Rewind (Vanish Book Three) (11 page)

“
You weren’t the only one; a
whole classroom saw.” He turned his gaze toward the TV and
gasped.

“
What are we going to
do?”

“
Save them, if we can,” I
muttered.

I sat cross-legged in front of the TV
for hours, watching for updates—updates I knew somewhere in the
back of my mind, would never come. I flipped through the channels,
but it was all the same. Same shocked reporters, same policemen who
had ‘no comment’ on the story. No one knew what was going on, but
they were desperate to find out. Now that I thought about it, I was
glad they were finding nothing more to the story, I couldn’t be
responsible for more people going missing. I thought one was bad,
but now I needed to find an entire class.

The doorbell rang, and I got
up to answer it. Dante was taking a shower. Rose and Grace were off
putting more highlights in Grace’s hair. She was particularly fond
of our bright-red hair. I was going to offer to just imagine it,
but that was something I rarely did, and I wasn’t sure how much
control I had over that power.

“
Hello, I’m
Scarlett.”

“
Hi, I’m Lily. This is
Jackson, and Rachel.”

“
Nice to meet you,” I said
with a smile.

Jackson and Rachel both had striking
features, jet-black hair and the bluest of eyes. I had no doubt
that they were brother and sister.

I looked over to Lily. The
way she stood in the doorway, looking uncomfortable, reminded me of
when I first met her. I didn’t want things to start out rough with
her again; we had just started getting closer when I left. Standing
right next to her, looking just as uncomfortable, was Allison. Out
of the corner of my eye, I could see her staring at me. Her gaze
went from Cooper to me and back and forth from there. I knew she
recognized him; I just wasn’t sure what she would do.

“
So, where is everyone?”
Cooper asked.

“
Oh, hey guys come down
here,” I called upstairs.

Rose and Grace came down the
stairs along with unbearable fumes. Dante was still in the shower.
Everyone introduced themselves; they were all chatting and getting
to know each other, but my mind was elsewhere.

A few minutes later, I
looked next to me, and Dante was standing there. I wondered how
long he had been there; I hadn’t even noticed.

“
So when are we leaving?”
Lily asked.

“
Oh, there’s been a change
of plans, were not going today. We need to get more information,”
Dante answered.

“
Okay, well, how do you plan
on doing that?” Cooper asked me with curiosity.

“
I—I don’t know. I’m sorry;
I’ve been a little preoccupied this morning. Something happened the
other day at school, now an entire class is missing.”

“
All the more reason to
hurry, you believe it was the Alliance, right?” Cooper
wondered.

“
Yes, I know it was the
Alliance, what else could it be?” I shrugged, and he shrugged
too.

“
Well, I have good news. I
know someone who used to be in the Alliance. Usually they kill
whoever tries to leave, but they got away, and they know a lot,”
Cooper said with a smile on his face.

“
Great, so where are we
going?”

“
They don’t live too far
from here.”

Chapter 9: Old
Friend

We drove up to an old
abandoned-looking house; vines covered the sides. I looked over at
Dante; he shared the same worried glance. Whoever this was,
used
to be in the
Alliance, and that was enough reason to be concerned.

Cooper didn’t knock; he just walked
right in, which made me a little more nervous. The house was clean,
but no one appeared to be home. We walked around the house, which
was much larger than it looked from the outside, and finally, we
found someone—Elizabeth.

“
Hey Cooper, Lily, what are
you doing back here?” She asked.

“
We came to get answers,”
Cooper replied, “about the Alliance.”

Elizabeth was part of the Alliance? I
felt my heart sink. I couldn’t believe it, sweet, warm-hearted
Elizabeth, there was no way.

“
Well, what do you need to
know?”

“
Actually, I was hoping we
could talk to Grandpa.”

He sat us down, and got
ready to tell a story. His eyes lit up. He searched for each word
with care, words to provoke excitement, and shock. He didn’t look
at any of us as he organized all of his thoughts in his head. When
he was ready to begin, he looked around at each of us, when he got
to me, he took a deep breath. Then he stopped again as if the words
had vanished, as if, for some reason, he felt the need to tell a
new story—a story he had never rehearsed.

“
My grandmother was a
powerful woman,” he began, and paused for a long while. “She was
the beginning of all this in 1886. She found a necklace; it was
buried deep in the sand at a beach. She put it in her pocket and
went home. When she got home, she admired it for a bit, and then
put it on, instantly, she felt different. She woke up in the
morning, not as a woman, but a tiger.” He paused for a long time,
which left me thinking about the story Elizabeth told. This was the
same story; the only difference was that the mysterious woman in
Elizabeth’s story, was revealed to be her great-grandmother. Why
didn’t she tell me before? “She became a total recluse, afraid that
she would be punished. A couple of years later, she met my
grandfather. She gave him powers; they always knew what each other
were thinking. They fell in love and not too long after, my mother
was born, and my aunt.”

“
Grandpa, what does this
story have to do with anything?” Cooper asked.

“
It has a lot to do with
everything.” He looked over at me. “Once she came out of hiding, my
grandmother was regarded as royalty. She was the most powerful
anyone of our kind had ever seen. As the years went on, she gained
more power, without ever touching another necklace. Anyway, it
wasn’t too long after she found the necklace, that more people
started finding them all over. To this day, no one knows where they
came from. The Alliance was formed by the time my grandmother and
grandfather met, and she was destined to stop them. Or so everyone
thought.”

“
I still don’t see what this
has to do with anything,” Cooper interrupted.

