AN: A little short, a little boring and a bit of a wait for it, but I'm pushing on with this story in hopes that it can still be salvaged lol. Let me tell you, sometimes what you have planned and what comes out during writing are two completely different things. Anyway, hope you find it at least a bit enjoyable! The next chapter may have a bit more Jese, but I'm sure at least one or two followers (if this story still has any) are glad to see what Benny's been up to. The next story I plan to update is my other MBAV story, Five Nights at Jesse's, because that one just has a few chapters left! Woo! If you haven't taken a look t it, and you like Rory and Jesse, give it a try! And please, if you wil, ignore the fact that it's a Halloween story and I'm updating it in June, and ignore the author behind the curtain of shame as wel!

Anyway, read on! Slight filler, but necessary!

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Ethan grunted as he carefully eased himself out of his hiding space. Aria had just walked by- again, from one door to another on the bottom floor, where Ethan had finally made it after several painstaking minutes of easing through the third floor (where Jesse's study was) and the second floor (where Luc was recovering, and also where the squeakiest floorboards were. Aria, the maid, seemed to have no special talents (aka supernatural abilities) other than her keen instincts, and for this reason, Ethan thought she was probably human. She had just glanced back at the area beside a stray suit of armor in the halls just after Ethan had moved behind it. Then she continued on her way, and Ethan had done the same.

Four minutes later, he had just slipped out the small kitchen window he knew Aria usually left open. It had a crank and a screen as well- and he'd removed it very carefully in order to be quiet and slip out without leaving any visible evidence.

Walking through the gardens, a cool and gentle breeze blew through Ethan's tousled locks, but did little to calm his nerves. Even if everything was going as planned...even if he knew the ultimate outcome of this all, it was no less nerve-wracking than it would have been if he actually planned to make an escape. How long would it take Jesse to find him? To discover that he was missing?

An hour? A few? A day? Either way, he had to get out while he had will and opportunity. He'd left everything in his room just as it was earlier that day...neat and orderly, just how he liked to keep his belongings. Of course, nothing there actually belonged to him, but it was a nice thought that he had his own room.

Maybe it wouldn't be his room after that night, Ethan mused, wondering absently if Jesse would dare move him to the dungeon-like room he's been in when he'd first arrived. Blinded by hate and fear as Ethan was, even he could see that Jesse didn't like seeing him upset.

But that was irrelevant. Now, Ethan would make his trip to the tunnels he knew lied under the grounds outside. He'd seen the creepy groundskeeper go through a door not far from the back porch and disappear into the little shed next to the greenhouse for what seemed like forever. Now unless there was some kind of drug lab in there, or a kind of safe (doubtful), Ethan assumed an entrance into the tunnels must have been in there.

Which would lead him eventually, to the main quarters of the groundskeeper...Ethan just hoped he wasn't there, when he reached it.

Reaching inside his front jean pocket, Ethan pulled out a small rectangle of folded leather that he'd hidden on one of the wooden beams of the canopy above his bed. Smirking, he grabbed the leftover wires and tape from his pocket, as well as one of Jesse's many cellphones and dropped them on the ground at the edge of the circular driveway, right where it came up to the front doors of the mansion. Then, he took a leisurely job around the outside of the mansion, being careful to try and leave footprints in the soft ground.

A little ways into the trees surrounding the mansion, on a tree branch facing away from the house, Ethan tied a small but carefully cut piece of a scarf he'd gotten as a gift from Luc. After the small strip was secured, Ethan walked further into the woods and this time, was careful not to leave any visible tracks, stepping on rocks and fallen branches as much as he could instead of on the grass and soil.

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"Excuse me, sir. Can I just ask real quick, if you know this man?" A paper was thrust into the elderly lady's face and she reeled back with an appalled sound. "Have you seen him? Maybe a month ago? Or two? Ever?!"

"Slow down, kid! And get the damned thing out of my face!" The woman sighed and shoved the paper away before snatching it up and putting on her reading glasses. "And do I really look like a man to you? For shame, young man! Have some manners!"

"Sorry." The boy apologized and then accepted the heavy cup of brew handed to him by the pretty waitress behind the cafe's counter. "Really, it's just that my eyes are a little blurry, I didn't sleep much last night..." He rubbed his eyes and drooped as he realized that the woman held no look of recognition on her face whatsoever. "So, uh...you don't recognize him, then?"

"Looks more like a boy than a man, doesn't he? Can't say Iv've seen him lately...no, I don't believe I've ever seen him before...you, Dianne?"

She held the picture up for the teen girl to see, but all the waitress did was shake her head with a small frown. "Nope, sorry. actually think you came in before, about a month ago...his picture is up on the wall already."

Benny looked at the chipboard wall and scrunched his face up when he saw the face of his best friend already staring back at him.

