Hey everybody! Thanks to scott, TheWaterElement & harryrulesmyworld for reviewing! Some of your questions will be answered in the next couple of chapters. So here's chapter 6 for ya'll! Enjoy!

Irma: WAIT JUST ONE SECOND! WHAT IS GOING ON WITH ME?

Me: You can't just read the story like the rest of everyone to find out?

Irma: NOT WHEN YOU'RE PRACTICALLY KILLING ME OFF HERE!

Me:::sigh: you do know that you aren't really living this, right?

Irma: Oh…umm…right…

Me: ANYWAYS, how about reading the disclaimer Irma?

Irma: Love to. :clears throat: KaNdRaKaRgrl does not own WITCH (wish she did, then I'd FINALLY have a boyfriend instead of creepy little Martin) or Daniel Powter's song Bad Day.

Me: Thanks Irma! Now on with the story!

Chapter 6

Golden Revelations & A Restless Heart

The gleaming glass doors of The Golden shimmered into Irma's vision as the echoes of her footsteps bouncing off the concrete fell into the most irritating repetition that the water girl just had to think about how much less annoying it would be if Hay Lin had just flown them there on a lofty, leisurely pocket of air.

Hay Lin…Irma shook her head despondently as the image of her friend's normally chipper, smiling face materialized in the midst of her mind's eye. And then Hay Lin's shining pearly whites started to grit so hard Irma could almost hear their squeaks in reality. The dancing almond eyes she'd envied from the day they met, so free, so able to display emotion and not regret it later, so unlike her own turquoise orbs, gained the greatest fire Irma had ever had the chance to marvel, like the flood of flames that had threatened to devour Will that joyfully cursed Halloween night. Irma hated life when she knew nothing of what was falling apart around her…and she hated herself, too; even thought the almighty beings of Candracar had transformed her into a keeper of a broken, limitless element, she never felt more powerless when knowledge just wouldn't open up its door to her…and when Cornelia was right there, front & center to point it out and rub it in Irma's face, tearstained only on the insides of her soul.

But before her train of thought could roll on and plunge her further into her own little ocean of emotion, Irma pushed every thought that was cluttering her mind into a dustpan and dumped it out the windows of her head just in time to pull open the heavy panes of glass and take in the hustle that was The Golden.

"IRMA!" The water princess cringed as the call sliced through her soul's perfectly contented silence. Swiveling her head to the right, her eyes drank in the sight that was Cornelia, standing up next to a table and waving her arms like a chicken trying to escape the chopping block.

"What's up guys?" Irma asked, pulling up a chair and grabbing a cookie off the plate set in front of her. As the scraping of Cornelia's chair sliding back into place reached her ears, she glanced up & took a look around the table. "Um…where's Hay Lin?"

Will's fiery mane of red hair snapped up from her mug of coffee and gave Irma a long hard look, her eyes refusing to meet her's.

"Well…we just…thought it would be better if she sat this meeting out," Will told her, quickly lifting her mug to her parted lips in a futile effort to ward off any more questions.

Irma wasn't buying it. "Is this about…you know, yesterday?"

Cornelia gave her look that plainly said, "Well, duh. I mean, why else would we make sure she didn't come with us?" But Taranee spoke out before she could put those thoughts into words.

"See, that…wasn't exactly 'Hay Lin behavior.' We think something's wrong with her powers…or her. We didn't want her to hear that from us, or from anyone else. Either way it's dangerous. You or any one of us could be her next victims-"

"HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT?" Irma thundered as quietly as she could without attracting too much attention. "Hay Lin would NEVER attack her friends on purpose! Not without good reason! And even then she wouldn't do it! She's one of our best friends! After all we've been through…I've known her almost my entire life. She is my sister if you take away the part about having to be related by blood for the title to count." She paused to take a deep breath, all of the remaining guardians staring at her in disbelief. Of all her outbursts, this one had by far been the most impacting. "I guess…I can't believe that she would do it because she wanted to. I know her too well…or maybe I just don't know her at all anymore…"

