Emma and Amelia’s attention drifted to the area that Prescott pointed to, their eyes widening when they saw a sheet of paper that seemed to have been folded and stashed within a crack in the wooden walls.
It was almost non-existent that Emma wondered how Prescott had seen it, had noticed it and had called it out. She had cleaned the cabin after all, from top to bottom, and she hadn’t seen the crack.
“What do you think it is?” She heard Amelia ask, and shrugged her shoulders. No other way to find out than to actually check it out. She stood up from the sofa and walked to the wooden wall with little cracks on it.
Heaving in a deep breath, she pulled the paper by the tail, hoping that it actually meant something and not some second-thought attempt to close a crack in the wall. But even as she rolled the paper out of its rumpled statement, she knew that it meant something. Could her mother have left her a message?
Beside her was Amelia who still had Prescott in her arms.
‘If you see this, then you are as much a keen observer as I am, and have probably found me. But I am already on my way to search for your siblings. Don’t come after me. Not yet. I will find you, myself. Go to these coordinates and stay there, till I come. – Your mother.’
Emma turned the paper upside down when she saw no coordinates on the paper. Frustration burned through her, partly because she hadn’t found the paper first, that she hadn’t been a keen observer as her mother had highlighted in the paper, and partly because she hated riddles. She already knew that finding the coordinates wouldn’t be plain. She understood that her mother had done this for her protection, but still it didn’t stop it from being frustrating.
“What is the matter? What does it say?” Amelia asked, worry filling her voice, having seen the frustration on Emma’s face.
Emma said nothing, but she handed the paper over to her sister. She looked at Prescott next, in a way that suggested that the squirrel might actually know the riddle that her mother was going on about.
Prescott looked into the paper then, and seeing nothing about the coordinates, asked Amelia to keep him on the floor, with the paper.
Amelia obeyed, and she and Emma watched as Prescott kept the paper on the floor gently, and then asked for a chalk.
Emma furrowed her eyebrows, wondering where they would get chalk, wondering what chalk had to do with finding the coordinates.
“If your mother had left this message… I am sure she did… then she had used a chalk. You have to find it.”
Amelia and Emma didn’t move. They didn’t understand what Prescott was saying.
Prescott, lifting up his head and seeing that they were staring at him, shook his head. “She had used the chalk to create the crack on the wall. Only someone that had honed the aura around his or her eyes with magic, would have been able to see it. She had taken a gamble with doing that, guessing that you probably might have tapped into your powers. You have, but you haven’t trained yet.”
Amelia and Emma exchanged glances, the same question running through their minds. A fake crack on the wall? How? Emma especially, since she had been the one that had retrieved the paper from the wall.
She swerved then to confirm Prescott’s theory, her mouth dropping open in shock the next second, mirroring Amelia’s expression, when she saw that the crack from which she had collected the paper from, wasn’t there anymore. It had closed up, or rather it was nonexistent. A shiny firm wood surface was all that greeted them.
It dawned on her the reason why she had cleaned everywhere, and hadn’t seen the paper was because she couldn’t see it.
Emma chuckled, and sank her fingers in her thick hair, not believing the smartness of her mother.
“So, the coordinates… I take it that you can see it?” Amelia asked Prescott, after getting slightly down from the highness of a shock.
Prescott shook his head. “Not yet. I need a chalk. Look around for the chalk that she had used to draw the crack on the wall. That had enabled her usage of magic to create an opening. Check around. The chalk should be around somewhere.”
***
Tempest and Margo arrived at the shifter’s house, noting first the affluence of the building.
“Are you sure this is the place?” Margo asked, a furrow outlining her forehead. She didn’t remember her daughter being friends with rich people, or having friends at all. Well, she had really been invested in Emma’s safety so much so, that she hadn’t really been aware of what was going on in Esther’s life.
That will all change. She muttered to herself, taking a hard look at the house with high gates.
“Well, I’m not sure. But that’s where the trail has led us to. We should knock, and ask questions. Then we will know how to move from there.” Keturah answered, and then went ahead to drop a knock on the gate.
At first there was silence.
Keturah sighed. The gate was too hard. She couldn’t keep dropping knocks on the gate. But just as she was about to drop another knock, the gate opened sharply, revealing a girl donned in a flimsy blue night wear, and a pink sleep band on her midnight black hair.
“Who are you?” The girl asked, one hand holding the gate, the other in the pocket of the flimsy pants she was putting on. She trailed her eyes all over Keturah and Margo, as if perusing goods for sale.
Keturah detested the rudeness.
“We are looking for Esther. I am her … Aunt.” Margo bit back from saying mother. If this was really Esther’s friend, then the girl might think an imposter, seeing that Esther’s mother was ‘dead.’
“Oh…she has mentioned you sometimes. But then you had gone missing… I remember her lamenting about that.”
The girl spoke, now looking at Margo with a renewed interest.
“Yeah. But I’m back now. Is she around? I need to see her.”
The girl shook her head, a notable emotion of sadness flashing across her eyes. “She is not here. She’s been taken by the werewolves. Seems, she had worked with the black witch to cause commotion in the pack. They had promised not to harm her though. She had gone with them willingly, after the fight ….”
“What fight?” Ketura asked, folding her arms across her chest.
“The fight with Lekan. Another prominent shifter whom we had thought was a friend. He was only with us to keep tabs on Esther. He had shifted to a vampire, and then a beast. It had taken one of the girls, Freya… yes I remember her name…to subdue it. She is not a werewolf. I’m not sure what she is either. However, I’m sure that Esther is safe. You know the way to the pack right?”
Margo nodded. Of course she did.