___________________ ღღ ___________________
Dawn
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ •.¸ ¸.• ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
[ - Sunday, September 15, 2019 - 6:45am - Dawn’s House - ]
I awaken slowly to the sight of the slanted beige ceiling of the upstairs den. I’m lying in a bundle of blankets atop the air mattress with my head on a soft pillow. It’s nice and toasty in my little nest, and I bask in the stillness and quiet of the early morning.
That conversation with Vielet yesterday had been intense, and enlightening. Everything I learn about Anne and her magic fascinates and energizes me, though right now I’m feeling a lot more sleepy than energized.
A few minutes go by, before I hear rustling from the couch to my right. Ellie or Maddie sits up and peers at me owlishly.
“Hullo Dawn,” they say softly.
“Good morning Ellie, good morning Maddie,” I say pleasantly.
“How’d you sleep?” they ask. Then they tilt their head and add, “Oh, and Ellie’s fronting at the moment.”
I smile at Ellie. “I slept like a baby, how about you?”
“Same,” she says with an easy grin.
She’s so pretty, I think offhandedly.
I find myself wondering whether or not Maddie is listening in.
“Hey,” I mumble sleepily, “is Maddie usually still present while you’re fronting, and vice versa? Er, except for when one of you goes to Anne’s world, obviously.”
Ellie tilts her head at me with a curious expression on her face. “At the moment Maddie’s present, but that’s not always the case. Anne’s teaching us to make our own ‘headspaces’, and in general there are lots of other places we can go in our mind besides just sitting and watching the screen that shows what’s going on in our meatspace life.”
I blink a few times, processing that. It helps wake me up more fully, and I sit up on the air mattress.
“Gotcha,” I say with a small smile, “thanks for the info.”
“Anytime,” Ellie replies.
Another important question pops into my head, and I decide now’s as good a time as any to ask it.
“I have a question for Maddie too actually,” I say.
Ellie blinks, and her eyes unfocus. Her posture shifts slightly and she seems to put her guard up.
“Maddie here,” Maddie says a moment later, their gaze sharpening. “What’s up?”
“Are we dating?” I ask sincerely.
They tense up, giving off a great impression of a deer caught in headlights.
“D-do you um, want to?” they ask. “Date me, I mean? I-I should probably have told you but we’ve kissed before and--”
“I do want to date you,” I cut in with a smile, before they can spiral any farther, “and I knew, or at least I suspected, that we’d kissed.”
They blink and shake their head before refocusing their moss-green gaze onto me. “Seriously?” they ask, “You definitely don’t have to, I’d totally understand if--”
“Madelaine,” I say softly, and they trail off. So I continue, “I know you’re just as much a part of the person that I’ve grown to love as Ellie is. If you’d have me, I would absolutely love to date you.”
“But- You- Okay,” they sputter, “Okay, so we’re dating now. That’s cool, that’s fine, that’s chill.” A smile fights its way onto their face. “I’m really happy about that!”
I laugh softly. “I’m glad,” I respond. Then I get up off the air mattress and move to sit beside them. As I sit down I slide an arm around their shoulders and gently pull them closer.
They lean into my touch, and I smile as I bury my nose in their tousled brown hair. They smell of a faint floral scent, no doubt from the girly shampoo and conditioner Jay brought home for us earlier in the week, and I inhale deeply and contently.
The sound of footsteps coming up the stairs reaches us a few moments later. I pull Maddie a bit closer, nuzzling them.
They pull away as Jay rounds the corner to our right. It’s immediately apparent that something’s wrong. Jay’s face is creased with concern and his cool grey eyes lock onto mine with urgency.
“Mornin’, have either of you heard from Sky?” he asks.
Maddie shakes their head as I turn to face Jay fully.
“No, why? What’s wrong?” I ask.
“They never showed up for our weekly history game night last night,” he says, “they’re not answering their phone, and it’s been over twenty four hours since anyone we’ve talked to has seen them.”
“Fuck,” I say, “Have you contacted Eve? They were supposed to be hanging out with her yesterday.”
“Nope, we can’t reach her either. Aiden’s contacted her family, and they say they don’t know where Eve or Sky are,” Jay explains.
“They could be asleep somewhere with their phone dead?” Maddie suggests.
“True and if that’s the case, no biggie. But they’ve always been good about calling us from someone else’s phone when theirs dies,” Jay says, “Plus it rings for a while every time we call it, so we think it’s not dead.”
Hmm I wonder, I think, pondering the various technological means of locating someone. Surely they won’t mind if we invade their privacy just a little bit to ease the minds of our dads?
