Guess what! I come bearing gifts of a new chapter! Let me know what you think!

Four crest looking things were lined up in a row in the frame. A dragon, with its mighty yellow wings spread out adorned the first one. A scary looking two headed snake wrapped itself around a sword on the red one; the snake heads looking ready to attack anything that moved. A large bear found itself on the blue one, and on the last crest thing there was a ferocious looking green wolf.

"These crests represent all four currently known branches," Mom began pointing towards all of the pictures.

"Didn't you say there was a fifth?" I asked noticing that there were only four branches shown and remembering what she said in the car on the way here.

"You told her about them?!" Uncle Arthur whispered rather urgently to Mom even though I could still hear him. He wasn't a very effective whisperer.

"It just kind of slipped out," she admitted quickly before facing back towards me and pushing up her glasses, "as I said before we don't really know much about the fifth branch. Anyways, the four branches of the Cahill family. We are the Ekaterina's as you already know," she pointed towards the yellow crest, changing the subject. "Do you remember all of the characteristics?" I nodded, "well, the leaders of this branch are your Uncle and I. Hence why you were in a bit more danger than most F.I.T.'s. Your Uncle here deals with all of the technological aspects of the branch, heading research teams, coming up with new invention ideas, supplying us all with computers, he keeps everyone high tech and up to speed. I take care of all the hard stuff," she smirked at her brother, "I used to head missions but as I've gotten older I've moved away from the mission's and such. Now I plan them, I also deal with relationships between other branches, and deal with problems when they arrive. While Arthur here just tinkers around," Uncle Arthur opened his mouth to protest but Mom brushed him off.

"The Tomas branch is led by somebody named Raymond Sidel although everyone that is even remotely interested in athletics calls him "Marlin". I don't know why, most of the Tomas have strange nicknames-" Mom continued but was interrupted by her brother.

"So they can make up for their lack of brain power," Uncle Arthur added in quickly before starting to laugh at his own joke but soon stopped and shrank away as Mom, as I could have guessed, gave him another death glare.

"Anyways, the Janus leader is Vera Winters, famous painter. I would like to believe that she spends all of her time painting but that is not the reality. She's a very effective leader and we've had several close calls with the Janus before, although King here doesn't like to admit that. Especially since the last one was his fault," Uncle Arthurs face surged with anger and turned a fiery red, although he didn't say anything. Knowing that he'd just get shushed. "The last branch is the Lucian branch. I don't know a person alive today, well maybe except Helena, that isn't afraid of Evelyn-" Mom started.

"Good God Janette! You don't want to scare the poor girl, talking about Evelyn on her first day as a Cahill!" He interrupted mom as she was speaking, apparently he was ready to face the death glare that I thought was sure to come, but it didn't. Wasn't Evelyn who the men were talking about that night? She was mentioned several times that night, she must have been who sent them. If that was the case then I didn't want to have anything to do with her, ever.

Mom sighed, "You can't shelter her from everything Arthur, and I know that now. She asked to hear the truth so the truth she'll get and that involves Evelyn. Anyways if you cross paths with Evelyn Hartley, the Lucian branch leader, you'll either need to get out of the situation you're in as fast as you can or somehow convince her that you're not a Cahill-"

"Which is a lot harder than it seems, Lucian's are experts at lie-detecting. I learned this a few years back when Mrs. Hartley and I's paths crossed. That was a rather unfortunate event, I was-"

"-Thank you for that little snippet Arthur, didn't you say something about not scaring her? Anyways, technically the Lucian branch is run by both Evelyn and her husband Stefan. Although everyone knows that it's Evelyn who's running things, and she's very very good at it,"

"Emphasis on very, I'm never going to forget that night," Uncle Arthur didn't have the somewhat giddy grin on his face anymore. It reminded me of what Carolyn looked like when she told me about her family back at home. I had a feeling that one of these days I was going to hear the story about Evelyn and him. Mom looked down at her phone and then immediately started talking with Uncle Arthur, except that they were a bit better a whispering this time though. So, unsure as to what to do, I started examining the various pictures and artifacts that were framed on the walls.

