"Marina?"

The bitch just vanished. I looked all over the house for her and then all over town. She just disappeared. I didn't think she would actually embark on any craziness because of her ridiculous belief in vampires but I guess I was dead wrong.

"Natalia!" I heard Vanessa call me from the corridor. I was in Marina's room again, going through all of the stuff she left behind. There was a journal she made for me on her desk so I took it before leaving the room.

"Where the hell is this girl?" I wondered out loud for the thousandth time.

Man is she gonna hear it when I see her again.

"Her parents haven't heard from her either" Vanessa told me when I reached her, "and there's something else. Luke is gone too."

Oh, for fuck's sake. Poor Luke, she really took him along in that madness of hers.

"Damn, she is unhinged, I swear. This is insane, we have to find her and force her into therapy."

Vanessa shrugged. She was on phone duty. After trying Marina's phone a million times and being ignored she tried Luke's, who didn't pick up either, and then Gloria's, but we still had nothing on Marina's location. The rest of the girls in the house didn't even see her leaving, our only clue was Marcio. He spoke to her before she left Luke's house with him.

"Why would she leave like this? What happened?"

I tried not to look at Vanessa when she asked that. I promised Marina I wouldn't tell anyone so I would take that to my filthy grave, her impulsive and unreasonable decisions be damned.

"I don't think that even matters right now. Do you think we could track her phone?"

No, she didn't think so. None of us knew how to do that and we didn't know anyone who could either. Maybe the police could but we were all still disagreeing about reporting her as missing. Some of the girls thought it would be a massive overreaction, especially if Luke was with her. He would make her see she was acting crazy and make her come back before the cops even started looking for her.

I had a feeling that would actually happen, to be honest.

"Fuck, there is absolutely nothing on that boy she hangs with in her room. No address, no phone number, no picture, nothing. It's like she never even met him but she's with him all the time, how can this be?"

No one answered me.

God, was that fishy or what.

There was nothing we could do, really, but I felt too restless to let it go. These people Marina was scared of could not be vampires but she did say she thought they were dangerous and with her disappearance I started to believe in that too, if anything.

"Hey" Vanessa called me again, "Marcio said something else. Luke left a note on their fridge board saying he was with Marina and that no one needed to worry because they would be back as soon as possible."

Well, surely that was what he hoped for, but would she let him drag her back?

Her parents left BH as soon as they heard she was missing and the night was miserably long. Everyone was worried and nobody knew what else to do. Gloria threw a fit about some of us not wanting to report her disappearance and stormed off to do that and Bernardo just sat there with us with the most pained expression I had ever seen on a man in my whole life.

"She's with Luke, she's fine. He won't let anything happen to her, right?" He repeated like a mantra all night long and gosh I wish I was closer to him so I could just hug the fuck out of that guy. He looked like Life was defeating him.

We heard nothing of her all day long. Both her parents left for the bed and breakfast they were staying at after a few hours of radio silence and we all needed to go about our days, but I couldn't. Marina was like a sister to me, I felt my heart clenching every second we had no news of her.

It was on the second day of her disappearance that shit hit the fan.

They had left at night and we had only noticed it a few hours later. The next night it was all silent again but the police were notified of her disappearance, though I had no idea of what they were doing about it. Knowing our cops, not much. The following day went by and another night came and then it all exploded in my face.

I was wandering aimlessly downtown, trying to shake the anxiety away and thinking of anything else I could do that didn't involve leaving town without knowing where to go like Marina probably did. It was around nine o'clock and the streets were pretty full, which made it a little hard to think but I didn't feel like going home. I could barely focus on work or college, I was on the verge of freaking out.

Can't believe you're doing this to us, girl. Something really bad must have happened, this is not you.

It started to creep on me then. That very same feeling I had on the night Marina helped me get ready for the party and I got her late to work and saved her life. A horrible cold feeling spreading very slowly from my chest to the rest of my body, ending at my fingertips. The closer I got to my house the worse it felt. I knew right then, just as I knew when the bar burnt down.

We were in danger.

I took a moment to consider what to do. I could turn around and take shelter anywhere until it passed or I could check if I was right again. I thought about all the people inside the house and how I would be turning my back on them if I just tried to escape from whatever it was and decided to go check, praying to be finally wrong that time.

The first thing I noticed when I went inside was that the electricity was off. The rest of the street was all lit up so it had to be some problem in our house specifically. The second thing I noticed was that there was no one in there except for me. I looked around for a while and found a note on the kitchen counter.

"We tried to call and text you but you didn't answer. We are going to the small square because there is no energy in the house, come meet us. - Julia."

"Great, really wonderful." I whispered in annoyance.

"You must be Natalia."

I jumped so high I could have touched the ceiling and turned to see who spoke. A young girl was standing in the corridor between the living room and the kitchen. She didn't seem to be over fourteen and looked extremely familiar.

"Fuck, you scared me." I put a hand on my chest to try to calm my heart. "Are you related to Alec?"

"I'm Jane. I am Alec's sister." She smiled serenely and walked to me.

