The Possession of Anna Drake

13 - Electricity in the Air

We were now sitting at a table, and Anna had not arrived. I was wondering if I had misread the situation. The conversation sounded like we were all supposed to meet at the restaurant. Still, judging by the way Jordan took off out of the parking lot, something else could have come up. When we had left, Anna and Sam were lip-locked against the hood of her car. Maybe Anna had decided to pull over for a little time alone. I wouldn’t put it past her; she was far more open to one-night relations. On the other hand, I cherished my chastity with all I had.

“You ok?” Jordan asked as he picked up the menu and began to look at it.

“Just wondering where Anna is,” I answered truthfully. I was not one to lie. I learned my lesson when Nadia died. It was always best to tell the truth, even if you do have to keep some of it to yourself for the better of your mother’s Coven.

“I’m sure she’s fine. She and Sam seemed pretty cozy.” He winked at me, and I blushed. I knew exactly what he was saying, and I had already thought of the possibility as it was.

“You’re probably right,” I laughed and looked at the menu.

“You look like you don’t get out often,” he said as he looked at me over the laminated menu.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized. I wasn’t sure what else to say. Had I somehow offended him with my unusually awkward conversations?

“No reason to be sorry, just wondering why I have never seen you. Electrokinesis is a rare gift. I don’t think I’ve ever met another witch who could control electrical currents.”

“I’m still mastering the art. It tends to get a little unpredictable at times.” Of course, I was talking about the first time it had ever taken me over.

“Oh? You a late bloomer?” he placed the menu in front of him and looked at me with interest.

“No, no. I had other circumstances that prohibited me from fine-tuning the gift.” I answered.

I had sounded like I knew what I was saying, and I hoped he would not pry further into the issue. I had never had a conversation like this with anyone. Anna and I hardly spoke of our gifts, which tended to put me into an anxiety attack. I was too scared to use my power while she was tempted by the magic she possessed.

“Prohibited? It sounds like you have a parent that sheltered you too much,” he laughed.

“You have no idea,” I smiled awkwardly.

I didn’t know what else to do. He was partially correct. My mother was sheltering, but she did it for selfish reasons. If I had been allowed to go to Juvy, maybe, I wouldn’t be so socially awkward with a boy. I closed my eyes, mortified I was going to say something to turn him off.

“What can I get the two of you?” An older woman with an apron asked.

“Coffee for me,” Jordan answered enthusiastically.

“Same,” I muttered. I had already come down from whatever drug we had taken, but I was still tired.

“And to eat?” the waitress asked without smiling. She was staring at the two of us like we weren’t supposed to be there. Had we managed to make our way to a place that was getting ready to close?

“Pancakes,” Jordan answered as he rubbed his hands together in a greedy manner.

“And for you, Miss?”

“Same,” I replied softly.

In the last two months, I had eaten in only one other restaurant, and it was run by one of our coven members, so it wasn’t as awkward. I had never had pancakes, though I had heard of them.

“I’m glad you decided to come out with me tonight,” Jordan said suddenly, and my head jerked toward him, and I raised an eyebrow.

“You are?” I squeaked.

“Of course, you may not believe this, but I’m not the kind of guy who asks girls he doesn’t know to restaurants after meeting them in a club.” He gave me a dazzling smile, and I instantly blushed.

“I’m going to try calling Anna,” I mentioned as I pulled out my phone. What else was I going to say? He gave me butterflies and made my hands clammy. I had to do something before I swooned so hard that I turned into a puddle in the booth.

I dialed the number and waited for her to answer. It rang three times and went to voicemail. Not a very Anna thing, honestly. If she wanted to be alone, she would have sent me a message, and my phone showed no signs of contact. I hadn’t been nervous before, but now I was highly concerned.

“What’s wrong?” he asked after he saw my facial expression.

“She’s not answering,” I answered as I sat my phone down on the table. “It’s not like her not to answer. She knows how worried I get; she would have messaged me had they decided to pull over. Something doesn’t feel right.”

“Let me call Sam,” Jordan grabbed his phone from his pocket and dialed. I watched his face go from straight to concern in a nanosecond.

“No answer?” I asked as soon as he set the phone down on the table.

“No,” he replied. “Sam is not one of those to let his phone go to voicemail. He is always prompted to answer, which is why we are friends. He doesn’t jerk me around like many other warlocks in our Coven.”

Jordan squinted his eyes and looked out the window. I thought he was half expecting them to round the corner into the parking lot.

“Should we go?” I asked.

The waitress sat our coffee down in front of us and turned to walk away.

“No, we should eat and wait. They have to get here at some point. Right?” He raised his eyebrows and looked at me.

I was a wreck when Anna was further than five feet from me. This was the first time I had ever been out with a boy, and I was alone. Not something I wanted to be right then. I needed Anna, and her not showing or answering made my heart pound. I had left my medication at home. I didn’t think I would need it, and I had no way of returning to my room to take the pills before a full-fledged attack came on.

“Yeah,” I breathed.