“Have you tried using the FindMyPhone app thing?” I ask aloud, “If the phone’s still ringing it should be charged, and the app should lead us right to them.”
Jay raises both eyebrows. “No, hadn’t thought of that yet. Can you figure that out hun?” he asks.
Joy sparks through my heart at the casual way he calls me ‘hun’, but it’s quickly overshadowed by the urgency of the situation.
“Absolutely,” I say, rising from the couch and moving to grab my phone from its charging place. Maddie stands and moves towards their phone as well.
“I’ll need to spend some time in Sky’s room figuring out their passwords but hopefully I’ll get it ready within the hour,” I say.
"Come downstairs when you've found something?" Jay says, "I want to go be there with Aiden."
"Of course," I reply.
“Thanks love,” he says, before turning and making his way back downstairs.
I look to Maddie and raise an eyebrow. “Well,” I say, “that’s one way to get us out of bed.”
Maddie cracks a smile, but their arms are crossed vulnerably. “Aren’t you worried about Sky?” they ask.
“Oh a little bit,” I say, “but I know we need to focus if we’re gonna find them.”
“How are you going to ‘figure out’ Sky’s passwords? They’re a hacking whiz, I doubt they left any lying around.”
“You’d think so,” I say with a smile, “but Sky sometimes needs me to get on their PC and access their password manager for them, when they’re off gaming somewhere and forget how to log in to whatever obscure server they need access to. So I can get that far fairly easily because they trust me. As long as their google password’s saved in there I should be able to find the phone pretty quick.”
Maddie nods, and follows me out into the hallway.
I lead the way to Sky’s cyan door and pull it open. The room is littered with the usual controlled chaos of the college freshmen lifestyle: books and papers are scattered about the desk and stacked up haphazardly on the floor. There’s a hamper full of dirty clothes to the right and a beefy computer setup on the desk to the left against the wall. The bed is the only thing that looks tidy, meaning they definitely never slept here last night.
I make a beeline for the desk and pull the rolly computer chair out from its berth. I start clearing the area beneath the desk of tissues and dustbunnies. The computer sitting beside the desk is alive and humming with electricity.
“What are you doing?” Maddie asks.
“Looking for clues,” I reply, as I lay down on my back and slide myself under the desk.
I stare up at the underside of it where Sky has a strip of masking tape with their current lock screen password written on it in sharpie. I read it out loud to Maddie because it’s been updated since the last time I did this, and they stand over me and type it into the keyboard.
“It worked!” they exclaim. “Oh, looks like they never shut it down so there’s lots of stuff open.”
“Awesome,” I say, sliding out from under the desk and getting to my feet. “Anything interesting?” I ask as I dust myself off and take the rolly chair that Maddie offers me.
“Take a look,” they say, gesturing to the now-logged-in computer screen.
On the screen is a document with the letters ‘BPI’ in all caps at the top. There are various triplets of words starting with B, P, and I, as if someone’s been trying to figure out which one they like best. I assume it's some kind of school project they’re working on, so I ignore it as I put my fingers to the keys and get serious.
It’s the work of a few clicks to pull up Sky’s password manager, and sure enough searching for ‘google’ brings up their main gmail account. I carefully type the password in on my phone to sign in to the findmyphone website, and boom, immediately we have GPS coordinates to my sibling’s lost device.
---
I come down the stairs quickly with Maddie in tow behind me, and find Jay sitting at the table staring at his phone. He looks up as we reach the bottom of the stairs.
“Find anything?” he asks.
I can hear the faint sounds of Aiden cursing in their bedroom to my right.
“Yes,” I say, walking towards the table and Jay. “It looks like their phone’s in the industrial park across Belmont Avenue for some reason.”
“Huh,” Jay comments, “maybe they lost it?”
“Must be something like that,” I say.
“Well if you’ve got its location let’s go get it,” Jay says.
Aiden opens the door to the dads’ bedroom and walks out with a sour expression on his face. He’s dressed already and looks slightly haunted. “Sky, Eve, and Audre Somberset, one of Eve’s moms, aren’t answering their phones, I left them all messages asking them to call back asap.”
“We found Sky’s phone’s location thanks to our daughter here,” Jay says with a smile in my direction.
I feel happiness bubble up through my thoughts at being called their daughter. Fuck, that’s practically everything I’ve ever wanted.
“Excellent work Dawn, that was my next plan,” Aiden says.
“Should we get going?” Jay asks.
“Absolutely,” Aiden replies, “Let’s get in the car and go find our child.”
