Chapter 16

I sat in Esme’s class mostly drifting off into daydreams. The atmosphere still felt depressing after the funeral yesterday. Esme didn’t even seemed to be at her brightest. I started to think about the possibility of their being a cure, and a half-demon, half-angel type being out there. These days reproducing with a demon or even going on one date with one was frowned upon. From both sides. I finally tuned into the class. Esme was talking about Lord Nicholas, and yet again Eric was amazed by her lecture. I had no idea what his fascination with the Lord was. When the bell finally rang I packed up my stuff. As I got ready to leave, I noticed Eric had walked over to Esme’s desk. I walked over.

“Ms. Greene, could I ask you a few questions?” He asked. She smiled.

“Of course you can, Eric.” She said.

“It has to stay between us.” She gave him a curious look, but nodded. “Do you know anything about The Fallen?” This definitely sparked her interest.

“Well yes, of course, but why the sudden curiosity?”

“We’re just curious. You know, young minds always full of questions.” I said. She eyed us warily before answering.

“What do you want to know?”

“Do you know if they actually exist?” asked Eric.

“Well I didn’t when I first heard about them. But I was travelling around London, and just so happened to run into one. It was a girl not much older than you two. Her name was Mary-Lynn if I remember correctly.” said Esme. “I don’t know where she is now, or if she’s even alive. But if she is then I assume she’s still somewhere in London. I can confirm that they are in fact real, despite how many people call me crazy, but they’re very rare.”

“Thanks Ms. Greene. If we have anymore questions, we’ll be sure to ask.” said Eric. We walked out and hurried to our next class.

I didn’t enjoy having gym today. I was running around the gym during the warm up with Dawn, when Jasper caught up to us. Dawn sped up a bit, giving us some privacy - sort of. I knew what Jasper wanted to talk about. He wanted to talk about us being best friends again. I honestly had no idea how I was going to answer him. I hadn’t done much thinking about it over the past couple of months. I tried to ignore how hot he looked in his gym uniform. Even if I did agree to being Jasper’s best friend again, I certainly didn’t want him knowing about our plan. If Jasper found out about it, I know he would blab about it to Matt or Ariane.

“Have you thought about our conversation yet?” He asked. That was his opening sentence? I sighed.

“No, Jasper, I haven’t. I’m sorry but I’ve been caught up with other things.” I said.

“Right... Sorry.”

“I’ll give it more thought and let you know at Matt’s party. Sound like a deal?” I asked. Jasper nodded.

“Alright, deal.” He said and then sped up. I caught up to Dawn.

“What was that about?” She asked. I sighed.

“Him wanting to know if I thought about our conversation at all. I told him I’d give him an answer at Matt’s party.” I said.

After gym class, Dawn and I headed to the dining hall for lunch. I grabbed a hot dog with ketchup, some fries and a soda with some chocolate cake on the side. We walked over and sat with our friends. Eric was flipping through the pages of the old book. Wyatt was looking at it, trying to keep up, but failing because Eric was a faster reader than him. Austin was chowing down on a cheeseburger. I looked around the dining hall. Jasper was sitting with Ariane and Matt. I could only assume that they were talking about Matt’s party. I turned back to my hotdog and took a bite.

“This book has a lot of interesting things in it.” said Eric. I looked at him.

“Yeah, if only you could let me read some of it.” said Wyatt. Dawn giggled.

“Eric, have you been reading that thing all day?” I asked. He nodded. “Where did you even get it?”

“My father gave it to me just before we left Hollywood.” He said.

“So, Esme said that she met one of The Fallen in London. Her name was like Mary-Lynn or something.” I said.

“So does this mean we’ll be taking a trip to London?” asked Wyatt.

“If we can plan a trip for during Christmas break...” Eric said. He closed the book and fixed his glasses a bit. “Two weeks doesn’t give us much time, considering we have no idea where to look really or who to look for, but it’s better than nothing.” Austin turned towards me.

“I don’t mean to change the subject, but before I get, would you like to go on a date tonight? I was thinking we could go to a movie again, since you wanted to see that other one. You know, with the little people and that wizard guy?” He said. Eric slapped his forehead and shook his head.

“You mean The Hobbit?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s the one!” said Austin. Sometimes Austin amazed me at how little he knew. I giggled.

“Sure Austin. I’d love that.” I said. Something to look forward to after school.

After lunch I headed to our training class with Eric and Austin. Our instructor had us start off with some basic moves, and basic sparing techniques. He then had us move onto using our light spells on dummies. Finally, the thing I needed to work on the most. My fighting techniques were the top in my class, but my spells could use some work. After my training class, I headed up to my room. I couldn’t wait to check my emails. Hopefully Devitri had replied back to my email from last night. When I got up to my room, Dawn wasn’t there yet, but pillows and blankets were thrown everywhere. Clothes were scattered all over the floor, and books had fallen from our desks. I dropped my bag to the floor. I searched around to make sure nothing was stolen. To my luck, nothing was. Dawn arrived at our room and gasped at the mess.

“What happened!” She exclaimed.

“I have no idea. I think someone was trying to look for something...” I said.

“Who do you think it was? And what on earth could they be looking for?” She asked. I sighed.

“I don’t know.” My phone buzzed. It was a text from Eric. “Eric and Wyatt’s rooms were broken into as well. Let’s get this mess cleaned up.”

Dawn and I managed to put everything back in it’s place. I sat down at my computer and opened my email. I smiled when I saw that Devitri had replied back. The subject had been Finally home! and I clicked on it. The email was small and simple:

I’ve managed to make it home finally! Hope everything’s okay over there. I hope school went okay. Reply when you can!

