I'm back from the dead. :) Sorry for the long wait. It took me a long time to get a full outline together as far as where exactly I wanted to go with this story – now that I've finally got one, writing will come much easier! I have historically been terrible with stories where each chapter leads directly into the next, so I'm nervous about this one. It has been, oh… probably about 14 years since I last tried, though. Hang in there with me!

Same rules as the last story – I'm even busier than I was last time. I've changed jobs since completing Always, and my new job has me travelling out of town fairly often. My goal is to post one chapter per month, but I'll try to get chapters up more often than that. I'd love to finish this story before Dragonwatch comes out, which I'm tooooootally looking forward to! We'll see how that goes. Please be patient with me.

Remember, this is a sequel to Always so the themes I began in that story will directly relate to this one. If you haven't read that one, you could probably get by without reading it but you'll miss things.

This story will be rated T to be safe, but I won't be any more graphic with anything than the original series was. Kendra is nearly 27 and Seth is newly 25 years old here, so this is supposed to be about 5 years after the end of Always. First chapter is introductory and will probably be shorter in length than most of the other chapters in the story.

Disclaimer: This will serve for all chapters in this story. I do not own Fablehaven and I make no money off of my writings herein.


Chapter 1: Kidnapped

With experienced hands, she aimed the telescope toward the sky and located the cluster of stars she wanted to study that evening. "Pleiades is in sight. The telescope is unfortunately picking up a halo, but the image is fairly clear." She took a couple of measurements and called them out, then let out a large breath of air. "It's beautiful."

"I told you you'd love the view from here," a man's voice said to her right. He put his pen and notebook down on the ground and walked up so that he stood next to her, placing his hands on her upper arms.

"Just look at it, Dad," she said, stepping away from the telescope to allow her father to gaze for a moment. "Look at all of that creation. Those stars are so bright, it's amazing." He murmured his agreement, then stepped back to allow his daughter access to the telescope again. "Back to science," he said after another couple of minutes.

She chuckled and said, "Right. Science. Sometimes it's just so easy to get caught up in the breathtaking beauty of everything. I feel so tiny and insignificant right now." She fully stood up and went to retrieve her backpack where she kept paper, textbooks and writing utensils.

A strong, cold breeze blew past her and she shivered. She was already wearing a thick sweater, but her heavier coat laid on the ground next to her backpack so she picked it up and put it on before reaching into her bag to pull out a spiral notebook and a pen.

A sense of foreboding suddenly flooded her. She turned toward her dad and then unexpectedly found that she could no longer move. Her muscles felt like they had been frozen in ice; she felt cold inside and out and her brain started to shut down so that she could only process the feeling of paralyzing fear.

"Who do we have here?" several female voices seemed to shout. Her body was completely incapacitated and she was unable to form coherent thoughts. She couldn't see who was talking to her. The next thing she knew, she felt like her head was being ripped open and she tried to scream in pain but couldn't. All of her memories from her entire life seemed to push their way to the forefront of her brain at once and she couldn't handle trying to think of so many different things at once. In dizzying succession, they displayed in front of her like an artist's flipbook. It was agonizing to try and process everything she was seeing for only fractions of seconds at a time.

"Interesting," the voices shouted again, only they didn't really seem all that interested after all. "Wait," they continued, sounding surprised.

A single image was frozen in her mind. Her best friend. Well… former best friend.

"You know this person," the voices stated. More images to do with said former best friend rushed to the forefront of her brain. Tears leaked down her face. She would've fallen to the ground in anguish if her body wasn't frozen in place.

After what felt like an hour of her mind being forced open, the voices finally spoke again. "Bring this girl to me," they almost screamed, "if you want to see your father again." A picture of a mountain filled her mind. She felt a giant whoosh of air against her body, then as suddenly as the paralysis had set in it was gone and she fell to the ground in a graceless heap. She didn't have the brain capacity to think anymore and she fell immediately unconscious.


Bright lights inside the house disguised the fact that night had fallen outside. Seth sat at the kitchen table with his sister and brother-in-law, all of them facing each other and holding a varying number of cards in their hands. Kendra placed a card with a green eight in the middle of the table, and Bracken placed a card with a blue eight on top of hers.

Seth gritted his teeth as he pondered his next move. He'd wanted the color to remain green, and unfortunately he couldn't change it back that way. After performing a silent "eeny meeny miny moe" to himself, he placed a blue five on top of Bracken's card.

"Uno," Kendra said, putting a blue six on top of Seth's card.