I prayed Anna was going to walk through the door. When she didn’t, I knew something was wrong. I had felt it outside the club and was worried sick.

“Maybe they went back in?” he suggested.

“Maybe, if she thinks I’m ok, she might do something like that,” I confirmed uncertainly.

“It was so loud in there she couldn’t hear her phone. We will eat, and if they aren’t here by the time we are done, we will head back to the club and check it out.” He waited for me to agree.

His telling me we could go back to the club to check on Anna settled my heart, and I could breathe without difficulty. I had managed to bypass and attack with Jordan’s help.

The waitress brought our food, and both Jordan and I picked at the pancakes while we took turns looking out the window. If it had been any other situation, I would have devoured the fluffy discs as they tasted like little bits of heaven, but I was too scared. I took a few bites and pushed them away just as Jordan did.

“Alright, we’ve waited long enough. Let’s head back,” he said as he pulled out his wallet and threw a fifty on the table. “Thank you,” he called out to the waitress.

She nodded, and we stood up and left the café.

Back in the car, we were both increasingly nervous.

“Does your friend do stuff like this?” he asked me.

“No, not like this. Yours?” I questioned.

I knew he wasn’t trying to place any blame on Anna; he only wanted to feel the situation. Not that I blamed him, we didn’t know squat about each other’s companions.

“No, he’s very responsible. This is the first time I’ve ever left him alone.” Jordan pushed down hard on the accelerator, and we instantly began to pick up speed.

Jordan kept up through the twists, turns, and dirt roads. We had been gone just over an hour, and by the time we pulled into the field, every car had disappeared, and the club looked dead and dark. There was no sign of Anna’s red car, and nobody was in the parking lot. I instantly felt cold. We had not seen them on the road, and now that we were in the field, she wasn’t there. Where had they gone?

“s**t!” Jordan yelled as he slammed his hands down hard on the steering wheel.

“Maybe they took a wrong turn?” I asked softly.

“Hand me the map in the glove box,” Jordan calmly requested.

I opened the tiny box, pulled out the map, and handed it to him.

“What are you going to do?” I questioned meekly.

“Scry for their location,” he replied as he pulled a crystal necklace around his neck. I was a bit shocked to find that he wore the right items to complete a scrying spell. Maybe that was normal for his Coven. I knew my mother kept her crystals in the top drawer of her desk. She only ever pulled them out if she felt it was an emergency. I closed my eyes and prayed she didn’t have the feeling anything was wrong. I didn’t need her chastising me when I got home.

Jordan placed the map in his lap and began his enchantment. He used a different language than I was taught, so it took a lot of work to determine what he was saying. The crystal started to swirl around and then finally landed on a location.

“That’s odd,” he mentioned as he looked intently at the map.

“What is?” I asked.

“They are headed toward Evergreen Falls,” he replied with a sigh.

I wondered if he knew why they would have headed toward home. Why would Anna go in the opposite direction? I was sure she understood I still had to go home. She wasn’t giving me over to Jordan to keep forever. It didn’t sit well with me, and my stomach began to churn.

“Are they moving?” I asked as I leaned over and looked down at the map. I had never performed a scrying spell, so I had no clue what I was looking at. I had studied how it was supposed to function, but I never needed to try it.

“No,” he groaned. “Something isn’t right.”

“You’re telling me, how far out are they?” I asked.

“About an hour,” he replied.

“Then I suggest we get moving. Maybe her car broke down,” I mentioned. I was still trying to see the silver lining in the situation.

Even though I knew it wasn’t the case. Anna could fix that car by thinking about what was wrong with it. If they were broken down, it meant she was not conscious, and that was not something I wanted to think about.

We drove silently for quite some time, looking left and right for any sign of Anna or Sam. I had taken to biting my nails, and Jordan’s hands were wound so tight around the steering wheel that his knuckles were white.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered after the silence had gotten to me.

“What are you sorry about?” he laughed anxiously. “You didn’t know this was going to happen.”

“No, but your friend would be fine if it wasn’t for me.” I hadn’t even used my powers, yet I had put another innocent life in danger.

“Don’t say that. If it wasn’t you, there is no telling who it would have been,” he sighed.

“I thought you said you didn’t pick up women at the club.” I thought I was catching him in a lie until he looked at me, and I understood.

Sam was a lot like Anna, always looking for the next thrill. It may not have been Jordan picking up on the drugged-up witches, but Sam was not as innocent as I had thought. He looked the part, but apparently, he was built to appear wide-eyed and incapable of doing wrong.

“Oh,” I replied with a hushed tone. I wanted him to know I understood what he was saying.

We entered into silence — this time, I kept my mouth shut. Jordan looked lost in thought as we sped down the backwoods two-lane highway. The trees looked malicious like they were trying to hide a dark secret, making my blood cold. During the day, when the sun shines on the green leaves and brown bark, trees look as if nothing could be wrong. However, when the night comes, and the shadows take over, the forest takes on a new appearance, which has always made me uneasy.

