Chapter 3

"Let me guess," Grace's voice rang out through the house as Serra let herself back in. "She didn't want to fight back."

"Stow it," Serra growled at her as she jogged up the stairs. Feeling the summer heat intensify as she climbed the steps, Serra changed her mind and turned around, unwillingly rejoining her sister in the coolest room of the house.

Grace was sitting at the kitchen table again, the oscillating fan locked onto her face, blowing a steady stream of cool air towards her. "I'm not bragging, Lucky," she sighed, leaning back in her chair. "I just have a habit of understanding people. It's one of my many gifts."

"Why would she go back?"

Shaking her head, Grace shrugged. "Only she'll ever know," she commented. "And until she makes the decision to leave on her own, all you're gonna do is piss yourself off." Changing subjects and leaning forward, Grace pushed that morning's paper towards her sister. "Look, though," she continued, "there's some jobs listed here. Waitress, copy girl, janitorial, babysitter…" Grace glanced up at Serra, lifting her eyebrows. "Anything sound interesting?"

Serra rolled her eyes and shook her head, staring at the newspaper. It was folded in half and as she stared at the print, she couldn't help but rest her eyes on a headline from the other side of the page. All she could read was '—issing four days' but it was enough to catch her interest.

"Did you see this?" Serra asked, unfolding the paper and pointing to the headline. "Those two girls are still missing."

Grace stood from the table, ignoring her sister. "Yeah, and Kansas' finest are on the case," she replied. "Your job right now is to apply to every one of those jobs that are in that classified section and ignore the police scanner you have hidden in your room."

"I don't have a police scanner hidden in my room."

Grace clicked her tongue and shook her head. "Anyway," she pushed on, "that's not our job anymore. Besides, the cops are leaning towards the uncle anyway. He's missing too. His car was found a couple hundred miles away."

Serra was still staring at the newspaper. "That doesn't mean anything," Serra muttered. "He's probably been taken by the same thing that took the girls." She glanced up at Grace. "I'll bet it's a vamp."

"Not everyone that disappears was taken by a monster."

"Are you gonna let me have any wins today?" Serra asked, spreading her hands wide on the table. "Can you try just for a minute to let me have something?"

"No," Grace replied, not missing a beat. "I told you, we are out of the game. We are going legit, especially if you want to keep a roof over your head."

Watching Grace put the dishes away, Serra shook her head. "We were never homeless."

"Living in crappy motel rooms and sleeping in the Chevelle does not mean we had a home. We were nomads, Serra," she sighed. "Don't you want to keep this house? Don't you want to hold onto the one thing in our lives that Dad did right?"

"I want a lot of things, Grace," Serra answered. "I want Stephen to stop beating Gem. I want to hunt what's hunting these girls up in Shenandoah. I want you to get the hell off my back about finding a job."

"It's too bad we don't always get what we want," Grace replied, cynicism dripping through her voice. "I'm tired of carrying you, Serendipity. It's time to stand on your own two feet."

…

"Hi, my name is Serra Browning and I saw your classified about the waitressing job?" Serra listened to the woman on the other end tell her that the position had already been filled. She rolled her eyes as she replied. "No problem. Thank you very much." Serra let the phone close and she set it on the table in front of her, rubbing her face with the palms of her hands.

The newspaper that Grace had given Serra was spread out in front of her with red circles dancing across the tiny print, highlighting the jobs that she figured she was qualified to do. So far, they had all been dead ends, either needing a specific set of skills that she was not able to provide, or she had to be twenty-one to perform.

Slowly, Serra unfolded the newspaper to stare at the photo of the two missing girls. They were young, probably not older than thirteen or fourteen, looking happy with their blonde hair tied up in ponytails as the wind dragged stragglers across their faces. In the background, there was a tidy front yard with a white picket fence, complete with a barn cat and a flowery vine that climbed up the side of the house. As Serra reread the article, she shook her head and sighed. "You don't look like girls that would run away," she muttered to herself. "You're happy."

Flipping the page and continuing the story and map in the following column, Serra pored over the text, searching for information that she may have skipped the first, second, or third time she had perused the article. Her fingers came to rest on the image of the map of Shenandoah, Iowa, where the missing girls were last seen. Their uncle's car had been found across from Rose Hill Cemetery, (he was missing as well, though the media had neglected to give him the same attention as the missing girls) overturned on the overgrown shoulder of the road, with blood found within the vehicle.

Standing quietly from the table, Serra moved silently across the kitchen and through the living room and glanced behind her, waiting for sounds of her sister on the second floor. Figuring that she still had about ten minutes before Grace decided she was too hot to continue putting laundry away, Serra spun the desk chair around and opened her sister's laptop, waiting impatiently for the too-slow internet to load. Finally, the search page opened and Serra tapped the keyboard, entering her search in the URL bar.

Staring at the articles that loaded slowly in front of her, Serra managed to navigate her way through the images that the news vans had loaded to their websites, and finally, she found the image she had been looking for.

The girls' uncle's car was overturned on the muddy shoulder, just as the black and white image showed in the newspaper, but here, it was in full color. There were drag marks in the mud and weeds where the front passenger door had been forced open and it appeared that there had been a struggle for one of the crash victim (whoever they might be) to stand.

Serra clicked on the image to enlarge it and moved closer to the screen, trying to see the open door in low-resolution zoom.

"What are you trying to see?" Grace's voice startled Serra so badly; she practically leapt from her chair.

Whipping around to face her sister, Serra released the breath she had gasped just moments before. "Jesus, Grace. I'm gonna sew bells into your clothes."

"Sorry," she replied unapologetically, lifting her eyebrows. Nodding towards the screen of the laptop, she continued, "Why are you zooming onto the door?"

Slowly, Serra turned back towards the computer and leaned closer towards the computer once more. "I can see something in the window here," she answered, lifting her finger to point at the window of the passenger door. "I don't think this photo was taken by the media. I think it's a still from a security camera, maybe from the cemetery."

"Why does that matter?"

"Because I think that's a reflection."