Destiny (Vanish Book Four) (5 page)

“So you’re sure nothing happened while we
were separated earlier. You—you just seemed kind of shaken up.”

“No,” I took a deep breath and tried to keep
my face straight. “Nothing happened.”

“Okay.”

“I think we should go home tomorrow,” I said.
“Annabelle, Rose, and Grace won’t mind.”

“Of course,” he promised.

“I’m going to try and get some sleep,” I
said, though I knew I would only lay there. I needed to be alone
with my thoughts, and lately night time was the perfect time to do
so.

“Yeah, I guess I’ll try, too.”

I closed my eyes, but nothing happened. I lay
there awake as I knew I would. I thought about the group from
earlier. They could have known Skylar; it could have been his plan
to get closer to us—to me. Who knows if he wasn’t the one who
wanted to start the new Alliance, he had just gone a sneakier
route. I wasn’t too sure of anything. All I knew, is that once the
Alliance was gone, I thought I would have a chance to live in
peace, but I was foolish.

In the morning, we packed everything up and
hit the road. We weren’t too far from home, but it still seemed to
take ages to get back. The camping trip had taken a lot off of my
mind. Like the fact that I needed to return to the murdered woman’s
house later and retrieve anything suspicious. It would be
catastrophic if Joe or anyone else got their hands on those
potions.

Though the trip helped me get that off my
mind, I had more to think about now than ever before. I wasn’t sure
how to begin dealing with the fact that someone was trying to start
a new Alliance. I did know one thing. If their Alliance was
anything like the first one, I couldn’t let it happen.

Dante went to go check on Lily. I needed to
head over to Ms. Winter’s house. I got in the car instead of going
in the house and just left. I drove along the fence, and I noticed
something strange. There was a hole in the fence, right behind a
bush, where it wouldn’t be as noticeable. This fence was well kept.
I knew this wasn’t just something that had happened over time. I
would come back to check it out later.

I pulled up to the house, there was no one
around, but there was police tape circling the house. I drove down
the street and parked. Then, I looked around to make sure no one
was watching and turned invisible.

I ran into the house, and the boy met me at
the door. When I got inside, I saw a picture of the woman. I felt
awful for her. The only mistake she made—as far as I knew—was
moving into a house once occupied by a member of the Alliance, and
she died for that mistake.

I became visible and picked up the picture.
All I had time to do was gasp, before I could no longer see what
was in front of me.

The image that appeared before my eyes, was
by no means unfamiliar, it was this house. I watched the woman walk
from the kitchen, but she showed no sign of fear. She didn’t know
what was coming. She stood there, looking in the mirror, adjusting
her hair, her dress, fixing her makeup.

Then the next thing I saw, was her tied to
the chair again, just like in my first vision. She sat there
begging for her life, pleading with this monster not to kill her. I
couldn’t see his face, but I needed to. I needed to find out who
this guy was and catch him.

It was quick, and from what I could tell it
looked rather painless, but that didn’t matter—it was still
wrong.

He walked toward the attic, and yelled up to
someone, and then I heard a female voice call back. Their words
were all jumbled up, and I couldn’t tell what they were saying.

I came back to reality and sprinted toward
the stairs. Not everything was gone, but they had definitely gotten
what they came for. I hadn’t taken notice to how much was up there
before, but I knew at least some of it was missing.

I grabbed the boxes one by one and turned
invisible as I took them to the car. When I held on to the boxes
and went invisible, they vanished along with me. Soon, I had gotten
everything of importance out of the house.

As I walked out the door Ms. Winter appeared
in front of me. She didn’t speak, she didn’t even look in my
direction. She just stared behind me at all of the things she no
longer had use for.

“I’m so sorry,” I said as I walked away.

I got in the car and headed home. When I
reached the neighborhood, I went along the fence and stopped when I
came to the hole. I got out of the car, locked the doors and walked
over to it. I wasn’t sure why I had such a strange feeling about
it. I only knew that I did, and my suspicions wouldn’t go away
until I checked it out.