"His name is Ethan." Benny stated, deflating, and then started to mumble more to calm his nerves than anything else. "He's my best friend, and he disappeared about two months ago...no one has seen him since..."

"I'll ask my other employees if anyone has seen him." The manager said sadly and then gave the teen a pat on the shoulder. "Just keep looking. Wherever he is, he's lucky to have a friend like you, sweetie."

"Sorry to bother you so early." Benny turned to leave the place. "Mind if I hang another poster up outside your front door?"

"Of course, just tape it up right in the front."

When Benny had left and trudged back to the park bench where he'd sat earlier, where he could see nearly every part of the town he and his grandma were staying in, he pulled out his phone. Checked in with the contacts he and Ethan had made over the last couple of years in the science and electronics clubs...in the last couple months, Benny had recruited them to help him begin a chain of surveillance that would alert them if any of their local and semi-local hacks had seen hide or hair of Ethan Morgan.

So far, no one had seen anything. The day Ethan had gone missing...was a day Benny would never forgive himself for. First, he'd slept in most of the day...then, he hadn't checked in on his best friend until late in the afternoon, and by then, his parents had thought that he and Ethan had just been out goofing off together. But when Ethan didn't show up for dinner, or for curfew...

Benny sting himself gulping down his coffee. The heat first burned his tongue painfully and then numbed it as it seared a path down his throat, tingling all the way past where his heart should have been...but Benny hadn't been the same since that night. He'd lost most of his enthusiasm for anything, save for hacking and law-breaking in an attempt to locate his missing best friend.

He'd started by hacking into the town's security footage, and then sneaking into Ethan's bedroom (which had been a total and heart-breaking taped-off crime scene) and logging into Ethan's computer to search through his history and check for potential bugs or- or anything that gave indication that Ethan was being followed by someone.

Unfortunately, all of his efforts had been for nothing. All that he could find after hours of security footage was himself and Ethan (and sometimes Rory) an camera in the local arcade and in their high school hallways and parking lot. Nothing after the time that Ethan had gone home from Benny's own house at approximately nine o' clock the night before he went missing.

"Visions..." Benny sighed, and pulled out a notebook he'd been using specifically for notes on Ethan's disappearance. "Yellow eyes. Who has yellow eyes? That doesn't make sense...could it be someone with contacts? But that still wouldn't explain the glowing part..."

The teen flipped through his pages, to one where he'd taped pages from a notebook kept in Ethan's backpack. A notebook that held sketches and notes on different things...crazy things, if Benny hadn't know Ethan better. Drawings of what looked like wet horns, and notes on an Ancient Greek myth, about something called the Oracle of Delphi. Notes scribbled and hard to decipher, but conveying a pain in Ethan's eyes and nightmares that Ethan had been having. Of course, Benny had thoroughly studied and thought through all these things in the times that he wasn't zooming into security cams, and had still come up empty.

Empty, just like the spot in his heart where his best friend should have been. But no, Ethan had just been...gone. No note, his bike was still in the garage, no signs of struggle anywhere...hell, even his phone, laptop and shoes had been left behind. It was like Ethan had just vanished from existence...

But Benny knew it was more than that.

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"You have to let me!" Benny pleaded with Ethan's parents. "Let me take the laptop, l-let me look, please!"

"We've already called the police, Benny." Ethan's mom had a hand on his shoulder. "We can't let anyone tamper with possible evidence, sweetheart. We need to let professionals handle this."

"Look, they might- they might destroy clues Ethan might have left behind, you know that he and I were always together, no one knows him better than I do."

"Which is how I know that you must be in a lot of grief too, Benny." Sam Morgan placed her hands on his worried face. "I know you love Ethan too, and I'm sorry, Benny, that none of us can do more than this right now. I think you should return home for a while...let you're grandma know how the search is coming along. The police will be here shortly to take a look at Ethan's room, but after that, you're welcome to look for anything you like." The blonde lady sniffed, and was joined by her husband just as she gave Benny a final hug and gentle shooed him through her front door.

"We'll be in touch, Benny." Ethan's dad, Ross told the teen with a tight smile and slightly red eyes. "Just have hope, okay?"

Benny could hear Ethan's mom give a small and pitiful cry as the door closed, and his heart clenched painfully in his chest. He stood there for a moment, wondering what he should do, when he heard the sound of tires approaching from down the street, and in a moment of panic, rushed for the back door of the Morgan's home.

"I'm never gonna regret this!" Benny muttered as he slunk as quietly as possible through the back door, and paused as he listened to the Morgan's talk quietly by the front entrance. Then, he heard a tearful, "I'll be out in a moment" and the sound of a door closing, while footsteps made their way up the stairs.

Now!

Benny rushed to the hallway, fully prepared to sneak into Ethan's room and steal something important, like Ethan's laptop, or something else that could provide a possible trail for Ethan's whereabouts, when he caught sight of something black on the floor of the Morgan's bathroom.

