Hello everyone. I am so sorry that I haven't updated in so long, but I've been busy. AP classes deserve to die. You guys don't know how great you all are. I really, really appreciate your wonderful reviews, thanks so much for the feedback. For this chapter, I want to give major thanks to Summer Jasmine and ilovetwilight99 for being such amazing betas. You guys are great. :) Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy this chapter! :D

Back at the house, the first person I saw was Olivia pacing up and down - an old habit she keeps up when things were bad.

"What's wrong?" I asked, drawing her attention to me. Her head snapped up, and she looked surprised as if I'd caught her off guard.

Nicole walked in. "Oh good you're here." She looked relieved. She stared at the phone in her hands seeming to will it to ring.

"What's wrong?" I repeated my question.

Nicole took a breath. "Don't panic, okay?"

I frowned at the way her eyes were watery. Hunters did not cry on the job, and by the way Olivia and Nicole were tensed, they were definitely on the job.

"Mom's missing," Olivia blurted out. "She was hunting Lucas with Cheryl, but Cheryl said Mom didn't meet her at the place she was supposed to."

I frowned. "How long ago was that?"

"About an hour," Cheryl answered walking into the room. "I tried calling her phone again. It's not even ringing any more."

"Wait, that's not possible," I said. "She couldn't have been missing for an hour." She'd just called me, and she'd sounded fine. Except at the end when she was rushing to leave…

"Why not? Do you know something?" Cheryl asked. Three pairs of eyes stared at me.

"I just talked to her a few minutes ago," I said, remembering the very unpleasant conversation.

"That doesn't make any sense," Cheryl frowned. "Did you call her?"

"No, she called me." I didn't like where this was heading. The next question would be what did she want to talk to me about, and that was a topic I hadn't had enough time to formulate a good, solid lie for.

"What did she want to talk to you about?" Olivia asked. See? I'm practically psychic.

Unfortunately, there were no lies, no beating around the bush, no easy way out for this one. I'd had to tell them the truth.

"Emily," I said softly. "She wanted to talk to me about Emily."

Cheryl's frown became more defined. Olivia looked confused. And Nicole looked hopeful. "Did they find out anything new?" Nicole asked.

I spoke very slowly. "There are some members of the Administratio, according to Mom, who think that Emily is a vampire." I waited for their outraged disbelief.

Sure enough, right on cue all three gasped at the same time. "What? How?" Olivia's eyes were still bulging.

"I don't know, Mom didn't say much about it. But I guess that's why she didn't want us trying to find Emily."

I only glanced once at Nicole who stood shaking her head in disbelief while the rest of her body was frozen. "But," she said hesitantly, "that means they're going to look for her, and then they'll kill…" She stopped talking.

Cheryl was, as usual, the calm one. "What I don't understand is why Mom would call you specifically in the middle of hunting to talk about Emily."

Olivia's head snapped up. "You think it's connected to where Mom is?"

Cheryl nodded. "Let's say Mom was caught."

"By Lucas?" I asked trying to wrap my head around where she was going with this.

"Most likely," she said and continued. "What if Lucas was holding her captive for whatever convoluted reason that he may have? Why would that cause Mom to call Evy and start talking to her about Emily?"

"You don't think Emily would be working with him, do you?" Olivia's eyebrows were pulled very tightly together.

"I don't think so," said Nicole. "What if Lucas wanted Mom to call Evy? What if the whole thing was set up?"

"All we're coming up with is questions, but no answers," I said frustrated.

"Evelyn, what exactly did Mom say to you on the phone?" asked Cheryl.

I'd wanted to avoid this. However, my mother's life was at stake. "She asked me if I'd seen Emily in the past month."

"Why would she think you'd seen Emily?" Olivia squinted at me as though she was trying to read my mind.

I shrugged, again hating the direction the conversation was heading.

"Would she have a reason to think you've seen Emily or does she always check up on you to make sure you're not hanging out with vamps?" Olivia pried.

"Olivia!" Nicole came to my rescue.

"What? You don't think it's weird that Mom calls her in the middle of a life or death situation to ask her if she's talked to any old friends recently? There has to be some kind of a connection," she said calmly.

"Evy wouldn't just decide to be friends with a vampire," Nicole said. I felt kind of bad listening to her defend me when Olivia was pretty much right.

"No one's a hundred percent sure that Emily is even a vampire," I added, trying to help my case.

