A/N: Happy 2017! It's been a while but this is the new chapter. I'm going to skip the whole review reply thing for a while, just because I'm super swamped. But I still wanna give a shout out to all the reviewers who took time out of their day to read and review my work.JDrummond, Zane S. White, SME13, HetaliaGirl -21, xxstarcrystalxx, Rephiamluvers123, Barayah, Guest, and Huntsman-in-the-snow. That's right, I'm talking about you guys! You're the best of the best. Your comments make my day. That doesn't mean I don't still love my non-reviewers, cause I love y'all too!

I have a tendency to babble so here is the next chapter. And so we begin.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Darkest Powers


Joining the Team

"You're joking."

Chloe knew that she probably looked ridiculous, with eyes the size of saucers and her mouth gaping open. She probably resembled a fish out of water gasping for air. On any other occasion, she would have probably laughed at herself. But this wasn't one of those times. Right now, what she had heard was more ridiculous than any face that she could make, and there were some crazy ones. But nothing compared to the insanity Derek was telling her right now because there was no way he was being serious.

"You're joking," Chloe repeated as Derek continued to stare back at her. "You're pulling my leg, right?"

"Do I look like I'm joking?" Derek asked blandly.

"No."

Derek's eyebrows rose slightly. Apparently that had been a rhetorical question. Chloe couldn't bring herself to care though, even as he continued speaking. "This is serious. People like us are disappearing and being killed. Without your help, we won't be able to stop them."

Chloe blinked at him. It was the only thing that she was capable of doing. "This is serious."

"Yes, this is serious." Derek sounded exasperated and he raked his hand through his hair rather aggressively before he continued speaking. "What do you think they would do with a necromancer who can't control her powers?"

Chloe felt a rush of cold go through her. A necromancer who couldn't control her powers. Images of undead armies coming back to life filled her head and her heart felt like it was plummeting to through the floor. "Why is this happening? Can't we just… I don't know, tell the cops?"

"Yeah, that's always my first thought. Call the human cops. Make sure to tell them about how you're able to see dead people and bring them back to life." Derek's tone was cold and Chloe felt blood rush into her cheeks, mostly from indignation but faintly from embarrassment. She knew how people reacted to the truth. "They can't do anything to help. You should know that already. It's up to us to fix this. And we need your help."

Chloe frowned, his words playing over in her head for a moment before she answered. "What do you mean?"

"What?"

"You said 'I should know'," Chloe said again, his words going through her head. "What do you mean?"

Derek's frowned as his brow furrowed in confusion for a moment before his eyes flashed with recognition. "That's not important."

"I think I can decide what information is and isn't important." Derek stared at her hard and Chloe narrowed her eyes. "Look, I've believed everything you've told me so far, despite how insane it sounds, because somehow I know it's the truth. But you're holding something back and if I'm going to go into this on pure faith that you're telling me the truth, I'm going to need you to tell me."

When Derek just stared back at her, Chloe grabbed her jacket and stood up, tossing his scarf back at him. Catching it, Derek watched her put on her jacket with a scowl. "Where are you going?"

"Back to my room," Chloe said simply. "This whole leap of faith deal—me being here and actually considering being part of whatever rebellion you're plotting. I'm not going to stay when it's obvious that you're holding back information from me."

Silence followed her words and Chloe sighed, turning as she headed for the door. It wasn't until her hand was on the knob that he spoke and his words left her frozen. "I know what happened in Buffalo."

Chloe's hand clenched into a fist around the knob as a flash of anxiety flew through her, followed quickly by one of anger. "How in the f—"

"It was in your file," Derek cut in, sounding almost exasperated with the topic. "After hearing you in the library, I wasn't going to take the chance of being wrong and checked the school records for evidence of powers. All supernaturals have some kind of record, even if it's a small one, from using their powers. It's an easy pattern to recognize, if you know what to look for. So when I found that on your record, I knew."

