Chapter Six
Mom wasn’t at home waiting for me when I got there and she still wasn’t answering her cell. She hadn’t shown up by the time I started dinner, but I cooked for the both of us anyway, and eventually sat down to eat by myself. Desperately needing a distraction, I flipped through the channels until I found a movie starring one of those goofy guys from Superbad and forced myself to watch it. Ever try watching a comedy when you’re just not in the mood to laugh? Apparently, it has the opposite effect, or so I found out when I started to feel even more on edge than I’d been before.
Putting the leftovers in the fridge for Mom, I practically jumped out of my skin when my phone went off. My heart hammering in my chest, I flipped open my phone without even looking at the caller ID.
“Mom?” I asked. I hadn’t intended for my voice to sound so hopeful, but I couldn’t help it.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t her on the other end.
“Hadley?” It took me a few seconds to place the voice.
“Jinx?”
“Yeah,” she said meekly. I could feel the fear coming through the phone as clearly as if she’d expressed it out loud. It was more than just the hesitation in her voice, though. Right now it was as if I was feeling what she was feeling. And her emotions were overwhelming. For a second, this threw me off, because for as long as I’d known Jinx, she’d always been in control. She was never over-the-top; she was even-keeled. Calm and collected. Prim and proper, without being a total Stepford. Her easygoing attitude made it so that she got along with pretty much everyone. There wasn’t a person who didn’t like her—including me. So the fact that she was now acting a little unhinged set off alarms in my head.
“What’s wrong, Jinx?” I asked.
“Have you seen my parents? They left last night—said they were going to meet your mom and the rest of the Cleri for something—and, well, see . . .”
Her voice trailed off and I was left waiting on the line for a few seconds. I wanted to tell her to spit it out, but forced myself to take a deep breath before talking. “What happened, Jinx?”
“They never came home,” she finally said. And with those words, my heart sank. It wasn’t just my mom. “I tried calling Jackson first, but couldn’t get ahold of him. So I thought maybe you’d heard from your mom and knew where they were? That you could tell me that they’re okay? Are you still there?”
I’d only had a few conversations with Jinx before, and none of them had been outside of witch classes, yet here she was asking me to give her answers. Sure, I’d been the second person she’d contacted, but she obviously thought I could help. And I wanted so badly to do that.
After all, she’d always been kind to me—on the rare occasions that we’d said more than a few words to each other, at least. And despite the fact that Jinx had experienced a much more luxurious upbringing than I had, she’d never treated me or anyone else like we were below her. We might’ve even been friends if we’d gone to the same school and I’d been able to devote the kind of time that went into a friendship.
I wished I could shed some light on the situation that was clearly stressing her out. Unfortunately, I was just as in the dark as she was.
I must have gone momentarily catatonic because Jinx had to say my name a few more times before I responded.
“I’m here,” I said finally. “I’m sorry, Jinx. The truth is, I haven’t heard from my mom since last night either.”
The line buzzed with white noise as neither of us said what we were both thinking. So I broke the silence. “Listen, I’m going to give the others a call and see if anyone else has heard from our parents, and then I’ll call you back, okay?”
I knew this wasn’t what Jinx wanted to hear, but the wheels in my head were already spinning and I didn’t have time to console her. I had to find out what was going on. Still, I felt bad about leaving her feeling so helpless.
“We’re going to figure this out. I promise,” I said before hanging up and heading to my room to find the others’ numbers.
First I called Sascha. And then Jasmine. When I’d gone through my entire witchy address book, I finally dialed Fallon’s number, not even bothering with pleasantries. As I hung up, I collapsed back onto my bed, eyes wide and feeling eerily numb. If I hadn’t been positive that I was awake, I would’ve thought I was having a nightmare. But there was no doubt this was really happening.
No one had heard from any of our parents in over a day, and the sinking feeling was steadily growing in the pit of my stomach.
I stared up at the ceiling, noticing for the first time that there was a discoloration right above my head in the shape of a turkey. Like the kind of turkey you made in first grade by outlining your hand. How had I never noticed that before?
I blinked. I had to snap out of it.
Picking up the phone again, I dialed the only number I hadn’t called yet. And I didn’t have to wait long for someone to answer.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Peter said before I could even say hello.