The four of us slip into jackets and shoes in the main entryway, then file outside into the brisk autumn air. We end up taking the family’s red minivan, Jay’s primary ride, out to the industrial park.
---
We make it to the parking lot in the industrial park where Sky’s phone supposedly is. It’s still early, and the sun’s light is warm compared to the chilly autumn air.
All four of us get out of the car in rapid succession, and we survey the area for a moment.
“Well,” Aiden says, “Let’s see if it’s here.”
There are murmurs of agreement as we all start scouring the ground around us for the phone. The area is a deserted asphalt lot with tons of cracks in the pavement and a variety of scattered light poles and pot holes. The dot on the map indicates we’re in the right spot, but I’ve no idea how accurate it is at close range like this.
I start moving south, alternating between peering at my phone and staring hard at the ground for any hint of Sky’s white phone case.
I’ve barely been searching for five minutes before Ellie calls out, “Found it!”
“Oh thank the gods,” Aiden says.
“Yeah, what he said,” Jay says.
We all move closer to my girlfriend.
“Hang on, it’s still got charge but only a bit. And... what’s this?” Ellie says, peering closer at the screen. “It looks like... no way, it’s recording!”
I feel dread settle in the pit of my stomach. Why on Earth would they have left their phone recording and abandoned it?
Jay whistles and Aiden puts a hand to his mouth, looking concerned. “Can you play it back?” Jay says.
“Yeah, but it’s got almost eleven hours of audio recorded,” Ellie says, “Let me end the recording... there, it saved alright. But yeah it’s eleven hours long.”
“Let’s plug it in in the car?” I suggest, “Then we can all listen to it without fear of it dying.”
Jay nods. “Good idea.”
As soon as we pile in the minivan Ellie sets the phone on the center console in between Jay and Aiden and just ahead of Ellie and I. Aiden finagles a cord out of the center console and plugs the phone in, the screen lights up showing numerous missed calls and texts.
Jay hits ‘play’ on the recording app’s latest file, and we immediately hear the sounds of wind gusting against the microphone and running footsteps slapping against pavement. Sky’s voice comes across this background noise low and tense.
“Fuck fuck fuck,” they hiss, “Phone’s got no signal. Eve’s gone, they got her and they’re gonna get me t--”
“Hands in the air!” a gruff voice shouts suddenly as a second, more distant, pair of running footsteps joins the first.
Sky curses. "It's BPI," they hiss into the mic. There’s a heavy THUD and clattering sound, as if they dropped their phone, then the sounds of scuffling on the pavement.
“Stand up, get in the back of the truck, and no one gets hurt,” the masc voice demands distantly.
"Okay okay I'm up I'm up," Sky says hurriedly, clearly afraid.
There's the sounds of tires on the pavement and an engine revving.
“Sky get the fuck out of here!” Eve’s voice calls faintly. She sounds like she’s in pain.
“Little late for that now, princess,” a different, equally faint growly voice says.
There’s more shuffling, an ‘oof’ from Sky, then the sound of doors slamming.
“This is delta squadron over,” the first voice growls, “We’ve captured a V and are on the way back to base. Got a kid too, a collaborator, in case the freak gets snacky.”
We’re all leaning in close to the car’s center console and the phone resting upon it, but the reply is just garbled static as the four of us listen in stunned silence.
The gruff masc voice speaks again, much clearer and closer to the mic of Sky’s phone. “No I don’t know who the kid is and I don’t care. You asked for another freak, we got you another freak. End of story. The thing woulda probably killed the kid anyway if we hadn’t showed up.”
There’s the sound of more shuffling and another door being closed, then the sound of an engine revving and tires crunching the pavement. Then there’s nothing but the sound of the wind blowing against the microphone.
Shit shit shit, I think to myself, how the hell did they get themselves into this mess?
“Holy fuck,” Jay swears.
“This cannot be fucking happening,” Aiden says.
I lean back in my seat and cross my arms, thinking furiously. “There’s got to be some way we can find them,” I say.
Ellie is frowning, still perched on the edge of her seat leaning close to the quiet static of the phone. “Could we track Eve’s phone?” she asks.
“We’d need her google account or something like that,” I reply, “which her family might have, so we should ask them.”
“Hmm, okay. I think we should go back to the house,” Ellie suggests, “we can upload this recording to audacity and scrub it for anything else useful in the eleven hours after what we already heard. And we can look at that file on Sky’s computer, the one that said ‘BPI’ on it.”
That seems to snap my dads out of their silence.
Jay puts the car in drive. “On it,” he says. “What’s this file on Sky’s computer?”