Chloe turned slowly to face him, eyes flashing as she looked at him. "You read my file?"

"Obviously. I just said that."

Chloe felt her blood boil at the response but no words would come out as she stared down the dark-haired boy sitting in front of her. Obviously. The word sent a chill down her spine and the thought of someone knowing what happened in Buffalo. In her pocket, she felt the stone her mother had given her like a weight in her pocket the angrier she got. "And obviously, you don't understand the definition of privacy. That was none of your business."

"It's my business when it comes to someone I don't know who gets cozied up to my family," Derek snapped back at her with a surprising amount of force that rocked Chloe. "First Liz and Tori, then Simon? If you weren't one of us, you were one of them. I had to make sure. I needed to know."

"Well, you know everything about me now, don't you, Derek?" Chloe snapped back. And that's when she felt it. The energy crackling in the room that seemed to be surging through her at an alarming rate. Taking a deep breath, she tried to keep her temper under control as she slid her shaking hands into pockets, fingers instantly finding the pendent in her pocket. "I'm going back to my room. I need sleep and I really don't need this."

Chloe didn't wait for a response, opening the door and closing it forcefully behind her to show that she was over this conversation. Walking over to her room, she kept replaying the end of their conversation over in her head. The more she thought about it, the angrier she got. By the time she had carefully shut the door to her bedroom, she could feel the anger that had been flitting at the edges of her consciousness boiling over. She just couldn't understand how he could be so casual with information like that. Not just casual, careless. It was as if he didn't care about anything that he had said to her and, more importantly, that he didn't see the reason that she would be upset about it. How could she not be mad that he had gone through her personal files? She could come up with an actual list of how wrong he was. Guess it wasn't exactly obvious to the genius, Chloe thought in irritation as she shrugged off her jacket and tossed it carelessly in the direction of her bed.

"Oi!"

Chloe jumped, spinning around to see a very irritated looking Mila sitting on herbed, her body disappearing into the jacket that had been discarded so carelessly a moment ago. Feeling a spike of irritation zing through her, Chloe shot a glare in the ghost's direction as she tried to calm her stuttering heart. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"We said we'd meet up later to see if we missed anything last night," Mila said as she haltingly pushed the jacket out of her. Blowing out a frustrated breath, she gave Chloe an irritated look and gestured down at herself. "You mind giving me a hand with this?"

Chloe rolled her eyes as she walked over and carefully pulled the jacket out of Mila's stomach, suppressing a shiver. No matter how many ghosts she saw walk through things, she would never get over how creepy it was. "Mila, I'm not really in the mood—"

"Where the hell have you been?" Mila interrupted as she jumped up. Chloe merely looked up at her warily and Mila's eyes widened. "What the hell happened to your neck?"

Chloe sighed and quickly recapped what had happened over the day. She considered filtering the information she was giving Mila, but with thought better of it. The only person that could even hear her was Chloe, so there wasn't really a point. At the end, she found herself squirming under Mila's scrutiny. "Anyway, you can see why I'm not in the mood—"

"I don't know what happened to you, but you have some serious trust issues. Either that or you're just plain stupid."

Chloe immediately puffed up at the accusation and settled Mila with a glare. "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't—"

"Yes, you do."

"I don't!" Chloe snapped and she felt a surged of anger burst through her. Mila's eyes widened but she didn't back down. "I have a right to be pissed off that someone has been snooping around my private files to—"

"Figure out if you're a danger or not? Or, better yet, if you're in danger or not? Wow, what a bad guy." Mila's sarcasm wasn't lost on Chloe and she felt her face turning red with rage and embarrassment. "There must be something absolutely wrong with him for doing his homework and checking facts."

"He could have just asked me!"

"What reason would he have to believe anything you said?" Chloe opened her mouth to answer and found that she had nothing to say. She didn't have a reason. Mila saw her pause and swooped on it. "Whatever they did to you back in Buffalo really fucked you up, because as soon as someone mentions the word, you all but sprint the other way. And don't try to deny it."

