I am sooooo sorry that I didn't update it earlier, but I had the Asia Pacific Dance Competition and A Day of Love and a whole bunch of other actiivities going on. But I've got holidays coming up and I promise that I'll update it more frequently. I hope that you guys like this chapter! :D Picture of Hunter on the side! :D
Chapter 9
Kayla raked a hand through her long dark hair, accidently making her hair stand up on end like she had been struck by electricity. Jenna’s disappearance had been worse than even she had possibly imagined. Taking a shaky breath, she forced herself to let it out slowly in an attempt to calm her fears and anger. Biting her bottom lip, she turned to face Coral.
“When did the children get out of the tunnels?” she asked, trying to swallow the quaver in her voice.
Coral shook her head abruptly. “We’ve been keeping the children in the tunnels under the school because we were afraid that his army might return. Wes noticed that Jenna was missing but he thought that she was somewhere else in the tunnels in a different group of protection. There were a lot of kids there but he assumed that she was there… Unfortunately, he was wrong; she had disappeared.”
Kayla gritted her teeth, hands clenched into fists in her lap. Troy laid a comforting hand on her arm; it took all of her willpower not to shrug his hand off. Digging her nails into the palms of her hands, she was grateful when Dahlia spoke up to claim Coral’s attention.
“Did any of the other children vanish?” she asked. “Is it possible that they were targeted to become… leverage?”
Coral shook her head violently once more. “We were very careful. After Jenna’s disappearance was confirmed, we checked up on all the children to make sure that they were safe. Not a single other child vanished which is good.”
“For them, not for Jenna!” Kayla exclaimed, unable to bite her tongue in time.
Coral’s face hardened slightly at Kayla’s rude exclamation, but before she could unleash her disproval, a diversion appeared in the form of Sapphire, who had changed out of her chocolate-covered clothes into jeans and a T-shirt. She smiled at all of them before sitting down and taking a biscuit from the plate of food in the centre.
“Hi, Sapphire,” Troy greeted her quickly to cover up Kayla’s loss of temper.
“Hey,” she said. “What have you told them so far, Mum?”
Coral’s face softened slightly at the sight of her daughter. “I just told them how Wes viewed Jenna’s disappearance. You already know all about that.”
Sapphire nodded. “I have to go and check up on Raven. I promised Jared that I would be back to make sure that she’s okay; he can’t save her without using his potions and if something happens to her that his potions can’t fix, he can’t rescue her. And I still have to make sure that the injured victims in the battle are okay… or at least healing.”
“Why did you come here?” Troy asked curiously.
Kayla rolled her eyes expressively. Troy sometimes acted so stupid, it got on her nerves. Inwardly, she wondered how Dahlia coped with him. In actuality, both of them were smart, even though they were sometimes hopelessly ignorant about the magical world.
“She lives here, Troy,” Kayla retorted.
Sapphire laughed lightly, even though it sounded a little forced. Jenna’s disappearance caused worry lines to appear on her forehead. “Tam wanted me to take a break. From healing magicians and Moon Children, I mean.”
“That boy is obsessed with you,” Coral muttered.
“Mum!” Sapphire scolded, her cheeks flushing bright red.
“It’s not a bad thing,” Coral assured her. “Don’t worry, Sapphire, contrary to what you seem to think, I actually like Tamarak. He’s a decent boy and he’s willing to do a lot for you. I can’t imagine a better boy for you… unless it’s Romulus.”
“Mum!” Sapphire was so red that Kayla could practically feel the heat rising off her skin. “Romulus… he’s…”
“He’s loved you since you were children,” Coral reminded her daughter. “He didn’t want you to leave the Isle of Avalon either.”
Sapphire glanced awkwardly at the others; Kayla was looking impatient, Troy, amused and Dahlia rather embarrassed and intrigued at the same time.
“Can we talk about this another time?” Sapphire asked, tugging at a strand of her blonde bob. “I’d rather not discuss my boyfriend issues right now. Especially in light of Jenna’s disappearance.”
“Alright, Sapphire,” Coral said finally. “Will you be staying at the Elemental Academy tonight or will you come home?”