The boy stopped in his hasty movements, and looked curiously at the linoleum floor of the Morgan's bathroom. Just as the front door was beginning to swing open, he dove and grabbed Ethan's phone off of the floor, where it was half-hidden under a bathroom-dresser thing that women kept their lady products in. And then, without thinking twice, Benny pocketed it and rushed out the back before he could be spotted.

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Unfortunately, Ethan's phone had been locked up, set with a new password, apparently. A new password that Benny had been unable to decode, nor had he been able to hack into it. However, one good thing about the phone was that Benny knew for a FACT, it didn't have the tracking device enabled, therefore, he could keep the phone for as long as he needed before possibly returning it to the Morgan's. The important thing was, the police wouldn't know he had it...and he had time to break Ethan's password.

The rest had been taken from Ethan's room, including his laptop, backpack, electronic tablet, school jump drives and a daily journal he'd been writing in while in their English class. Though Benny didn't expect to find anything ground-breaking in the daily journal (he and E had never written in those) he did want to find someway to get the laptop. The tablet, Ethan only used for science research and gaming, but the laptop may have had something useful on it.

So would the backpack, maybe, if he could get that back. It was only pure luck that he'd found Ethan's notebook sitting on a shelf in Ethan's room, undisturbed. Benny just hoped that the cops couldn't tell that there was a tracking device sewn into the fabric of Ethan's backpack...similar to the one he had in his own, which could only be tracked by Ethan's phone. Which was locked up and no longer in E's possession

"Hello? Helllooo?"

Benny blinked and nearly spilled his coffee when he heard the sound of someone's voice coming from his lap. He was confused for a second and then put the phone to his ear.

"Rory?" Benny asked, and looked at the watch on his wrist- Ethan's watch. "What's up? And why are you up so early?"

"Me? You're the one who called me." The blonde sounded stuffed up and a little miffed. "So I should be asking you what's up."

"Really?" Benny looked around for a moment, realizing that he'd been doing things subconsciously again, lacking any presence of mind. He must have dazed off. "Oh, sorry."

"It's cool...so, any news on E?"

"Not on my end." Benny sighed. "Just been hanging up more fliers. Grandma's been asking around too...really, it's a good thing she has these weird meetings every month."

"Yeah, more opportunity to get the word out." Rory agreed readily. Then, "Hey B, you know those prints we took from E's phone after you stole it from the crime scene?"

"Sshh, Ror!" Benny hissed. "It's bad enough being the only two dudes E actually hung out with. We don't need more suspicion, and anyone could be listening!"

"Oh right! Should. Speak in code?" There came a garble of sounds that made Benny shudder as he recognized the language as Romulan.

"No! Never mind, whatever! Just talk in English! Screw the police! What about the prints, Rory?!"

"I think I have a match!" Rory exclaimed. "I just checked in...early this morning, my programs found a potential match to the prints found on Ethan's phone, but...it's weird, it says that the fingerprints on the phone belong to..."

"To who?" Benny got up, grabbing his bag with the posters in it and began rushing to his and his grandma's hotel. "Who is it?!"

"I don't know!" Rory sounded thoroughly confused. "It- it won't tell me...just says it found a match, but...this is so weird. It's outdated, and says that the print owner's files can only be found in the Whitechapel archives in the town library. The person these prints belong to is..."

"Outdated?" Benny asked incredulously and slowed in his run. "The archives?! It must be a mistake. You'd have to be dead, long dead, for your prints to show up in the archives.

"Yeah, I know...I'll see what I can find out. Maybe it is just a mistake. Either way, I won't stop looking. I'll message you later."

"Keep me posted." Benny sighed and then slowed to a walk again as he made way instead for a local diner, deciding to pick up breakfast for Grandma.

"Wherever you are, E." Benny said suddenly, tears welling in his eyes with force enough to make his head, throat and heart hurt simultaneously, "Wherever you are, I will find you. That's a promise."

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Ethan pulled on the sturdy storage-shed door and hummed when it wouldn't budge whatsoever. Then, he pulled out his folded piece of leather and got to work on the padlocks.

First pulling out a home-made tension wrench he'd made from one of Aria's flat tweezers. He'd taken one half of it and bent the top half into a ninety degree angle, just enough to ease into the key slot. The two lock picks he had had been created from an old pumpkin-carving saw with a blade barely a centimeter thick, and two flattered and welded paper clips. The paper-clip pick had been especially hard to make, especially with having only a box of matches, a metal file, needle-nose pliers and the end of a small hatchet to work with. But, it had gotten the job done, somehow.

Finally getting the first lock open, Ethan sneezed suddenly and slapped a hand over his nose and mouth, looking around as if expecting to find Jessie standing right next to him. Jessie, however, was nowhere to be found, and Ethan continued working the next lock. As he worked, Ethan wondered how far he would actually get.