I climbed up a small hill to get to the
fence, and then I went through. I kept walking. I didn’t need to
know which direction to go. Even if I wanted to go a different way,
it didn’t seem as if I could.

After walking about a mile, I came upon a
metal fence with bushes hiding whatever was inside from my view.
What the bushes didn’t hide, the vines growing along the fence did.
I got a little closer and found an open spot. Inside, there was a
small, but beautiful log cabin, with a lot of open space around
it.

I looked away for a second, making sure no
one could see me. When I looked back, the front door was opening. I
ran away; I wasn’t prepared for this, but I would be back.

I needed to tell Dante about this, but first
I needed to know exactly what it was. It could have been an
innocent family, like George and Elizabeth’s, or it could be the
opposite. It could be nothing at all, but I needed to figure it out
for myself.

As I made my way back to the car, I noticed
someone was sitting in the passenger seat. They had a hoodie on,
and I couldn’t see their face. They looked through the glove
compartment and then ducked down to check under the seats. Then,
their face turned in my direction. I saw them for only an instant,
not nearly long enough. They had sunglasses on that almost covered
their entire face.

They hurried out of the car and ran down the
street. I got to the car as fast as I could to chase them. I could
look at them for a few more moments, but I didn’t gather a lot.
They were short; at least they appeared so from this distance. They
looked thin, but again, it was difficult to tell just how thin from
so far away. There was one thing I figured I could assume; they
were out to get me, but they definitely weren’t for
confrontations.

I went around the whole neighborhood twice,
but found nothing. If they left, they would have had to use the
gate, but it didn’t look like it had been opened since I came
through.

More and more things seemed to be piling up,
but if I could deal with them on my own, then I had to. I couldn’t
go dragging Dante and everyone else in on all of my problems.

I thought about how helpless I always felt—if
I was so powerful I shouldn’t feel this way. I didn’t understand
what was so great about anything I could do. I could turn
invisible, but it didn’t always help me. I could see the future,
well, not so much anymore. I could change things, but I was too
afraid to really use that power. There was too much that could go
wrong, too much that I couldn’t change back to the way it was. I
could see ghosts, but they rarely gave me anything useful. Who
would envy me? That seemed insane, though it was arguable that they
actually were insane.

I made it to my house and brought a couple of
boxes up to my room with me. I set them on the ground and went to
return for the rest. When they were all up in my room, I thought
about where to hide them.

I got on the floor and looked under the bed
to see if there would be enough room there. Before I could check, I
noticed something crinkly peeking out from under the bed. I pulled
it out farther. It was an old piece of paper, no, not just an old
piece of paper; it was the picture that Grandpa had shown us when
we went to visit him. There was a sticky note on it that read,
‘Take a closer look.’

I looked at everything as close as I could
manage. There was nothing, absolutely no answers in this. I didn’t
understand, until I took a closer look at the boy holding my hand.
His eyes were not dark. They were not like staring into the clear
night sky—they were green. I dropped the paper and stood there,
staring ahead at nothing for the longest time. I was in shock, not
just my normal someone’s-trying-to-kill-me-shock—this was a
heart-wrenching, life-altering shock.

I cleared my mind, ready to face all of the
explanations this could hold, but I only came up with one. Dante
and I were never meant for each other. But how could that be? We
shared our powers; I fell in love with him again every time I saw
him.

I turned and picked up the pair of jeans I’d
changed out of. I dug through the pocket and picked out a small
piece of paper.

I would need to figure this out on my own,
even if it meant going behind Dante’s back. I had information
sitting right in front of me, information that may or may not lead
me to more. I needed to do this; I couldn’t argue that fact, but I
wanted to. I picked up the phone and dialed the number.

“Hey, Skylar?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“It’s Scarlett, can you meet me
somewhere?”

