"So this is the place, huh?" I said, moving closer to Henry and wrapping my arm tightly around the crook of his elbow. We were standing in front of a house where a crowd, holding candles, had gathered just outside. The sky was a deep shade of midnight blue, and the candles glowed within that darkness like tiny beacons.
I pressed my face against Henry's arm and breathed in his scent. He smelled like a mixture of pine, leather, and bonfire. I felt my pounding heart slow down a couple of beats. I exhaled in relief.
What we were about to do was probably not going to end well. The last victim's family we had approached, the father had shoved a gun into our faces and threatened to shoot us if we didn't leave. Our other previous attempts to talk to the other families had also not gone well, but the gun was a first.
We had been investigating the disappearances of the kids ever since Henry had noticed the strange symbols associated with all the disappearances, a pentagram with irregular symbols written above each point of the star. What had drawn our interest to it was that Henry seemed to have remembered seeing a similar symbol in Greta's office back at the academy.
We approached a woman handing out candles to those who didn't have one yet. She had tired, sad-looking blue eyes, and her white-blonde hair looked like it hadn't been washed in days. Judging by her unkempt appearance, the woman was either the mother of the girl who had vanished, or someone was very close to her.
"Thank you for coming," she said and handed me one and then one to Henry. She lit both of them with a lighter.
Even though I had been living in this world for almost a year, I still couldn't quite get used to the fact that people had to use devices for things we normally accomplished with magic. Back in our world, we could've just lit that candle with a snap of our fingers; no matter what element you were, you were capable of simple spells from other elements. You were actually capable of more complex spells of the other elements, too, but that fact had been hidden from the general population a long time ago, as I had learned.
"Excuse me," Henry said. "Are you Savannah Blair's mom?"
"I am, did you go to school with her?" she asked.
"No, but do you mind showing us the spot that they found the symbol? He asked with no emotion whatsoever in his voice. "I'm so sorry your daughter is missing."
I tensed up. "Henry!" I whispered angrily, "We've been over this. You've got to be really sensitive when asking someone a question like that!"
"I said I was sorry her daughter was missing!?"
The woman tensed up and opened her mouth to speak.
Here it comes, I thought, and braced myself to be yelled outz
But before she could say anything, a girl with brown hair and similar blue eyes appeared beside her.
"Mom, let's just show it to them," the girl said, touching the blonde woman's arm gently.
"But Santana, your sister's disappearance is not for someone's entertainment per-" the woman began.
"Mom, these freaks won't go away until they get what they want, don't you remember that group of boys? They broke into our house in the middle of the night and went into her room, searching for that stupid mark! I don't know about you, but I'd rather not wake up to that again!" She glared at us, "If you follow me, I'll show you, but only if you promise to leave right after I do."
"We will," Henry said, and I sighed in relief. That had gone a lot better than I had expected.
The girl turned and began pushing her way through the crowd.
I looked at Henry, and we both nodded. We both blew out our candles and handed them back to the woman before following her through the mass of people.
We eventually reached the front of the crowd, where a red rope drew the line between where people were allowed to stand and where they weren't. The girl ducked under the rope, and we copied her motion.
"Hey, you can't go past the rope! The house is off limits to everyone, except the police and family!" A nameless person protested from somewhere in the sea of faces, now all looking at us with anger and disgust.
The girl turned her head to look at them. "I am family, I'm her sister." She continued towards the house.
From behind us, I heard someone in the crowd say. "So that's the twin sister. Poor girl! It must be hard to have someone so close to you vanish."
We crossed the front lawn and stepped onto a sidewalk leading to the front door. When we were almost to the door, she held out a hand to stop us.
"I thought you said you were going to show us the symbol?" Henry said.
I elbowed him in the stomach, but I was thinking the same thing. All the other symbols had been found inside the homes of the other children, mostly in their rooms, but the newspaper hadn't mentioned where this most recent girl's pentagram had been found yet. She had only been gone for four days, so it was too soon for that information to be released to the public.
"Your girlfriend is standing on it," the girl said coolly.
I looked down at my feet, but I didn't see anything. I looked back up again to see both the girl and Henry staring at me. I stared back at them in confusion.
"Violet, move your feet," Henry said quietly.
"Oh, sorry!" I said, backing up a little, revealing the pentagram, about the size of my palm, burnt into the sidewalk.
Henry knelt beside it and traced it lightly with his fingertip before glancing up at me. "It's the same symbol I saw in her office, now I'm sure."
"So it is definitely her?" I asked solemnly.
Henry glanced at the girl still standing beside us, "We should talk about that somewhere else." He stood and turned to leave.
I looked at the girl one final time.
"Thanks for showing this to us, and I'm sorry about your sister. I hope she will be able to come home soon!" I smiled at her before I turned to follow Henry.
"Wait, who are you talking about!? What office!?" The girl called after us, and I saw Henry beginning to move a little faster up ahead. I jogged to catch up to him. He easily blended into the night in his place t-shirt and pants, and I knew if I wasn't careful, he would disappear into the night.
From behind me, I heard the sound of light footsteps, and I knew the girl had begun to chase us.
"I said wait!" the girl yelled.
Suddenly, I tripped over something in the dark, and I went down, landing hard on my knees.
"Ow," I mumbled and screamed when something warm moved underneath my legs.
"Violet!" Henry called out in alarm. The next moment, he was standing over me. He reached down and yanked me off the warm, moving mass, then pulled me to his chest. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah, I just fell, but what did I trip over? It moved!?"
That answer came when a beam of light appeared from the darkness and lit up whatever I had tripped over. It was a boy with curly brown hair and round glasses, who was now slowly picking himself off the grass.
"Arnold!" the girl yelled, coming up from behind us, holding a flashlight which she had pointed at the boy. "What are you doing in my backyard, you little creep!?"
The boy straightened his glasses and stared back at us from behind their lenses, "Investigating the spontaneous black hole phenomena," he said in a matter-of-fact voice.
Henry let me go, moved closer to the boy, "What do you mean by spontaneous black hole phenomena?"
"The girl shone her flashlight onto him. Oh no, I'm the one asking the questions here, not you."
She then showed the beam of light onto my face, and I squinted in the brightness. "Now what do you two know about that weird symbol!"
"I'll tell you about the black hole. It was awesome. It appeared right behind Savannah and swallowed her whole! Nobody believes me, though not even my mom!"
The girl pointed the flashlight back at the boy. "Shut up about your stupid black hole. Savannah didn't get eaten by one, because black holes don't just appear out of nowhere and suck people up!"
"Oh yeah, if black holes don't just appear out of nowhere, then what's that forming behind you?" the boy asked and pointed at the girl.
We all turned our heads just in time to see a black hole crackling with blue lightning pop into existence right behind the girl. She barely had time to scream before it began to duck her in, but not before I had a chance to stumble forward and reach out and grab her outstretched hand.