“I thought it was a school assignment, it looked like a book report or something,” I say. “But Ellie’s right, it said BPI at the top and had a bunch of different word combos that could fit that acronym.”
“Given that they were possibly referring to Eve as a ‘V’ and a ‘freak’,” Aiden says, “I bet Eve’s family might gather more from this audio than we can currently. We should call Audre and show this to her asap. I’m going to do some sleuthing once we’re back, see if we can track Eve’s phone through less conventional means, while you all look into those other leads.”
“Good idea,” I say.
Aiden has about seven years’ experience as a penetration tester for a huge corporation, so he knows his way around a lot of social obstacles that stump most people. I have no doubt that he can find Eve’s phone if he really wants to.
“This is like something from a B movie,” Jay mutters as he pulls us out of the parking lot and back onto the road.
“I’m impressed that you girls got over the shock and came up with an action plan so fast,” Aiden says, “I’m proud of you both.”
I feel my face heat up with embarrassment, and glance at Ellie to find her similarly pink-cheeked.
“Thanks dad,” I say happily, “that means a lot.”
“You mean a lot to us,” Jay answers with a sad smile into the rearview mirror. “You all do.”
He meets mine and then Ellie’s gaze in the mirror. “I’m extremely proud of you all for handling everything that’s happened in the past week or so with such kindness and courage. Ellie, Maddie, Dawn, you’ve all been under some extraordinary stressors and yet you’ve persevered and taken care of each other along the way. That’s amazing.”
“Thank you, Jay,” Ellie says sincerely.
“Yeah thanks Dad!” I add.
I feel the butterflies in my stomach flutter about frantically, and I can’t stop myself from taking hold of Ellie and Maddie’s hand and squeezing tight. They grin and lean over to pull me into a kiss. It’s quick and soft and so, so good.
I’m left with a dopey smile on my face as Jay navigates through an intersection. Both my dads are quiet for a while, giving the two of us space. Ellie, Maddie and I are also quiet, just enjoying each other’s company.
Of course, the happy feelings fade all too soon, as the reality of our situation sets in.
“Fuck,” I say quietly, as we cruise through the neighborhood, “they’re really gone. I almost can’t believe it.”
“Almost?” Ellie asks with a questioning eyebrow.
“After everything else that’s happened so far? This is exactly the kind of shit Spar warned us about, right Maddie?”
Ellie’s expression and posture shift to be a bit more guarded. “That’s right Dawn,” Maddie says.
Five minutes later we pull into the driveway and get out of the car. We kick up a flurry of orange, brown and red leaves as we all walk across the driveway and onto the path to the front door.
Once inside the house we split up. Jay goes up to his office to look through the audio file and Sky’s phone in general, Ellie and I go into Sky’s room to get as much info as we can from their desktop computer, and Aiden goes to his first-floor office to ‘make some calls’.
I settle down into my sibling’s soft rolly chair, and put my fingers to the keys. Ellie stands just behind me, peering over my shoulder at the screen.
Time to get serious and, hopefully, find some clue as to where my sibling went.
---
Sky’s ‘BPI’ file doesn’t have a ton of info on it, just the acronym guesses, a crude digital drawing of a logo, and a list of names, dates, and GPS coordinate pairs. I don’t recognize any of the names. The dates are spread out throughout the last year, and plugging the GPS coordinates into an address converter shows the indicated spots are spread throughout the western Chicago suburbs.
“Well, that’s the last one,” I say, leaning back in the rolly chair and looking up to Ellie at my side. “What do you make of that?” I ask her, gesturing towards the screen with eight little pins marking the coordinates in the file.
“No clue really,” she replies with some consternation. “But given that they said ‘It’s BPI’ in the recording, this must have something to do with why they got kidnapped.”
“Yeah, I agree. Let me see if I can find anything else useful,” I reply.
I start to look through the other open applications on Sky’s computer. There’s a few other word documents with various assignments on them, a handful of communication apps which I avoid reading too much of after verifying none of the recent messages are important, and an idle game that I minimize. I find their various chats with Eve and make a note to compare them with what Jay finds on the phone later.
All of this random info doesn’t really give us anything to go off of, so I stand up beside Ellie and we file out of the room together. Aiden rounds the corner at the top of the stairs just as I make it out Sky’s door and we nearly collide.
“Oop! Sorry hun,” my cyan-haired dad says, “Did you three find anything useful?”
I shake my head. “Not really, there’s a list of names, dates, and locations, but we don’t know what they’re referencing.”
“Yeah,” Ellie agrees, “Hard to know what they’re referencing without more context, so we’ll need to do more research on these people.”
