Author's Note: I'm back! And boy, does it feel good! But I feel I owe all of you readers an apology for the delay. You see, I've been working on something else, A Harry Potter fanfic that I've just started.  It's called: Absolutely Surreal and even if you don't read the Harry Potter series, you can still follow along because everything will be explained. I'm really proud of this one and I think it deserves your support! So go find it and please let me know what you think!

Disclaimer: I don't own CCS in any way.

Chapter Fourteen: The Effects a Vanilla Bean Can Have

            Sakura took slow breaths, trying to make as little noise as possible.  If Ms. Caldwell found her certainly she would take away the book and make sure that Sakura would never be able to enter the library, let alone read Symbols of Past and Present...ever. 

            "Who's up here?" Came the voice of a one very stingy librarian.

            Sakura looked around for an option, anyway whatsoever on getting out of here without getting caught. After finding none, Sakura began to back away from the footsteps, which were becoming louder as each second passed by.  No one's up here, Sakura spoke in her head, trying to magically send Ms. Caldwell a message, via Jedi mind trick. Go away evil librarian! Shoo!

            Naturally that failed, so she tried to think up other options. I know I can't summon the key. Ms. Caldwell may be an old hag but she's not blind. If only I could... But her thoughts were cut short when she saw something move out of the corner of her eye.  Turning to her left, she saw that a sign was swinging back and forth on a door. It read: JANITOR'S CLOSET.

            Thank you God she thought to herself as she made a dash for the janitor's closet, as quietly as humanly possible.  She locked the door quickly behind her.  And now all she could do was wait it out, like a hurricane. Hurricane Caldwell, she thought.

            "I know you're here so there's no use in hiding. Why don't you just come with me and we can work this out nicely, hmmm?" Sakura could hear the footsteps coming right towards her and then suddenly, they were right at the door of the janitor's closet.  Thankfully enough, Ms. Caldwell went right by it and continued her search of the floor.  After ten minutes had passed, Ms. Caldwell decided to give up and mumbled horrible things under her breath as she walked down the stairs.

            Gasping a sigh of relief, Sakura opened the door and let it shut behind her. She smiled to herself, feeling happy she outsmarted that horrible old woman.  She turned to leave but again, something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. The doorway she had just left was no longer there, in fact, by the way it looked, no doorway had ever been there.  In its place was a large bookcase with hundreds of dusty books aligning the shelves and nothing more.

            Sakura walked down an empty road towards the shelter by the lake; the place that was now her home.  She held the book of Symbols of Past and Present against her chest, her hair covering most of it.  Her mind was littered with explanations for why the janitor's closet was, one minute there and the next, gone.  As soon as she received a headache from concentrating on the problem too much, her mind traveled elsewhere: "I'm starved," she said to herself. "What I wouldn't give for a nice-"

            "Ice cream?"

            Sakura took a sharp intake of breath in as she whipped her body around to find out who was talking to her. It was Eriol.

            "Is French Vanilla okay?" He asked, offering her a waffle cone with two mounds of snowy white ice cream adorning the top. "Ya know, vanilla bean is a natural cure for aches, pains and...small dilemmas." Sakura walked to him and freed one hand from her book and took the ice cream that Eriol was giving her. "Are you alright?"

            "In a matter of speaking...Eriol...what are you doing here?"

            He smiled, shoving his hands deep within his pockets. "I came to help you, Sakura."

            "Obviously, Eriol but...I mean...what are you doing here? On the side of this abandoned road with French Vanilla ice cream.  Which, by the way, is my absolute favorite and...how did you know that?"

            "It seems vanilla bean also causes curiosity.  I wish the vendor would have told me that before I ordered it.  I would have gotten chocolate instead."

            Sakura smiled and, with one hand holding the book and the other holding her ice cream, gave Eriol the best hug she could manage. "It's nice to see you again, Eriol. You have no idea how much better I feel knowing you're here."

            Eriol ended the hug short and took the book from Sakura's hand. "Symbols of Past and Present. How did you get this, Sakura? It's very hard to come by..." She smirked and that could only mean one thing. "Surely you didn't do something horrible to get this?"

            "Surely you don't know me quite as well as you imagine you do, Eriol." She started to walk away from him and, as if on cue, Eriol began walking beside her. "Don't worry, everything's perfectly alright. I didn't hurt or maim anyone to get it." After a few bites from her ice cream, she turned to Eriol. "And before I forget, thank you for getting me out of that tight bind with Ms. Caldwell.  She would have hung me from the town square if she had caught me in the Restricted Section, stealing this book?"