I thought I was going to explode with the tingling in my body telling me to run the fuck away.

"Don't come any closer." I took a few steps back, going further into the kitchen. She raised her eyebrows at me.

"I just want to talk."

"Unless you want to tell me what happened to Marina I don't want to talk to you. I know you mean no good."

She hummed and seemed to be having quite some fun teasing me with her presence and her knowledge of everything I ignored.

God, what a fucking bitch.

"I don't know why you would think that. I haven't done anything to you" her tone implied the sentence was unfinished and my brain automatically completed it for me – yet .

"I can tell."

She smiled again.

"Yes, that is very interesting. I saw you outside debating if you should come in. Can you always tell when something is wrong?"

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Leave.

My brain was going off like a siren, begging me to get as far from that girl as I could. But she knew where Marina really was, she knew where Luke was, I was pretty sure of that. I had to know, I had to make her tell me.

"Usually, yes."

She reached me and raised a hand to touch my face. I automatically tried to lean back but she grabbed me so quickly I barely saw her fingers moving. She cupped my face with an iron grip and I inhaled deeply while my heart leaped.

"I don't feel anything" she sighed in disappointment, "should I take you or just get rid of you?"

Was she asking for my opinion or just torturing me?

"Where are Marina and Luke?"

"She told you, didn't she?" She released my face and I felt my skin burning from her tight grasp.

I stared at her in confusion.

The only thing Marina "told" me was utter nonsense, that girl could not possibly be afraid of that, right? It couldn't be true, no way.

"Marina is not well, she is making up shit in her head."

But I was not as sure of that as I once was. Everything was too strange and I felt in my bones that I was in deeper danger than I had ever been before. The only thing near me in that moment was that little girl and how could she be that dangerous? She didn't look dangerous at all, she looked like a doll.

Unless Marina was right .

Oh God, I was getting crazy too. Marina was dragging everyone into her nonsense.

"She is really perceptive" was all the girl said.

No, there was no way. It couldn't be true, how could something like that be true?

I refused to believe it.

"I really have no idea of what you are talking about."

"What did she tell you?"

I couldn't take it any longer, instead of answering her I tried to run towards the backdoor. Somehow she was right in front of it when I turned.

"We are not done talking."

Fuck, did she just teleport?

"Tell me where they are or get the fuck away from me."

I was barely finished talking when the cold in my veins telling me to run was replaced by pure blazing fire. I felt every cell in my body burning and let out a shriek as I fell down.

It was over as quickly as it began.

"What did she tell you?"

I looked up to her incredulously as she repeated her question, panting like I ran a marathon. The pain lasted for not much longer than a second but it was so intense that I thought I was going to die

She did this to me?

"Holy fuck , she was right?" I tried to crawl away from her but in another blink she was on top of me.

What the actual fuck is happening?

Jane didn't say anything, she just put her hands around my neck.

"There are two ways this can go" she finally said after contemplating me in silence for awfully stretched out moments. "I kill you right now, choking you." She applied some pressure on my neck to illustrate what she meant.

Like she really needed to, the sadistic piece of shit.

"Or" she continued, deliberately slowly "you tell me exactly how that little radar of yours works and I take you to your friend."

It sounded like a super easy choice, which just made it all the more suspicious.

"It doesn't always happen" I said with some difficulty because that little bitch was super strong and my throat was aching in her tiny hands "but when it does it is always right. I just feel it in my chest, spreading through my body. It's like ice. And my brain starts to scream."

She released my neck and got back on her feet. I took a second to catch my breath and sat up.

"Why did you come in if you felt that?"

"I thought all my friends were inside."

"And you thought that you would make any difference if they needed saving?" She laughed, her dark eyes sparkling. "Astonishing."

Damn, how am I being roasted by this brat?

"It's true then" I ignored her snarky remark, worried with more important matters, "you and your brother are vampires."

God, I really said that word out loud to someone's face. It sounded just as pathetic as it did in my head.

"We are." She crossed her arms and stared at me like she was making an important decision. "And we have a very important rule. Humans are not allowed to know of our existence, no exceptions."

I could actually feel all the blood leaving my face.

A hundred horrible thoughts started to run around in my head in complete disarray. The first one was that Marina and Luke were dead because of this secrecy. The second one was that I was next. Somewhere in the midst of the rest of them was the thought that Marina spent months befriending a fucking vampire knowing exactly what he was and even kissed him.

If that girl didn't need therapy I didn't know who did.

"I should bring you with me, I think" Jane finally decided. "It might be something, who knows?"

"You're taking me to Marina and Luke?"

She smirked and my brain screamed again.

"I am taking you to Marina."

What about Luke? Are they not together anymore?

I couldn't force the question out of my mouth. Jane was cute and mischievous in a very scary way, it made the marrow in my bones freeze. I didn't want to poke her too much. When she left the house I followed her in my best behaviour and prayed to my guardian angel to walk by me into the night.

Looking back now I think my angel was overworked and took the night off.