The forest green door to Jay’s office opens and Jay’s head pokes out into the hallway ahead of us. He locks eyes with Aiden and smiles. “Come on in y’all, I’ve found some interesting stuff on Sky’s phone.”
“Do tell,” Aiden says with interest. Ellie and I follow him into the study.
Jay explains that he’s already got the audio file extracted from the phone, and that he made a much smaller clip of just the interesting bits from the start so we can play it back whenever we need to reference it. He also found a number of texts on the phone with pertinent information.
“Apparently Sky and Eve were going to meet someone named ‘Drew’ last night, and they were expecting trouble of some sort. They’re very cryptic in their texts, but it definitely seems like Eve is more than she seems, and that Sky knows about her uniqueness,” my shorter dad explains. “It also sounds like there have been other people disappearing in Eve’s extended family, so that could be what those names, dates and locations you discovered are.”
“Oh, that could make sense,” I say thoughtfully.
Ellie frowns. “We still don’t have any idea what we’re up against, or why Sky and Eve were taken.”
“True, but I’ve put out some feelers in the weirdo community, we should know if anyone else has been kidnapped around these parts soon,” Aiden says. “Plus I called in a favor with an old friend.”
Jay looks up interestedly from Sky’s phone. “Claire?” he asks simply.
Aiden nods. “Claire,” he says, then he turns to Ellie and I. “Claire is a witch we knew in college, she’s kept up with her practice and has a lot of ties with the supernatural community in Chicago last I heard.”
My eyes widen. “You guys know a witch and you didn’t tell me?!” I exclaim.
Jay shrugs. “We know a lot of people, Claire’s just special to us because, well...” He trails off, glancing at Aiden with a questioning expression.
“Because we helped her out and she claims she owes us a debt, is how I would explain it,” Aiden says. “She’s a damn good investigator to boot.”
“How did you help her?” I ask interestedly.
My cyan-haired dad nods at me seriously. “There was a stalker casting nasty spells on her and some others. We tracked him down and, ah, ‘convinced’ him to leave her and everyone else alone.”
“That sounds like a hell of a story,” I say.
“It is,” Jay replies.
“Well, dang, I want her on our team then,” Ellie says.
“Same,” I echo.
“Oh she’s definitely on the team,” Aiden says. “I just had to check and see if she’s able to play ball anytime soon, and she is.”
I cross my arms, nodding. Internally, I can’t help thinking about what exactly it means to be a witch. What mysterious powers does this ‘Claire’ have?
And is it something that can be learned? I think to myself. Because uh, I’d kinda like to learn it.
KristenOfTheCoven
Dear discerning readers,
Thank you all so much for joining us on this journey! Welcome to the beginning of the second act of Acceptance of the Self. We hope you enjoy the ride ^^.
___________________ ღღ ___________________
Dawn
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ •.¸ ¸.• ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
[ - Sunday, September 15, 2019 - 6:45am - Dawn’s House - ]
I awaken slowly to the sight of the slanted beige ceiling of the upstairs den. I’m lying in a bundle of blankets atop the air mattress with my head on a soft pillow. It’s nice and toasty in my little nest, and I bask in the stillness and quiet of the early morning.
That conversation with Vielet yesterday had been intense, and enlightening. Everything I learn about Anne and her magic fascinates and energizes me, though right now I’m feeling a lot more sleepy than energized.
A few minutes go by, before I hear rustling from the couch to my right. Ellie or Maddie sits up and peers at me owlishly.
“Hullo Dawn,” they say softly.
“Good morning Ellie, good morning Maddie,” I say pleasantly.
“How’d you sleep?” they ask. Then they tilt their head and add, “Oh, and Ellie’s fronting at the moment.”
I smile at Ellie. “I slept like a baby, how about you?”
“Same,” she says with an easy grin.
She’s so pretty, I think offhandedly.
I find myself wondering whether or not Maddie is listening in.
“Hey,” I mumble sleepily, “is Maddie usually still present while you’re fronting, and vice versa? Er, except for when one of you goes to Anne’s world, obviously.”
Ellie tilts her head at me with a curious expression on her face. “At the moment Maddie’s present, but that’s not always the case. Anne’s teaching us to make our own ‘headspaces’, and in general there are lots of other places we can go in our mind besides just sitting and watching the screen that shows what’s going on in our meatspace life.”
I blink a few times, processing that. It helps wake me up more fully, and I sit up on the air mattress.
“Gotcha,” I say with a small smile, “thanks for the info.”
“Anytime,” Ellie replies.
