Horizon Lines

~6~

Belle woke up at eleven a.m. the next morning, the earliest she'd woken up all month. She sighed gratefully and rolled out of bed, hoping she could continue to get her sleeping schedule on track.

The scent of waffles drifted to her nose. Her stomach immediately growled and rushed to the kitchen, where her mother was already by the stove.

"Hey," Mom said as she glanced up at Belle. "Glad to see you're actually up before noon."

"Me too," Belle said and slid into one of the kitchen chairs. "Waffles?"

"Yep. Since you did so great yesterday, I thought I'd reward you further."

Waffles were her favorite breakfast, and her mother knew the best way to reward her was food. Food was always on her mind and her mother knew it.

Belle grinned at her mother cheekily. "You do know how to reward me good."

"That I do know," her mother said.

They had breakfast where they talked as they ate, their conversation ranging from their favorite TV shows to shapeshifting abilities to hair products.

As they were finishing their meal, Miss Harper's phone rang. She looked at the caller's ID and quickly answered. "Hello?"

Belle saw a shift in her mother's attitude, from calm and relaxed to tense and worried. Miss Harper abruptly got up and walked out of the room. Belle quickly got up and followed her, worried.

Mom walked into her office and shook her head at Belle when she tried to enter. Mom shut the office door with a soft click.

Worried and confused, Belle walked to her room, wondering who was calling her and what caused her to get so worried and upset. She'd seen her mother worried and upset before, but there was something different, like there was something significantly wrong.

Belle sat on her bed, worry twisting in her gut. She and her mom usually did their lessons after Belle woke up, but right now it was apparent that it wasn't going to happen right now.

Trying to calm her nerves, Belle grabbed her laptop and logged on. Seeking to get her mind off of whatever was going on with her mother, she logged onto the High Council website. She'd heard of all the missing people cases that had occurred ever since Caius had returned. She wanted to see if there was anything new that had been reported.

She thought of the Lewis and Wayne family, the two families who'd gone missing and had kicked off all the missing shapeshifters and were creatures and had gained the most attention due to the horrible circumstances that had occurred when they went missing.

She typed in the Wayne family in the search box and two articles appeared. One article was when they had first gone missing with the exception of Claire Wayne, the second article was more recent.

She clicked on the article and read that the two families were still missing and how long they'd been missing. It was now almost two months since they'd first been attacked. There were pictures of both Jonathan and Trevor Wayne beneath the article in color. Jonathan, Trevor's father, had short brown hair, a strong jaw, straight nose, and amber eyes. Trevor had pale skin, long black hair, a square jaw, slightly crooked nose, and pale blue eyes. The father and son didn't bear much resemblance, but both had the same smile in their pictures.

Belle felt sympathy for Claire Wayne. She couldn't imagine how horrible that had to be, to have both your son and husband missing.

She moved on to the Lewis family. Not much had changed since they'd gone missing, all of the members still missing and investigators still looking for them.