I’m not sure how much longer we drove until we came across Anna’s car on the side of the road. Smoke rose under the hood, and not a single aspect of civilization was in sight. Jordan pulled over, and I was out of the car instantly.

“Anna!” I screamed as I ran toward the door.

I half expected to find her slumped over the steering wheel; instead, I found an empty car. Anna’s keys were still in the ignition, and the radio played the playlist she had uploaded to her phone.

“Where are they?” Jordan asked the moment he caught up with me. He ran his fingers through his short black hair and closed his eyes.

“I don’t know,” I replied as I reached out to calm him.

“We have to find them,” he said with panic. His eyes were darting this way and that, looking for any sign of the two beings.

“Maybe they went into the trees?” I asked softly, pointing toward a clearing directly across from us. There were maybe ten feet of trees and then an opening. That was all I could make out in the darkness.

“Only one way to find out,” Jordan replied as he grabbed my hand. He said a few words, and a fire orb manifested itself directly in front of us.

I was in awe; I had never seen anything so amazing before. I had heard the tales of the Pyrokinetic gift, but I had never witnessed its power firsthand. As we made our way through the trees, the ball remained in front of us. If Jordan looked to the right, the ball would follow; if he looked to the left, it would do the same. I might have found more joy in the spell if we weren’t looking for our friends.

The fire gave a glow wide enough for us to see about six feet in either direction. Not enough to get a good look between the shadows. Every few feet, one of us would call out to be welcomed with the sounds of silence. Not even a cricket made noise in the wood. When we hit the clearing, everything seemed to appear even more malicious.

“Sam!” Jordan called out as he looked from left to right, his ball of fire following his movements.

“Anna!” I yelled, hoping for some response.

“Jordan,” I heard the faint male voice coming from our right.

Jordan began to move faster as he yanked me through the high grass. Finally, we found Sam. He was battered and bleeding over one eye, and a knife was clasped in his hand. It was small and could easily be carried in a pocket, not one that would alert the police. It was covered in blood, but there was no Anna in sight.

I panicked. I began to shake, and the world felt like it was closing in on me. Where was Anna? In a fit of fear, my electrical current began to command the skies above. The clouds pulled together and began to swirl; the lightning flashed across the sky, providing a brighter light than the fire orb.

“Liz,” Jordan said, my name calmly.

I turned my attention to him as he began to walk toward me.

“Don’t come near me,” I requested. It wasn’t in anger. I had seen what the lightning could do to a child; I didn’t want to know what it would do to a full-grown man.

“You aren’t going to hurt me, but Liz, I need you to calm down,” he pleaded with me.

“Where’s Anna?” I whispered, my eyes flickering with my inner energy. “Where’s Anna?”

“He took her,” Sam answered as he tried to get to his feet.

“What, who?” Jordan asked as he continued to reach toward me.

“The Shadow Man.” Sam sounded like a lunatic.

The Shadow Man was an urban legend created to keep young witches and warlocks from going out after dark. I had spent many a night the last two months walking back and forth under the cloak of darkness. I had never encountered the famed Shadow Man.

“Can you walk?” Jordan asked. His arms encircled me, and the sky was about to lay waste to the woods ahead of us. “If you do this, Liz, you could kill her.”

My heart was racing, and my head was foggy, but I knew he was right. I knew if I were to explode with the energy-consuming me, I could hurt my friend. Even if the Shadow Man took her, she would be incinerated before he had the chance to possess her. I closed my eyes, and I thought of my room. The place I always went to when I needed to be alone. My sanctuary, where I could still use the ankle monitor if I needed to control everything. I used it to stop myself, and I had left it lying on the nightstand like an i***t.

“Good, Liz, keep breathing,” Jordan instructed.

By the time I opened my eyes, only the three of us and a floating fire orb were standing in the middle of a field. Trees were looming over us from all sides, the silence tearing through us like a knife.

“We need to leave,” Sam instructed as he latched onto Jordan’s arm with his hand. “He will be back.”

Jordan grabbed my arm and began to yank me from where we had been. His fire orb floated faster and faster, providing more light than it initially had. Sam made up the rear with his knife ready. Just in case whatever took Anna returned. Jordan opened the passenger door for Sam to get in the back and then pushed me softly into the passenger seat. I knew I was a lump of clay at that point. My mind was already racing with the possibilities. The Shadow Man took Anna. How does an urban legend come to life?

“How far do you live from here?” Jordan asked me, and I stared at him in dismay. I knew he was speaking and heard his question, but I could not answer. Forcing the electricity back down in the pits of my stomach caused me to go into shock.

“She’s the daughter of the High Priestess. I wouldn’t suggest going there.” Sam muttered from the backseat.

“Do what?” Jordan asked him.

“My aunt lives in Evergreen Falls; she has a cabin. Right now, she’s overseas, so it should be empty, a good place to regroup.” Sam instructed, and Jordan took off, leaving Anna’s car and my best friend behind.

I watched the scene fade in the mirror as we flew down several more roads. Sam was giving Jordan the directions, and I was still lost. We were sisters in magic. I should have known if something had happened to her.