Another important question pops into my head, and I decide now’s as good a time as any to ask it.
“I have a question for Maddie too actually,” I say.
Ellie blinks, and her eyes unfocus. Her posture shifts slightly and she seems to put her guard up.
“Maddie here,” Maddie says a moment later, their gaze sharpening. “What’s up?”
“Are we dating?” I ask sincerely.
They tense up, giving off a great impression of a deer caught in headlights.
“D-do you um, want to?” they ask. “Date me, I mean? I-I should probably have told you but we’ve kissed before and--”
“I do want to date you,” I cut in with a smile, before they can spiral any farther, “and I knew, or at least I suspected, that we’d kissed.”
They blink and shake their head before refocusing their moss-green gaze onto me. “Seriously?” they ask, “You definitely don’t have to, I’d totally understand if--”
“Madelaine,” I say softly, and they trail off. So I continue, “I know you’re just as much a part of the person that I’ve grown to love as Ellie is. If you’d have me, I would absolutely love to date you.”
“But- You- Okay,” they sputter, “Okay, so we’re dating now. That’s cool, that’s fine, that’s chill.” A smile fights its way onto their face. “I’m really happy about that!”
I laugh softly. “I’m glad,” I respond. Then I get up off the air mattress and move to sit beside them. As I sit down I slide an arm around their shoulders and gently pull them closer.
They lean into my touch, and I smile as I bury my nose in their tousled brown hair. They smell of a faint floral scent, no doubt from the girly shampoo and conditioner Jay brought home for us earlier in the week, and I inhale deeply and contently.
The sound of footsteps coming up the stairs reaches us a few moments later. I pull Maddie a bit closer, nuzzling them.
They pull away as Jay rounds the corner to our right. It’s immediately apparent that something’s wrong. Jay’s face is creased with concern and his cool grey eyes lock onto mine with urgency.
“Mornin’, have either of you heard from Sky?” he asks.
Maddie shakes their head as I turn to face Jay fully.
“No, why? What’s wrong?” I ask.
“They never showed up for our weekly history game night last night,” he says, “they’re not answering their phone, and it’s been over twenty four hours since anyone we’ve talked to has seen them.”
“Fuck,” I say, “Have you contacted Eve? They were supposed to be hanging out with her yesterday.”
“Nope, we can’t reach her either. Aiden’s contacted her family, and they say they don’t know where Eve or Sky are,” Jay explains.
“They could be asleep somewhere with their phone dead?” Maddie suggests.
“True and if that’s the case, no biggie. But they’ve always been good about calling us from someone else’s phone when theirs dies,” Jay says, “Plus it rings for a while every time we call it, so we think it’s not dead.”
Hmm I wonder, I think, pondering the various technological means of locating someone. Surely they won’t mind if we invade their privacy just a little bit to ease the minds of our dads?
“Have you tried using the FindMyPhone app thing?” I ask aloud, “If the phone’s still ringing it should be charged, and the app should lead us right to them.”
Jay raises both eyebrows. “No, hadn’t thought of that yet. Can you figure that out hun?” he asks.
Joy sparks through my heart at the casual way he calls me ‘hun’, but it’s quickly overshadowed by the urgency of the situation.
“Absolutely,” I say, rising from the couch and moving to grab my phone from its charging place. Maddie stands and moves towards their phone as well.
“I’ll need to spend some time in Sky’s room figuring out their passwords but hopefully I’ll get it ready within the hour,” I say.
"Come downstairs when you've found something?" Jay says, "I want to go be there with Aiden."
"Of course," I reply.
“Thanks love,” he says, before turning and making his way back downstairs.
I look to Maddie and raise an eyebrow. “Well,” I say, “that’s one way to get us out of bed.”
Maddie cracks a smile, but their arms are crossed vulnerably. “Aren’t you worried about Sky?” they ask.
“Oh a little bit,” I say, “but I know we need to focus if we’re gonna find them.”
“How are you going to ‘figure out’ Sky’s passwords? They’re a hacking whiz, I doubt they left any lying around.”
“You’d think so,” I say with a smile, “but Sky sometimes needs me to get on their PC and access their password manager for them, when they’re off gaming somewhere and forget how to log in to whatever obscure server they need access to. So I can get that far fairly easily because they trust me. As long as their google password’s saved in there I should be able to find the phone pretty quick.”
Maddie nods, and follows me out into the hallway.
I lead the way to Sky’s cyan door and pull it open. The room is littered with the usual controlled chaos of the college freshmen lifestyle: books and papers are scattered about the desk and stacked up haphazardly on the floor. There’s a hamper full of dirty clothes to the right and a beefy computer setup on the desk to the left against the wall. The bed is the only thing that looks tidy, meaning they definitely never slept here last night.
