When we reached our house, the girls were laid on the couches in the living room. When Chrispin tried to step away from Olivia, she pulled him back to her. He didn’t falter and sat by her side.
“What was that? That place, what they were doing?” Brady asked.
“Evil,” Landen said.
Clarissa had gotten a warm towel and was wiping away the streaks of Hannah’s mascara, telling her she was fine.
“Do you know where you were?” I asked Olivia as I hovered over her.
Olivia stared blankly into the room, then said, “I remember being on the boat. I woke in a chamber. A massive bed was there, and chairs around a fireplace. The walls were made of stone. No windows. When the fire went out, darkness filled the room. Once a day, we’d find a large cart of food and water. After we ate, we’d fall into a deep sleep—so drugged. I convinced Hannah and Jessica not to eat.”
Tears drizzled down her face, “We pretended to sleep, and after an hour or so the fireplace slid aside. The room was filled with people wearing long black robes, and shadows covered any signs of their faces. They lined the room. When I opened my eyes wider to focus, I lost my sight, Jessica screamed as the chants began, and Hannah started to pray out loud. That is when she lost her voice.” She pressed her lips together and pulled her shoulders back. “We were carried into another room...”
She tried to speak a few times before she got the story to come out. “They...they stripped our clothes and washed our bodies. Dressed us. Then we walked. It was cold, and the ground was uneven, uphill. The air was damp. We stopped. The chants began again then you came like they said you would.”
Everyone was hanging on Olivia’s every word, and now the fear she felt was filling the room.
“Who said she would come?” Chrispin asked softly, being gentler than anyone else was capable of being.
“When they were dressing us, I focused on the people talking. I heard Drake talking to a man with a husky voice. Drake was angry with him, telling him ‘Now you’ve done it. Willow is sure to feel this, and the moon is not full.’ The husky voice just laughed, saying there were always more people to be taken if need be. I prayed you’d come, Willow. I didn’t know what you could do to help, but it was easy to see that Drake was afraid of what you could do.”
Hannah had been nodding along as Olivia spoke, she motioned to me; she wanted something to write on. Dane left the room swiftly and returned with one of my sketchbooks. I tore out a clean sheet and handed it to her.
Hannah began trying to sketch. She drew a necklace it had a star, and she shadowed it to make it look like it was glowing. She then drew arrows pointing to it. Then wrote: old man had it.
“Did that star do something?” Brady asked.
Hannah nodded and drew what looked like a small tornado on the back of the page.
“Okay, Okay. Just calm down. We’ll figure it out,” I promised her, halfway trying to convince myself.
I sensed my father and Ashten’s panic. I glanced to the window and saw them pulling up in front of my house.
Brady glanced to Landen. “Are you ready for this?” he asked. Landen shrugged.
We met them on the front porch. My father’s eyes danced over Landen and me.
“What happened?” Ashten shouted, trying to look behind us. My father quickly looked us both over again. “They’re fine,” he said to Ashten.
I spoke up first, telling them what had happened—how the girls were hurt.
Dad walked in the house. Ashten went to speak, but Landen raised his hand, stopping him. Right then everyone filed outside giving my dad room to work. Almost fifteen minutes passed before Landen and I went back in, hoping he’d figured out what was wrong.
My father was still looking over Jessica as she lay sleeping. Hannah’s confusion was apparent. She couldn’t understand why Dane, my father, and I were all there.
My father smiled warmly back at her. “Listen, we’re going to make you all better, okay. You just need to calm down.”
He then led us into the kitchen and paced before he spoke. “There’s nothing wrong with them—they just think that they can’t see, hear, or speak.”
“What do you mean?” I asked quietly.
“I can see that they’ve been given narcotics or something close to that, but beyond that they’re fine.”
Brady had stepped in the kitchen as Dad was talking.
“I think they’re under some kind of spell,” Brady said. “You heard the chants, didn’t you, Landen?”
My father promptly stood at attention. I seemed to have left that small detail out earlier.
“Chants?” he repeated, making sure he wasn’t mistaken.
“They…umm…were in a room with an altar and chants, but they were sick before that,” Brady said, looking guiltily in our direction.
Dad slid to the floor against the cabinets, bowing his head to his knees. We all rushed to his side. Landen and I could feel how distraught he was, almost to the point of grief. He looked up slowly, reaching for my face and leaning his head toward mine.
“Dad, it’s okay. What’s wrong?” I asked.
He stared forward for a moment before he spoke. “If I’d brought you home, the two of you would have had enough time to prepare yourself. We could have all helped, but now you’re defenseless.”
Landen and I glanced at one another. We knew that we weren’t completely defenseless; our gifts were merging. Not to mention we could leave our bodies as they slept.
“We’re going to be fine, all of us,” Landen said.
My mother tapped lightly on the back door, causing us all to rise. She was genuinely concerned when she saw my father and his composure, but she listened as he gave us instructions. “You need to see if they want to go home now, or if they want to wait until they’re better. If they want to stay, you need to find a way to tell their parents that they’re okay.”
Landen, Brady, and I left the room, giving my father time to explain everything in his own way to my mother. When Brady passed through the entry hall and went back outside, Landen stopped me before we walked into the living room.
“Listen, if we take them back, I want to give them the herb to help them forget. I don’t want them to have to remember that place,” Landen thought.
“If they forget the chants would it break the spell?”
“I don’t know,” Landen thought softly.
I nodded and walked into the living room. They all looked up as I walked into the room, staring at me for some kind of explanation.
