Russell scoffed. “Don’t be so dramatic. It’s just a nick. You’ll live.”
Asshole.
Kaydan put a hand on Russell’s arm. “Come on, Russ. She was only watching us. There was no need to pull a knife on her.”
Russell shrugged Kaydan’s hand away. “Shut up, dork.”
“You don’t get it. She’s new at this and hasn’t learnt control. She could have fried your ass to a complete crisp.”
“No one is that powerful. Plus, I used a shield.”
“I believe Maddie is. Look how far she threw you even with your shield.”
I cringed. “What? My magic can’t be strong. I can barely lift anything and I can light a candle. How do you know, anyway?”
“I can sense power levels. Tracy said she told you about it. Yours was blocked, but is starting to come back to the surface and it’s stronger than all of us. Your power went off the charts when you blasted Russell. And I don’t think you’re done. I think there’s more hidden magic inside you.”
“How can I be that powerful?”
“I don’t know. It’s usually inherited. Who are your parents?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
My heart clenched. “I was adopted.”
“Oh. Okay. That makes things a bit more difficult. I wonder if we could somehow find out who they are. You usually find that two people with high levels of magic will produce high-powered offspring.”
“I can’t really ask my adoptive mother anything. She refuses to talk about me being adopted. And she’s a Normal, so I can’t tell her why I want to know about my birth parents.”
An image of Mum having one of her meltdowns filled my vision. No. I wouldn’t be asking her about it.
Russell crossed his arms. “This is all nice and cosy, but you all realise that Miss Sunshine here has ruined our plans for the night.”
Kellie crossed her arms too. “You both could have killed each other and all you’re worried about is that she messed up our plans? You’re unbelievable. Do you care about anyone else besides yourself?”
“Fuck off, Kellie. We need to be smart about this. She saw us and probably heard some of what we were talking about. We can’t trust her. She’ll tell Ms Grant or the Guild or something.”
What a bastard. The way he treats his friends…
“Don’t be ridiculous. She’s not going to say anything. She’ll get in trouble for being out here in the middle of the night too.”
I cringed. Kellie had a point. There was no way I was going to tell Tracy or Ms Grant and admit I’d broken the rules too. That would jeopardize my chances of going home. That couldn’t happen.
“I’m not going to tell anyone. I don’t want any trouble.”
“How do we know we can trust you?”
“I won’t tell. Whatever you were planning to do is none of my business—”
Russell scoffed. “You got that right.”
Kellie sighed heavily. “Shut up, Russell.”
It was good to see her telling him off.
I turned to Kellie. “What were you planning to do? Do you think that girl is going to be the next missing person?”
“See? She did hear what we were saying.”
Kellie rolled her eyes at Russell, then answered me. “Yes.”
“Okay, but what can you four do about it?”
“We can stop him. We’ve been watching him. We think he might be the one taking all the Descendants. We just need proof to show the authorities.”
“Which authorities?”
“You’ve heard of the Descendants’ Guild, right?” Kellie asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well, they’re the organization that deals with magical crimes. The Guardians are like police. None of us are eligible to join and we really want to do our bit to help people — especially the missing people.”
“And the Guild can’t — or won’t — help,” Justina added. “Not in the way they’re supposed to.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, something is wrong somewhere inside the Guild. It’s rare that things like this don’t get solved. Sometimes they might take a while, but this isn’t being solved. People are not being found. For this many people to just be gone and no one can find them is unheard of.”
Kaydan ran a hand through his hair. “It just doesn’t seem like they’re doing anything about it. And it’s not just happening here in Angel Falls, or only contained in the Blue Mountains. It’s all throughout Sydney and I’ve heard rumours that it’s Australia-wide. That’s a lot of missing people.”
I frowned. “But people go missing all the time.”
“Yes, but these stats are way higher than normal.”
I wondered what was normal. Did I even want to know?
Kellie rubbed a hand down her arm. “And too many of them are Descendants.”
It was scary to think that any one of us could be a target.
Kaydan leaned against the front guard of the car. “Maybe the Guild has become corrupt somehow. How else do you explain these failures?” He rubbed his chin. “Although, there have been rumours of Seers going missing and of a house exploding with a whole bunch of Seers inside.”
“Seers?”
“Yeah. You know that the Guild use them to try to prevent crime by hopefully Seeing it before it happens?”
“Yes. Ruby or Tracy mentioned it.”
“It seems like someone is bumping off all the Seers so they can get away with more crimes.”
I shuddered. Being a bigger target because you had an extra ability was even scarier. I had an extra ability. I needed to be more careful of who I shared that info with from now on. Then I remembered that I’d already been attacked so they could test my magic levels. No one had told us if they’d found out who it was, so maybe what they were saying about the Guild had some truth to it.
I was curious about something. “So, you said something about not being able to join the Guild?”
“Yeah, we aren’t eligible to join. You have to start your training early and be very good at wielding magic and defensive magic. None of us even knew we were Descendants till recently, so we don’t meet the criteria. We’re not competent enough with our magic.”
“Kellie is. I’ve seen her in class.”
“We know, but they still won’t let her in.”
“That sucks.”
“So once Piper went missing, Russell started this group to try to do something about it. We call ourselves the Rebel Guardians. Kassie was a part of our group too. We’d been doing our own investigations and were staking out a property when she… when the spider bit her.”
Kassie walked up and stood next to Justina. “I wish I could hug her.”
My eyes stung and I looked away. Russell was scowling at Justina.
Kellie lifted her head. “We’ve been training in defensive magic and—”
“Fuck. Why don’t you just tell her all our secrets?”
I was really starting to hate Russell. His attitude was worse than Justina’s.
“I’m not going to tell anyone.”
“How can we know for sure?”
“You’re gonna just have to trust me. Plus, I don’t wanna get in trouble for being out here, just like Kellie said. I want them to let me go home when I’m finished my training.”
“I don’t need to know your life story. I just need to know you’re not gonna dob.”
I rolled my eyes. What a dick. A childish dick.
Kellie wrapped her arms around herself. “Russ. Stop hassling her. She could actually be quite useful to us.”
“Oh, yeah? How?”
“She could help us find Piper.”
13Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGv0k3HqCDK
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Author's Note: Is Kellie about to tell Russell that Maddie can see ghosts? Would he believe her? Do you feel like kicking him in the shins?
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