I make a beeline for the desk and pull the rolly computer chair out from its berth. I start clearing the area beneath the desk of tissues and dustbunnies. The computer sitting beside the desk is alive and humming with electricity.
“What are you doing?” Maddie asks.
“Looking for clues,” I reply, as I lay down on my back and slide myself under the desk.
I stare up at the underside of it where Sky has a strip of masking tape with their current lock screen password written on it in sharpie. I read it out loud to Maddie because it’s been updated since the last time I did this, and they stand over me and type it into the keyboard.
“It worked!” they exclaim. “Oh, looks like they never shut it down so there’s lots of stuff open.”
“Awesome,” I say, sliding out from under the desk and getting to my feet. “Anything interesting?” I ask as I dust myself off and take the rolly chair that Maddie offers me.
“Take a look,” they say, gesturing to the now-logged-in computer screen.
On the screen is a document with the letters ‘BPI’ in all caps at the top. There are various triplets of words starting with B, P, and I, as if someone’s been trying to figure out which one they like best. I assume it's some kind of school project they’re working on, so I ignore it as I put my fingers to the keys and get serious.
It’s the work of a few clicks to pull up Sky’s password manager, and sure enough searching for ‘google’ brings up their main gmail account. I carefully type the password in on my phone to sign in to the findmyphone website, and boom, immediately we have GPS coordinates to my sibling’s lost device.
---
I come down the stairs quickly with Maddie in tow behind me, and find Jay sitting at the table staring at his phone. He looks up as we reach the bottom of the stairs.
“Find anything?” he asks.
I can hear the faint sounds of Aiden cursing in their bedroom to my right.
“Yes,” I say, walking towards the table and Jay. “It looks like their phone’s in the industrial park across Belmont Avenue for some reason.”
“Huh,” Jay comments, “maybe they lost it?”
“Must be something like that,” I say.
“Well if you’ve got its location let’s go get it,” Jay says.
Aiden opens the door to the dads’ bedroom and walks out with a sour expression on his face. He’s dressed already and looks slightly haunted. “Sky, Eve, and Audre Somberset, one of Eve’s moms, aren’t answering their phones, I left them all messages asking them to call back asap.”
“We found Sky’s phone’s location thanks to our daughter here,” Jay says with a smile in my direction.
I feel happiness bubble up through my thoughts at being called their daughter. Fuck, that’s practically everything I’ve ever wanted.
“Excellent work Dawn, that was my next plan,” Aiden says.
“Should we get going?” Jay asks.
“Absolutely,” Aiden replies, “Let’s get in the car and go find our child.”
The four of us slip into jackets and shoes in the main entryway, then file outside into the brisk autumn air. We end up taking the family’s red minivan, Jay’s primary ride, out to the industrial park.
---
We make it to the parking lot in the industrial park where Sky’s phone supposedly is. It’s still early, and the sun’s light is warm compared to the chilly autumn air.
All four of us get out of the car in rapid succession, and we survey the area for a moment.
“Well,” Aiden says, “Let’s see if it’s here.”
There are murmurs of agreement as we all start scouring the ground around us for the phone. The area is a deserted asphalt lot with tons of cracks in the pavement and a variety of scattered light poles and pot holes. The dot on the map indicates we’re in the right spot, but I’ve no idea how accurate it is at close range like this.
I start moving south, alternating between peering at my phone and staring hard at the ground for any hint of Sky’s white phone case.
I’ve barely been searching for five minutes before Ellie calls out, “Found it!”
“Oh thank the gods,” Aiden says.
“Yeah, what he said,” Jay says.
We all move closer to my girlfriend.
“Hang on, it’s still got charge but only a bit. And... what’s this?” Ellie says, peering closer at the screen. “It looks like... no way, it’s recording!”
I feel dread settle in the pit of my stomach. Why on Earth would they have left their phone recording and abandoned it?
Jay whistles and Aiden puts a hand to his mouth, looking concerned. “Can you play it back?” Jay says.
“Yeah, but it’s got almost eleven hours of audio recorded,” Ellie says, “Let me end the recording... there, it saved alright. But yeah it’s eleven hours long.”
“Let’s plug it in in the car?” I suggest, “Then we can all listen to it without fear of it dying.”
Jay nods. “Good idea.”
As soon as we pile in the minivan Ellie sets the phone on the center console in between Jay and Aiden and just ahead of Ellie and I. Aiden finagles a cord out of the center console and plugs the phone in, the screen lights up showing numerous missed calls and texts.
