Demigod dreams are never pleasant, and tonight is no exception. I watch helplessly as two boys arrive in a creepy graveyard. One boy, who looks to be about seventeen, gets hit by a green light and dies. The Avada Kedavra, of course. The other, who might be fourteen, is tied to a tombstone. I can't see him very well, but he has glasses and a scar shaped like a lightning bolt. I can't hear anything, it's all kind of fuzzy.
A rat-like man who must have killed the older boy takes a bone from the ground and puts it in a huge cauldron that also has something-a baby?-in it. Then he takes a dagger and takes blood from the Lightning-scar boy and adds that. Finally he cuts off his hand.
A man with white skin and no nostrils-
No. It can't be. They told me he was dead, that he was gone. Please, please, let it be some other evil guy. Please. Let him drown, let it have gone wrong. I thought we were safe. Please, let us be safe.
I feel exactly what the boy feels as Lord Voldemort rises again.
The dream ends. How could Beth have kept this from me? The dream actually happened years ago, but I never knew about this...gods, Voldemort. To all you demigods out there: pray as hard as you can that you aren't also a wizard. He'll find you. He'll find people like me, too. There are only twenty-five people in the world that are demigods and wizards and Elements. He killed Amber and I stopped him before he could do worse. Now he's out to get me. Oh, gods, I've said too much, you don't need to know about all this.
"How could you have kept this from me?" I demand of my sister the second I get downstairs.
Beth looks at me. She knows I mean Voldemort. "Mia, there was no other choice. If you knew you'd be hysterical. You wouldn't leave the house. You've got to understand."
I sigh. My sister is right. "Fine then. But who's the boy with the lightning scar?"
Beth launches into an entire story about Harry Potter that takes ten minutes to finish. He's basically her hero. I walk upstairs.
Beth is right-I don't leave the house until it's time to leave for Hogwarts. I only sleep when Beth is beside me, standing guard. Even she doesn't know about me being an Element, she understands that I can't tell her what it is that make me fear Voldemort.
The days pass all too quickly. I have too many secrets too keep, too much weight on my shoulders.
Before I know it, it's September 1st.
Doomsday.
More about Elements later. I'm not a spoiler! You'll see what Mia means in a few chapters.