The Fifth Element
Chapter Eighteen

Huh? Was my first thought. Well, this was an unfortunate turn of events. My number one supporter at the meeting, not to mention one of the big four, was someone I was going to have to expose to murder. Just when I thought life couldn’t get any more complicated...

Lacy let out a huff of breath. “Look, I was there, and I know Vivian is the only one standing between you and,” she took her pointer finger and slid it across her throat, “so I’ll cut you a break. “I’ll wait until you prove to them that you can be a valuable resource, instead of a liability. But you better do it fast; I’m not a very patient person.”

“Surprise, surprise,” I muttered under my breath.

“What did you say?”

“Absolutely nothing,” I gave her a phony smile.

She narrowed her eyes, or at least where her eyes should have been. “Whatever, I can’t wait until I cross over. It’s a rather sad existence when the only person to talk to is you. Well toodles, I’ve got places to see, haunting to do.” She blew me a kiss, and slowly faded away. But before she faded away completely she added. “Oh, and make sure Hampton Blackwing doesn’t catch on to what you’re doing. He’s not a very nice man. He’s quite nasty.” Then she was gone.

“No, you can’t just disappear with a line like that!” I screamed into thin air.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and the next thing I knew I was laying on my back on the soil. Amber stood over me, her brown eyes blazing with anger. She knelt down and leaned over me until her face was inches from mine.

“Who were you talking to?” she bit out and leaned even closer to my face. “Who?”

“Nobody,” I said, somehow managing to choke that one word out.

“Don’t lie, I heard you!” She flipped me onto my stomach and started bending my arm behind my back.

“Ow, ow, ow!” I cried. “You’re going to break my arm, stopppp!”

“Then tell me who you were talking to, and I will.”

“And I’m telling you there’s no one here! Take a look for yourself, if you don’t believe me.”

“Don’t move!” she barked.

I felt Amber’s weight disappear from my back. Seconds later, I heard the sound of bushes rustling. I sat up and proceed to rub my now sore arm and wait for Amber to come back. It felt like an hour had passed before she actually did.

She walked over to where I still sat and held a hand out to me. “I didn’t replace anybody, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t hear what I heard!“I accepted her hand, and she pulled me to my feet.

I began brushing off dirt from the back, and front of my uniform, once standing. I made sure to give Amber an especially dirty look, worthy of all the dirt she had gotten on me.

“Are you sure the voice you heard wasn’t just mine because I tend to talk to myself sometimes.” I peeled a leaf off of my shirt and flung it to the ground.

Amber narrowed her eyes at me. “No, there was one other voice besides your’s.”

I froze, but not from the knowledge that she might have been able to hear Lacy, but because there was a man in a pair of tan pants, a blood-stained tan shirt, and only half a face standing directly behind Amber. He stared at me with his one gaping hole.

Amber, noticing my eyes were fixated on the space behind her, spun around to face the threat she thought was there. When she turned back around, there was one giant question mark written all over her face.

“Ca-Can we get out of here, please! I-I want to go back to my dorm.” I hated how much my voice shook.

Amber gave me another questioning look and took one more look behind her. “I guess, follow me.” She made a gesture for me to follow. I made sure to follow very closely behind her.

Once the wooden door was safely closed behind us, I felt I could finally breathe again.

Amber began leading me back the way we came, but suddenly she stopped and gave me an intent look. “What did you see back there? Your face turned at least three shades paler.”

“I didn’t see... ”

“Nah-uh,” She cut me off and made a slicing motion through the air. “Look, people tend to want to destroy what they don’t understand; that’s part of the reason the school board was debating whether or not if they should kill you. We don’t fully understand your powers, so the more you hide, the more afraid they become. So, I ask you again, who were you talking to back there, and what did you see?”

My shoulders slumped forward, she was right, but I still needed to keep some things hidden, me seeing ghost wasn’t one of them.

“I see dead people,” I exhaled, amazed of what a weight of saying those four words lifted off my chest.

Amber scrunched up her face. “You mean like ghosts?”

“Yeah, and I saw one standing behind you with half a face. He was wearing the same kind of tan uniform, I think.”

Amber’s face lit up in amazement. “Oh my god, one of our teachers, a few years back, was viciously mauled by a Wren in there. Before they got to his body, it ate his face... so the person you were talking to was-”

“A ghost,” I finished for her. “And I was talking to it because..” come on, come up with a good lie, “trying to get this..it to cross over. It’s been haunting me ever since I came here.” Well maybe that wasn’t really a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either.

Amber narrowed her eyes again. I think she knew that I wasn’t telling her everything, but she had no proof to say otherwise. “All right, but I am going to have to report this back to the school board, they need to know.”

