Betrayal (Vanish Book Two) (2 page)

“They love you too. They want you to be
happy. They saw what happened the other day, and it wasn’t easy to
watch.”

“I will. I promise,” she cried.

They smiled and disappeared.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” she sighed. “I mean, I know
you’ve seen things like this before, but just to know they’re still
out there….”

A knock on the door interrupted her. I got up
to answer it.

“Cooper?” I said, surprised. “What are you
doing here?”

“I wanted to make sure she was okay.” He
smiled at Annabelle.

“I’ll leave you two alone.”

I looked back at Annabelle to make sure it
was okay, and she nodded.

I came back down the stairs. Dante was
sitting in a wooden chair, looking very uncomfortable. Grace looked
pretty much like she had all day, upset.

“Hey, what’s going on?” I wondered.

“I need to talk to you,” Dante said with
urgency. He got up and led me out the backdoor. “Okay. I needed to
tell you this before she did,” he said, looking worried.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Your mom’s power…” he began, “…
is
to
make people forget.”

“So, she did make me forget, but why?”

“She made me forget, too. That’s why I don’t
remember...” He ignored my question.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I still don’t know, but it could
have been Skylar; he was there that night too.”

“How do you know that?”

“He followed me for a while before what
happened. I saw him a few times. I saw him again one night when my
family went out to dinner,” he answered.

“What? Why did he follow you?”

“It was a few towns over,” he continued,
ignoring me again. “We had just visited my aunt. It was a dimly lit
restaurant, but I knew he was the guy who’d been following me. I
went to approach him. He was there with his parents, or so I
thought, but I didn’t care. Until I got over to the table. That’s
when I saw who I thought was his mom, but it was your mom. I
noticed the resemblance when I first saw him, each time after that
he looked more and more like me.”

“So how do you know he was there that night?”
I begged, while tugging on his shirt collar.

“One of my brothers tried to talk to him
thinking he was me, they told me the next morning.”

“Okay, well I need to go talk to Grace. I
need to find out what she was talking about in the car.”

“Good luck,” he called after me.

“Come with me?” I turned around, afraid of
what this revelation could be.

“Sure,” he smiled.

We sat on the couch across the room from
where Grace sat. She was turned away from us staring out the
window.

“Grace?”

“What?” She turned to look at me and then
turned back around.

“I need to know what you were talking about
in the car.” I waited for her to turn around, but she didn’t.

“You know, I kind of wish you didn’t find
me.” Her voice was dull, lifeless.

“Why would you say that?” I demanded. “Just
tell me what it is, get it over with, and then maybe you’ll feel
better.” She sighed, but still faced the window. I gave her a
moment to get her thoughts together, when she finally started
talking, I had chills.

“I’ll start from the beginning,” she began,
her voice still weak. “I just need to know that you’ll believe me,
that you won’t hate me.”

“I will believe you, and I could never hate
you.”
Obviously
.

“Okay, that evening your mom drove you over
to my house. You had so much to carry. She said she wanted to see
us in our dresses together.” I remembered this part, but not every
detail. “She refused to leave until she got pictures. I thought it
was odd. She never seemed to care about any of that before. She
took her pictures and left without a good-bye. We headed over to
Alexis’s and danced for a while, Dante looked so,” she let out a
frustrated sigh. “Anyway, you left to go to the bathroom, and then
Dante left. I don’t know where he went, but he came back a few
seconds later, and he started kissing me,” she looked over with
caution, then continued staring out the window. “I knew you liked
him, but I couldn’t stop. I had a bit of a crush on him for a
while, too, you know.”

“Okay, there’s no need to be mean,” I said,
annoyed.

“Well it’s not my fault he liked me, and not
you—” She turned the chair around and looked at us, seeing his arm
around me. “Eh, I guess you’re a good replacement, but something
that isn’t broken doesn’t need replacing, now does it?”

“What is your problem?” I demanded. “I just
saved your life, and this is how you treat me?” she looked
unfazed.

“From what I heard, it was because of you
that I ended up there.”

“Just keep telling the story,” I said in a
flat tone.

“Anyway, Dante led me into one of the
bedrooms, you don’t need to know the rest about that,” she rolled
her eyes. “You busted in as Dante was getting dressed, and you
looked so upset. Dante jumped up and went out the sliding glass
door. I followed you and tried to apologize, but you were so angry.
I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. So I went back into the room and
followed him outside, he went into the woods. I thought I saw him,
but it was dark, and someone came up behind me and hit me with
something. When I woke up, someone was standing over me,” she
stopped. “I can’t—” she started to complain again.

“You can’t what? Hurt me? You already have. I
thought that part was over, but carry on,” I glared at her.

“I heard footsteps coming in our direction,
and the person standing over me ran and hid. You walked over and—”
Grace’s voice grew further and further away, until I couldn’t hear
it at all. In fact, I couldn’t see anything either; I was being
swept away into another vision of the past. This time I would get
answers, answers, I wasn’t quite sure I was ready for.

I sat on the front porch of the house. I
heard someone scream,
Grace
. I ran into the woods, dodging
Branches, and roots that stuck up out of the ground. I heard her
scream again, and I followed the sound, and soon I was standing
over Grace. I got down on my knees.

“Grace? What happened to you?” my voice
trembled.

“Watch out,” she screamed.

I got up faster than I thought possible. When
I had a second to take in what was happening around me, I noticed a
huge gash in my wrist. I couldn’t see their face, but it was
definitely a woman. She whipped the knife through the air, cutting
me again. I fell back onto the cold, wet ground. I started crawling
away, when two men walked up. I was hidden behind a bush; I don’t
think they even knew I was there.

“We will take care of this for you ma’am,”
the men said, trying to sound like they were helping.

