Chapter 1
It was the smell of French toast that woke me up.
As I sat up in bed something didn't seen quite right. Today was Friday. Kit never made French toast on Fridays. In fact, he never made French toast period. Something wasn't right.
Blinking a few times in the bright light something else seemed wrong. My window was on my right, so why was the sunlight hitting me directly in the face? A quick scan of my surroundings made my stomach drop. This wasn't my room. At least, it wasn't my room anymore. This was my room in Massachusetts. What the hell was going on?
Cautiously I got out of my bed and my feet sunk into the plush carpet. There was no doubt this was my old room. I was in my old room. I could smell French toast. Could that mean what I was hoping it meant?
I bounded out of my room and reached the edge of the stairs. The smell was stronger now. There was something else. There was a woman singing. It was a voice that I knew I would never hear again. But here it was.
In a trancelike state, I moved down the stairs into the kitchen. It had to have been a dream. My mom was standing there, with her back to me, making French toast at the stove. She looked exactly like I remembered—red hair pulled back into a low bun, tall and slim. She was singing her favorite song, Moon River. I never knew why it was her favorite song, but to me it was the most beautiful sound in the world.
Finding my voice I croaked out a single word. "Mom?"
She turned to me and smiled. "Well good morning, sleepy head! I made your favorite."
In a swift movement I crossed the span of the kitchen and flung my arms around her neck. Tears slipped from my eyes as I held my mom. In surprise she returned the hug and I felt like I was in heaven. Maybe I was. Maybe this is what heaven was.
"Sweetheart, what's wrong? Are you all right?" Mom ran her fingers through my hair. She let go and looked into my eyes.
"I…I just had an awful dream," I finally said.
"Well it was just a dream. You're all right now. Ready for some breakfast?" I nodded and took a seat at the dilapidated table. This was just how I had remembered it. Sitting in the kitchen with my mom; eating French toast. She would have coffee and I would have tea. As the plate was set in front of me, a stack of four pieces of French toast lathered in butter and syrup, I knew that this wasn't a dream. My mom was here, and I was home with her.
But how? I knew that for the past year I lived with my dad on Morris Island. My friends, my pack, were all there. How was I here?
After breakfast, Mom had to go to work so I retreated up to my room. Standing there, surrounded by my things—ribbons, awards, posters, dirty clothes—it all felt wrong. My fingers grazed the top of my dresser which was filled with pictures of me and my friends. Everything was exactly how I remembered it, like I had never left.
My phone sat on my end table. Maybe this was a side effect to our disease. Hallucinations. But Mom seemed so real. I had to get in touch with the boys. It was then I found something else that wasn't right. They weren't in my phone. Shelton, Hi, Ben, Kit, Jason, none of them. Text messages I had saved, contact info, even pictures were simply gone. I switched over to iFollow and wasn't surprised to see that they weren't there either. I had no way to get in touch with my pack. Unless…
I pushed with all my might, trying to flare. Nothing happened though. I tried to think of every single thing that made me angry, the Tripod, Whitney, Chance, and everything. Still nothing happened. I had lost my Flare.
Realizing it was useless; I sunk to my knees and cried. I had my mom back, but I lost my pack. Something was wrong and I had to fix it. And the only way I could do that was if I got back to South Carolina. No matter what I had to get back.
…
Despite my resolve until my mom got home there was nothing that I could do. That meant I had until five o'clock to think of a way to get her to take me to South Carolina. No matter the cost I had to get back. I had to find out where my friends were and why I couldn't flare.
There was a lot of time to kill until the however. A nagging feeling in the back of my head, like an instinct, told me to research LIRI. As I opened my laptop and went to the website, I knew why. There, right on the main page was a picture of Dr. Karsten and the words 'Director of Loggerhead Island Research Institute'.
A small cry escaped my lips as I gazed at his picture. Karsten was dead. Everyone knew it. Granted, not everyone knew how he had died, but his murder was in national news for a week. And now he wasn't dead.
More panic settled in, like a vice around my heart. Again, I tried to flare, thinking that my fear would spark it. Still nothing. My powers were gone. I was hundreds of miles from my pack. I had no way of reaching them. And now two people were back from the dead.
There was no way I was going to wait until my mom got home to deal with this. I grabbed my phone and instinctively dialed her cell number. She answered on the third ring. "Tory? What's going on?"
"Mom, I need you to come home now," I said.
"Tory, I can't just leave in the middle of my shift."
"This is important. You need to come home now. It can't wait."
There was a pause. For a moment I thought she had hung up. "All right. I'll be home in ten minutes." I let out a breath I didn't even know was missing.
Ten minutes later my mom were sitting at the kitchen table facing each other. The look on her face was a mix of fear, concern and confusion. She was waiting for me to start talking. While I was waiting for her, I planned out what I was going to say. That plan vanished from my brain the second she walked through the door.
"This is really hard for me to say," I started. "So, I'll just put it bluntly. I want to go see Kit."
"Kit?" Mom asked. She studied my face for a second, then her eyes went wide. "How do you know about him?"
"It's hard to explain. I know he's my dad though. And I need to go see him."
"Honey, I understand you want to get to know your father. I wish I had told you about him a long time ago. But, the thing is, I don't know where he is."
"Charleston, South Carolina. Well, Morris Island in the Charleston Bay to be exact. He's a marine biologist for LIRI."
More wide eyes. "Where did you find that out? Tory, you're starting to scare me. What's going on?"
"If I told you, you wouldn't believe me." As soon as I said it, I looked down at my shoes. She was going to give me the look again. Whenever my mom knew I was keeping something from her, she gazed at me until I spilled my guts. That was the look I knew she was giving me now.
This wasn't how I wanted this conversation to go, but I took a deep breath and began the backstory to my biggest secret.
