daddy.”

He smiled, trying to remember the last time she’d called him that. “I love you too, baby.”

She leaned over and hugged Sabrina, too, for a long time. “I love you, Mom.”

“And I love you,” Sabrina said back, holding her and looking over her at Jack.

Nikki sat back up, finally, on Jack’s lap, wiping a couple of tears. But once more, her gears shifted.

“Can I go call Andy?” she asked, pleading.

“Go ahead,” Jack grinned.

She hugged him once more, quickly, then jumped up and grabbed Monique’s hand. “Come on!” she said. “He’s totally going to freak!” She ran off toward the stairs, dragging Monique with her, who somehow managed to stay on her feet. Jack watched them as they bounded up the stairs together, and as Monique started asking her sister rapid questions, getting into the excitement, finally, as well.

Sabrina watched Jack’s face, smiling to herself as she did.

Look at you, she said into his mind.

He turned his face to her. What?

A few minutes ago you were ready to sell her to gypsies. Now all of a sudden she’s Daddy’s girl again.

He smiled, sheepishly. Weird how that works, huh?

Sabrina slid over and took Nikki’s spot on Jack’s lap, and he put his arms around her waist.

Are you ready for this? she mentally asked.

Do we have a choice? he mentally grinned back at her.

Do we ever?

Maybe one of these times. Wouldn’t that be a nice change?

So…Samantha’s future rings true again. Nikki got the wolf. If this keeps up, that means Monique will have powers soon, too. Probably teleportation. And if it all plays out like it did on Sam’s world, that means all our daughters are going to be super-heroes.

Jack looked unusually old as he stared past her and thought about that. We could ground them, he smiled, but his face didn’t match the smile.

I know exactly, she thought, putting her arms around him, how you feel. They held each other and both let the other be silent and just worry.

One day at a time, Sabrina sent. Isn’t that what you thought at me a few minutes ago?

Yeah, he agreed. Guess even I can be right once in a while.

Don’t let it go to your head.

I’ll try not to.

She moved her face and kissed him on the cheek.

By the way…anybody ever tell you you’re adorable when you’re proud?

He smiled.

She wants to be just like you, she thought, smiling too.

If there is a God… he moaned, and she laughed and kissed him. Nikki’s excited and rambling voice could be heard all the way from upstairs, punctuated with screams and laughs from Monique as they both talked with Andy. He was the first, as predicted, of many calls to the extended Forte family. And all of them seemed to agree, with varying reactions to the thought…

…that the next generation had definitely begun.

END.

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