ILLUSION, ELI HALE

twenty | realizations

Everything that could go wrong in the past 48 hours had. Nadia and Eli were hunted and sent into hiding, then Nadia was slashed with a knife and almost bled out. Not forgetting the fact the poor girl found out literally everyone in the town had a connection to the supernatural and she had to be so incredibly dense to not know it until now. Then, the Oni break into the Hale household and stab three people, including her best friend and his father—and they quite literally vanished into thin air.

All before she got to tell Eli how she felt.

"Are they dead?"

After the girl asked Malia the question about what had happened, she went to the floor next to the woman. She was seated next to Malia, the brunette had put her fangs away, now finally overcoming the shock of their current situation. Malia was attempting to calm Nadia, pulling her into a tight grasp in her arms—one part of her feeling guilty she'd not done that to her little cousin before watching him vanish from the Oni.

There had to be something else going on that had both of them lost. Deaton and Stilinski had been whispering about the Oni earlier, but Nadia hadn't paid it any mind. Somehow, maybe after Scott, Malia and Lydia rose Allison from the dead during their ritual at the Nemeton, the butterfly effect of events had caused the arrival of the ninjas. Maybe that's why everyone was disappearing. However, Malia hadn't faced the Oni much before today, and she was adamant the last time people didn't disappear in a cloud of smoke.

"I hope not." Malia's dull tone echoed throughout the basement. She wasn't the best with comfort, that was for sure. One thing about Malia, she was going to be outright with her words. She was trying to calm the girl down the best way she could.

Nadia pulled her knees to her chest and burrowed her head on her legs. Flashes of Eli vanishing replayed over and over again in her head. She felt the emotions washing over her once more. The amazement she felt as he had his fangs, which quickly turned into one of horror. Where had he gone?

There was so much she'd not had time to do. She never got the chance to tell Eli how she felt about him. She never told him if she reciprocated those feelings. Now he was gone, and from what she heard from Malia, they didn't know the Oni could do that. So who the hell knew where they'd all been transported to? They could have disappeared into minuscule particles in the atmosphere never to be seen again.

Nadia was beginning to feel nauseous again.

She touched the necklace around her neck, holding the crystal in her grip, squeezing tightly as she shut her eyes. Trying to calm herself down, the girl began to chant. Please don't let him be dead. Please don't let him be dead. She hadn't realized she was making this statement out loud until she felt Malia's eyes on her, burning a look into her side.

A few hours before, she'd been so angry at him. He kept a huge secret away from her, and Nadia made it known that she was mad at him. They barely had the chance to talk about it since. If he was dead thinking that she was still angry, that guilt would be on her conscience for the rest of her days. She hadn't meant it. Eli should know that. Nadia could never hate him. She could never be afraid of him.

"I'm sure they're fine." The same monotone-less voice Malia donned when attempting to comfort a person dripped in her dull done. "They're not dead. He's not dead."

Nadia pulled her head up from her lap, mentally telling herself not to roll her eyes at the excruciatingly painful attempt of being the nice surrogate big sister the older woman was attempting. "Thank you Malia for your constant optimism."

"I'm trying so hard."

"Yes, I can see that. What do we do now? How do we get them back?" Optimism was going to be the only thing to get them past this. Nadia knew that if the fact that Eli was gone, she would break down. She would shut down like she had when her father died. She couldn't do that. Not now. So, she had to keep going. No matter what, she was going to get him back. "Sheriff's station?"