“I don’t know where she is, but the last thing she told me before she left was that she was going to the heart even though I don’t know what that means,” he added as he looked down at his book and continued reading.

  “The heart?” Annabelle whispered, asking herself. She quickly ran towards Joanna who had been waiting for her.

  “What happened? Did he tell you something?” Joanna asked, tapping her right foot.

  “He told me Crow said she was going to the heart,” Annabelle replied, looking at Joanna’s tapping foot. For some reason, the foot tapping seemed to disturb her.

  “Does he know about the heart?” Joanna asked, eyes wide open in expectation.

  “No he doesn’t. I would have said we try to find her but she has already told us it is a futile effort,” Annabelle said, looking at the man.

  “Have you seen him before?” she asked Joanna as she suspiciously glared at him.

  “No, probably he is new or he is one of Crow’s magical minions,” Joanna replied and the girls started to giggle.

  They had developed a bad habit of talking in the library. Well, a bad habit that had only been two days old. They both had more questions about magic and there were a lot of uncertainties and loopholes. Loopholes they hoped would be cleared soon enough.

  But some of the questions on their minds were how the library had only one entrance considering its enormous size and how the power supply was fixed without them even noticing.

  They left the library, still having time on their hands and Annabelle and Joanna got engaged in the longest and most intimate conversation they ever had since the beginning of their friendship. It was 5:00 p.m. and the time had come to go home. She saw her brother waving at her from a distance and she beckoned to him.

  “Oh yeah it’s your brother,” Joanna said, pretending to be happy, the moment he approached them.

  “Don’t pretend to be nice to me, I know you don’t like me but I’m okay with it,” Josh whispered and smiled as Joanna rolled her eyes in disgust.

  “Don’t forget about the amulet,” she said to Anna as she hugged her. They waved at each other and then parted ways.

  “So how was your day? Did you see your boyfriend?” Josh asked, as Anna pulled out her mp3 player from her bag and started listening to music to block him out. Josh kept on talking and Annabelle kept on ignoring him throughout the fifteen-minute walk back to their house.

  On getting to the front door, Anna opened the door, unplugged an earphone from her ear and greeted her father who was comfortably seated in the living room as he watched hockey and ate popcorn which had been prepared by Mrs. Peterson.

  “No earphones in the house. I told you before,” he said, then Anna grudgingly unplugged her other ear.

  She headed upstairs alongside her brother and went straight to her room to create what would hold her amulet. She slowly locked her doors, flung her windows open and took a deep breath as the fresh breeze hit her face and ran through her nostrils. She still found it weird that she lived on a hill with one other family but she felt a bit comfortable considering the fact that she was making progress with the investigation of mystery and magic.

  She pulled off her shoes and socks and threw them to a corner of the room. Something she wouldn’t originally have done but she was eager to use the amulet’s protection.

  “I didn’t even collect Crow’s phone number. How dumb of me,” she said to herself as she reached into her bag and pulled out the amulet. It glistened before her very eyes and she smiled.

  “This will solve all my sleep problems,” she said to herself as she put it on her desk and opened her drawer to look for a chain she could attach it to. She got a chain from one of her jewelry and attached the amulet to it. Luckily for her, it already had a hole for attachment just like most pendants.

  “That’s all?” She asked herself in disappointment, for she expected something magical to happen the moment she had attached it. She put on the chain and looked in the mirror.

  “Isn’t this thing too big?” she asked herself just when the amulet started to glow.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “Whoa,” she stood there in awe, still looking at the amulet as the light got even brighter.

  It vibrated and made a faint hissing sound as the light got brighter. Anna was about to take it off in fear just when she levitated off the floor. She felt like she had no body mass and she tried to scream but her lungs felt light and it also seemed like her vocal cords had disappeared. An almost opaque force field enveloped her completely and she passed out still midair.

  She fell to the floor with a THUD but no one seemed to notice. About ten minutes later, Anna woke up with a throbbing headache. She winced as she stood from the floor, due to the pain in her head. She looked into the mirror and exclaimed.