Olivia completely ignored what I said. "Don't you think she's been acting weird lately? She hasn't been hunting as much or talking to Ethan. She's always out doing who knows what with other people."

"I agree," Cheryl interrupted.

"What?!" I tried to make sure my voice didn't get too high to give me away.

"Cheryl, you don't really think Evelyn-" Nicole started.

"I think Mom's phone call has something to do with Evelyn. If it didn't she wouldn't have called her. I think she was trying to give us some kind of hint. Maybe it's something that only you would understand," Cheryl looked at me hopefully.

I considered the reasonableness of what Cheryl was saying. "All she said was that Lucas was the one who leaked the trail about Emily being a vampire, and she asked me if I'd had any contact with her recently. She said she'd fought Lucas today, and that was it."

"Am I the only one here who thinks she sounds defensive?" asked Olivia.

"Yes," Cheryl and Nicole said together.

"Look, Evelyn why don't you just think about it, and if you come up with any ideas just let me know. Right now this Emily thing is all we have to go on, so I think we should search for her," Cheryl said taking charge.

"But Administratio laws state that we'd have to kill her," Nicole reminded her looking weary.

"And Mom specifically said to stay away from Emily," I said.

"Maybe that was her hint." Nicole looked at the skeptical expression on Cheryl and Olivia's faces. "You never know, it could've been her way of keeping us safe."

"Yeah right. Mom cares more about catching Lucas than she does our safety," Olivia said.

"That's not true!" I looked at her incredulously. "She isn't obsessed with hunting him," I paused, "well, not anymore…"

"Mom's a hunter first and foremost, you know that," Olivia said apathetically.

"We have to worry about all this later," said Cheryl. "Right now Emily's our only lead to find Mom, it's her or Lucas. And if her hint was to avoid Emily, I really don't care. Finding Mom is more important. I vote we go find Emily, unless anyone thinks we'd have a better shot at Lucas?" She looked around at our blank faces. "Okay then, who's ready to go?"

"Wait, I just have one more question for Evelyn. Why have you been avoiding Ethan?" Olivia asked me.

I sighed heavily. "Because his little puppy dog crush is annoying." It came out curt and harsh.

"Sorry I've been such a nuisance," said Ethan coming up behind me.

I looked at Olivia who'd obviously known that Ethan was standing there. She smirked, I wanted to punch her.

"Ethan, I-"

Ethan's face showed no emotion. "Don't worry about it," he cut me off and then looked at Cheryl. "My father wants to talk to you. He's been thinking about ways to locate your mom."

Cheryl nodded. "Evy remember what I said. Just think about it. Nicky, you stay here in case any of the hunters come. Olivia, come with me."

"What's Evelyn going to do?" Olivia asked.

"She needs to go back to school," Cheryl said firmly. "And you should go back too Ethan."

My jaw dropped. "But Mom's missing," I protested.

"Go Evelyn."

Without looking at anyone I teleported out of the house, but I didn't go to school. Instead, I went to Anthony's house. I figured I would talk to Emily; she had a right to know what was going on. And, I'd also call Anthony to see if he would come home early from school. I really needed to see him.

When I rung the doorbell I was a little surprised to see Anthony answer, he must have been ditching. "Hi, what are you doing here?" He looked my face over when I didn't respond. "What's wrong? Come inside."

I walked in, but I didn't go farther than the foyer. Anthony and I looked at each other for a while. "Um, I'm going to need to see Emily. Things are kind of falling apart."

"She's with Eric. What happened?"

"Really? She's with Eric?" I hadn't expected her to get over her aversion to other vampires so quickly.

He nodded. "She needed to feed."

I couldn't stop myself from wincing at that. And then I saw him see my reaction.

"Does that bother you?" he asked. "Because there really isn't any way around it."

I sighed. "I know, I'm sorry. Today just really isn't a good day. And when you said 'feed…'" I paused. "I'm still getting used to this. I don't even know if we can work out."

"Wait, wait slow down. Tell me what's wrong." He walked over to me slowly. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes as he traced his fingers along my face.

"My mom's missing, and the other hunters are pretty sure that Emily's a vampire," I started to explain. Anthony wrapped one arm around my waist and led me to the living room. I looked around. "Is anyone else here?"

