'Annabel? Annabel!'

'Wh-What? Where am I?'

I sat up all of a sudden as I realized what had happened – I'd blacked out right in the middle of Sophie's bedroom, and slept through the rest of the night till morning.

'Oh m-m-my God!' I stuttered in panic, 'This can't be happening! Why didn't you wake me up earlier?'

'You needed some rest!' Sophie retorted with a worried look on her face.

'Still… Oh no, my parents are gonna kill me!'

No sooner had I spoken, that Sophie's mom called for her from downstairs.

'Don't worry, I'll handle it. Here are some clothes for you, and a bag with spare stuff you can use at school for today. Oh, and a few snacks for you to eat on your way.'

I stared at Sophie in utter surprise.

'You've- prepared everything?'

'Of course I have! You didn't think I would just let you leave on your own like that, did you?'

I should probably not answer that.

'Wow, Soph, thanks, I- I owe you one.'

She giggled while giving me a friendly pat.

'Don't be ridiculous… Now, go! I'll catch up later at the bus stop. And don't forget to call your parents before they get head over heels!'

I nodded and quickly dressed up. Then I grabbed the bag and left through the window. It felt awfully tedious and clumsy without my super-powers.

I slowly walked to the bus stop while gobbling all the food Sophie had packed up for me. Only when I had finished it all did I realize how hungry I still was. I left a message on my home's answerphone, saying I absolutely had to get up early to get a book from a friend or something – good thing no one would pick up my call. Sophie joined me about twenty minutes later.

'Hey, morning! What's up?' she said, feigning surprise.

'Nothing much. The night was short.'

We gossiped and giggled like the regular teenage girls we were supposed to be. Once we were at school, we carefully avoided the others as we had previously decided. I itched to tell them about my experiments with the Pegasian powers, but I knew I had to wait all day.

I was sitting at my desk, daydreaming about the previous night, when Mr. Fletcher, our school's principal, came in. 'Attention, class!' he called, and we all stood up. He invited a young woman in.

'Students, let me introduce you to Ms. Lawson, your new teacher. She's going to replace Ms. Seymour, who happens to be ill for the next few weeks. I expect you to welcome her and do your best to help her feel comfortable in our school.'

Fletcher left, and our new teacher let us sit down with a broad smile. There were mumblings among the class.

'Ms. Seymour, ill?' a boy behind me whispered. 'I heard rumors she's been missing!'

I exchanged a concerned look with Sophie. Our teacher getting ill all of a sudden and replaced so quickly sounded suspicious – and even more so when you knew what had happened just a few days earlier.

Ms. Lawson hushed up the class and began her lecture. That morning felt like the longest ever. I had grown so impatient that I practically rushed out of the classroom when the bell rang. I texted the others to arrange a meeting in the cafeteria. I knew we had agreed not to stay together in public, but it seemed like urgent enough a matter to discuss. We got there separately and managed to sit in a corner, away from prying eyes.

'So, what do you think?'

'Ms. Seymour going missing after possibly witnessing the landing of the Shadows' Lair?' Abiona taunted me. 'Honestly, I wonder.'

'Poor Ms. Seymour,' Lynn sighed.

'You never liked her anyway.'

'Right – but I like that Lawson even less.'

'This persistent smile, like she was a robot!' Phoebe exclaimed with disdain. 'Sends shivers through my spine just to think about it!'

'But we can't let Ms. Seymour down,' Sophie observed, 'we have to find out what's happened!'

Abiona chuckled:

'Big words! We don't have to do anything!'

'Yes we do! She's our teacher!'

'So what? Aren't students supposed to be happy when teachers are missing?'

'It's not about her being out teacher,' I said while shaking my head, 'but if they can take her, how long before they take our friends? And our family? And ourselves?'

'This girl has a point there,' Abiona mused after a moment of silence.

'So what do we do?'

'We should break into the principal's office.'

That was Sophie speaking. We all turned to her in surprise.

'What? It's the only logical thing to do. If there's any info about Ms. Seymour's disappearance, it has to be there.'

'Easier said than done,' Lynn retorted, 'even though I agree with you – but you don't just walk into the principal's office like that.'

'That's right, we're gonna need backup. Maybe a diversion, too,' I reflected.

We all stared at each other, trying to figure who was going to play safe and who was going to take the chances.

'I'm all about this plan!' Phoebe suddenly exclaimed. 'What are we waiting for?'

'Principal Fletcher? Please, come, it's urgent!' Lynn was begging at his door.

Fletcher soon burst out and she urged him to come along. The idea was simple – Sophie was to fake a crisis of whatever grave condition to keep the principal busy, while Phoebe and I were going in. Abiona would keep watch from a distance and ring my phone to warn us when he would return.

We waited for Lynn to drag the principal out of the building and hurried to his office. Phoebe carefully closed the door behind us and looked around.

'So, what are we looking for?'

'I dunno, some kind of paperwork – a file, maybe…'

'Alright, I'm taking the folders, you look into the computer.'

I nodded and quickly sat down while my partner in crime was checking the drawers. The desktop was a real mess and I couldn't find anything that looked promising in there. I decided to try a different strategy and ordered a search by date to get a list of the most recent files. Hundreds of results popped up – fortunately, I immediately spotted a cluster of videos that dated back to the night of the Lair's appearance.

'Would you look at that-'

'Found anything?' Phoebe asked eagerly.

'Yeah, seems like footages of the other night. Hopefully we can find something useful on them…'

We watched a few minutes of Saurians and Myriapods running about in the courtyard – nothing of value in there. Then a new sequence opened and it instantly froze my blood. It pictured a blurry body falling off a building.

And a crystal clear recording of me shouting 'MERCURY POWER, MAKE-UP!'.