“Of course,” he said a little too willingly.
“Where?”

“Meet me in the park across from the theater
around ten.”

“Alright,” he said, sounding a little
smug.

Was it possible that the difference in eye
color was nothing? Could it have absolutely nothing to do with any
of us, but the people who came before us? I didn’t know, but I
needed to figure it out. I shoved the boxes under my bed and waited
for ten.

While I was waiting, I turned on the TV. The
news was on, and someone had been murdered. They showed a tape of
the suspects walking out of a local convenience store. It was the
men from the woods, wearing exactly what they had been wearing when
they, themselves, were murdered. I felt relieved. In the end, we
had actually done a good thing. We hadn’t murdered some losers in
the woods just trying to start trouble they wouldn’t finish; they
had killed someone else, and the police didn’t think it was the
first time.

I sat in my car in the deserted parking lot.
The lamp posts were the only sign that I wasn’t in the middle of
nowhere. Right in front of the car, was a pond with a bridge
running over it, the pond looked deserted also.

I waited patiently for ten o’clock to come
around. I wasn’t too excited about this; I wasn’t quite sure what
the point of all of this was. There was something that I needed to
know, I just wasn’t sure what that was yet. The only thing I could
know for sure—it had something to do with Skylar.

A set of headlights blinded me, and then the
car pulled up right next to mine. I waited to get out; I wanted to
make sure he was alone. I didn’t fully trust him, but he did save
my life, after all.

He was alone, and dressed quite nicely; I was
afraid he got the wrong impression. I opened the door and got out.
I looked him up and down; it was the first time I had the chance.
Besides the time in the woods, Skylar and I had only been face to
face once before—when he and “Grace” were trying to kidnap me. I
remembered when I first saw Dante disguised as Skylar, his brown
eyes tinted the green contacts, making them less than perfect. But
Skylar’s eyes held my gaze, and I could see now, that they were a
beautiful, mystical shade of green. I looked down to the ground.
I couldn’t really be thinking these things, could I
?

We walked over to a bench, just beyond the
pond. A light hung right over our heads, casting an eerie, orange
haze around us.

“So, why did you call me?” he asked with a
giant grin on his face.

“To be honest, I don’t know. I’m not sure
what I was expecting to find. Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Have you been following me?” I asked.
“Please just tell me the truth.”

“I admit I was trying to find you in the
woods, but I wouldn’t go as far as saying I’ve
been
following you.”

“So you didn’t put something in my room?” I
asked.

“No, I’ve never even been to your house.”

“How did you find me in the woods?”

“A power or something I’ve been trying to
ignore. Something draws me to you, but I ignore it. That time in
the woods, this feeling came over me, like I knew—”

“That someone was after me.”

“Yes, I know what you think of me, and I can
see how easily my actions can be misconstrued as evil, but that was
never my intention.”

“You remember what happened—”

“Yes, anyone with powers can tell that
something has shifted,” he began. “I remember going after you with
Grace
that was a big mistake. I felt like I needed to get
you away from there, everyone knew that was where you were hiding
out. Then,
Grace
said she thought it would be better to just
kill you. I was going to take your powers and pretend to kill you.
I figured if I gave them to the Alliance they would leave you
alone.”

“Then why did you run away? You could have
warned us.”

“You guys were pretty sure that I was evil. I
stole Dante’s clothes, and I tried to capture you, there was no
explaining that, you guys already thought I was evil.”

“Alright, I guess all I can do is trust you.
Don’t make me regret it.”

“I won’t.”

“Alright, back to business,” I said as I
pulled the crumpled picture out of my bag. “Do you know anything
about this?”

“No,” he said as he looked closer. “Is that
me?”

“I don’t know, I guess. I just don’t
understand,” I sighed. “I should go.”

“Wait, why are you leaving so fast?”

“I needed to ask you about this, and I did,”
I said. “I might need to ask you something else some other time,
but for now, that’s it.”