How long was the tunnel? And if the flashlights Ethan had glimpsed inside the door of the shed were no longer there, how would- oh, right. He didn't need a flashlight...but it would still be nice. Especially considering he hadn't drank Jessie's blood in some time in order to place as much distance (physical or otherwise) between himself and the vampire as possible. Without Jessie's blood in his veins, it would make their link weaker and harder to track through, in theory.

Although, he'd only been refraining from drinking for mere weeks. Hopefully, it was weak enough for Ethan to have some fun first. He wondered what was beyond the gardens and main groundskeepers quarters...was there another town? There had to be. That is to say, yes, there very well better be, otherwise Ethan really was screwed.

"Yes! Got it!" Ethan whispered to himself and tucked away his tools, as well as the cash he'd swiped from Jesse's safe a couple weeks ago. Amazing what you could do with vampire blood-amplified seer eyes...or, in any case, a shot glass. Not surprisingly, Jesse's favorite mix appeared to be Jack Daniels with a splash of H-Deficient, whatever that was.

Searching the inside of the shed, Ethan found the industrial-looking flashlight he'd seen before and also a door built into the stone floor with more padlocks on it. Suddenly, Ethan wondered if he really wanted to go through with this...after all, knowing what he did about vampires, anything at all could be hidden behind this door.

Ethan gasped and turned on the flashlight quickly, thanking God that it was now thundering and raining outside, and closed the shed door. Then he worked on unlocking the ground-door, pocketing two of the locks and leaving the rest on the table that rested near one wall. Feeling Jesse's confusion, now that he was looking for it through their link, gave him a feeling like giddiness and fear at the same time, and Ethan threw open the ground door before stepping in and closing it behind him.

All he could say in defense of the tunnels was that they really weren't that scary...and he was sure there wouldn't be anything horrific waiting for him at the end. He'd walked for around forty minutes at a brisk pace, sometimes jogging, and only passing two other doors, which was locked with something other than a key. He was out of breath and wondering if he should just turn back and face Jesse's wrath (or amusement) before finally reaching an incline, almost tripping many times as he ascended and eventually came out through another door jutting out of the ground.

The seer grunted in discomfort as he squeezed through the door, which had been caught on something before it opened all the way. When he was completely free, he realized two things...one, this definitely wasn't the groundskeepers special quarters or anything like that...in fact, he wasn't sure the golden-eyed vampire worked on the grounds at all, this didn't come up near anything resembling a greenhouse or workhouse.

And...

"Oh..." Ethan whispered, stumbling out from where the door had been hidden under mud, grass and other foliage. He shook the leaves off himself and the door slammed shut behind him, not even startling him as he crept forward, noting the little group of what appeared to be street lights in the distance, but also something else...

"Oh, what the hell?" Ethan muttered and sank to the ground at the edge of a cliff. The sun was coming up from behind him, and if he couldn't see the waves hundreds of feet below him, he could most certainly smell and hear them crashing against the cliff's wall.

Wherever he was...he want in Alberta anymore.

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"Clever boy." Jesse mused as untied what he recognized to be a piece of Ethan's scarf from around a tree near the mansion.

"Monsieur, I am confident to say that the boy is nowhere to be found in my kitchen, dining hall, or the maids-quarters." Aria spoke from a second-floor window above where Jesse was standing. Her thick French accent was especially prominent in her amusement as she wiped her hands off on a dish towel. "Shall I continue? I believe Luc is searching the halls and third floor as well."

"No, thank you Aria." Jesse smiled up at his maid as he pocketed Ethan's scrap of clothing and walked back into the yard. "You've done well. I'm going out for a bit, if you see Luc, tell him not to worry. Don't wait up for me at dinner either, my dear."

"Master Jesse will be gone that long?" Aria sounded surprised, and merely stepped back when Jesse flew up to climb in through the open window of the second floor. "Should I be worried?"

"No worries, dear." Jesse smiled and then went to check what other clues Ethan had left behind for him. "Take the day off. I just need to go and find my charge is all...the boy likes to give his caretaker a hard time is all."

Aria simply nodded and curtsied a bit before turning around to tend to breakfast anyway. After placing a simple cold breakfast under closed platters in the dining hall, she decided to go out into town for the morning. Lord knows she had a very quiet social life, apart from her own clients who visited very infrequently. Returning to her rooms, she noted confuse sly that one of her tweezers had gone missing from her vanity.

"Master had unique tastes." She dismissed and proceeded to get dressed for her day as Aria the History Major and Journalist, instead of Aria the Maid.

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AN: Drop me a review! As always, please point out mistakes, grammatical or otherwise, and happy summer!

Uploaded: Monday, June 12th, 2017, 5:30AM D: