Betrayal (Vanish Book Two)

The sky was crystal clear as I lay in the
field behind the apartments. The breeze was gentle, but colder than
I would have liked. Staring up at the bare trees, sadness swept
over me. I longed for summer. I wanted to see this beautiful forest
in all of its glory, and I would. We weren’t leaving; we couldn’t.
Grace was our responsibility now, and she wouldn’t be safe anywhere
else. She was frail, and weak. She hadn’t moved or eaten anything
since we got here. It seemed like it had been an eternity since
we’d returned, but in reality, it had only been two days. That made
today a week since my release from the hospital.

I wanted to go see Dante, but these past two
days, everything seemed more complicated than it should. I planned
to forget everything once we found her. I wanted to push away all
the sadness and confusion, but while I could pretend, Dante knew
better. He wanted me to talk about it. He thought it would make me
feel better, but there was nothing to say. Grace was hiding
something, something about me. I had a feeling that it was much
more than that, but I knew she would never let me in. She changed.
It wasn’t only the six months of being chained to that wall.
Something was off.

“What are you doing out here?” Dante asked as
he snuck up from behind.

“Just getting some fresh air,” I smiled up at
him. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw his face. It took all of
the pain away, but only for one brief second at a time. I wanted to
run away with him. Things would be so easy… but no, I couldn’t
leave George and Elizabeth to deal with my problem. It was awful,
but that was how I felt. Her excuse for not talking in the car was
that she didn’t want to hurt me, but the few times she had spoken
to me since had been nothing but hurtful.

“You should come inside,” Dante said,
interrupting my thoughts.

He held out his hand to help me up, but I
didn’t reach for it. He looked at me, trying to be understanding,
but he didn’t understand. As far as he saw it, this was over, and
that’s how I saw it at first, too, but now I wasn’t so sure.

“What are we going to do?” I mumbled.

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t live like this forever, we can’t
leave. Period.”

“It won’t be forever,” he assured me.

“What’s going to change? What about
Grace?”

“We’ll figure something out—“

“No matter what, we’ll have to babysit her.
It would be one thing if she was the same Grace she used to be, but
she’s not, not even close.”

“Come on. George and Elizabeth are expecting
us, and it’s not going to be easy to persuade Grace.”

“Alright.” I grabbed his hand. He held it
outstretched during our whole conversation, waiting for me to give
in. When I was up, he wrapped his arms around me and kissed my
forehead.

When we reached the apartments, tension
filled the air. I saw a glimpse of Annabelle through the window;
she was sitting on the bed. Her expression hadn’t changed since
we’d arrived back at George and Elizabeth’s. She saw the success
Cooper had with Grace’s belongings. She gave him a locket that had
belonged to her mother, hoping he could help her find them, too. He
saw nothing. I tried to persuade her that it was probably because
it belonged to her for so long. She would have to find something
that her mother had touched more recently. It felt wrong
encouraging her like that, with all the help she’d given me, and
now I could do nothing in return. I was afraid for her and her
parents, if she did want to leave to continue her search, she would
only have Cooper at her side. Lily was still weak from her
near-death experience, and it had done a lot to her mental state.
Everyone here was suffering with their own problems, and I couldn’t
get my head clear enough to even try to help.

I walked over to Grace’s door and knocked.
She didn’t say anything, so I took out the key and went right in.
She still refused to talk about what had happened. It didn’t matter
what I said, she rejected it. I needed to know what she was keeping
inside. I couldn’t imagine it would hurt me as much as she thought.
I knew—probably better than anyone—how it felt to be trapped inside
your own head for six months. Some things seemed a whole lot worse
until you could talk about it. Then once you did, it went away, and
you couldn’t remember what the big problem was in the first place.
Nevertheless, whatever she needed to tell me, I needed to know. It
was killing me, thinking about the possibilities over and over in
my head. Did it have something to do with Dante? Or did she know
why the Alliance was after us? I doubted that, she said she didn’t
even know who the Alliance was. Was it something that happened
that night
, something I didn’t remember? I felt like I was
going to go crazy.

I had to drag Grace out of bed to get her to
attend. There was no way we could let her stay here alone. I’d seen
what could happen when someone had been through enough, and I
wouldn’t let Grace hurt herself. Another worry was that she would
run. Sure, Cooper would help us find her, but I couldn’t go through
that all over again.

When everyone was ready to go, we walked over
to their house. I hoped, for Elizabeth and George’s sake, that
everyone would try to have a nice time. They led us into the dining
room and told us to have a seat.

“So
Grace…” Elizabeth began, “…how do you like it here? Would you like
to do something tomorrow?” She was trying to be welcoming, and I
loved her for it, but Grace didn’t care.

“No, Thanks,” she grumbled.

“Okay, well I think it would help you to…
maybe get some fresh air or—”

“No, I need revenge, and that’s all I
need.”

“Revenge against who Grace?” I pleaded. She
just rolled her eyes and continued moving her food around her
plate. I smiled at Elizabeth and shoved a forkful of food into my
mouth. “Mmm, this is really good.” I complimented. Elizabeth
smiled.