Sapphire rose from the table and grabbed her coat off the hook by the door. Pulling on her wrap, she turned to her mother. “I don’t know, Mum,” she said. “If Raven has recovered, I’ll come back tonight. If not, I’ll stay there and look after her.”
Sapphire gave her mother a quick hug, waved to the others and headed out the front door. It clicked shut behind her, the echo sounding rather creepy in the house that was empty apart from the magicians in the kitchen.
Immediately, Kayla rounded on Coral. Hastily, Dahlia carried two of the mugs of hot chocolate and placed them before Kayla and Coral in an attempt to calm Kayla before she started on another tirade.
“Here,” she said, putting them carefully on coasters.
Kayla focused on the drink to avoid losing her temper. It definitely wasn’t the time to talk about Sapphire’s boy problems and chocolate drinks! Prying her fingernails out of her bleeding palms, she slowly clamped them down on the china mug. Silently, Dahlia returned to the table with two more cups and took her seat next to Troy.
“So when did you confirm that Jenna was really missing?” Kayla demanded.
“Just before I sent Sapphire to find you,” Coral replied. “Wes and the rest of the children came out of the tunnels and we discovered that Jenna wasn’t with them. The tunnels are now empty; we checked them out as best we could, using Magicians of Air to detect human presence.”
Kayla’s vision swam once more. She had been hoping that Coral had been wrong and that Jenna was somewhere on the island and was safe. Her vision cleared when she felt a scalding pain in her palms; her already bleeding hands were now getting scalded by the hot chocolate in her mug.
“Wait,” Troy said. “It’s possible that the Magicians of Air missed her; they might have made a mistake. We can ask Hunter to confirm whether she’s on the island, right?”
“Who’s Hunter?” Coral asked.
“Hunter is a Magician of Earth,” Dahlia explained. “He’s a tracker for magicians. He can find Jenna if she’s on the island and if she isn’t, he can tell you.”
Kayla shook her head slowly. “I can’t ask Hunter,” she mumbled. “No one apart from you two, Sapphire, Tamarak and Romulus know about her. I can’t let anyone else find out that she exists.”
“But why, Kayla?” Troy asked. “You need his help. Wouldn’t you rather find out where she is rather than worry about alerting someone who will help you find out if she’s safe or not?”
Kayla swallowed hard, not wanting to think about it. After all, there was only one place that Jenna could be if she was not on the island. And that was the one place that Kayla could not bear to think about.
“Kayla?” Troy prompted.
“What?” Kayla snapped, jerking her head up to glare at him. She immediately regretted her words at the startled and slightly wounded expression on Troy’s face. Dahlia squeezed his hand lightly in comfort, but he jerked it away. It was Kayla’s turn to wince at the hurt look on Dahlia’s face.
“Where would Jenna be?” Troy asked quietly, looking hard at his sister and forcing her to meet his eyes.
“Captured by Varmer’s agents,” Kayla snapped back, her voice shaking with fear and exhaustion; she was too tired to think of yet another lie to tell him. “Are you happy now, Troy? Do you finally have the answer that you wanted?”
Troy turned pale with fright before dropping his gaze. Still staring at the floor, he started to chew nervously on a fingernail. “No, I don’t,” he mumbled around his nail.
Kayla felt hot tears of anger, fear and frustration springing to her eyes but she forced them back. Jenna’s disappearance was almost more than she could handle. Tightening her grip on her mug like it was a lifeline, Kayla almost didn’t notice when the mug shattered beneath her grip. Hot liquid splashed everywhere and the clay shards dug cuts into her palms.
“I didn’t mean to do that,” Kayla stammered.
“That’s okay,” Coral said quickly. “I didn’t know you could project, Kayla.”
“Project?” Dahlia repeated as Troy stood up to take the cloth that Dahlia had abandoned.
Coral nodded. “Sometimes the more powerful magicians can project their powers into the elements nearest to them subconsciously or consciously. The mug that Kayla was holding is made out of clay, made out of the earth. She doesn’t physically have the strength to break it, so she accidently projected her current emotions into the mug.”
Coral didn’t say the words exactly, but Kayla knew what she was thinking.
