Dimokre Chronicles Book 2: Sarah's Fate

Chapter 19 - How a Pearl Necklace Became a Pearl of Wisdom

"What?" Sarah stared at him. She loosened her grip on his hands. "Michael, that's ridiculous. I literally saw her yesterday. Ya know, in detention. She held my phone and goblets; she wasn't a ghost. I know I've been seeing Grammy a lot, but there's no way Jenn's a ghost."

"You've been seeing Elise more, too?"

Sarah stiffened. Hot tears stung at her eyes. Great, he thinks I'm losing it. She yanked her hands free and wiped her eyes with a hoodie sleeve. "Yes," she hissed. "Not a lot, just here and there. Usually between classes, but the class I got detention in, she kept appearing in front of me and flipping the teacher off. I hadn't slept well the night before, and I know what you're going to say. That it's probably a hallucination and not her ghost, but listen, when I was little and told her about bullies or a mean teacher or anything else upsetting me, she'd say she was gonna march down to the school and flip them off. I didn't understand what that meant or why Mom would always scold her. But when the sub yesterday was yelling at me, she flipped the teacher off, and for a minute, I felt happy and like she was really there."

Sarah drew in a breath, fiddling with her—well, Michael's—fingernails. His were slightly long, probably as an influence of being able to turn into a wolf with claws. She didn't dare look up at Michael's face. She didn't want to know Michael didn't believe her, and she didn't want to see it on her own body. "Then she looked ready to staple the teacher's head, and I told her no. But the teacher thought I was yelling at him, so... detention."

Michael drew in a breath. "So then you went to detention, and only a teacher who wasn't there for much of it, your best friend, and Jenn was there?"

Sarah nodded, shrugging.

Michael swallowed. "Sarah..."

Sarah stood up, hugging her arms. "I'm not crazy, I swear! I really did see her! I'm just... I'm just tired. Between Julie and dreams, I haven't really been—"

"I know." Michael stood up, too. "You're not crazy. But I don't think you're seeing hallucinations. Or a ghost, either."

"What do you mean?"

"I think you're seeing the Huntress."

"... Huh?"

"She stole a shifter's powers, so it'd make sense that she can shift into someone after she's killed them." Michael shrugged. "There's a lot of different shifters with different abilities and limits, and I don't know which kind she stole. Almost all of them though can shift into someone as long as they're already dead. Some shifters can only shift into the dead person if the shifter was the one to end the form's life."

Sarah stared at him, her mouth agape. "... But... I... I talked to Jenn. She always replied like..."

... Herself? She sat down, thinking of all the times Jenn's been moody or distant lately. She pouted when Ariah turned down her invitation to bake at her house. Sarah remembered all the gossip she's heard about Jenn's teachers and her own family saying she's changed.

"You stole from her... pretty early on in this semester..." Sarah said slowly. "I'm guessing you checked the memories in the machine pretty quickly after?"

Michael nodded. "I'm guessing Huntress killed her in the summer, and then took over her life when she felt like it. Maybe even brought other shifters in to cover for her."

Sarah shuddered, looking up at him with wide eyes. "Her family... went camping for a week on their summer vacation. She said she was going to knit me a scarf in between all their hiking and stuff, but she didn't." She hugged her arms, slowly standing up. "She didn't, but I just thought she was busy with family time. I didn't think she... was... murdered." Sarah covered her mouth with her hands. "Oh, my God. Her family doesn't even know."