"Aren't we all entitled to our own secrets?" Chloe muttered angrily as she walked away from Mila into the washroom. "Derek isn't exactly an open book either and you don't see me snooping in his personal business."

"So this isn't about him nosing around in your information but because you can't do the same to him?"

Chloe gave Mila a sharp look. "It's about how he knows everything about me and I know nothing about him."

"He doesn't know shit about you. He knows whatever the school knows about you. Why is that such a bad thing?"

Chloe turned the tap on, keeping her gaze averted. Because that's not the full story, she thought desperately. But saying that would mean telling Mila the story, the full story, and she wasn't ready for that. She wasn't ready to open that wound and she knew that Mila wouldn't let up until she knew. So instead, Chloe did what she did best whenever anyone brought up Buffalo. She changed the subject. "Since when are you on Derek's side?"

"Since I found out that he's trying to help and you're being too much of a brat to notice." Chloe was about to fire back her annoyance when she noticed that the tap was shaking beneath her hand as she turned it off. Frowning, her eyes drifted up to the mirror that seemed to be trembling in front of her eyes and the sound of the taps in shower trembling as the pipes made a strained sound. A glance at Mila told her that the ghost didn't seem to notice, too busy glaring. Telekinetic demon ghost, Chloe reminded herself suddenly. She's a poltergeist in the making and I pissed her off. She waited warily as the ghost continued her rant. "Everything you've told me so far has made me come to the conclusion that Derek not only isn't trying to kill you, but that he's trying to keep you alive. And you're pissed because he did what? Looked through your personal file? Nothing that happened in Buffalo could matter so much that you would turn down someone who is trying to help you not die!"

The word was punctuated with a crash from the other room. Chloe jumped, running past Mila to look for the source of the crash. Nothing was broken, but her suitcase was lying on the ground where it had somehow tipped over and spilled all the remaining contents in it onto the floor. Pursing her lips, she turned back to look at Mila standing in the doorway and gestured to the washroom. "Mila… are you doing this?"

Mila's eyes flashed to the bag before she turned around quickly, staring presumably at the still rattling sinks. The rattle came to an abrupt stop all at once and Mila turned around almost sheepishly back at Chloe. "Sorry, I… it's been harder to control since… well, since I died."

Something Derek had said popped into Chloe's head and she peered at Mila. "You couldn't control your powers."

"Of course I—"

"Before you died, your powers had started to get out of control, didn't they?" Mila's jaw flexed and Chloe frowned as the rumbling started again. "When you said you were strong, that you were trained, you meant that sometimes you were too strong. You were starting to lose control."

Mila sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Sort of. I don't know. I would have times when my temper would get away from me and some stuff would fly or things started shaking. It wasn't like it happened all the time."

"But that might be the reason that you were a target." Chloe pulled her laptop from under her bed and opened up the notes she had made last night. "We were so focused on the attacker that we didn't look at the similarities between the victims. Derek said everyone who died was—damn, what was the word he'd said? Right—uncontrollable. I think if we asked Peter and Brady, they'll say that they had the same deal."

Mila paused, seeming to think it over as her frown deepened. "If that's the truth, then we need to get into the student files."

Chloe felt as though her eyes were going to pop out of her head. "Why the hell would we need to do that?"

"If the school is involved in this, then they have information that we need that would be in our files." Chloe shifted uncomfortably and Mila kept talking. "We need to see for sure. I have a feeling that those are going to come in handy if you want to figure out what's really going on at this school."

Chloe didn't respond immediately, thinking over all the information she had gathered today. It was a lot. From finding out her friends weren't serial killers to finding out that she was a science experiment gone wrong, she felt as if she had aged ten years. But there was one thing that was really nagging her. "We'll talk in the morning. I need to rest."