Bracken shuffled through the myriad of cards he held in his hands and his expression soured a little as he played a card that consequently skipped Seth's turn.

"How was that supposed to thwart Kendra's winning streak?" Seth bluntly asked the unicorn.

"Thank you," Kendra stated, smiling as she played her last card – a blue two.

"Sorry, Seth," Bracken said. "I took the wrong risk there." He gathered his cards and placed them in a neat pile on the table in front of him.

"You couldn't change the color somewhere in the hundred cards you had?" Seth asked incredulously.

"Twenty-three," Bracken corrected. "And yes, I could have, but I didn't think her last card was blue – if it wasn't, she would've had to draw a card instead."

Seth lightly tossed his cards on the table haphazardly as Kendra gathered them all up and began shuffling the deck. "One more round? Or is it time for bed?" she asked.

"Nah," Seth answered. "I think I've played enough Uno tonight to last me for the next few months at least. Is this really what boring old married people do all night?"

Bracken's eyes adopted a mischievous glint. "We prefer… other activities at night," he began, his voice full of implications, "but we're playing cards because you're here."

Kendra laughed at her husband's words and her brother's flushed face as Seth sat back in his chair and smiled as he responded with a simple, "Touché." He looked up at the clock on the wall and said, "Almost eleven. I should probably head to bed. The sun rises early these days, after all."

"It would kind of defeat the purpose of coming here if you stayed up all night anyway," Kendra agreed.

"Somebody has to clean up the party mess," Seth said. "I'd rather do it after a good night's sleep than after a fitful night full of the sounds of screaming things." He grimaced at the thought. "Thanks for letting me crash here."

"It's no trouble at all," Bracken reassured, standing up and placing his empty tea mug in the sink. "I'd imagine festival nights at a magical preserve would get loud and wild."

"You haven't been through one before?"

Bracken shrugged. "In the fairy kingdom? Sure. Around other parts of the world? Yes. At a preserve? It's not really my scene."

"I can't say that I blame you," Seth answered. He and Kendra stood up and the trio moved toward the living room, where three separate bedrooms branched out. "That one's yours tonight," Kendra said, pointing to the bedroom the furthest to the right.

The room filled with music and Kendra's expression betrayed her obvious confusion as she walked toward the coffee table where she'd deposited her cell phone earlier that evening. "Who's calling at this hour?" she asked herself, then paused when she looked at her phone. She seemed even more confused, but opted to answer the phone. "Hello? Julie?" she asked.

Bracken and Seth heard what sounded like frantic screaming mixed with crying and Kendra pulled the phone away from her ear slightly in reaction. "Julie – slow down, I can't understand anything you're saying right now," she said.

"KAYLA," the men clearly heard from Kendra's phone. "My dad was taken!"

"What? Have you called the police?" she asked, putting Julie on speaker phone so that her husband and brother could hear the whole conversation.

"It was – it was – I don't know how to explain – Kayla, he was taken and I couldn't move, I was frozen, I couldn't think clearly – she took him, she took him!" Julie wailed, speaking very quickly and quite obviously panicked.

"Julie, breathe," Kendra emphasized, immediately adopting a collected demeanor to counterbalance Julie's crazed one. "Where are you?"

"I'm in Buenos Aires," she answered, taking several audible breaths of air. "We'd gone a little outside city limits to do some stargazing and – and then – and then I couldn't move anything, I couldn't think, it was like my mind was being ripped open and then I saw you and she told me – she told me to bring you to her if I wanted my dad back." She was speaking very quickly, but Kendra's brain was working in overdrive as she started trying to connect what seemed like severely disconnected dots.

"You're in Buenos Aires?" Kendra asked calmly.

"Yes, at the airport. I'm getting on the first flight back to the states," she said. "I can't talk to the police, they won't believe me, I can hardly explain what happened, it'd be a huge waste of time and she has my dad!"

"Come to me," Kendra said. "Fly to the Hartford airport. Call or text me with the time you'll be here and we'll be there to pick you up."

"You believe me, don't you?" Julie asked.

"Yes," Kendra said as she looked at Bracken and Seth, who both nodded in agreement. "Absolutely."

Kendra reassured Julie several more times that she wasn't crazy and that they would indeed be there to receive her at the airport before Julie finally hung up the phone. As she looked back at her husband and brother again, Seth said, "So… I'm thinking this is going to be an all-nighter after all. Anybody want some coffee?"


I'll be back soon! :)