“Something’s definitely going on,” I answered, unwilling to confirm what I thought he was saying. Before I went overboard with conspiracy theories, I had to assess things for myself. And Peter might be the only one who had the clues I needed. “The Cleri held an emergency meeting last night. You know anything about it?”
“Your mom was over here for a little bit with a few of the others, and they were talking about getting the group together. They thought I wasn’t listening, but I was,” he said, sounding slightly guilty.
“That’s great, Peter,” I said, encouragingly. “Did you hear where they were going?”
My pulse was racing. If Peter didn’t know this, we really had no leads. And my fear was that time was already running out for our parents.
“They said something about trees or bushes,” he said.
“They met in a park?” I asked, confused.
“No, it was like a type of tree, I think,” he said slowly. “Name some trees and maybe something will sound familiar.”
Thank God I aced my environmental science class freshman year. “Fir. Maple. Spruce. Evergreen. Elm. Pine—”
“Elm! It was the Elm. Or maybe Elm Street. No, it was definitely the Elm. They didn’t say where it was exactly, but it seemed like it was kind of close to here.”
I pumped my arms in the air in victory. Then I remembered that I was alone in my room, and I let them drop back down to my sides. I could celebrate later, when I’d found our parents. The important thing was that we had a name of the last place the Cleri was before . . . well, before they never came home.
But I couldn’t think about that right now. I had to keep my focus on the job at hand. “Peter, you’re amazing,” I said happily. “And if you weren’t total jailbait, I’d definitely kiss you for this.”
I hopped off the bed and scurried over to my computer, quickly typing in “The Elm” and the city Peter lived in as well as the surrounding areas. I had no idea what I was looking for: a restaurant, a hotel, a church. It could be just about anything.
My heart sank when only a few listings popped up. One was for a dance club about an hour away. The second for a diner right off Highway 64. And the last appeared to be a warehouse that stored construction equipment. None of them sounded like places where the Cleri would meet.
But this was the only lead we had.
So we had to narrow it down. No way were a bunch of old people hanging out in a club, so I crossed that one off the list. And when I called the diner to find out the hours, an answering machine message told me that it had closed earlier that year. So that left only the warehouse.
Once again I dialed Peter’s number and waited for him to answer. When he did, I started right in. “Give your aunt and uncle an excuse so you can get out of the house. We’ll pick you up in an hour.”
It ended up taking longer than I thought to round everyone up, and I didn’t pull up to Peter’s until an hour and a half later. By that time, my stomach was upset over the fact that I was running so late. It had already grown dark and I could barely see Peter standing in front of some bushes just out of eyeshot of the house, behind him. I hadn’t even come to a full stop when he pulled open the back door and jumped inside.
“Whoa, Speed Racer, what’s the rush?” Jasmine asked Peter sarcastically before I sped off down the street.
“My aunt thinks I left forty-five minutes ago to work on a school project,” he explained, throwing back the hood of his sweatshirt. “They’d freak if they saw me get into a car full of kids.”
“But we’re not just kids, we’re twitches,” Sascha said from the passenger seat.
Peter looked at her like he had no idea what she was talking about.
“She means teen witches. Twitches,” I said.
“Ohhhh,” he said, nodding. I saw Jasmine roll her eyes and then look out her window, already bored with the conversation. Her requisite black ensemble made her nearly disappear into the darkness of the backseat.
“Well, twitches or not, they’d freak if they knew what we were doing,” Peter said, settling back into his seat. “Ever since my parents . . .” His words trailed off as if he didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
I instantly felt awful about what Peter must be going through. Here we all were, freaking out over having not heard from our parents in less than a day when Peter’s family had been gone for twice as long. And in the Glovers’ case, there was proof of a struggle. A struggle that had ended badly. At least the rest of us still had hope that our parents were just holed up somewhere.
I knew it was a long shot, but it was better than the alternative.
“It’s all right, Peter. We get it. They’re a little overprotective right now because of everything going on,” I said.
He just nodded from his place in the back.
