The Monsters Under Your Bed

Chapter 2

            It  was when Angela didn't get off the bus that I began to worry.

       Perhaps she is just at a friends house, I thought. But if she going to a friends house she would have told me.

      I sighed and tried to calm myself before doing anything irrational.

    You cant go out now, Isolde, they could see you. I told myself.

    Not if I blend in, Half of me argued.

      I took the ruby pendant that I always wore around my neck in my hands and it started to glow a deep red. I never would have thought I would have to use it under these circumstances. Red swirls dispersed from the pendant and started to swirl around me. I felt the change come on before it started and shivered slightly. This part was always my least favorite. I felt the red ingulf me in and the shadows that made up my body. My "skin" changed to a slight tan as my yellow eyes faded to a dull brown to match the color of my newly grown hair. Black swirled around me to create clothes- a blue t-shirt with a black leather jacket over it, black jeans, combat boots, and a blue scarf to match the shirt. All in all, I looked human. That is, if you didn't look to long. I still gave off a weird vibe, but the disguise let me pass as human. Some would say it was a perception filter of sorts.

    I took a deep breath before going out to investigate the cause of Angela not being home. As I stepped out of the house, a wave of fresh air hit me and I breathed in the smells of the fall air mixing with those of the country side. I had forgotten how much I loved the Human realm.

    I looked around at my suroundings, taking everything in. Every thing appeared normal- but only through an untrained eye. What I saw was a bit hard to explain.  Light floated gently through the air like gentle waves on a calm sea. Different colored lights swirled and blended together, disappearing in the shadows. This was what monsters and the fae called The Mist. It covered up any unnatural things. The Mist, along with The Boundary, protected the realms from effecting each other and maintain order.

    I walked the streets I had become accustomed to watching and kept an out for anything suspicious. Besides Ol' Trash Mouth- a grumpy little gremlin that had been expelled from its own realm- jumping from the Ryan's second story window with a cat in his hands, nothing was out of the ordinary. I searched for quite a while before going home and calling the school.

   "Um, excuse me, my child, Angela Browne, well, she didn't come home today, and I was wondering if she was still there." I told the lady at the front desk.

  "Well, hold on ma'am, I'd have to check," she responded. I heard the clacking of keys on the other end and waited while she searched the computer. "Um, you said Angela Browne, right?"

   "Yes, that is my child." I said.

   "Ma'am, she wasn't  here at school at all today."