He ended the email with a smiley face, and I replied back, Glad you made it home okay. School’s fine. Everything here is okay except that our room was broken into and trashed. Eric and Wyatt’s room was trashed as well.

I hadn’t expected to get such a quick response. I figured Devitri was too busy that it would take him hours to respond. But I got his response five minutes later.

What! That’s terrible! Do you know who it was? Do I have to fly back there? Do you know what they want?

I responded, No, we don’t know who it was. No, you don’t have to fly back here and, no we don’t know what they want. Anyway, I have to start getting ready for my date with Austin. I’ll email you tonight.

Another instant response, Have fun little sora. But not too much fun. He applied a winky face and I rolled my eyes. I shut my laptop and proceeded to get ready for my movie date.

I put on a pair of jeans and a nice v-neck shirt. Dawn curled my hair while I did my makeup. I didn’t see the point in getting too dressed up for a movie. I met austin down in the parking lot. He looked handsome in his jeans and a grey v-neck shirt. His hair looked extra soft tonight. He walked over and hugged me. Boy did he smell great. I’m not sure what cologne he used, but I knew I didn’t want him to stop using it. He opened the door for me and I got into the car. As he got in, he immediately started a conversation. I just wish he had picked a different topic.

“Did you hear?” He asked. “Eric and Wyatt’s room got broken into.”

“Yeah, I know. Eric told me. My room got trashed too.” I said.

“Who do you think it was?” I wish people would stop asking me that. I hated questions that I didn’t know the answer to.

“I have no idea, but I could take a wild guess.”

It could have been anyone really, and it certainly couldn’t have been a demon or a Dark Angel. If they had humans working for them, we were in trouble or worse... Light Angels. I highly doubted that possibility though.

“If it was a Dark Angel, then they probably want the book.” said Austin. I looked at him.

“What? Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Come on, Sky. They can’t all be stupid. I know there are some out there who are as smart as Eric, if not smart.” He said. If that was even possible. “I’m sure they figured out about  the spell, and that it was probably in that book. How they guessed that one of us had, I don’t know yet. But it’s obvious they must have gotten a human or something to try and snatch the book. We’re lucky Eric brings it around with him everywhere.”

“Wait, that doesn’t make any sense... Why would they want that spell? They’re whole purpose in this life is to turn others into one of them.” I said.

“Good point. But didn’t Dawn say that Ethan guy wanted to be freed? Maybe he’s the one behind this.” said Austin. I found that highly unlikely, but you could never be too sure.

We pulled up to the theatre and walked up to the ticket guy. Austin ordered two tickets to see The Hobbit. After getting our popcorn, candy and soda we headed to our directed theatre. We chose some seats in the back. We were just in time for the previews. People probably thought we were weird, but we loved watching the previews. We always pointed to the ones we liked and promised to see them. I stopped at a preview for some kid’s movie, and looked at where people were coming into the theatre. I couldn’t believe what I saw. Two guys wearing sunglasses and a girl was with them. I grabbed Austin’s arm quickly and, probably tighter than I had planned. He looked at me.

“Hey, watch it there Sky. What is it?” He asked. I pointed towards the bottom rows. “Skylar, I’m pretty sure even demons and Dark Angels like to watch movies.” He lowered his voice for that sentence. I glared at him.

“We can’t let them know we’re here.” I said. He put his arm around my shoulder and brought me close to him.

“Then try not to talk so much and they won’t notice.” He said with a chuckle. He took a sip of his soda.

Thankfully they didn’t notice us throughout the whole movie. We walked out of the theatre, glad that they left first. As we walked along the hall, Austin held my hand. He suddenly pulled me aside and brought my behind one of those giant movie cardboard cutouts. Before I could speak, he grabbed my cheeks and kissed me. It was another one of his wonderful kisses. Warm. Soft. Gentle. I never wanted his lips to leave mine, but he pulled away as he heard a scoff from behind us.

“Get a room you two.” a voice said. It was Aeryn’s. Austin turned around and looked at her with his arms crossed.

“How lovely of you to interrupt us.” He said. He brought me out from behind the cutout. Roland and Ben were standing there. “Great, you two.”

“Did you two enjoy the movie?” asked Roland. “We did.”

“Why did you send someone to go snooping through our rooms?” I blurted out. I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t tell from behind their sunglasses, but I assumed they were giving me some kind of confused look. Ben’s question confirmed as such.

“What in the world are you talking about?” He asked. He sounded generally confused.

“You sent a human into our room to search for something.” I said. Roland chuckled.

“We don’t even like humans. Why would we possibly ask one to do a favor for us? We’re capable of doing our own favors. If we really wanted something from your rooms, we would have found a way to do it ourselves.” He said.

“Not that that would be possible.” added Austin. Aeryn walked up to him. She was standing a bit closer than I liked.

“You obviously don’t know what they’re capable of.” She said. I could tell Roland didn’t like how close she was standing to Austin either. He walked over and took her hand.

“Let’s go babe. Before we end up making a scene.” He said. “I assure you two, none of us had anything to do with your rooms being trashed. I’m many things but a liar isn’t one of them.” He walked away with Aeryn and Ben. Well, back to square one.

We had to find out who broke into our rooms, and what they wanted. If it wasn’t those three, then who was it? Austin brought me out to the car and we got in. He drove back to the school, and the whole ride there I tried to figure out what was going on. I had a feeling that this was just the beginning...