            Eriol laughed. "What are you talking about, Sakura? I didn't help you at all, remember? I didn't even know how you got this book until you told me."

            Sakura laughed with him too. "You never were a good liar, Eriol. I know it was you!" Eriol's laughter suddenly died to a complete halt and Sakura's smile faded as well. "It was you who helped me, wasn't it?"

            "No, Sakura. It wasn't me."

            The look on Sakura's face when she realized that the janitor's closet never existed was nothing compared to the face she had right now.

            "Sakura," Eriol asked softly. "How did you come by this book?"

            After she replayed the events to Eriol, it seemed like forever had passed by. When several minutes had passed as Eriol was thinking, Sakura found herself staring right into her lakeside refuge.  They were already there.

            "What do you think it means, Eriol?" Sakura asked as she heard people rummage around inside, surely to greet her (and now Eriol, though none of them knew of his arrival).

            "Sakura," he said quite seriously, and it almost scared her. "Someone wanted you to get to that book and seemingly, went to a great length to keep your presence in the Restricted Section concealed."

            "But who?"

            "I don't know. But something isn't right here. I can feel it…in the air…" He exhaled as he ran his fingers through his hair. "Quite frankly, Sakura, from now on, none of us are safe."

            Sakura's jaw dropped as Li ran out from the front porch.  He stopped dead in his tracks, unsure of what to make of the situation.  There stood Sakura (with a half-eaten French vanilla ice cream cone) and Eriol (very much NOT in England) and both looked as if they hadn't had a glass of water in weeks.

            In the living room sat a group of people; each one with a thousand different questions but knowing that not a single one could be answered. Not be Sakura, not by Eriol, not by anybody.

            Sakura sat on a large forest green couch with Li at her side. To her left was Yue, standing behind a matching green chair with Kero hovering right beside him. Sitting in the large chair was Madison, hastily trying to finish Sakura's dress for the Lantern Festival that was to be held later that evening. To Sakura's right sat Eriol in a chair that identical to the one that Madison was occupying. At the center of it all was the library book that Sakura had found in the Restricted Section, opened to the page with the large picture of the tattoo on Megumi's back.

            "Are you sure it's the same one?" Kero asked Sakura. He didn't want to doubt his mistress, he just would have preferred to be wrong in this case.

            "It is." Sakura picked up the book and read the scripture underneath the picture. " 'This particular marking made its first appearance in the late thirteenth century in Tokyo, Japan. It was first used as a symbol of friendship amongst the family with the surname of Hu, but when the Serpent Clan defeated every last person of Hu descent, they took the symbol and forsaked the name of the Hu.' "  Sakura took a moment to turn the page. She quickly skimmed the page, "It gets worse," she said and then read on. " 'Using the blood of the Hu's, along with red and black dye, the Serpent Clan made a mixture that they used to make the tattoos of the same symbol they had stolen.' Oh my god, that is so disgusting," Sakura said, throwing the book back onto the table, yet everyone's eyes followed it as it landed with a hard smack!  The picture was enticing.

            "Right," said Li, taking hold of the situation. "Where does this leave us?"

            "With more questions and still no answers," she said, exasperated. "Shit!" She cussed loudly, standing up and walking around, pacing almost. "I don't even know where to begin!"

            "None of us do," Li said, joining her from her pacing behind the couch. He held onto her shoulders and gently shook her back to reality. "Do you think any of us have more of a clue than you?" She shook her head, suddenly feeling rather stupid. "Let's just start from point A, alright?" Sakura nodded and Li let go of her, resting his hands on the back of the couch and addressed the group as if he were the president of a large company and these were his board members. "First off, Megumi." The board members waited for him to speak. "She has the tattoo, Sakura saw it; which means that it's just a little more than coincidence.  This leads to the second thing, that Megumi is a member of the Serpent Clan, hence the large snake tattoo."

            "That may be so," Eriol said, finally contributing to the conversation. "But we can't be sure if it's her."

            "What do you mean 'we can't be sure?' " Li said. "Of course it is!  There's no other explanation for it!  The strong aura, the fact that another card is usually lurking by when she is; all signs point to her."

            "Although it is probable that her involvement in this is not purely coincidence, we cannot be one hundred percent sure until we catch her in the act."

            "Eriol's right," Yue said, his eyes intensely focused. "But you realize that catching her is going to be difficult. She's extremely powerful."

            "Yes, Yue," Kero agreed. "I sensed something strange from her. And whatever it was, it was unnatural and evil. So for now, we have to concentrate on capturing the other cards because if she captures the remaining ones, we're in a whole lot of trouble."

