Lost In The Night (On Hold)

A Note

(Adrian's P.O.V.)

Once I get home, I drop my car keys on the table and rush upstairs to my room, eager to take a shower and wash away the scent of Jerimiah. Cress is in her room, I can hear her steady heartbeat and the occasional turning of a page.

I enter my own room and plug my phone in to charge, then I quickly get out of my clothes and hop into the shower. As the steaming hot water runs down my body, I think about my meeting with Jerimiah. He wants to turn me into the thing that I loathe the most, make me part of the race I was raised to destroy. I can't accept his offer, there's no way in hell I'm letting him do that. We'll find another way to understand whatever the hell Cress and Raphael have, we always find another way. I groan and run my hand through my soaked hair, hoping Cress won't ask me where I was. She always knows when I'm lying, just like I always know when she's lying.

I smile fondly as I recall when Cress had played a prank on one of the other hunters at headquarters and the hunter was furious. Mom and dad had come to us, we were about six at the time, and they asked us if we had anything to do with it. I wasn't with her when she pulled the prank, but one look at my sister told me she was responsible for it. We had made eye contact, and I could tell that she knew that I knew it was her who did it. Mom, being ever so observant, changed her line of questioning and turned to me. She told me that if I told her who did it, I'd get to try staking a dummy.

At the time, we weren't allowed to practice with real stakes, but we desperately wanted to. I had considered my mother's offer, and dad was standing back, leaving mom to get all the answers. After some careful deliberation, I decided I'd rather use a stake for the first time with my sister by my side, so I insisted we had nothing to do with it and that it must have been one of the other children. Our parents eventually gave up, thinking neither of us had a part to play in the prank. To this day, nobody knows who actually played the prank on that hunter besides Cress and myself.

The water turns cold, snapping me out of my reverie. I grumble and turn the shower off, feeling slightly better now that I no longer have Jerimiah's unique and unsettling scent clinging to every fibre of my body.

Returning to my bedroom, I check my phone and see I have a text from Stacey. I smile to myself and type a reply. Stacey and I hit it off immediately when we became new lab partners, she gives me a sense of normality amidst all that's been happening lately and I'm glad I got the chance to get to know her. We're not exactly dating, and part of that is my fault. I don't want to get into a relationship with all of the shit that's been going on, especially not with someone as innocent as Stacey.

I think to some extent she realizes that I'm holding back and that I have a good reason for that, so she doesn't ask about "defining the relationship". Not wanting to think about all the complications in life right now, I drop onto my bed. But just as I'm about to close my eyes to try and actually get a decent amount of sleep for once, there's a knock on my door.

Shit. I'm so screwed.

"I'm not home, leave a message at the beep." If Cress wants to talk, there's a high chance that she's going to ask where I was.

The door opens and my sister's face appears in the doorway. "Haha, very funny Adri." She sticks her tongue out at me and I return the gesture. "So," she sits next to me on my bed and glances at me, "where were you this afternoon? You normally tell me if you're going out."

Well shit. "I was just uh-" Damn it, I got nothing.

I hear a quiet sigh from my right and look over at Cress, her eyes are trained on the floor and she's playing with her hands. "I know where you were, I just wanted to see if you'd tell me. Why, Adri? I specifically asked you not to go to him!"

I can tell she's upset, and I do my best not to grab her shoulders and shake her to try and make her see how much I worry about her, how much I fear losing the only family I have left. "What else was I supposed to do, Cress? We know nothing about this, nothing! For all we know, one of you is freaking destined to die by the other's hand! We have no god damn clue why you and Raphael can sense each other or why the hell you two can now communicate telepathically! You may not be freaking out, Cress, but I am. I worried as hell about you, about what this can do to you."

"You think I don't want to find out what it is? I do, Adri! But of all people, Jerimiah is the worst possible person to turn to for answers."

I sigh, knowing my sister is right. "You're right, I'm sorry. I just don't want to lose you too."

She smiles softly at me, pulling me in for a hug. "I'm not going anywhere Adri, sorry to disappoint, but I'm still going to be a pain in your ass." I chuckle and release Cress, just as a crash is heard from downstairs. The two of us glance at each other, then I quickly but quietly grab two stakes from my bedside table, handing Cress one.

We creep down the stairs, ready for an attack and ready to attack at any moment. We reach the bottom of the stairs and my eyes scan the living room and I spot the object that crashed, a framed picture of our family, or what used to be our family, that is. It's not one of the photos that were all formal and proper, dad was tickling mom and Cress and I looked like we were laughing a lot.

"Adri," I glance over at Cress and see her holding a piece of paper folded in half. We're both very curious as to what the note says, because at this point I know who it's from and I'm sure Cress does as well. She unfolds the paper and my breath hitches in my throat as I immediately recognize the neat, elegant print that is my mother's handwriting. All hunters are taught how to write neatly and properly, we start learning cursive and calligraphy once we've started printing neatly.

"Shit." The quiet mumble from Cressida has me actually focusing on what the letter says.

"You want to find us? Come find us. Let's get this over with, we're tired of being hunted by our own children. You two are smart kids, so figure out where we are. That should be easy enough for you to work out, after all, we didn't raise idiots. We left a clue, can you find it?"

My eyes scan the letter quickly, and I keep rereading it, not sure what the hell is happening. Then, something clicks. "What's the clue?"

It seems like Cress was already working on this. "They couldn't have knocked over that picture frame by accident, they're too skilled for that." She picks up the frame and we both look at the picture. It was taken when we decided to go downtown for a night, the picture was taken in front of a restaurant we ate at. I remember seeing an article in the papers about that same restaurant closing down about two years ago, something about the owner disappearing and people disappearing from inside the restaurant. The League had gotten to the bottom of that situation, but the restaurant was never reopened.

"Cress..." I trail off, because I know she's already figured it out.

"It's too simple," she whispers. "They wouldn't make it that obvious, would they?"

"Only one way to find out." I pick up my duffle bag that has weapons already packed in it. "You up for a drive downtown?"

Cress gently places the broken picture frame on the coffee table and picks up her own bag. "Let's go."
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This update is super late, honestly I tried writing it but this chapter took me a long time to write and I'm not sure why. I don't know if I like how this chapter turned out, but I'm keeping it because I need to update. So please leave a vote, comments are also appreciated.