She felt Cornelia's cold yet sympathetic hand on her shoulder. "Well, we're here to find out just what the hell is going on," she said, turning to Will. She nodded, and the rest of the girls huddled close into a circle, Irma following Cornelia's lead so that they all hovered over Will. No one else paid any mind, thinking they were huddled poring over some teen magazine or something. Only one silhouetted figure noticed them at all, sitting at the farthest back corner of the diner…

Will closed her eyes, and the rest of the girls just gave a look of deep concentration toward her open palm. She curled up her fingers, and with a muffled blast of hot pink light unfurled her fist, giving way for the brilliant jewel that was The Heart of Candracar to rise up above her palm. She spoke to it softly, in a barely audible whisper in a language the other three guardians could not even begin to comprehend. The crystal just remained dim, until a light bulb clicked on in Irma's brain. She fixed her mind on the image of Hay Lin's power outburst and repeated one word inside her head, over and over and over again: Why?

A silver glow overtook the sphere, and Irma smiled contentedly. But instead of giving their eyes an image to wonder about, spirited threads of blue began to interweave the silver circle, and pretty soon they had a double thread of color surrounding the Heart. But then the silver patches began to spread, devouring the turquoise snatches, feeding on them until there was just a ring of silver wind. Irma just kept staring, knowing there was something more to this. And there was, a lot more than she could have imagined there ever would be. But all hey eyes drunk in was the flickering image of two aurameres, one blue, one silver, dimming until they were no more, crashing into one another, and then ceasing to exist altogether. And with the loudest bang that only the four themselves could hear, Irma was thrust backward, shooting out of her chair and onto floor. The Heart fell out of the air, dimming once again, and Will snatched it up off the table and absorbed it into herself once more, ensuring that their secret was still just that: a secret.

Taranee jumped off her chair, breaking the circle further and helping Irma back up.

"Well, we know one thing's for sure: something's going on up in Candracar, and its affecting us, or mainly you and Hay Lin, here," Will said all leader-like, not knowing just how right…and dismally wrong she really was right then.

"That just proves my point: it wasn't Hay Lin's fault," Irma said firmly.

Will sighed. "We don't know for sure, Irma. She could very well have made the decision consciously." Seeing the death look the water guardian was giving her, she quickly added, "But tell you what. Tomorrow we'll call up Hay Lin and go see the Oracle. He'll straighten out this mess."

"Like he'd actually give us a straight answer," Cornlelia muttered. "Don't know if you've noticed Will, but the guy talks in the worst kind of code. If he says the sky is blue it probably really means the tree is purple." The rest of WITCH looked at her like marbles had just started pouring out her ears (A/N: get it? Heehee) "What? Go ahead, try and tell me I'm not right."

"It still won't hurt to try," Will said in a very final tone, and it was one of the rare occasions that Cornelia actually shut her mouth and kept it that way, sparking a very wide smile from Irma. "But you are kinda right."

"I have to get going," Taranee said.

"We all should head out. I'll call ya'll tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay," Irma answered for everyone. And the four guardians slapped their bill on the table and left The Golden chattering away, Irma not being able to help shooting a look at the farthest corner table of the joint out of some sort of instinct…some kind of bond, really…

As soon as they were out those doors, the figure seated at that very table shifted back into the rays of sunlight from their hiding place among the shadows. Taking one long, last despondent sip of their soda, they paid their bill and stood up. Walking toward the double doors, like a rain cloud hung right over her head threatening to burst like her eyes filled with tears, Hay Lin left the restaurant in a run.

Yay I finished chappy 6! Lol sorry it took a little long. I wrote, wasn't happy with it, so I rewrote it. I hinted at something that was wrong with the girls in this one. I'll give a cookie to anyone who can guess what it is! R&R as always please! Next update will come once the number of reviews hits 19!