Shattered.
She was feeling shattered.
In an attempt to take the attention away from her, Kayla turned to Coral. “What do you think… I mean, how do you think Jenna was kidnapped?”
Coral rubbed her eyes wearily. “I think someone snuck through the Earth Door and kidnapped her. Otherwise there would have been no way for that person to get Jenna off the island and that was the nearest exit.”
Kayla glanced quickly at Dahlia and Troy, wondering whether they should hear all of Coral’s speculations. But Troy gave a brief grin, realizing all at once what Kayla was going to say.
“You know that Dahlia can force you into telling us what you hear,” he said, smirking. “And you know that she’ll tell me.” He faltered for a brief moment. “You will… won’t you?” He addressed Dahlia.
She hesitated for a brief second and then nodded. “Of course I would.”
Kayla scowled darkly.
“Just be grateful that she trusts you enough not to force you to confess now,” Troy grinned.
Dahlia jabbed him into the ribs. “That’s enough out of you, missy! Now, shut up and listen.”
Troy subsided enough for Coral to ask a question. “How would Dahlia ‘force’ Kayla to tell her anything?”
“Dahlia’s a charmer,” Kayla explained impatiently. “No one can resist her powers of persuasion. It’s annoying.”
“You’re wrong,” Dahlia corrected flatly, her face falling as fast as a collapsing meringue. “He… my fath…”
Kayla winced, recognizing the familiar pain in Dahlia’s voice that she was feeling herself. Although Jenna was not dead, she was still worried about the little girl; Dahlia’s father was dead and she would never ever see him again, unless it was as a ghost. Even though he was a traitor, she still loved him… Kayla knew emotions like that better than anyone else.
“Jenna’s a shield, Troy,” she said quickly.
Her information provided to be a good distraction; Dahlia looked up, startled, and Troy’s head snapped up in surprise.
“Like Ellie?” Troy asked, but even as he spoke, Kayla was shaking her head.
“No, Ellie creates magical shields,” she explained. “Jenna can create physical ones.”
“So nothing physical can harm her?” Dahlia asked. “What about elements? They are physical things, aren’t they?”
“They would bounce away, depending on the strength of the shield cast,” Kayla explained.
“So Jenna and Ellie are like… polar opposites,” Troy suggested.
Kayla nodded.
“Jenna would have wanted to defend the Earth Door if Jared’s shields ever collapsed,” Coral noted. “Which they did. So she would have been as close as possible to the doors so that she’d be able to make a really strong shield.”
“But unless there was a teleporter there to kidnap her, she’d still have to leave through the doors,” Dahlia mused.
“They had two opportunities,” Kayla continued. “Once when they first crashed the shields and then again when Philip McLean appeared.”
“Neither time fits,” Coral objected. “Wes told me that Jenna did not disappear until two hours, give or take, after Philip McLean died.”
Kayla fell silent, pondering her theories. Careful not to disturb her for fear she would snap at them, Coral, Troy and Dahlia remained quiet.
“Wouldn’t Varmer have someone like Raven on his side?” Troy suggested. “Maybe he kidnapped Jenna and got someone to temporarily replace her.”
Kayla shook her head. “Raven’s power is extremely rare and anyway, the person would still be trapped on the island. I don’t think that anyone could hide from us on an island of so many magicians.”
“Maybe if the person had an illusion on him or her?” Dahlia offered.
“It’s called a glamour,” Kayla muttered absent-mindedly.
“Glamour?” Troy repeated.
“That’s an illusion on a human,” Coral explained.
“It still doesn’t work,” Kayla said. “Because the person would still be around and someone would have come across him or her.”
“Just an illusion then,” Dahlia suggested.
“Wes would have found out,” Coral protested.
“Not necessarily,” Kayla objected. “Varmer makes potions like Jared does and if he got some agent to kidnap her and leave behind the illusion potion. Then, when the potion wore off, the illusion vanished. Very, very clever.”
“That’s good, right?” Troy asked. “Now we know how Jenna was kidnapped.”
Kayla shook her head. “It’s just a theory, although it’s a good one. And it just makes things ten times harder to get her back.”