Betrayal (Vanish Book Two) Read online

  The woods didn’t frighten me as much as they used to, as much as they should, I had more important things to worry about. I walked forever, unable to see much in front of me. The glow from the trees wasn’t bright enough to show me where I was going. I stepped on something, then I bent over to pick it up; it was a lighter. I checked to see if it worked, it did. I held onto it, in case I needed it. I hoped if I changed my mind, I would be able to find my way back, but I couldn’t change my mind, not now. Everyone around me would be in danger. I didn’t know how long it would take for the Alliance to find me, but until then I would be alone.

  Up ahead, there was a sign posted on a tree. I lit the lighter to get a closer look. It was a shrine or memorial of some kind. There were teddy bears and candles in a circle around the tree. A necklace hung from one of the lower branches. I held the pendant in my hand to get a closer look. It lit up so bright, no matter how far I was from the house, they could probably see it, like a spotlight in the sky. I let go; I was a little startled, but I was still curious. What would happen if I put it on? I took it off the branch holding it by the chain, making sure not to touch the pendant. I put it around my neck and the second I did it felt like it was a part of me. It lit up again, but it dimmed. When I turned toward the sign that I hadn’t yet read, I saw the name Scarlett. I jumped back. There must be thousands of people named Scarlett, I thought to myself. However, when I saw the date written underneath, it was harder to deny.

  October, 28, 1993- September, 7, 1996

  My birthday, but I didn’t die on September, 7, 1996. You’re being crazy, I told myself, it’s just a coincidence, a huge coincidence.

  The necklace stopped glowing, then there was a sudden bright burst of light, and I was surrounded by what I could only hope was hundreds of ghosts. The only other thing it could be was the Alliance. I wasn’t excited about either.

  “You can see us,” one woman said.

  Yes, I could. It was obvious now. They were ghosts, but why couldn’t I see them before? And why were there so many?

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “Evil spirits can come here, there’s nothing stopping them like the living, but this is the one place that they’re scared to go. That doesn’t stop all of them, but we’re safer here,” one of the ghosts explained.

  “I wouldn’t think anything could hurt you, you’re ghosts.”

  “You have a lot left to learn—”

  “And not much time to learn it,” I interrupted.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Alliance is after me,” I answered.

  “You’re safe here, from them at least. Well, besides one loophole….”

  “What’s that?” I wondered.

  “Evil spirits will sometimes take over the bodies of innocent people. Like I said, nothing can really hold back bad spirits,” the ghost asserted.

  “Wait, what are you saying? They possess them?” I asked.

  “No, they kill them, or wait for them to die and take over their bodies completely.”

  “Most of the time,” another one spoke up.

  “There’s one of them among you,” a man said in a nervous tone of voice.

  I looked through the crowd and for an instant, I saw an unmistakable face.

  Someone came up behind me and put a bag over my head. They carried me away without trouble, even though I kicked and screamed and clawed at them. I kicked them pretty hard, and they dropped me. I took the bag off my head and looked up in horror.

  “What the hell?” I screamed.

  “Don’t make this difficult Scarlett. One way or another, you’re coming with us,” Grace said.

  “What? Where?” I asked, terrified.

  “We haven’t exactly decided yet. Keep your power or turn you in to the Alliance. Decisions, decisions,” Dante laughed.

  “Dante, how could you do this to me?” I cried.

  He didn’t answer. He walked back over, getting ready to drag me off again. I kicked him in the shin as he walked over, and then I got up and went invisible. I ran faster than I’d ever run before. Soon, I saw the lights hanging off the trees in the distance. I thought about screaming, but that could either help or hurt me.

  When I made it to the door, I ran inside and locked it. I noticed Cooper wasn’t there, so not wanting to disrupt the party, I ran towards Cooper’s room. Before I got to his door, I went visible with ease, and ran in.

  “Cooper,” I sobbed. “I think Grace and Dante want to kill me.” Before I knew it, I was hugging him. He pushed me off of him. “What’s wrong?” I wondered.

  “Nothing, you should go,” he snapped.

  “Did you not hear me? Dante and Grace are after me,” I cried.

  “Just go. Go tell my mom or something, I don’t care, just leave me alone.”

  “I don’t understand, what is this about?” I demanded.

  “Just leave. Maybe someday you’ll find out,” he looked uncomfortable, and it seemed like he was mad at himself. His eyes focused on the necklace I found in the woods.

  “Please just tell me what I did, and then I’ll leave,” I promised.

  “I should have known,” he looked down. “Scarlett,” he whispered to himself. “But how would I have known? For all I knew—” he looked back up at me and stopped; it seemed as though he had forgotten I was there.

  “I don’t care if you want me to leave, I will, just please tell me what I did.”

  “You didn’t do anything. Thank God you didn’t want to do anything; I don’t think I could live with myself,” he said under his breath.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Please just leave. I can’t look at you.” He looked disgusted.

  “Fine,” I said.

