Okay, I seriously think I have a problem. Six chapters in two days? Well, that's what you get when you have a bored writer home alone with her cat and her sister with nothing to do all week… ACK! CAT ON KEYBOARD! MAYDAY! Oh wait, never mind. She went to go sleep in a corner. It's all good. I try to update as fast as possible, but for those of you who have read my other fanfictions, I can take up to three months in between all my activities like school, dance classes, writing my own novels, and attempting to be the first founder of the New Jersey chapter of camp Half Blood.

You rate and review, yes? Good. I will go get sherbet now.

Cassia and Holly ran down the hall, pictures flying by them as they went. The room was dimly lit by bulbs with burnt tops and sides screwed into the wall with no frames or lamps and the glow was eerie in the crevices of the cracks in the walls. She longed for the bright light of Belle's necklace, but it stayed dimmed. Holly looked less scared now, and more determined. She must have really loved her brother to face terrors at such a young age to save him. She reminded Cassia of herself when she was young because she had to take care of herself more than other kids because her parents were always gone. She wondered if something happened in her childhood to make Holly as strong as she was.

"So, your brother," Cassia said while they hurried along. "What does he look like?"

"He has brown hair the color of chocolate and dark blue eyes," she said. "He has glasses, but she doesn't wear them too much and keeps them in his pocket."

"What was he last wearing?"

"He had on a blue gaming t-shirt. I think it's called 'Minecraft'," she said. "He had a jacket, but he lost it when we first started. His thirteenth birthday was yesterday, and that's why we came here; he loves art history."

"Okay," Cassia said. Now she knew what to look for.

"We have to save him," Holly said, looking at Cassia somberly. She made it very clear to her that the task at hand was incredibly dire. "I can't lose someone else. Not after I lost my daddy."

She lost her father? Cassia thought with a jolt. She stopped Holly and crouched down so that they were the same height. "It's okay, Holly. My parents are never around either. I know how you feel."

"Thanks," she said. "But we have to keep going. Toby's out there."

"Right," Cassia said.

Before they began going down the seemingly endless hall again, though, Holly grabbed Cassia's shirt. "Cassia?"

"Yeah Holly?"

Her eyes were brimming with tear when she said, "I'm scared."

"Don't worry," Cassia said with an encouraging smile. "We'll get out of here. Now come on. I think I see a door."

They didn't have to go far before they hit another door. This one was unlocked, so Holly turned the knob and pushed it open. They stepped into the room, and there were two staircases stretching down in front of them. The left side had blue tinted lights, the right side red tinted lights. There was a little drip of some kind of liquid on the wall, and without thinking Cassia went up to it and ran her hand over it. It's paint, she thought. Just like everything else in this damn place. As soon as she removed her hand, there was a loud sucking sound, like somebody stamping something over and over again. She backed up and saw that all over the wall in red, oozing paint, were mismatched letters in different sizes that somehow created one word:

CHOOSE

"Cassia," Holly pointed at their feet. "The floor!"

Cassia's eyes trailed down the painted wall and onto the floor they stood on and saw that in more letters, colorful and varied this time, were splayed across the floor in the same spaced stamp style as was on the wall.

BLUE IS WHAT YOU NEED

RED IS WHERE YOU WANT TO GO

"It kind of contradicts itself," Cassia said.

"What does that mean?" Holly asked.

"It means that they both can mean the same thing," Cassia explained. "If what we need is where we need to go, we go left. If where we want to go is what we need, we go right. But one could be a trap."

"Cassia, what's that over there?" Holly pointed to a corner of the room, and to Cassia's shock there was something she didn't notice before.

Wedged in the corner was a small wooden desk. On top of it was an open book and next to it was a quill. They went over to it and saw that there was something scratched into the desk. It didn't look like the creepy writing Cassia saw when she first came in, and it didn't look like Belle's writing either. It looked like something that was supposed to be on the desk, like it was stamped by a machine. They were neat, organized letters, and they said:

THE PAGES HERE WILL KEEP YOUR NAME

SHOULD YOU PERISH YOUR ROSE CAN BE RECLAIMED

IF YOU LEAVE A PETAL YOU CAN BE REVIVED

AND IT WOULD BE LIKE YOU NEVER DIED

"So, if we leave a petal next to our name…"

"And we," Holly squeaked, "die."

"We can come back here to claim our last petal which could revive our rose," Cassia said.

She removed her rose from her bad and Holly took hers from her dress pocket, and they each plucked a petal off. Cassia felt the familiar searing pain in her side and Holly winced as well. Cassia went first and took the quill from the ink vial. She tapped off the excess ink and wrote in her tight, swooping handwriting, Cassia Kensington. Holly went after her and wrote in straight, scholastic, uniform letters, Holly Markham. Cassia placed her rose petal next to her name and so did Holly, and the pages glowed briefly before it died down and Cassia closed the book on top of them. She noticed that Holly only had five petals on her rose instead of seven like Cassia.

"So," Cassia said, turning back to the stairs. "Which staircase?"

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"Ib!" Garry gathered her up in a tight hug as Ib cried against him. After she's called him and told him everything, he rushed home to her. He couldn't drive fast because he'd just gotten his license and if he did he would probably kill a few people. "Are you okay? I'm so sorry, Ib."

"Why are you sorry?" she sniffed. "It wasn't your fault."

"When was the last time you talked to Holly?"

"Yesterday," Ib said, wiping her eyes. This was no time for tears. "She said her brother wanted to go to the Central Art Gallery. He loves art history so much and he wanted to go for his birthday."

"Have you ever met her brother?"

"No," she said. "He was always out when I went over her house. She usually comes here because it's on our way home from school. I tried to tell her not to go, but she didn't listen! That museum is built right over top of the Guertena Gallery, but I couldn't tell her about what happened there! She would've thought I'd lost my mind! I've never even told a soul about the time we spent in there and don't plan to."

"We know that it's real. We know, and that's what matters," He said, his voice as calming now as it was a year ago when she met him in the gallery. It was also nice to know, though, that he was just as scared as she was most of the time. His brief flashes of cowardice were actually quite endearing and made him seem human. He stood up, grabbed his favorite coat, and took Ib's hand. He gave her the red cardigan she usually wore and said, "Put this on. We're going to the gallery."

"WHAT?" Ib cried. "You didn't LOOK insane when you woke up this morning."

"Do you want to get Holly back or not?" Garry asked, his eyebrows lifting.

"That's a rhetorical question," Ib muttered irritably as she snatched her cardigan out of his hand and pulled it on, throwing the door open.

As she walked out and opened the car door, Garry couldn't help but contrast the old Ib with the new Ib. The experience opened her up to her own mind. She's now not restricted by her conservative parents and she's developing into the outspoken girl she can now be. When he met her as a ten year old, scared, quiet girl, he had no idea how cunning she was and how much talent had been smothered by fear. Garry doesn't grieve for her parents' loss, but Ib sure does.

This would be one of her biggest obstacles yet, but this time, Garry wouldn't leave his adoptive sister's side.