It wasn't a lie. The entire day was starting to really weigh on her and she needed to sleep. Mila nodded slowly, eyeing Chloe carefully for a moment before disappearing and leaving her with only her thoughts. As she robotically went through her bed time routine, the nagging sensation in her built until it felt like a weight in her chest, dragging her down to the depths of her thoughts in an attempt to figure out what it was about. She just couldn't push the feeling that something was missing something. There was some part of this puzzle that didn't make any sense. Pieces were clicking together from Derek's explanation but she knew there was still information that she didn't know. And she wasn't sure that she wanted to know. That night, she had dreams of being chased around a laboratory by a batch of scientist with scalpels, only waking up when they caught her and started to dissect her like a frog. After that, she fell into a restless, exhausted sleep.

When morning finally came around it took Chloe a while to wake up but the moment she did, everything about the previous day rushed back to her. Touching her neck, she felt the sensitive skin at her neck. She had been right with her first assumption. It was no deeper than a paper cut, but it stung just as badly. She came to the same conclusion as she touched the other cut on her neck. I'd probably look like Frankenstein if she'd pushed any harder, Chloe thought as she pulled herself up and out of the bed. The more awake she got, the clearer the memories from last night became and with those memories came a reminder of a dark-haired boy with bright green eyes. The thought of Derek sparked an ember of anger at the reminder that he knew. But after a night full of nightmares and sharp thing cutting into her, she found that the ember was all that remained of her earlier anger. Though she was still irritated about him going through her personal records and finding out about Buffalo, there wasn't much that she could do about it now. All she could really do was wait for rumors to spread and wait for her Aunt Lauren to send her away again. Chloe felt a sort of resignation flow through her at the thought as well as a bit of sadness. She was starting to like it here, even if for the past week of feeling like she was being hunted. She was really starting to enjoy having friends again.

A rapid series of knocks on the door brought Chloe out of her thoughts. A moment later, she swung open the door to reveal three people she didn't expect to see so early on a Sunday morning. Tori, Simon, and Liz all wore similar looks of wariness on their faces and Chloe couldn't help but feel outnumbered. "Uh…

"We need to talk to you," Liz half-whispered as she looked around the deserted hallway. Chloe quirked an eyebrow at the blonde haired girl. "Can we come in? Please?"

Chloe shifted out of the way and gestured for the group to come inside. After a bit of shuffling, she closed the door behind them and leaned her back against it as she faced them. Tori went to lie down on her bed while Liz sat perched on the edge as Simon hovered beside them. "What's up, guys?"

"Derek said he fucked up," Tori said with no preamble and Simon shot her a look to which she gave him one of her own. "What? He did say it."

"You couldn't have at least tried to ease into that?" Simon snapped and Tori rolled her eyes. "What she's trying to say is that Derek told us what happened last night and that you guys didn't leave on the best terms."

Chloe felt her back stiffen slightly. "Oh, did he?"

"Oh, I knew she'd still be mad!" Liz said as her face fell. "We didn't mean to hide from you, we were just making sure we didn't scare you off."

Wait, what? What did she mean, scare me off? Chloe was about to ask when Simon cut her off. "We know it's a lot to spring on you, but we were just making sure that we were okay. I mean, we didn't want to hide who we were from you, we just didn't want you to—"

"Okay, hold on, what?" Chloe cut in with a frown. "I have no idea what you're talking about. What were you hiding?"

Simon frowned, glancing over at the girls. "We thought you were mad because we didn't tell you who were are from the get go and didn't tell you we knew who you were."

"I didn't want to, but Derek said it was safer that way," Liz rushed out and Chloe noticed that there was a faint rumbling in the walls like when Mila had gotten angered last night. Telekinetic demons are easily triggered, Chloe noted. "We hated lying to you. I promise!"

Chloe shook her head. "I'm not mad at you for lying. Derek went snooping through my personal files."

"He looked through your personal files?" Simon asked, eyes lighting up in confusion. "Why would he do that?"