He shook his head. "Juana wanted to go shopping or something so Mark took her. Now about Emily, we can take her into hiding somewhere else and then I can help you look for your mother-"

"No," I stopped him. "See, it wouldn't be such a huge fiasco if there were two separate problems because then the hunters would look for my mom first and that would give us time to figure out what to do with Emily. But, I told them about how my mom had called earlier - when she was supposed to be missing - to talk to me about Emily. So now everyone thinks the two things are tied together, but I know for a fact that Emily's been here the whole time."

Anthony frowned. "It still doesn't add up though. If your Mom was already missing when she called you, then she probably only had the opportunity to call one person, why would she waste that opportunity to talk about Emily?"

"Ugh, my head hurts. And one of my sisters already suspects something's up with me. Then again she was always the bitchy one," I ranted. He raised an eyebrow. "What? She is." I told him about how she'd set me up to say Ethan was annoying.

"Ah, Ethan. I don't think he likes me very much," Anthony reflected, stating the obvious.

I heaved a sigh. "I don't even want to think about Ethan right now."

He looked at me sadly. "I'm sorry."

I shrugged. "That's the least of my problems. Can you call Eric? I really think Emily should know what's going on."

He was just about to pull out his cell phone, when for once, something went right and Emily and Eric walked in.

They stopped dead when they saw me. "Evy, what's up? I thought you were supposed to be at school." Emily came and sat down next to me.

I bit my lip trying to figure out what to tell her. "The Administratio knows, well they strongly suspect, that you're a vampire. And my sisters think you're connected to my mom being missing."

She frowned. "Your mom's missing? What happened?"

I recounted the whole story about how my mom had called and what she'd said and what my sisters were planning to do to find her.

"We should get you away from here," Eric said. "They're going to look for you locally. You can't risk that."

"We can leave today if we have to," Anthony said.

I looked at him worriedly. Today?

He stroked my face gently. "Not for forever, just till -"

"No," Emily said firmly. "You guys can't do this for me. The hunters aren't going to stop looking for me. It's part of hunters' culture, if one of us turns then we have to die."

"Don't be ridiculous," I said. "There has to be a way to-" Emily stopped me with a look.

"Listen Evelyn, you can't keep going through this for me. By protecting me you could lose Anthony and that's not fair. I know how hard things already are for you two."

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, don't get all self sacrificing and melodramatic. If they take you into hiding it'll be, like he said, only for a little while."

"Actually, I think you should stay, little brother," said Eric.

Anthony raised an eyebrow. "You might need my help."

"To what, avoid a few hunters? Like we haven't done that before," said Eric, perfectly confident. Emily and I stared at him. "Sorry ladies, but a guy has to survive. Anyway, the hunters already know you're here, if you disappear now they'll follow."

"That makes sense," I said. "But where are you guys gonna go?"

"Are we going somewhere?" Juana asked walking in with her hands full of shopping bags.

"Juana, don't you think it's time you leave us alone?" asked Eric.

"No, I love you boys way too much." She looked at me and then glanced at Emily and sighed. "You know these hunter people have way too many problems, if you boys want to ditch anybody it should be them."

"You and I are leaving with Emily, and Anthony's staying here," Eric said to Mark.

Mark looked surprised at first, but then shrugged. "Okay."

"And I'll stay with Anthony," said Juana cheerfully. "Someone has to keep him company." I rolled my eyes at that, and no surprise, she saw me. "Problem with that huntress?"

I glared at her and was just about to say yes, when Anthony spoke. "Juana, I think it's time for you leave."

She sighed dramatically. "Eric just said much the same thing, and I ignored him. Weren't you paying any attention?"

"The difference between what Eric said and what I'm saying is that I'm not asking you if you want to leave, I'm telling you that you have to."

I looked down to hide my smile.

Juana narrowed her eyes. "Excuse me? Do you remember how I helped you when you first turned? I let you three play your little 'let's not kill the humans' game. I took care of you when the hunters like her," she pointed at me, "saw how weak and new you were and wanted to kill you. The reason I'm so weak is because I always had to protect you three. Don't you think that deserves some sort of a thank you?"

"Don't you think over the centuries we've done enough for you Juana? We haven't let anyone kill you either," said Mark.

She pursed her lips. "Fine. I'll leave, but you'll regret picking the hunters over me."

She turned her cold eyes on me. She looked crazy with her mean expression, but still something about her made me think she was ready to cry. "Bitch."

"Oh, get over yourself," I said, before Anthony could say something. I was fed up.

She smiled maliciously. "You're going to regret this."