“No, I got it, thanks.” Her voice, sent
chills down my spine, I couldn’t be sure who she was, not yet. Not
until I saw her face.

“She’s worth a lot to us alive,” the man
added.

“How much?” the woman asked, intrigued.

“We can talk numbers later, I can write down
my address and number, if you have something to write on.”

“Alright,” she agreed with reluctance. “Will
this work?”

“Yeah, that should work.”

After he was done, he went to hand it back to
her. A large gust of wind blew before she could grab it. It blew
out of the man’s hands, and went down what looked like some sort of
small cliff.

“I’m sorry, do you have anything else?”

“Just write it on my arm,” she snapped.

I hoped, I wished, I prayed that voice didn’t
belong to who it sounded like it did. I sat there in a daze for
what seemed like forever, until Grace’s screams snapped me out of
it.

“No,” Grace yelled as they dragged her
away.

I was too afraid to move, not even to save my
best friend. Her screams became muffled after a few moments, and
soon disappeared altogether.

The woman picked up the shovel she had leaned
up against a tree.

“You’ve really gotten yourself into some
trouble this time,” the woman scolded.

She struck me in the face, knocking me over.
I lay down on the ground, looking up in horror. As she bent down to
look at me, the moon shined through a break in the trees, directly
onto her face.

“Mom?” I gasped.

I was back to reality before I could see what
happened next. I ran my fingers over the scars on my wrists, a
souvenir of the ultimate betrayal. No matter what I may have
suspected Grace was going to tell me, I would have never thought
this.

“My mom?” I screamed at the top of my
lungs.

I got up and ran upstairs, choosing any room
that was empty and locking myself inside. I threw myself face
forward onto the bed and cried; I thought it would never stop. The
look in her eyes was murderous. She knew who I was, and she wanted
to hurt me.

I racked my brain trying to remember what
happened next, but I couldn’t. The next thing I remembered from
that night was being shoved into a police cruiser, Joe’s police
cruiser. I thought this nightmare was over, but now I realized it
hadn’t even begun. The mystery of what happened to Grace, and what
happened that night wasn’t close to being solved.

Dante stood outside banging on the door. I
stayed lying face down on the bed, drenching the pillow with my
tears. I couldn’t talk to anyone right now, not like this. I needed
to confront my mother, but I was afraid, and I didn’t know
everything that she needed to be confronted for. I had seen only
the beginning of this tragic series of events. For all I know,
she’d been planning it for some time, but what I did know is what I
saw wasn’t the end, no, not even close.

This wasn’t fair. I wasn’t allowed to know
who my father was. I had no other close family, and my mother was a
murderer, or at least she attempted it.

I sat up, trying to compose myself; I needed
to be able to function. It was like being at a friend’s house and
being hysterical like this; it would be awkward, and I would just
go home. I didn’t have a home. I grabbed a handful of tissues from
the nightstand, and walked over to the mirror.

My face was a little red; I went into the
bathroom and splashed some cold water on it. My vivid green eyes
were nothing short of miraculous after I cried. My hair, however,
was disgusting. My long red locks, now black—the same color as my
mother’s—were only another reminder of the fact that I was her
daughter, and I needed to change it back. I imagined my beautiful
red hair returning. It was still disgusting though, and I needed to
settle down, so I decided to take a quick shower. The warm water
felt nice as the dirt melted off of me.

When I got out, I realized all I had was my
dirty clothes. I wrapped a towel around myself and went into the
bedroom. On the dresser, there was a note.

Take whatever you need. It’s all new.

They lived to help people; anyone who wasn’t
in the Alliance should take a lesson from them.
Was my mother in
the Alliance?
I asked myself.

I opened the first drawer underwear, socks,
and bras, all with the tags still on them. I grabbed what I needed,
along with a green T-shirt and blue jeans.

Once I got dressed, I opened the door. Dante
was still sitting in the hall. He got up without a word, looking at
me with what I could only call pity. He came in and shut the door
behind him. Before I could reach out for the hug I desperately
needed, his arms were wrapped around me.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“No. How could she do this to me?

“You don’t need her, Scarlett. You never
did.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. I didn’t need her, but I
had no one left. No Mom, no Grace, at least not the one I knew. I
didn’t have anyone else to begin with. Dante was all I had
left.

There was a balcony outside of the sliding
glass door. The moon shined over what looked like a lake in the
distance. The trees glowed a little, like it could sense us here,
but we weren’t standing on the soil. The lake, too, looked like it
was glowing. I held onto the rail and just looked out, pondering
what my life was becoming. I didn’t have much of a family before,
but at least I had one. My group of friends wasn’t huge, but at
least they made me feel better, and I could make them feel better.
That was no more. Dante was there for me, but did I really want to
invest my whole life into a boyfriend?

He stood behind me, wrapping his arms around
my waist. He moved my hair aside and whispered in my ear.

“Everything is going to get better.”

“No it won’t, maybe someday, but not yet,” I
sighed.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“This isn’t over, not by a long shot.”

“Let it be over tonight. We can worry about
this in the morning,” he whispered.

“I can’t just push everything aside and
pretend like life is perfect, Dante.”

“I know, but you can try and feel a little
better, if only for a few minutes. I thought once we found Grace,
everything would be okay, but here you are, miserable all over
again. I hate seeing you like this.”

“What about your family?” I blurted.

“What about them? I’m old enough to be on my
own.”

“I know, but what if someone is still coming
after us? They couldn’t do much to me or Annabelle, but they could
find your family.”

“I’m sure they’re fine. They have powers too;
they can take care of themselves. I should probably call them
tomorrow; I haven’t had the opportunity to do that in a long
time.”

“Yes, you should.”

I felt awful for tearing him away from his
family. They were very close; his brothers were his best friends.
Well, besides Grace and me.

“I will, and I promise someday soon
everything will get better.”