Chloe blinked at her friends. It seemed that Derek wasn't telling them everything either. She couldn't tell what that said about him but it did peek her curiosity. Why hadn't he told them about her files? And if he didn't tell them about her files, did that mean that he hadn't told them about what he had found in them? She had jumped to the assumption that he had told the others but if he had kept her personal files a secret then she had hope that he hadn't told them about Buffalo. But why? Chloe thought as her eyes bounced from one person to the next. The all held expressions of confusion and surprise over the fact that Derek had been in her files. Why wouldn't he keep my secret? The thought bounced around in the silence for a moment but no answer came. One thing had changed, however. Though she wasn't exactly enthusiastic—an understatement—that Derek knew anything about Buffalo to begin with, she felt relief from the information that he hadn't told anyone what he knew extinguish the last ember of real anger she had towards him from last night.

"It doesn't matter because I'm not mad anymore. It was more that I was shocked that he was able to get a hold of my files than anything else. Besides, it would be stupid to be mad at you for lying about your powers. It's not like I was forthcoming with the fact that I see dead people. As far as I'm concerned, we're good."

"Told you it was just Derek being an idiot," Tori grumbled and Simon shot her a glare. "So does that mean you're in?"

Chloe shifted her gaze to the ceiling as she mulled over her answer. She knew she would be safest with them and that without them, she was basically a sitting duck. They had the information and the means to end a fight she didn't even know was going on. A fight she didn't even know that she was a part of or if she wanted to be a part of. But being with them was looking like the best way not to become one of the ghosts she was always talking to. "Yeah, I'm in. But from now on, I need to be in the loop."

"Deal," they all said together.

"Great," Chloe said as she nodded to herself. Mila's request from last night popped into her head suddenly and she knew what she had to do. "Now that we're all on the same page, I'm going to need your help."

"With what?" Simon asked, brows pulling together.

"I want to break into the school records."

They all gaped at her for a moment before Simon's face broke into a wide grin and said, "I knew there was a reason I liked you. What did you have in mind?"

Twenty minutes later, Chloe was dressed and they were all in the boys' room sitting on whatever flat surface was available. Tori had commandeered the desk chair on Derek's side and was doing whatever computer thing she did with Chloe's laptop. Liz was lying on Derek's bed, light blonde hair sprayed across the pillow while Simon absently doodling into a sketchpad from where he laid on his own bed. They had already explained to Derek what their plan was, which he hadn't liked but hadn't had a choice in letting it happen since it had already started. As Tori worked, Chloe found herself watching Derek pace back and forth from where she was perched on Simon's desk, a thought hitting her suddenly.

"Thank you."

It was whispered too low for the rest of the group, but she figured that he could hear her despite how quiet she was. This was confirmed when Derek paused mid-step as his eyes immediately snapped to hers. "What?"

"Thank you," Chloe repeated quietly, eyes skimming the room to make sure that no one else was listening to their conversation. When she came to the conclusion that they were all preoccupied in their own worlds, she continued in a whisper. "I know you didn't tell them about Buffalo and I wanted to thank you for not spreading it around."

The gratefulness in her voice was affected slightly by residual irritation from finding out that he knew about Buffalo, but the meaning behind it was real. She was grateful for him keeping this from the rest of the group even though she wasn't sure why he would do that. She just knew that she was grateful that kept his mouth shut. Derek tilted his head, green eyes probing as he met her no doubt curious gaze. As their eyes locked, she felt as if he was looking not at her, but through her. It felt like his green eyes were looking into her soul in their intensity. Chloe found herself trapped in the gaze and she wasn't aware how long they stayed like that, staring into each other's eyes but she watched emotions flicker in the depths of his cloudy orbs. She saw a curiosity that reflected her own as well as a look that she couldn't classify. What was he thinking?

"I'm in!" Whatever trance Chloe had found herself in with Derek was instantly broken, her heart thumping hard in her chest at the sudden sound of Tori's voice as her eyes snapped to the girl. Hopping off the table, she bolted to Tori's side. The reason that they were waiting in the room was because Tori was hacking into the school system. The plan was that whatever information they couldn't find through the servers, they would go into the office and thumb through the hard copies. "Your laptop has some serious fire power, Chloe. These systems are crazy good. Who decked it out for you?"

"I know a guy," Chloe mumbled. "Did you have any problems?"

"Not really. I had to set up an extra firewall around the us to alert us if they try to back hack us. I was also able to ping your IP off a few different proxies so if they do try, they won't be able to find us if I—" Tori cut off and looked around. Chloe was sure that she wasn't the only one who looked confused. She understood most of what Tori had said, but it wasn't without a lot of inferencing. "We're safe. Now, what are we looking for exactly? There server is buggy as shit and I don't know how long I can stay undetected before they catch onto me."

"The files of Mila Saunders, Brady Hirsch, and Peter Ricci."

A few key strokes later, the screen went black before four windows popped up. Three had the names of the kids Chloe had listed off but the last one wasn't labelled at all. Liz pointed at it, frowning. "What is that?"

Tori clicked on it and it opened to a bunch of things that Chloe was sure wasn't English. Tori let out a sigh of frustration. "It's an encrypted file. But it involves all of those kids so I'm guessing it's important. But these are too small to be student files. They must only be partials for reference material. Actual school records must be paper only."

"Copy whatever is there and get off of the server," Derek rumbled, fingers drumming impatiently against his desk. "Don't stay in any longer than you need to."

"I know what I'm doing," Tori shot back as she plugged in a thumb drive and waited for the download to finish. "It's not my first time at the rodeo."

"No, the first time you did this, you got caught and nearly got us all killed."

The color rushed into Tori's cheeks and Chloe was sure that she saw a spark fly off of her finger as she flipped him off. "Bite me, Fido."

Chloe's eyebrows shot up and her eyes travelled back to Derek. His jaw clenched and the two stared each other down before Liz intervened. "Okay, guys, I know that we're all stressed but we can't turn on each other."

Derek glared down at Tori for another moment before his eyes shifted back to the laptop. Fido? Chloe wandered, but her mind was pulled back to the task at hand when she heard the pinging from the laptop. "What's that?"

"That would be the school trying to back track," Tori said as she turned back to the laptop. "And I still need a little bit more time to download this last file."

Tori's hands seemed to fly across the keyboard and the beeping stopped as suddenly as it had started. Simon's eyes narrowed. "What did you do?"

"Same thing I did to your computer when you piss me off," she replied in an amused tone and Simon grimaced. "Mild virus to slow them down. Nothing too severe."

Simon snorted. "You backed up my computer for a week with gay porn, so what exactly is your definition of mild?"

Tori didn't bother responding as she smirked, watching the loading bar finally fill up before popping the file out and going back to whatever she was doing on the laptop. Chloe couldn't help but shudder. She thought everyone knew better than to piss Tori off. Simon learnt the hard way. A triumph sound drew her out of her head to see Tori smile as the screen went black.

"And that's how you hack a system," Tori said proudly as the screen switched back. A few keystrokes later, Tori let out a swear. "You guys might want to check this out."

On the screen were the folders of Mila, Brady, and Peter. They weren't very long, each only consisting of a few lines with barely any words. But the words that were there sent a chill down Chloe's spine. In the files, she saw their ages, years of birth, even their supernatural race. But under status, each one had the word deceased written in red lettering with a date and time. At the bottom of the page was a series of numbers and letters. It looked eerily like the patient ID numbers she had seen in the hospital. Wordlessly, Chloe pointed to the bottom of the screen. Everyone's eyes travelled there but no one spoke. Even though it remained silent, the room felt as if it were heavy with the words that weren't being said. "Is that what I think it is?"

"It's an identification number," Derek said shortly, confirming her earlier thoughts. "They're on all the files."