“Listen, I don’t know how to explain any of this to you. I can’t tell you when you’ll be better. If you want to go home to your parents, we’ll take you there. If you want to stay here a while longer, you can.”
Hannah turned the page in the sketchbook she was holding and wrote “HOME PLEASE.”
Jessica glanced at her, then back at me for some kind of understanding. Landen walked over, gently took the pad from Hannah, and wrote what I said for Jessica to read.
Jessica wrote the words “Which way will make us better faster?”
I swayed my head, “We don’t know. Dad says that there’s nothing physically wrong that he can see. It’s unexplainable.”
Olivia leaned forward, reaching for my arm. “Do they want to go home?” she asked, I whispered yes, then she turned to where she knew they were sitting and said, “I’m going to stay here...it feels right here.”
I felt like I had won a battle. I wanted to stuff Olivia in my suitcase days ago, but I’d never take her from a comfort she knew. I guess it felt to know as bad luck as I may be, I’d helped someone by just being me.
“Are you sure you want to stay here?” I asked softly.
Olivia grinned. “You get me. I get your crazy. The vibe is right here,” she said glancing blinding around.
Landen then left the room to tell the others what the girls had decided, and I slid down in one of the big chairs in the room trying to plot my next move. I had my friends back, but the draw—need t
o confront Drake had me chains that I could not break free from.
Olivia asked, “Willow, where are we? Who are these people who are trying to help us?”
“My family.”
Jessica tried to speak, but not being able to hear her voice, she was rather loud. “Drake knows that guy with you. He asked if we’d met him yet.”
“Landen? He knows Landen?” My rush of fear caused Landen to look in the window at me.
I thought back to when Drake and Landen were face to face. I couldn’t figure out if they acted like they knew each other or not.
Seeing my surprise, Jessica went on. “He just described him. He thought you two were together.”
Landen came in, hearing the last part of what Jessica said.
“Did he say anything else about us?” I asked.
“He asked a lot about you, Willow. He wanted to know what you painted, why you have that tattoo, if you ever talked about your dreams. What made you scared or happy,” Olivia said.
Landen and I were locked in a stare both questioning what Drake had to do with us.
Aubrey and Felicity arrived. My mom and Felicity gave the girls food and changed them out of the dresses they were in. Brady and Marc took the dresses and jewels the girls were wearing and burned them in one of the side fields. Chrispin hovered near Olivia every chance he could; he seemed to have a goal to make her laugh and succeeded with only a few whispered words.
“Are you getting the same vibe I am,” I asked Landen when he leaned against the wall with me and could see what was in my line of sight.
Landen smirked. “Yeah...I was going to say something to you.”
I glanced up.
“Chrispin saw his beacon right before I made him go into the one with the waterfall. When we came back out, he looked back and it was gone.”
“He doesn’t think that...”
Landen shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t think he’s had a chance to think anything. I just knew you’re still having a hard time with Dane and Carissa. This might too weird, even for us.”
“Not a hard time,” I said grimacing. “I’m just not that lucky. When I do find luck, there’s always a consequence.”
His furrowed brow questioned me.
“If I could’ve only taken two friend’s it would’ve been them. We run with a circle, but...I don’t know, we were just different. Waiting or something.” I tilted my head as I promised myself the worse was behind us. “I just don’t want them hurt. Anyone hurt.”
Our conversation was cut short as Rose arrived at the house. She motioned for us to come to her. We followed her through the kitchen, off the porch, and into the backfield, far away from earshot of the house full of people. Coming to a stop, she turned and crossed her arms, looking at us over her small square glasses.
“Libby mentioned that she saw the two of you in her room last night,” Rose said. She had a proud smile on her face as she measured our response. We looked at each other with guilty smiles on our faces until the realization that our secret was no more suddenly set in.
“The others won’t learn what you can do from me,” she reassured us. “It’s your gift. All I want to do is help you with it.”
“Do you know how she could see us?” I asked.
“Libby is connected to the both of you. The only vision she has directly involves the two of you, or your surroundings. It makes sense that she can see you when others can’t.”
I stared at Landen. Both of us had deep concern coming from us. We felt protective over her. We didn’t want her to see anything as dark as we’d seen that day.
“When your father told me of the way you dream, I was sure that you did meet soul-to-soul. Your bodies are only vessels,” Rose said proudly. “That’s why I agreed with the decision to keep Willow in Infante. I knew you two were never really apart.” Her eyes looked over Landen and me carefully. “Have you learned to use each other’s insight as one yet?”
“If you mean that I can feel emotions and she can see intent, then yes.”
Rose gave off an emotion of surprise, meaning that wasn’t what she meant.
“You now have both,” she said, trying to hold down her excitement.
“We’re just now learning our new ones. It can easily be overlooked because our own is so familiar to us.”
“You both should try to intensify your primary gift.”
“How do you mean?” Landen asked.
“Try seeing intent further away or changing emotions with a touch to those that are here. Don’t push it, or you could hinder your progress. Let it come to you.”
“Can you change emotions?” I asked.
Landen looked fleetingly at me, astonished, then back to Rose. “No wonder you always understood me,” Landen muttered under his breath.
Rose grinned. “We all have the power to change the emotions of the ones around us. A kind word could make someone’s day, just as a harsh one will bring pain. The secret is to know your own energy and use it to fill the room around you. By being connected the way the two of you are, I can only imagine the energy you could find as one.”