We walked in to a pretty small hotel lobby and was greeted by Eddie. He looked spooked for a second before a huge smile appeared on his face and he hugged the alchemist tight. She hugged back, which surprised me. Why was she so open to us? Wasn't she supposed to be distant like she was last time? Back then, she had been all business, not personal like this. They stopped hugging and Eddie looked over at me.

"Is it true that he..?", He asked and Sage nodded. Eddie looked worried at that, and a bit scared. I felt uncomfortable. If they were telling the truth about my memory loss, they probably knew more about me than I did myself at the moment. They probably remembered a lot of strange things that I had done these past nine months, and it felt weird. It felt like they had private jokes that I wasn't in on.

"Come on, I packed all our stuff, we can talk on the road.", Eddie said and led the way to a gorgeous yellow mustang. When Sage saw it, she squealed and looked at me with big eyes.

"You kept it.", She said, still looking at me. She went over to the hood and caressed it.

"Is this.., mine?", I asked. How on earth did I afford this?

"Yes it is, you bought it while in Palm Springs.", Castile said dangling the keys. "Who's driving?", He asked and looked at me. Sage looked at me with a pleading look and I nodded.

"You can drive it Sage. I don't really care.", I shrugged. She seemed to lighten up at that and she snatched the keys from Eddie who then got seated in the back. I guess I was riding shotgun. I got in the car and we started driving.

"Where are we even going?", I asked. Nobody had told me.

"We're going to Palm Springs. We're gonna see if we can get your memories back.", Sage said next to me. Well okay. I could understand why they took me there of all places, since that seemed to be the place I had forgotten. I was to calm about this. I could feel it. I should have been downright hysteric by this point. I should have been rocking back and forth and I should have been suspicious against them. But strangely, I wasn't. Sure, I was a bit panicked and scared, but I trusted these people. I didn't know why I trusted Sage though, I had barely met her before, at least that's what I remembered. But I did. I trusted her with my life. It was a strange feeling, trusting someone you barely knew but who everybody told you you knew like the back of your hand. Since the car ride would take about seven hours, I decided that this was a good time to ask some questions.

"Except for the car, what else was new in my life during these nine months?", I directed it to both my companions but for some reason, I was hoping Sage would answer.

"Well, let's see..", Eddie started but Sage soon took over.

"You started art classes.", She smiled at me.

"I did?", That didn't seem like me. Firstly, where would I have gotten that idea, and secondly, I was the worst at taking responsibility ever.

"Yeah, but with a little help from me.", Sage said. "I had some connections with a teacher that helped, but it was you who wanted it in the first place.", She explained. I was surprised. That didn't seem like me at all.

"Really?", I said, with doubt seeping into my voice.

"Really.", Eddie said from behind me and Sage smiled.

"Wow. Did I have any hidden motive to do so?", I was partly serious, and partly joking.

"Actually, you did. You wanted financial aid so you could move out from Clarence's and get your own place.", She said and then looked at me for a quick second. "Maybe I should explain who Clarence is?"

"Yes please.", I said and nodded. "Actually, tell me everything about Palm Springs. What did we do there, how was it and so on.", I wanted so desperately to fill this black hole in my mind. And so they started. They told me about their cover story at the school, they told me about Lee and most importantly, they told me about the time Sonya was kidnapped by vampire hunters. When they told me about that night, and how I had helped Sage out, something fluttered in my chest. It was weak, but I could feel it. I didn't know what it was, maybe fear, maybe worry or maybe even joy that I got her out, but it was important somehow. Before I knew it, everything faded and I saw a quick shot of me opening my hand and looking at a necklace with a simple gold cross hanging from the chain. I didn't know if I had ever held it like that, and I didn't know who's it was, but I felt assurance in that picture. It felt comforting. The other two kept going through everything that had happened until they suddenly stopped and Sydney sighed.

"..And then I got kidnapped.", She said in a grim voice. "I remember everything now, afterward. They jumped me and cast a spell on me. And then they tampered with my mind.", She shook her head angrily. "I hate them for it.", She seemed out of place now. She wasn't the stiff alchemist I had seen before, and she wasn't the careful and thoughtful Sage I had seen in the past hours. She was something else, she was angry, something I had never seen her be, not that I could remember at least. Not like this. Her face darkened and she was consumed by anger, but all of a sudden, her whole aura and her face shifted, and she was smiling at me again. What had happened to her? How had they tampered with her mind?

"Remember anything?", She asked. Something felt wrong. She was weird. I just shook my head in a confused 'no'. I didn't remember anything, at least not anything of importance.