"But those look like patient IDs," Chloe said hesitantly. "Why would students need patient IDs?"

"It's so they know who was and wasn't a part of the experiment." Chloe's head swiveled over to Simon, who had answered her question gravely. "Which means they know."

"I told you."

"Derek, we don't need a 'I told you so', we need a plan," Tori snapped at him as she shut the laptop. "We might know how they're kidnapping the others, but we don't know where being taken or where the main facility it."

"Maybe I can help with that."

Chloe jumped, smacking into the brothers at the sudden sound beside her ear and started tipping backwards. Derek caught her before she could drop on her ass and she absently noticed that his hands felt like they were burning against the skin of her upper arm. Glaring at the specter that had appeared beside her, Chloe flipped Mila off. "For fuck's sake, I told you to stop doing that!"

"Sorry!" Mila yelped as she gave her a lopsided smile. "I didn't mean to startle you, I thought you saw me walk in."

"I'm pretty sure if I saw you walk through a wall, I would have been just as freaked!" Chloe snapped back at her, shaking Derek's hands off. "Do you have any idea how scary that shit is? I can't—"

Chloe cut off suddenly, eyes slipping away from Mila to look at the others in the room. She had forgotten that she was the only who could see and hear Mila, meaning that to all of them, she looked as if she were talking to a random space in beside her. Now this brought back memories and so did the looks on their faces. They were all staring at her with shared looks of confusion and wariness, wondering what was wrong with her, probably. All except Derek, who had an almost expectant look in his eyes as she met his gaze. Frowning, she looked back at the ghost with clear exasperation over the situation as she gave her an apologetic smile.

"Sorry," Mila said again, softer this time as she pushed a loose tendril of hair behind her ear. "I went to your room and I didn't know where you were, so I took a chance and came here. I figured since you guys had my student files pulled up that they just knew everything."

"Warning would be appreciated next time, just saying."

"Uhm, Chloe?" Simon asked from behind Mila and Chloe's eyes met confused amber. "Who are you talking to?"

"M-Mila," Chloe stated, stuttering mainly out of fear. She was still waiting for them to call her crazy and send her off. "S-she kind of has a habit of giving me heart attacks."

"That's not hard when you're as skittish as a kitten." The comment came from Derek who had moved away now that Chloe was stable and was sitting on the edge of his bed. She shot him a glare but her merely shrugged. "I've been expecting her."

"You have?" Chloe asked incredulously and turned stunned eyes on Mila. "Why have you—"

"I heard you say her name in the library," he cut in impatiently, eyes sliding around the spot where Chloe was facing uneasily. "Hello, Mila."

"Hi, Mila!" Liz quipped after a moment with a giant smile. "I don't know if you remember me, but I remember you!"

Chloe felt herself almost sag with relief at how easily they seemed to accept the information. It was one thing for them to know that she talked to things that other people can't see even and another thing for them to be seeing it firsthand. But after the initial surprise of the matter, she could see that they didn't have a problem with it. Beside her, Mila smiled a genuine smile that made her seem years younger than she really was. "I remember you too, Lizzie."

"She said she remembers you too." The comment excited Liz and her impossibly wide smile only got wider. Chloe turned back to Mila expectantly. "What did you mean earlier when you said that you can help?"

"I mean, I'm a source of information and infiltration," she said as seriously as she could manage and Chloe cocked an eyebrow. "Seriously, I can get through walls and I can move things, as long as I have enough juice. I can get around without being noticed and bring back information. I can basically be your eyes and ears."

Chloe repeated the message and the others seemed to agree with her on her purpose. Derek pondered the thoughts for a moment before nodding once, having made up his mind. "Good. We're going to need all the help we can get if we're going to get our hands on the full records."


I hope that didn't seem as strained as I felt writing it... xD There is chapter and if you will excuse me, I'm going to do the pile of homework I've been putting off. R and R if you please

Love y'all. Tootles - Brii