  I walked out the door and turned around to shut it. The moment the door was closed, someone put their hand over my mouth. They dragged me into George and Elizabeth’s room across the hall. Then they pulled me out a sliding glass door, and over to the house. When they got me inside, they threw me down on the floor.

  “First, you’re going to call Elizabeth and tell her that we need to leave. Tell her something happened at my house,” Dante said. “And then you’re going to go to the car without a fight.”

  “Why are you doing this Dante?” I pleaded for an answer.

  “He never cared about you,” Grace laughed.

  I got up and went to run out the door, but Dante grabbed me by my hair and put a knife to my throat. How had he been in on this the entire time? I really thought he had cared about me.

  “Give me the necklace,” Dante demanded. “We can take her powers and kill her here, and then we’ll decide what to do with them.” Grace handed him a necklace, but before he could get it around my neck, someone came up behind them, and hit them with something.

  I turned around and there stood Dante, in his underwear, with a broken chair in his hands. I looked around the room; I wasn’t quite sure what was going on.

  “Dante?” I asked as tears streamed down my face.

  “Scarlett, meet Skylar,” he said as he motioned to the man, lying knocked out on the floor.

  “What— what happened? Why are you only wearing boxers?”

  “Well, I thought the call was from my mom, but apparently Skylar escaped and stole her phone. He came here to pretend to be me, and he stole my clothes.”

  “What do you mean Skylar escaped?”

  “We had him locked in our basement. We thought he had something to do with Grace’s disappearance. Not to mention the fact that I needed him out of the way for me to be able to pretend I was him, the only other choice would have been to kill him.”

  “So he’s evil, isn’t he? How could he come here?”

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t him that tried to kill Grace,” he pointed out.

  “Yeah, but he just tried to kill me,” I argued.

  “I don’t know,” he sighed.

  “We need to call Elizabeth,” I said as I ran over to the phone.

  �
�What about her party, are you sure we should interrupt? I think we can handle this by ourselves…” he pondered.

  “What are you planning to do?”

  “I don’t know, I guess we tie them up. Keep them in the basement until tomorrow morning, then we’ll see what George and Elizabeth say.”

  “Do you know what powers Skylar has?” I asked.

  “No,” he replied.

  Skylar jumped up and ran out the door, as we tried to follow him, something stopped us from going out the door. I didn’t see anything until we ran into it, and then it lit up blue. By the time we got past it Skylar was long gone. We searched around the outside of the house, forgetting about Grace, and when we returned she, too, was gone.

  “We need to tell Elizabeth,” I urged.

  “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll call her. Go make sure all the doors and windows are locked.”

  “Okay,” I said as I ran to the front door, and locked it.

  I went to every last window and made sure they were all locked. Then, I got the back door and the balcony doors, just in case.

  When I came back down stairs, Dante was sitting on the couch with his head in his hands. I sat down next to him.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

  “Tell you what?” My mind was a blur; I could hardly concentrate on anything.

  “That the Alliance is coming.”

  “We already thought they were after us, remember? And I’m sorry if I forgot to mention it with everything else going on.”

  “You’re safe as long as you’re here,” he assured. It sounded more like he was trying to convince himself rather than me.

  “I don’t know that, Skylar came here without a problem, and as long as I’m here no one is safe,” I protested.

  “Are you insane? You can’t leave—“

  “I have to. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, and I need to confront my mom.”

  “Wait, so you’re telling me that you’re going to risk your life so you can confront your mom?” he said in disbelief.

  “I need to do this… while I still can,” I explained. He gave me a dirty look. “What? You don’t think I deserve answers? You don’t think I deserve to know why she did what she did?”

  “Grace just tried to kill you, and now you need answers as to why your mom tried to kill her?”

  “No, not just that.” I realized I hadn’t told him, or anyone. “She was going to sell me, sell my power.”

  “That’s not reason enough to—”

  “There are a million things that I need to know, and if you don’t understand that…. I’m not asking you or anyone else to go with me; this is just something I need to do,” I proclaimed.

  “If you’re going, then I’m coming with you.”

  “It’s not safe for you to come with me.”

  “It’s not safe to go, period, but I’m not letting you go alone,” he argued

  “Fine tomorrow morning, we’ll go.”

  He went upstairs to get dressed. I lay in bed thinking about what would happen tomorrow. I needed answers, but more than that, I hoped these answers somehow proved my mom innocent, but I didn’t see that happening. Before I knew it, I was asleep, something I thought would never come.

  The three quiet girls standing in front of me didn’t frighten me, though I felt they should. Their eyes were fixed on me, but they didn’t move. I stood there as calm as I could manage, the greatest power I had to claim. I knew this would be bad; I could see the malicious look in each of their eyes. They took a step forward, and I took two steps back. They stayed where they were without a word. I thought about running, but I didn’t know where I was, deep in the woods. The trees didn’t glow, so I knew I wasn’t near Elizabeth and George’s anymore. I also knew I could be in some real danger.

  Finally, I spoke. “Are you with the Alliance?” I asked, keeping the fear far away from my voice.

  “The Alliance?” one of the girls laughed. “Oh the Alliance is nothing compared to us.”

  Frozen in fear, I hadn’t noticed their bright-red locks streaming down. The same red hair that I had. Nor had I noticed, that the eyes that bore into mine were the exact shade of bright green that I stared back with.

  “So who are y—you?” I stammered. The calm had been washed away, replaced with unmistakable horror.

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” a different girl spoke. They each had different features, none the same as the other, the same as me, but if I was standing beside them, we could all be mistaken for quadruplets.

  “What do you want?” I choked.

  “Well that’s hard to answer. I guess it depends on what you decide to do,” the girl on the right threatened.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  Chapter 5: Revenge

  My eyes popped open. The afternoon sun was blinding. The clock said it was two. I got out of bed and threw on some jeans and a black T-shirt. I ran out the front door and searched for Dante. I finally found him at George and Elizabeth’s sitting with them at the table. They all looked over with disappointment.

  “You told them,” I accused.

  “I had to, Scarlett,” Dante reasoned.

  “You cannot leave here,” Elizabeth protested.

  “I’m so sorry. I can’t thank you two enough, but I need to do this.” I looked over at Dante, “with or without your help.”

  “No.” Elizabeth said and walked away.

  “I’m sorry, what do you mean, no?” I objected.

  “I mean,” she said as she turned around. “You’re not going.”

  “So you’re going to keep me here forever like a prisoner?”

  “Honey, she’s right,” George finally spoke.

  “You know I can’t let her do this, and you know why,” Elizabeth disagreed

  “The Alliance? I’ll be fine. Skylar somehow managed to come here. Everyone is safer if I leave, and that includes me.”

  “That’s not it,” Elizabeth said with her back turned to me.

  “I’m sorry, but this is something I need to do. She’s my mother, but she’s never been a mother to me, and then she does this…” I trailed off.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, she’s—” Elizabeth started.

  “Elizabeth, we need to let her do this. She will find out what she needs to… on her own.”

  I looked at both of them, switching my eyes between them every few seconds. It was like they were speaking in codes or something, like they knew something I didn’t.

  “I will come back… if I’m welcome, but I need to confront her.”

  “I’m sorry. I know. This is more about you getting hurt, than what could result.” She grabbed two bags of dirt off of the table.

  “Thank you Elizabeth. I’ll come back. I promise.”

  “If you’re going, I’m going,” Dante said.

  “You don’t have to. It’s your choice,” I murmured.

  “I’m not letting you go alone.”

  “Here take this, too,” Elizabeth said as she grabbed a cell phone off the table. Since Dante already had one, I took it and put it in my pocket.

  “Good luck,” George said as we walked out the door.

  When we reached the car, it was obvious how nervous Dante was. He put the bags in the glove compartment, and as he did, I noticed his hands were shaking.

  “You don’t have to do this.” I looked over at him. “I can find another way, or you could let me borrow your car.”

  “No, I’m not going to let you do this alone. I’m sure the whole thing with the Alliance is exaggerated. I’ve never heard of them going after someone to that extent, no matter what the circumstances.”

  “Well I hope you’re right,” I smiled the best fake smile I could. Just like in my dream last night, I needed to appear calm and confident. I watched the road ahead covered on both sides with trees, when suddenly everything changed. There was nothing around at all, just long grass and fields. I looked over
at Dante to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

  “My powers have gotten stronger,” he explained. “I think you had a big part in that.”

  “How?” I wondered.

  “Just being near you, I feel stronger. I bet if I tried to take us right to your mom’s house I could, but then I might not be able to get us out if I needed to,” he sighed.

  “How far away are we? And how did you take the car with us?”

  “We’re not very far, and I don’t know I just tried it, and it worked. It was actually less difficult than I thought.”

  “Are we going to be passing the mental hospital?” I asked. I still wanted to know what the deal with that was. Now that I knew about our powers, I knew what went on at that hospital could have been even weirder than what I thought before.

  “No. We already did.”

  “We’re already that close?” I asked, stunned.

  “Yeah, coming from her house took a lot longer because there were a lot of stops, and I didn’t teleport us.”

  “So this is it huh? In a few short minutes, I will get to confront her.”

  The wind blew like crazy, and it looked like it was about to storm. The ground was wet because it had been raining earlier.

  “Yep,” he took in a deep breath. As we turned down the road, I thought I was going to be sick. He drove right past the house.

  “What are you doing?”

  “No one’s home. So, we can wait inside and catch them by surprise. I’m going to park the car down the street.”

  “Okay.” As I went to get out of the car, he grabbed my arm. “What?” I asked. He reached under the seat and pulled out a manila envelope with my name on it.

  “Here,” he said as he handed it to me. I recognized it; it was the only file that was in Meadowbrook, the one with my name on it.

  “You took this? You had this the whole time?” I yelled.

  “Yes, I just thought with everything going on it would be better to wait. I never looked at what’s inside of it though, I swear.” I couldn’t doubt the look on his face; it was so sincere.