There were tons of pictures everywhere, some in color, some in black and white, some partially destroyed by what looked like burn marks. I glanced over them. Several of them caught my interest almost immediately. I think mainly since I was in them. A couple of them had either corners burned off or long streaks of smoke black on them from what I assumed to be caused by flames. One of the ones I was looking at happened to be of me, and two other boys. I probably wasn't more than 4 or 5 in the picture and both of the other boys looked maybe a year or so older than me. The picture itself was in black and white but it looked more like the picture had been originally in color but whoever took the picture decided to put a black and white filter on it. It looked like maybe the picture had been taken at our old house, the little table that I was sitting on I remembered seeing when I was younger. One of the boys who either had black or brown hair was standing behind the little white table, and the darker skinned boy was sitting on the floor, leaning against one of the table legs. He was waving, presumably, at the photographer while the other boy looked bored out of his mind. I on the other hand was clutching a stuffed bear, Curie, I thought as I stared at the small toy. Mom had given him to me on I think my 5th birthday, she also told him his name before teaching me all about Marie Curie. I wonder if she was an Ekaterina? I thought to myself as I moved to the next picture. It would be really cool if Marie Curie, one of the most awesome scientists in the world was related to me!

I wasn't in the next photo that I looked at. But I'm pretty sure that mom and Uncle Arthur were. The strange thing about this picture was that it was actually part of a newspaper article. They were both smiling widely, standing in front of what looked like a presentation. Uncle Arthur was holding a large ribbon and mom was holding a very oversized check. The caption underneath the picture read, "Whiz-kid siblings win National Science Fair". I looked back at Mom and her brother, who were still whispering. The article went into more detail on their project. It was actually kind of cool to think about how my mom and my uncle had won the national science fair. A competition I had always wanted to win. It reminded me of my own unfinished science fair project that was probably still sitting in my dorm room and all the data I had collected was stored in my laptop which was still sitting on my desk. The relationship between Martian craters and their proximity to volcanos would have to wait until another year, oh well.

I looked at a few more pictures, most of them being family pictures where everyone looked less than happy to be there. A couple of pictures of uncle Arthur with various famous people, the president, the lady from "Good Morning America", diplomats from various countries, oh my gosh was that Stephen Hawking?! Conclusion: My uncle had met some pretty awesome people, like Stephen Hawking, and the president, and freaking Stephen Hawking. I wonder if he's an Ekaterina. That'd be really cool. I could be related to Stephen freaking Hawking too! After freaking out a little bit with that thought I looked over at some oil paintings. All of them were aging and several had bits missing, with the typical bite that fire makes on corners as well as the same smoky fingers that turned the oily colors into nothing but black smudges.

I glanced over at another picture that was burnt, it was missing a large corner almost like it was a cookie and someone had taken a bite out of it. Looking more closely, I saw myself in it, and Mom, and Dad, and Chloe who couldn't have been older than 1 or 2 and was being held by Mom. I looked to be around the age of 5, my hair at this point was still straight as it didn't start to curl until I was around 10 or 11, it was in two short braids and I was again holding Curie the stuffed bear. Dad had safety glasses perched on the top of his head and Mom looked like she was about to leave, she had her coat on and I'm pretty sure that there was a suitcase partially hidden behind the table that we were all standing in front of. We looked happy, one big happy family, or at least the good parts of what I remembered from my childhood. Dad used to always make jokes around the dinner table when Mom was gone.

I looked over at a 4th picture, it was a candid shot, that looked like it might have been taken from behind a bush or something since there were the tips of branches at the very bottom. I could tell who the main focus of the picture was though, it was a woman. A very beautiful woman, with dark black curls, and a sort of air about her that let you know that she was important yet also someone not to be messed with. Standing next to her was the same boy from the first picture I had looked at, he was clutching, who I assumed to be, his mother's hand and was boasting an award winning smile that just barely under-shined his mothers.

"Meeting the family are we?" I quickly turned around to see Uncle Arthur standing behind me, he was looking quietly at some of the pictures. "That there is Evelyn, and her little twit of a son Nicholas,"

"He was in the picture of me and of the other boy, I think it was taken at our old house," I said pointing out the picture that I was referencing. Uncle Arthur walked towards it and peered closely at it, looking over the top of his glasses. He smiled for a moment but switched to a frown just moments later.