"Oh right, I meant to ask you Eddie, what happened to Latte? The keys were left in the ignition and everything, did you find it?", She shot a hopeful glance at Castile who smiled and pointed at me.

"Last time I heard anything, this guy had taken care of it. I even think he took care of most of your stuff from Amberwood.", I wrinkled my forehead. I wanted so badly to remember but it wasn't possible. Everything was just blank. Had I taken care of stuff that belonged to a girl I barely knew, without being told so? Why? I mean, don't get me wrong, she was pretty and all, with her sunshine aura and her eyes that turned to gold in the sun, but she wasn't my type. Why would I take care of her stuff? From what they told me, we were friends, but that was it. We were okay friends, at least that was what i could make out from their action packed story, but we weren't best friends or anything. Just friends. Suddenly an imagine flashed through my mind. I could see her standing by a station wagon, looking back over her shoulder at me. She looked sad. She looked confused. She got in her car and drove away. Then the image was gone, as soon as it had been there. My heart was breaking in my chest and I didn't know why. Why had that image torn me apart? Had something been going on between me and a human? And on top of that an alchemist? If that was the case, then I wanted to applaud me. I mean, being in love with a dhampir was kind of a shocker to my society, what would they say if it had been a human? No, I was smarter than to fall for a human with a golden lily on her cheek. I was smarter than to fall in love with a vampire hater. It was wrong on so many levels. I pushed all feelings I had in that moment aside and decided that I needed some more answers. I had some other questions that wouldn't leave me alone.

"What if the witches come after us. What will we do then?", We had just left them on the floor in the basement. They would probably try to find us and get Sydney back.

"We can fight them. I'm stronger than them, I know that, and we have Eddie.", Sage seemed confident. She looked like an alchemist in this exact moment but then she seemed to remember what she had just said. She had admitted to using magic, and admitted that she would use it again if they came back. The alchemist look on her face vanished and she looked miserable. I wanted to comfort her and say that everything was alright. I wanted to hug her and never let her go. I wanted to take her hand and kiss it. I fought all these urges though. I couldn't be in love with a human. I couldn't, I wouldn't. It was impossible. I stared out the window instead and for the first time during this whole car ride, I took my eyes of her. I hadn't even noticed that I had been staring at her face for almost an hour straight. I could barely believe it. What was going on with me?

"I just hope they won't find us. What if they decided to kill us?", I muttered.

"They won't find us. They're only two people and the don't know where we're going.", Eddie spoke from behind my back. I sighed. Something felt wrong. Something about the energy in the car was off. Something was blocking me. I looked over at Sage again and noticed something. At first, I saw that her aura had a pale streak of gray in the outskirts of it. Like a scar from the trauma she had just been put through, second, I noticed how her entire aura was a bit faded and weak. Something was up with her.

"Sage, do you have something on you that's blocking spirit?", I needed to know. Something was keeping the aura dimmed and hard to read. At that, she almost steered off the road. She parked the car at the side of the road and started feeling her pockets. After a minute or so, she pulled out bracelet made of silver and threw it out the window.

"What was that?", I asked at the same time as Eddie said; "What are you doing?". Sage just sighed and started driving again.

"It was a charmed bracelet. The witches tracked me with it in San Francisco and it kept me hidden from spirit dreams.", She shook her head. "I can't believe I forgot about it. Now they probably know where we're heading.", She seemed a bit scared at that.

"But you threw it out. They must see that and maybe they will think that we changed our plans and went to court instead?`", Eddie sounded doubting from the back seat. That wasn't like him. Nobody was as I remembered them.

"Let us hope so.", Sage muttered and kept on driving. I just wanted to remember by this point. They had grown so much since I remember last seeing them. They were different people. Different in a good way. I wanted so badly to remember everything they were talking about. I wanted so badly to be normal and not be a burden. I resorted to looking out the window and saw a gas station that had a sign announcing that they had slushes. That simple sign and the picture of a red cherry slush and a blue raspberry one, sent a picture to my mind, clear as day. I felt the heat of a burning sun, I saw the bright red slush in my hand, and I felt kind of happy. I didn't know when that had happened, but I was sure that it had. It felt too real to be made up in my mind. I could feel that someone was there in the picture with me, but the sun shone down on us and the only thing I saw through the strong light was that golden cross again, hanging from someone's neck and reflecting the sun. When I looked at that cross, I felt home.

A/N: Sorry that it took a while to get this chapter up. I've had a lot of school work, and then I got a bit of a writer's block, but now I'm back on the road again! Hope you liked this chapter, it was a bit of a calm chapter and maybe a bit boring? I just hope you liked it. I will be back with more in a few days, I promise. :)