            "All we have to do now is wait," Eriol said.

            "There's got to be another option," Li suggested.

            "Like what?"

            "Well," Madison said, finally looking up from Sakura's (now finished) dress. "Isn't is obvious?" After looking at all the vacant stares (except for Eriol, who had none), she continued. "The Lantern Festival, you idiots!" Madison broke into a sheepish smile. "Sorry, but…there's always some gathering or festival or school soccer match that some card is going to plan on ruining.  Your job is to make sure that no one notices, right?"

            After the group had disbanded so they could prepare for the Lantern Festival, Eriol sat in front of the fire with the book in his lap. "You know," he said to Madison, who was lingering in the shadows behind him. "You pick up a lot for having no magical origin. You're quite natural at it."

            "Thanks," Madison said shyly, walking up to the couch and sitting down beside him. "So, Eriol," she said, unusually happy-like. "You think you could put the book down for two seconds and forget about this. Ya know…try to live a normal life."

            Eriol smiled and closed the book, placing it carefully on the table in front of him. "Normal life? That's highly impossible."

            "No, it's not," Madison said, defying him. "You just choose not to. And you know why?" He just stared at her, this time, with a vacant look in his eyes. "You're too stubborn."  He gave her a look and she just laughed. "What? Mr. Magic can't have a real human flaw? Oh, no," she said dramatically. "That would be highly impossible, now wouldn't it?"

            He laughed, at first, along with her, but it slowly died down and the twinkle in his eye faded to something deeper; something sad. "I'm not immortal, you know. I am a teenager, just like all of you, the only difference is I'm a little bit wiser." Madison didn't know what to say, so she listened intently. "None of you have any idea what it's like to be someone's reincarnation. And not just anyone, Clow Reed himself. It's like you have no identity, just someone else's used up one. I feel like I got sold at someone's yard sale," he joked, yet the undertones were completely serious. "You also don't know that everyday of my life, I wish it all away.  Why can't I just live in Reedington with the rest of you? Play soccer, get good grades, go to college…have a girlfriend…" Madison shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "But with my 'human flaws' comes human emotions, as well and-"

            "Eriol, would you like to go to the festival with me?" Madison spit out so fast, Eriol couldn't register what she was saying until a moment later. "I know it's sudden and all but Eriol, none of us give you enough credit.  We all see you as some…some…being who knows everything but really, you're just as clueless as the rest of us."

            "Well, I wouldn't say that.."

            "The point is," Madison interrupted. "I would really like to go with you.  I think we're good friends and you are one of us. You always have been."

            Eriol smiled happily, which was something he hadn't done in a long time.

            "And don't worry about what to wear, if that's what you're thinking…"

            "It's not," Eriol said quickly, but Madison was like in some sort of trance, talking rapidly and not paying any attention now to what he was saying.

            "I brought over a couple of extra tuxedos for Li in case one didn't fit him right and you're a little bit taller and uh," more muscular, she screamed at herself but what she ended up saying was, "you're built like an Olympian so…oh Jesus…"

            "So, if we were to go together," he mused to himself (and to Madison) while she took a moment to breathe. "It would be like…a date."

            "Um…I dunno. I suppose," she said, slowing down her speech and fully recovered.

            There was a long silence between them and Madison was suddenly regretting her offer because of the inevitable letdown she was about to get.  But, fortunately enough, it never came.

            "Sure, sounds fun," he said lightly, like it was nothing.  Although the rapid beating of his heart was surely not nothing. He exited the room, a smile adorning his face.  Madison had done it.  For not only two seconds, but for five whole minutes he forgot totally about the cards.  And he planned on doing that for the entire night.  Well, most of it, anyways.

            As Eriol opened the closet, sifting through the leftover tuxedos, he wondered why Madison had asked him. He knew it wasn't out of pity, she wasn't like that. But what could it have been? He thought.  But then Eriol remembered. As soon as Sakura had entered the house after their walk, Madison had stolen her French vanilla ice cream and devoured the rest of it. "Must have been the vanilla bean," he said, smiling to himself.

Author's Note: Okay, that was a short one but I have to get myself reacquainted with this story again. I should have the next chapter up by the end of the week if I'm lucky. One question: The whole Eriol/Madison thing. Good or bad? I mean, it's not going to be the main focus of the story just something small and I don't even know if it's going to develop into anything, it's just an idea. So review! And please go check out my new Harry Potter story, Absolutely Surreal! I love it just as much as I do this one!