"Yes," He said quietly, "I remember that day, very tough time for the Cahill's." He paused, and I was curious as to what he meant by that statement. Did something happen that day? "You're an Ekaterina, Lizzie. I'd like you to take one look around this room and figure something out for me," He forced his mouth into a smile.

"What do you want me to figure out?" I asked, looking around at the pictures and artifacts. He only smiled weakly and motioned towards the photos.

I didn't know what to do, I stood somewhat stunned and mainly confused while glancing around. The pictures were obviously some sort of puzzle and I had always liked puzzles. The only thing was that I knew how puzzles were supposed to end and just had to figure my way there. In this instance I didn't know either. What was I supposed to be looking for? I looked for patterns in the empty spaces, tried to see if there was some correlation between if a photo had a wooden or metal frame, searched for some sort of sign or something that was the same with all of them. I couldn't figure it out.

"I-I don't know," I mumbled, slightly ashamed of myself. I wanted to impress him for some reason that I couldn't quite understand and I felt that I had let him down.

"Look harder, pretend to be Sherlock Holmes," He smiled, this time more believably.

Pretend to be Sherlock Holmes. His final words seemed to make something click in my mind and I began examining each picture closely, the one thing that really stood out was the difference between the ones with burn marks and the ones without. The ones who had been burned didn't have as much dust over top of the glass or on the frame. One of which I knew for certain had been a painting at home when I was younger. Then it hit me.

"Our old house is gone, isn't it?" I asked quietly, my hand resting gently on a singed wooden frame. He nodded. "It burned," I added and he again nodded. This explained why Mom and I didn't return to our old house. There was no Elder house anymore. I hadn't seen it in five years but the blow was still harsh and hard to comprehend.

"Somebody burnt it while your mother, your father, your little sister Chloe, and myself were inside. I know you're probably wondering why in the world it is important for you to know that but it's my one piece of evidence for you as to what in the world you're getting yourself into as a Cahill. I will admit I pushed my sister to bring you into the clue hunt earlier, actually if I recall you fell out of a tree one time during one of those particular meetings," he paused to chuckle, "There are those in this family who will resort to whatever measures necessary to get ahead in the game. I don't mean to scare you but the doors were barred shut when the fire alarm went off," he paused to let that sink in, "I'm giving you the choice now, you have the intelligence of an Ekaterina and you would make a swell agent but you need to know what that entails," He paused to wait for my response.

There was something strange about Uncle Arthur, for a while he would seem joyful and cracking jokes every three seconds and then minutes later he'd be telling me something dark and scary. The thought of somebody purposefully trying to kill my family terrified me, of course I had been held at gunpoint before and almost kidnapped so it shouldn't have been too outlandish to think about. Uncle Arthur made a really good point. It was obvious that the Cahill's were dangerous and I didn't really want to be poking death in the nose, but at the same time I didn't want to lose my family. I had just regained them again and I knew that if I said I didn't want to be a Cahill any more that I'd probably be sent off to another boarding school. I didn't want to lose them again.

"I'll need to think about it," I answered quietly, staring at one of the burnt photos. I looked over towards mom's direction, she was furiously typing on her phone and her eyebrows were knit together.

"You won't have too long to make your decision, once you're in there's no escaping. Especially in your case," He stopped for a moment to look at mom as well, she was motioning frantically for him to come over to her. He adjusted his glasses and once again left me alone to stare at the pictures.

I had a big decision on my hands, lose my family again or take on a life of danger. If Carolyn was in my position I knew that she wouldn't have hesitated to accept her spot as a Cahill. There was also the family aspect, she didn't have much of a family and here I was being brought into the most powerful family in the world. If Carolyn was me it would have been a no-brainer. It wouldn't have mattered either way though, I probably would never have been allowed to return to Calderwood and I probably would never see Carolyn again. The least I could do was accept the family she had always dreamed about and not give them up. I couldn't lose my family again. I wasn't going to let them leave me ever again either. Never

Wow, it feels so good to finally post something new instead of just updating. I hope you liked it, make sure to comment your thoughts on it below! Because I made you guys wait so long I'd be happy to answer some of your questions if you have them and if they don't spoil anything. Comment your questions down below and I'll get to them when I update the next chapter.

Safety Tip: Always have extra clothes on hand.