“That’s fine,” I said, even though I wasn’t so sure if it was. Ghosts tell secrets, I had just learned that, and I was sure that the other members of the school board had secrets too.

Instead of leading me back to the dorm she led me back to school’s main room, and then down one of the many hallways branching off to one of its sides. The hallway ended with the fourth door I’ve seen here; three doors in one day, that’s a new record! This time, I was the one to open it, and we stepped into a delicious smelling room full of students sitting on long stone benches eating. Everyone in the room stopped eating and turned to look at us when we walked in.

I nudged Amber who was standing right beside me. “Why are they staring at us like that?”

Amber cupped her hand and whispered in my ear, “They aren’t staring at us, they’re staring at you. You’ve been the gossip of the entire school ever since the Kraken attacked.”

“Oh great. The gossip topic at my old school and the gossip topic at my new secret government school. Yay,” I said sarcastically. The noise was beginning to seep back into the room, but I could still feel the weight of hundreds of eyes on me.

We crossed the cafeteria, and over to an empty bench in the far corner. Amber told me to wait there while she went to get us some food, and that she would be back in five minutes. As I waited for her to return, I traced the cracks in the wooden table.

I looked up from what I was doing when I saw someone slide onto the bench across from me. It was Henry, and he looked exhausted. He put his head the on the table and groaned. I didn’t bother saying anything to him; instead, I just glared at him. Feeling the heat of my glare, he moved his head so he could look at me.

“What are you looking at?” he grumbled.

“Where were you!?” I snapped. “Knowing you and your freaky power you probably knew what that meeting was about!”

“Yeah, and I knew that you were going to be f-i-n-e, fine. Plus, I also knew there would be a lot of boohooing involved, and have you forgotten I don’t do crying. And also,you’re not the only one having a bad day here.” With that, he sat up and stretched; completely ignoring my angry stare from across the table. Luckily, Amber came back carrying two trays of food. She set one in front of me, and then she sat down with hers beside Henry.

“Hey, where have you been all day?” She asked him, picking up a fry from her tray, and then taking a bite out of it.

“Someone escaped from one the observation rooms, and they were questioning everyone who came in contact with them within the last couple of days. I had to make the smart comment that somebody felt sorry for him and probably let him go, because of all the ugly faces he had to see daily. Well, that earned me four hours in the interrogation room.”

Amber grimaced. “You got into that much trouble?”

“Yeah, they were this close from force feeding my fingers to me. There was also something about something going missing from the school’s keepsakes. By the way,” his electric blue eyes landed on me, “I’m going to need that amulet back.” His eyes slipped to Amber, who gave him an apologetic look. He held out his hand to me.

At first, I had no idea what he was talking about, and then I remembered the dark purple amulet in my pocket. Reluctantly, I took it out and handed it to him. He took it and slipped it into his pants pocket. For some reason the minute it disappeared from my sight I instantly wanted it back, but I kept my feelings to myself, and instead, I dug into my fries.

A thought suddenly occurred to me when I was on my last fry. I looked across the table at Henry. “Was the amulet one of the school’s keepsakes? Is that how you knew about it and took it back?”

“No, I took it back because I wanted to wear it myself,” he said sarcastically.

I rolled my eyes at him. “Why did you get in trouble for it, and honestly why do you always have to be so snappy all the time?F”

“Well I could tell you, but I rather not lose any parts of my body oh trolls...” His eyes focused on something across the room.

I turned to see that a boy with brown wavy hair, not dressed in one of the school’s uniforms, scanning the hordes of students. His green eyes landed on me, and his whole face lit up with a smile. He began walking towards me. His smile faded, however when he noticed Henry.

Henry shot to his feet, without turning around he said, “Amber, I need you to get Violet out of here as fast as possible can, and take her to Vivian. I’m going to take care of him.”

“But...” Amber began

“I’ll be fine,” he said and gave her a reassuring nod. “I’ll be fine.” I’ll be fine,” he repeated when the look on Amber’s face still hadn’t disappeared.

Amber got up, and so did I. I took one another look over my shoulder and saw that the boy was now running towards me.

“Violet!” the boy yelled, and that’s when Henry slammed into him, his hands blazing with red and orange flames. For some reason, I could have sworn I had seen this same scene before one other time.

“Violet!” this time it was Amber screaming my name, she had already opened up a hole in the wall. “We have to go now.” I nodded my head and ran through the hole after her.

“What’s going on?” I asked once on the other side. I could hear the sound of some of the students screaming, and teachers the shouting for everyone to clear the cafeteria, from the still open hole.

“No time to explain,” Amber said, and that’s when I saw that the boy had Henry pinned to the ground with one hand, and his other hand was raised above Henry’s chest, and that hand was flickering with black fire.