Chapter 4

Isabel

As soon as Ophelia takes Ambrosine and Blaze inside, I run up and hug my brother.

He seems startled. "Whoa, talk about mood swings!" he says, making me laugh.

Everybody else looks surprised too, especially Arkarian. But nobody says anything for a while. Finally, Matt breaks the silence. "So…what was that all about? Do you love me or hate me?"

I laugh again. "You're my big brother! Of course I love you!" I hug him again.

Just then, Dillon and Crystal come up the hill. "Whoa, back away slowly," Dillon says, which makes me laugh (again!).

And now I'm freaked out. About myself. I honestly don't know what's going on! I mean, one minute I'm pissed at my brother, the next, I'm hugging him and laughing as if he's been gone for years! This is kinda creepy…

Arkarian clears his throat, reminding me that we're all still outside. "I guess we'd better go in," I say, and we do.

Once we get inside the actual house, however, I'm overcome by a really bad feeling. While the others are chatting happily, my eyes keep darting around the room, looking for something, although I have no idea what.

Arkarian notices this. "Isabel," he says, "is everything alright?"

"I…I don't know," I reply truthfully. "I just get the feeling that something's wrong, but I don't know what it could possibly be."

He hugs me reassuringly. "Don't worry about it. I'm sure it'll pass."

After a while, it does pass. The eight of us talk about many random things, most of which aren't even worth mentioning. But pretty soon, the conversation rolls over to Crystal.

"How old are you, anyways?" Ethan asks her.

"Well," she replies, "I'm only 500 years old."

Dillon almost chokes on his drink. "You mean, I made out with an old lady!?"

I glare at him. So do Crystal and Arkarian. "You weren't complaining last night when I told you," Crystal says.

"That's because I thought you were kidding!"

"Still, I know that this won't stop you from wanting to do what you want tonight."

At these words, Dillon falls silent and it's Ethan's turn to almost choke on his drink. "Whoa, a little too much information there," he says.

"Oh shut up," Rochelle says playfully. "You'd think that since we have a kid, you'd be a bit more mature than that!"

I laugh. "Ethan? Mature? The only time you see those two words in the same sentence is if the words 'is never' are in the middle!"

Pretty soon, we're all laughing, even Ethan.

We barely even notice when Ambrosine comes in the room to look for a place to hide, closely followed by Blaze, who then starts looking for her. After a while, he gives up and starts to look for Ophelia. In almost no time at all, the two of them come back to look for Ambrosine together. After a few minutes of that, we start naming off possible places for a 4-year old to hide. They look again, with no success. So Matt and Neriah join in on the search, with no luck. Then the rest of us join, but even all together, we can't find her. Ophelia trips over something, and when she gets up, she pokes the air in front of her. It giggles, sounding very much like Ambrosine. Neriah goes to the spot and wraps her arms around the air. Suddenly, a pair of hands begin to form on Neriah's back, followed by arms and the rest of Ambrosine's body.

"Okay, I think that's enough hide-and-seek for a while," Neriah says. "Why don't the three of you go play a game in Ophelia's room, or something?"

"Yeah!" Ophelia exclaims, pulling the other two kids along with her.

I laugh and the eight of us sit down once more. "So now all three of the kids have their powers," Ethan says.

We start to talk again, but the night won't leave us alone for even ten minutes! Almost as soon as things start to get back to normal, we hear screaming from Ophelia's room. And not playful screaming either, no, these are screams of pure terror. We all run to the sound, but when we get there, the room is empty and the window wide open.

The kids are gone.

Haha! Suspense! Don't you just love it? And what's even better is that you'll have to wait until tomorrow to see what happens next! Haha! I'm so evil!