“
Pictures were drawn on the
walls of the first Alliance community. The one that still stands in
Sunny Bay and is regarded as the headquarters today. One was
thought to be of your grandmother, her siblings and a few good
friends that she had. I recreated that drawing; I was always trying
to figure out what it meant, and how it came to be. If this picture
was supposed to have come true, then what was to come?” He paused
and looked around the room, lingering on each of us, especially
Dante and I.

“
You know we love your
stories, but we need to know the Alliance’s secrets,” Cooper
said.

“
I have a question, too,” I
blurted. “Why were you in the Alliance?”

“
To do exactly what I’ve
done. Find their secrets and document them. Back to the story, I
don’t need to wonder anymore—about the picture, I mean. I know what
it means now; I figured it out only moments ago.”

He brought out a crumpled, brown piece
of paper and unrolled it. Standing in that picture was me, Dante,
Rose, Cooper, Lily, Grace, Annabelle, Jackson, and
Rachel.

“
Why didn’t you tell me I
was in a picture before Grandpa?” Lily asked.

“
You look exactly like your
great-great-grandmother’s sister and Cooper like her brother. She
had a cousin that she was close to, they looked almost like twins,
see here, this was my grandmother.”

She was an almost exact
replica of me, and her cousin, with her short, red waves looked
like Rose.

“
So you’re telling me there
was a group of people before who looked exactly like us?” Lily
asked.

“
Yes, you are the ones who
are meant to take down the Alliance, more specifically you.” He
pointed at me. “My grandmother told me that one day, there would be
someone more powerful than her, one of the powers she got over the
years was to see into the future, she could go a hundred years, or
more. She couldn’t see every detail, more like an example. She saw
you. She knew you would look exactly like her, and she knew that
you would be the one to take down the Alliance, but she never told
anyone.”

“
There’s nothing special
about me, I don’t understand why everyone thinks there is. Yes, I
have powers. I have a few powers, but I don’t see how any of them
make me more powerful than anyone else.”

“
That’s for you to find out.
It could take you a lifetime, but I am not wrong about this, and
neither are any of the other people who have told this to you. I
don’t know how they got their information, but they did, and now
they’re after you. You need to fight back. Some of you could die,”
he turned his gaze to the floor and almost looked as if he was
going to cry. “But that might be what was always meant for you; you
will go down in history,” he sighed.

“
So you expect us to go into
this expecting that we will die?” Cooper demanded.

“
You should have known there
was a chance of that already, Coop,” he turned away from him and
looked at everyone. “When you are done come back here.”

“
Come here, give me a hug
before you go,” the man said to Lily and Cooper.

When we went to leave, he
asked to have a minute alone with me and Rose. He led us into a
room in the back, and pulled out a photo album.

“
What’s this?” I
asked.

“
I know who you are, and I
know that you know as well,” he declared. Though the thought hadn’t
really crossed my mind, I knew I was his granddaughter and so was
Rose. “I told your mother not to do it, that it would be the
biggest mistake of her life… that it would ruin everything. I knew
that one of you would be the one my grandmother was referring
to.”

“
Wait, you knew Ann?” I
asked.

“
You mean your adoptive
mother? I didn’t know her, but she knew what I knew as well, and I
always had a feeling that she had bad intentions.”

“
Adoptive?” I said, shocked.
“No she stole us; she took us away.”

“
Your mother didn’t think
she could take care of you. She was young, but more than that it is
hard to think of taking care of yourself and a child—two
children—in a world like this.”

“
She gave us up,” I
whimpered. “Where is she now? We need to go see her.”

“
You need to deal with this
first. Come back, and I’ll tell you,” he smiled. “Good luck, I hope
everything goes alright. I’m glad you’ve made your way back, both
of you.”

“
Thank you,” I said. He came
closer to whisper in my ear.

“
You will need to go in
alone; no one else can do it but you.”

When we left, I sat in the
car in silence. Everyone chattered around me, but my thoughts
drowned them out. This would be deadly, and I couldn’t turn away
the fact that he said I really was special, and basically that this
was up to me. What would happen when we got to the Alliance? We
still had no plans. We needed a plan, a strategy; we needed
something concrete to give us hope. I wondered why he said no one
could do it but me, did this mean I would be totally alone? I
doubted that, I could use all the help I could get.

We all decided that
tomorrow, we would strike. Everyone would be staying at Grace’s
tonight. She still hadn’t heard from her mother. We needed to
figure out where everyone would sleep. Lily and Rachel would get
the guest room. Grace, Rose, and Allison had gotten close, so they
would share her bedroom. There was a chair that was suitable in the
living room, and Cooper decided to sleep there, when Jackson called
the couch first. The only two with nowhere to sleep, was me and
Dante.

“
You can crash in my room,
too,” Grace offered. “There’s more than enough room on the
floor.”

“
Can I talk to you for a
minute?” Dante asked before I could answer Grace. He led me out
into Grace’s garage, and then started looking around for something.
“Aha,” he said.

“
What did you want to talk
about?” I asked, paying no attention to what he was
doing.

“
Oh, nothing serious… right
now anyway, but I was wondering…” he mumbled as he looked down to
the ground. It was almost as if he was ignoring the fact that I was
there altogether. “I found a tent; I don’t mind sleeping in it
alone, but… I just thought… I don’t know what tomorrow will
bring…”

“
I won’t let something
happen to you, not again,” I swore. He pursed his lips, shook his
head and looked down.

“
I’m sure Grace’s room will
be kind of crowded, if you want, you can come out to the tent,
okay?”

“
Alright,” I
said.

I went back in the house. I
wasn’t sure if he wanted me to stay or was just trying to be
polite.