“Not to change the subject or anything, but do we know where we’re going?” Sascha asked, chomping on her gum. I’d picked her up first and she hadn’t shut up since she got in the car. If it were anyone else, I’d think it was simply nervous energy, but Sascha was a bit of a chatterbox to begin with. I’d just never been stuck in a car with her for a half hour before. Still, a nonstop monologue was better than silence. My mind tended to wander to dark places when it wasn’t occupied. Sascha usually kept things light—her favorite topics of conversation were celebrities, boys, or celebrity boys. I typically thought this was endearing. But tonight I couldn’t help but feel there were more important things going on than Taylor Swift’s latest relationship.
“We’re headed to the Elm warehouse over on one-nineteenth,” I answered for the third time that night. The GPS said we’d be arriving at our destination in nine minutes, but it wasn’t fast enough for me. Not when I had no idea what was happening to our parents.
“I think what Glinda here means is, why are we going to some random warehouse?” Jasmine chimed in. I waited for Sascha to make a noise like she was offended by Jasmine’s comment, but it never came. I guess I was still getting used to Jasmine’s sense of humor. Or total lack of a filter. But the others seemed to accept her—probably because they all hung out together pretty frequently—so I was going to try too.
I locked eyes with Peter in the mirror and at first neither of us said anything. When it became clear he wasn’t going to explain, I cleared my throat.
“We’re pretty sure that’s where the elders went last night. And that means it was the last place we know they were.”
“But why a warehouse?” Sascha asked, wrinkling up her forehead. I’d been wondering the same thing since I’d decided that this was the only possible place they could’ve gone. We drove in silence as the question hung in the air.
“Ohhhhh!” Jinx said finally, surprising us all. “I totally get it now.”
She’d been silent since I picked her up, and I had to admit, I’d forgotten that she was even in the car. When she didn’t elaborate, I shot her a look in the mirror, urging her with my mind to clue the rest of us in.
“I think I get the warehouse thing. Remember Phil Clinton? He graduated from Putnam a few years ago? Well, our families used to summer together in the Hamptons while we were growing up,” Jinx explained. “Anyways, they own a construction company, so his dad has a ton of equipment warehouses scattered around. I bet that’s where we’re going.”
I faintly remembered Phil. He was four years older than me and had graduated from high school before I’d gotten there, so we hadn’t exactly run in the same groups. Apparently, he’d headed off to college on a basketball scholarship. Either Dartmouth or Berkeley or something like that.
People said he’d refused to go to Cleri classes. Claimed that he was too busy spending his dad’s money to care about advancing his powers. It was hard to imagine that he and Jinx were from the same world. I hadn’t known his dad, but the connection made sense. Members of the Cleri were still active even if their kids weren’t attending classes anymore.
“In three hundred feet, turn right onto Fitzgerald Street. Continue to 10128 Fitzgerald Street, on left,” said Jane, otherwise known as the voice of my GPS. Not long after my parents gave the tech toy to me, I’d taken to calling her Jane. The computer-generated voice had the tiniest hint of a British accent, and I imagined the owner of the voice to be about twenty-five years old, sophisticated, and super-intelligent. Jane was most likely single—but it was by choice, not because guys weren’t into her. In other words, I sort of pictured her as being an older version of myself, but with a way cooler accent.
“Arriving at 10128 Fitzgerald Street,” Jane said.
As she said it, the five of us looked out our windows expecting to see acres of flat, indiscriminant buildings. But there was nothing there.
“What are we looking at?” Peter asked.
“I have no idea,” I muttered, straining my eyes to see in the dark. I pulled the car over and turned off the engine. Getting out, I let the door slam behind me, not even waiting for the others to follow. The street was empty as I crossed it, and all I could hear was the sound of crickets as they chirped in the night, followed by the echo of my heels hitting the pavement.
As I made my way to the other side of the road, I started to get a nervous feeling in my stomach, which always told me when something bad was about to happen. My fear threatened to turn into panic and my breath caught in my throat as I stepped up onto the sidewalk. I didn’t even realize that my hands had covered my mouth to stifle a scream. But the scream came anyway, a shrill cry in the quiet night. Only it wasn’t me; it came from one of the other girls just behind me.
Funny, I hadn’t even heard them come up.
I tried to speak, but for some reason I couldn’t. My mind had shut down and the rest of the world was quickly slipping away.
Because in front of me, on that chilly, dark evening, I was standing out on the sidewalk and looking at the last place my mom was known to be.
And the whole thing was burned to the ground.