As we were sitting at the table in silence,
two unexpected guests had arrived and stood at Annabelle’s side. I
could tell I was the only one who could see them. I felt the urge
to cry. It was clear that they were her parents, and they loved her
dearly. It was obvious they were pained by the expression on her
face. She hadn’t eaten, and I was afraid she would try to hurt
herself again. I wasn’t sure if telling her or not telling her
would be worse. They had their arms around her. She shivered, but
other than that she didn’t seem to notice. I stared at them for a
moment, and they looked back at me.

“You can see us?” I looked down, not wanting
to say anything to indicate a ghost was near. “You can. I know you
can.”

I felt bad ignoring them, so I looked up and
nodded once.

“She needs to know.” The pain in their eyes
was heartbreaking. I felt horrible for Annabelle, but it was clear
that she was loved. “We’re fine. It’s so much better this way. It
would have been almost impossible for her to rescue us, and that’s
if she even could have found us. It was horrible there. We would
have been stuck there forever, but now we’re free.”

I needed to talk to them, but I couldn’t at
the table.

“Excuse me, I need to use the bathroom.” I
looked at them trying to hint for them to follow. I hurried in and
shut the door. “You know she tried to kill herself, right? I don’t
want to do anything that would make her feel the need to do that
again.”

“She needs to know. We want her to move on,
to be happy,” Annabelle’s parents insisted.

“I’ll get her alone after dinner, when we go
to the apartments. Come find us and I’ll tell her anything you want
me to, okay?” They agreed. “Alright, I need to get back.”

I couldn’t eat. It was hard having to tell
someone there was no hope, that their parents were dead. For all I
knew, it could be the first in a long line of things like this. I
couldn’t ignore my powers, what was the use of it if not to help
people? But was this really helping? I didn’t know.

“Alright, there’s a reason we’ve asked you to
come here. We have a surprise for you, since you’ll be staying
longer than just a few days. George will take you,” Elizabeth said.
Grace stood up; she seemed to be having a hard time.

“Did you hurt your leg?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she snapped.

George walked out the door and instead of
going left toward the apartments, he went right.

“Where are we going?” Dante asked.

“Since you’re going to be staying more
permanently this time, we thought we would let you use one of the
houses,” he said, as if it was nothing.

“How many houses do you have?” Dante asked,
impressed.

“Five. Some are farther into the woods, but
we would rather you be close just in case,” George explained.

“I don’t know how to thank you George,” Dante
said.

“Please don’t. You guys are great, and we
would love for you to stay.”

“So, do you get a lot of people staying
here?” Dante asked.

“Every now and then, but people have come
here for far less serious reasons.”

“If there’s anything we can do to help out,
let us know, okay?” Dante offered.

“Thank you,” he said as he walked up to the
porch. The house was just as beautiful as theirs. “Here we are. If
you need anything call, okay?”

“Okay,” Dante said as he shook his hand.

“Thank you George, we never could have done
any of this without your family,” I commended.

“It was no problem,” he said as he put his
hand on my shoulder.

After George left, I knew I needed to get
Annabelle alone. I’d planned to talk to Grace first, but this could
get messy. I didn’t know how much time it would take, or how long
she would need a shoulder to cry on.

We walked into the house. The carpets were a
beautiful blue, and the furniture was all burgundy except that
which was made of wood.

“Hey,” I said to Annabelle. “Can I talk to
you for a minute?”

“Go ahead,” she sniffled.

“Let’s go find somewhere to talk,” I
suggested, knowing she wouldn’t want this to take place in front of
everyone.

“Alright,” she agreed.

We went upstairs, and I opened the first door
on the right. It seemed suitable. I walked inside and sat on the
bed.

“Sit.” I patted next to me and smiled. Her
parents had followed us up here just as they followed her all
night. “What do you want to say?” I asked her parents.

“You told me,
you
wanted to talk,” she
said, confused. I just smiled and listened.

“Tell her we know how much she wanted to find
us, and we know how hard she tried,” her mom said.

“Your parents know how much you wanted to
find them. They know you really tried.”

Her mouth popped open, but she didn’t
speak.

“She never could have found us, and even if
she did they would have killed her, and then killed us anyway.”

“They say you couldn’t have found them, and
if you did, their captors would have killed you and then killed
them anyway.”

“We didn’t feel it. It was an escape from
that awful place. Even though she won’t always know we’re here, we
will be. Her happiness is all that matters to us.”

“They didn’t feel it, dying was better than
being where they were. They will always be with you, even if you
can’t see them. Your happiness is all that matters to them.”

“You’re lying; this can’t be true.” Tears
streamed down her pink cheeks.

I looked over to her parents.

“When she was five…” her mother began with a
smile on her face, “…she begged me to get her ears pierced, because
all of her friends had them. I took her, reluctantly, of course.
She got one side pierced and decided that was enough. I tried to
reason with her, thinking she would get made fun of even more for
only having one, but she wore that one earring with such
pride.”

“When you were five, you begged to get your
ears pierced. When your mom took you, you ended up only getting one
side done.” She brought her hand up to her left ear.

“Mom, Dad?” she laughed, tears still
streaming down her face. “I love you, and I miss you so much.”

“We love you, too, honey,” her mom said with
joy.

“Tell her to please just be happy. I know we
already said it, but the other day… was hard to see,” her father
added.