The day after Christmas was always a little bit sad, Anna reflected, but it did have its perks. It was the kind of day where no one expected anyone to do much of anything and most people spent their hours relaxing and recovering from the grand spectacle of the holidays.

So Anna very happily wandered downstairs a little bit before noon, having been left to sleep as long as she wanted. Outside the sun was shining down on the glittering snow and the trees rustled in what was probably a very icy wind. Her mom had left early to get a head start on returns and exchanges at the mall and her dad was upstairs on the computer, which left only her sister to greet her as she went into the kitchen for breakfast.

Theoretically, at least. Emily didn't actually say anything to her, as she was totally absorbed in the show she was watching on TV. Like Anna she was still in her red plaid Christmas pajamas, her dark blonde hair in two braids on either side of her head.

Anna made herself some toast and then joined the younger girl on the couch. It was only then that Emily seemed to notice her.

"Watch with me?" she asked.

As little interest as she had in cartoons, Anna didn't actually have anything better to do while eating her toast. She nodded and looked up at the TV. On screen, a striped orange cat was running away from a much larger black one. They darted through the streets of a city, which seemed to be equally populated with cats, dodging street vendors and pedestrians. The orange cat yelled something and a ball of white light shot from its tail towards the black cat, who dodged it and glared with malevolent red eyes. Instead it hit what looked like a hotdog stand, which exploded in a shower of sparks.

Anna raised an eyebrow. "Magic cats?"

Emily just shrugged.

Now there was another striped cat, this one light grey, and a white one. She assumed they were all "good", primarily because they were small and cute looking compared to the thing chasing them. "So why does that black cat want to catch them?"

"He's an evil magician," Emily supplied, as if this was very obvious. "He wants their magic."

She seemed to remember her children's TV shows being a little less complicated, and less confrontational. But then, that was a while ago. "For what?"

Emily shrugged again, but expanded this time. "He has some, but he wants more."

Anna nodded and went back to watching. She found herself rooting for the little animated animals. It was oddly compelling. They darted down an alleyway and she almost wanted to cheer when the black cat got tripped up by a couple of even tinnier kittens.

"Last time he sent these other guys to get them," Emily said, happy that her older sister was taking interest in this. "They couldn't, so now he has to come himself. But he didn't mind that much, because the other guys found them."

Anna looked down at her. "Found them?"

Her sister's eyes didn't leave the screen, but she didn't seem to mind explaining. "They followed their magic. They couldn't catch them, so they just went back to him and told him where they were."

Something about this storyline sounded oddly familiar. It wasn't that unlikely, considering that most fiction was pretty derivative, but this was something else. She considered this, watching as the white cat made a puddle for the black cat to slip in.

The realization flashed through her mind almost instantly. The men at school that day disappeared without leaving any damage behind. Jonathan said they were called back because they had finished their job. None of them had been able to figure out what that job might be, but they hadn't seen the men again so it wasn't a top priority.

What if that job had been finding them?

They had found them. Yes, it had been at school but how long was it before they were traced back to their homes? They had been focusing on how to find this mysterious force that was pulling magic from the surrounding worlds, but maybe he wasn't only trying to hide his work from them.

Maybe he wanted their magic too.

Feeling a small hand on her arm, Anna looked down. "It's only pretend," Emily assured her. "They'll get away."

If only that was what she was really worried about. But her life, as strange as it was at the moment, was not a TV show. She forced herself to smile. "Thanks, Em." Leaving her half-eaten toast on its plate on the coffee table, Anna ran upstairs. She had to call a meeting.

Despite the general laziness of December 26th, everyone promised to be there within the hour. Isobel claimed she could somehow get the message to Jonathan, although she had hung up before she could explain how that was possible. Anna had been under the impression that he was going home for Christmas, and his home wasn't exactly down the street. But then, she didn't know exactly how one traveled between worlds, so maybe it was that easy.

She used the short time before her friends arrived to get out of her pajamas and clean herself up a little. In honor of Christmas, she had straightened her long, dark hair but sleeping on it had crumpled parts of it into wild looking waves. She coiled it at the back of her head instead and took a few minutes to wash her face before racing back downstairs.

Sure enough, Jonathan did make it. "How did you know to come?" she asked him, when he first walked in.

Isobel, who had arrived a few minute earlier, answered for him. "I gave him one of those walkie-talkies we used to bring when we went skiing."

When this had happened Anna had no idea but the fact that she had been able to contact him from another planet was far more mind blowing. "And that worked?"

"Apparently," Jonathan said. He held up the little green and black plastic thing. She hadn't seen one of those in years. "My family was… confused when it started speaking."

Well, that could be useful. It wasn't like they could call the kid. And how would they set him up on a cell phone plan even if they wanted to?

Anna ushered everyone up to her room, in case her sister emerged from the basement or her parents decided to hang out in the living room. This wasn't exactly a conversation that they could overhear. Technically, teenage boys were banned from her bedroom. In this case, though, that didn't seem like a big worry.

The girls sat but Jonathan remained standing, leaning against the wall and looking at her expectantly. Actually, everyone was. Anna felt like she was giving a presentation or something. She took a breath and began. "Okay, so I was thinking today about those guys who showed up at school."

There was a collective shudder throughout the room. That hadn't exactly been the best day. And she was only going to make it worse with this theory. "I was watching this show with my sister and there were cats and…" Okay, she was doing this all wrong. "The point is, we still don't know why they came after us, right?"

"They sense magic," Jonathan supplied. "Feed on it, really. They came after you because they weren't fed."

Marlie, who was laying across Anna's bed, propped herself up on her elbows. "So it didn't have anything to do with us?"

Jonathan shook his head. Ordinarily that would have been reassuring—they were pretty new to this whole magic thing and he was their resident expert. But Anna was fairly certain that those men hadn't just been after anything with powers.

"What if it did have something to do with us?" She looked at Jonathan. "You said they can find magic, right?"

He nodded.

The pieces were putting themselves together in her head. "So what if someone was using them to find specific magic? To find us?"

Some of the confidence faded from his expression. "Someone kept them hungry on purpose," he said quietly, the realization falling heavily into the otherwise silent room.

Behind Marlie, Cara sat up straighter. She looked less upset than curious. "So who wants to find us?"

"The one behind all of this," Jonathan told her.

As if this was the answer she expected, she nodded. "Right, you said the signature on the map was similar."

Grace finished twisting her hair into an interesting reverse braid and let her hands fall back into her lap. "But why? Isn't he trying to hide what he's doing so we can't stop him?"

And that was where Anna's real theory came in. "He's absorbing magic," she said. "And we have a good amount of that. I think he wants our powers." She glanced over at Isobel, who was curled sideways in the armchair near the window. "And the Heart." Feeling suddenly exhausted, she nudged Marlie over to make a space for herself against the pillows.

"That might be a good thing," Cara said. She stood up now to take the spot where Anna had been standing. Somehow the snowflake-decorated thermal shirt she was wearing did nothing to detract from the weight of her words. "We want to find him, right?" She didn't wait for an answer. "And apparently he wants to find us. So maybe he isn't hiding as carefully as we thought."

Marlie sighed deeply and let her chin fall back to the bed. "But we haven't found him yet," she pointed out. "And he sent his minions or whatever after us, so it's not like we've actually even seen this guy."

"We don't even know if he is a guy," Grace added. "How are we supposed to find him if he never shows himself?"

Anna hadn't actually considered that there might be a beneficial side to being searched for by a person who was amassing so much power that he risked destroying the planet. And of course, there were caveats. Because if he could use someone else to find them, he didn't even need to give up his location. Sure, they had at least held their own against the guys at school but that didn't mean they couldn't get taken down by something else he had up his sleeve.

"I could go," Isobel said suddenly. The whole room turned to look at her. She had let her legs fall back to the floor so she was sitting up straight and her eyes, staring straight ahead, had an odd unfocused look. "I could let myself get taken."

Anna's mind went blank. She knew that she had to protest this but any coherent rebuttals had been wiped from her head. Was she crazy? Why would she want to put herself in the hands of that…?

On the other side of the chair, Jonathan pushed himself off the wall. "No!"

Well, she reflected, that worked too.

Isobel blinked as if rising out of a trance and glared at him. "Thanks for your input." She turned back to her friends, who were all wearing expressions of varied surprise and dismay. Anna assumed her own face wasn't much different. "Just listen," she said. When no one made to protest, she continued. "If they take me, I'll see where he is. That's the only way we'll be able to find him."

"You'll put the Heart right in his hands!" Cara said.

That wasn't something that Anna had even thought about, and Grace echoed her more immediate concern. "You'll put yourself right in his hands! Is, we don't know anything about this guy."

Isobel was calm now against the onslaught of protests, shoulders back and chin up. Her eyes glinted with that steely determination that surfaced when she had to defend an opinion. "Of course I won't take the Heart," she told Cara. "How would you find me, then? I'll leave it with you and it can bring you to wherever I am. That's how we'll find him." She nodded firmly, as if this was said and done already.

This quieted Cara for the moment, but Marlie spoke up. "How do you know he won't hurt you?" she asked, her voice lacking its usual exuberance.

Isobel stood up. "I don't have any powers. I'm completely useless to all of you. So just let him take me, okay? Let me try and do something. What do you even need me for?" Her eyes were bright and slightly watery, like she was fighting back tears.

"Oh yeah, because you can't make a tornado or start a fire we can't be friends anymore." Grace's biting tone hid an undercurrent of worry. "Is, are you insane? How can you even think that?"

The other girl took a breath and looked down for a second, her fists clenching at her sides. When she spoke again, she sounded much calmer. "The best way to find him is to give him what he wants—us. Not all of us, because then we would all be trapped." Isobel looked up, her face set with determination. "But one of us should be enough bait. I'm the best choice. I'm sure he wants the Heart most of all, and he'll assume that I have it. And I wouldn't be very much help on the other side because I can't fight." A small amount of bitterness crept into her tone. "Last time all I managed to do was get slammed against a wall and almost strangled."

"Isobel," Jonathan said evenly, although the look on his face indicated that he wasn't feeling very calm. "This is a terrible plan. You'll only succeed in injuring yourself. There has to be another way."

She put her hands on her hips. "There isn't, and you know it. What, are you telling me that no one in your little organization does anything dangerous?" When he didn't answer, she raised an eyebrow. "Or maybe no girls do?"

Jonathan turned away from her, looking out the window at the empty street below. Anna thought briefly of the other houses there, where kids were playing with their new toys and families were trying to figure out what to do with all the leftovers. This part of her life still felt very surreal.

"Yes, we all do dangerous things. Women and men. But…"

"But?"

He looked back at Isobel, now unable to keep his tone calm. "They have training, they know what they're doing! They don't just throw themselves into risky situations and hope for the best!" His voice softened. "Isobel, please. You're going to get yourself killed."

Isobel's eyes widened at this sudden change in mood, but she remained firm. "It's the only way." She scanned the faces of the other Guardians, as if looking for some indication of approval.

"I think she's right," Cara said quietly, her eyes on Isobel. The other girl nodded gratefully.

Reluctantly, the other girls agreed.

"But you better not let him kill you," Grace said.

Isobel gave her friends a shaky smile. "Alright then. Let's make a plan."

As always, thank you for reading!