  “Whoa!” she said, in awe, looking at the amulet which had drastically reduced in size. “This is so beautiful,” she said, turning left and right, watching the amulet emit different colors due to the different wavelengths of light.

  She picked up her phone to call Jessica but Jessica’s phone was switched off.

  “Why at such a sweet moment,” she said as she looked at her reflection one last time.

  She read some of her school books after which she took her bath with the amulet still on her neck, had dinner and went straight to bed at exactly 8:00 p.m. with a beaming smile.

  “I will sleep so well tonight,” she said, stretching and yawning. She closed her eyes and slept off not long after.

  A few days without bad dreams had gone by and Anna was literally the happiest person in her world but there was a huge problem; Mrs. Crow was nowhere to be found and no one except Anna and Joanna had noticed.

  The school activities seemed to go normally, and the new librarian whom Anna had spoken to on countless occasions knew nothing about Mrs. Crow’s disappearance.

  “She told me she was going to the heart so I figured it was a city,” he would always say, every time he was interrogated by Annabelle in an attempt to find out Crow’s whereabouts.

  He was not very bright for a librarian and no one knew his name.

  Four days had passed since they were given the amulets and Anna hadn’t spoken to Jacob or Jackson about the attacks. Her life seemed to be taking a perfect stride or at least the stride that did not involve her being in danger every time. The new year celebrations were to commence the following day and Courtney Cox, the hottest senior in the school, had gotten almost everything ready.

  She was very popular, beautiful and knew how to hold a good conversation, irrespective of one' s personality. She had no interest in Jackson for many reasons and Anna always feared that she could take Jackson away. Her beauty was second to Mrs. Crow’s.

  There were no classes that week because the Principal declared the week lecture free because of the new year celebration so people were in school either for setting up or catching fun. Practically almost every rule could be broken that week, fighting and stealing excluded. Everyone wore a beaming smile on his or her face and Anna and Joanna went to the cafeteria to stuff their faces with food.

  “Hey girls, are you ready for the new year celebration?” Jackson asked as he sat among them with a tray of food in his hand.

  “I see no point in this,” Annabelle said, pretending not to care, but Joanna and Jackson knew that she loved the celebrations.

  “Oh really?” Jackson said, gently stroking her chin. She tried to look as serious as possible but burst into uncontrollable laughter a few moments later.

  “Okay, I’m psyched about it,” she sheepishly admitted as she kept eating.

  “Hey did you notice anyone missing?” Joanna asked Jackson, forking at the beef in her meal.

  Anna kicked her feet under the table, trying to signal her to stop asking. She wasn’t quite ready to start a conversation about magic just yet.

  “Missing how?” Jackson asked, as his eyes darted at Anna and Joanna in confusion.

  “Was someone kidnapped?” he added, rolling spaghetti around his fork.

  Both girls looked at each other in confusion and then back at Jackson, who was still looking confused with a morsel of spaghetti in his mouth.

  “Chew your food, we are just pulling your legs,” Annabelle said in an attempt to change the topic. They had not eaten for much longer when Courtney Cox approached them. The atmosphere around them was instantly filled with the pleasant smell of the cologne she wore. She had red hair which reached her lower back, blue eyes just like Anna, and the body shape of a model. She smiled and her teeth were white as pearls.

  “Hi guys, I just want to inform you that the new year celebration has to be attended with a date. It’s the principal’s rule and not mine,” she said.

  “We didn’t have to take dates before so what made Duncan change his mind?” Jackson replied as he looked at Courtney.

  “Well, I don’t know what made him change his mind but I guess he is just bored,” Courtney said, gently tapping Jackson on the shoulder.

  “Well, that will be all. Make sure you have fun tomorrow,” she said as she smartly walked away, her red hair bobbing behind her.

  “She could have just made a public announcement; why did she tell only us?” Joanna asked, still trying to understand why Courtney had approached them.

  “You know she can be very spontaneous,” Jackson replied, then bit an apple.

  “Well, there’s something I’d like to tell you,” Anna said, looking at Joanna for approval to speak. Joanna nodded in approval of Anna’s request and Annabelle then spoke.

  “My life is in danger,” she said, out of the blues.