Jay hits ‘play’ on the recording app’s latest file, and we immediately hear the sounds of wind gusting against the microphone and running footsteps slapping against pavement. Sky’s voice comes across this background noise low and tense.
“Fuck fuck fuck,” they hiss, “Phone’s got no signal. Eve’s gone, they got her and they’re gonna get me t--”
“Hands in the air!” a gruff voice shouts suddenly as a second, more distant, pair of running footsteps joins the first.
Sky curses. "It's BPI," they hiss into the mic. There’s a heavy THUD and clattering sound, as if they dropped their phone, then the sounds of scuffling on the pavement.
“Stand up, get in the back of the truck, and no one gets hurt,” the masc voice demands distantly.
"Okay okay I'm up I'm up," Sky says hurriedly, clearly afraid.
There's the sounds of tires on the pavement and an engine revving.
“Sky get the fuck out of here!” Eve’s voice calls faintly. She sounds like she’s in pain.
“Little late for that now, princess,” a different, equally faint growly voice says.
There’s more shuffling, an ‘oof’ from Sky, then the sound of doors slamming.
“This is delta squadron over,” the first voice growls, “We’ve captured a V and are on the way back to base. Got a kid too, a collaborator, in case the freak gets snacky.”
We’re all leaning in close to the car’s center console and the phone resting upon it, but the reply is just garbled static as the four of us listen in stunned silence.
The gruff masc voice speaks again, much clearer and closer to the mic of Sky’s phone. “No I don’t know who the kid is and I don’t care. You asked for another freak, we got you another freak. End of story. The thing woulda probably killed the kid anyway if we hadn’t showed up.”
There’s the sound of more shuffling and another door being closed, then the sound of an engine revving and tires crunching the pavement. Then there’s nothing but the sound of the wind blowing against the microphone.
Shit shit shit, I think to myself, how the hell did they get themselves into this mess?
“Holy fuck,” Jay swears.
“This cannot be fucking happening,” Aiden says.
I lean back in my seat and cross my arms, thinking furiously. “There’s got to be some way we can find them,” I say.
Ellie is frowning, still perched on the edge of her seat leaning close to the quiet static of the phone. “Could we track Eve’s phone?” she asks.
“We’d need her google account or something like that,” I reply, “which her family might have, so we should ask them.”
“Hmm, okay. I think we should go back to the house,” Ellie suggests, “we can upload this recording to audacity and scrub it for anything else useful in the eleven hours after what we already heard. And we can look at that file on Sky’s computer, the one that said ‘BPI’ on it.”
That seems to snap my dads out of their silence.
Jay puts the car in drive. “On it,” he says. “What’s this file on Sky’s computer?”
“I thought it was a school assignment, it looked like a book report or something,” I say. “But Ellie’s right, it said BPI at the top and had a bunch of different word combos that could fit that acronym.”
“Given that they were possibly referring to Eve as a ‘V’ and a ‘freak’,” Aiden says, “I bet Eve’s family might gather more from this audio than we can currently. We should call Audre and show this to her asap. I’m going to do some sleuthing once we’re back, see if we can track Eve’s phone through less conventional means, while you all look into those other leads.”
“Good idea,” I say.
Aiden has about seven years’ experience as a penetration tester for a huge corporation, so he knows his way around a lot of social obstacles that stump most people. I have no doubt that he can find Eve’s phone if he really wants to.
“This is like something from a B movie,” Jay mutters as he pulls us out of the parking lot and back onto the road.
“I’m impressed that you girls got over the shock and came up with an action plan so fast,” Aiden says, “I’m proud of you both.”
I feel my face heat up with embarrassment, and glance at Ellie to find her similarly pink-cheeked.
“Thanks dad,” I say happily, “that means a lot.”
“You mean a lot to us,” Jay answers with a sad smile into the rearview mirror. “You all do.”
He meets mine and then Ellie’s gaze in the mirror. “I’m extremely proud of you all for handling everything that’s happened in the past week or so with such kindness and courage. Ellie, Maddie, Dawn, you’ve all been under some extraordinary stressors and yet you’ve persevered and taken care of each other along the way. That’s amazing.”
“Thank you, Jay,” Ellie says sincerely.
“Yeah thanks Dad!” I add.
I feel the butterflies in my stomach flutter about frantically, and I can’t stop myself from taking hold of Ellie and Maddie’s hand and squeezing tight. They grin and lean over to pull me into a kiss. It’s quick and soft and so, so good.
I’m left with a dopey smile on my face as Jay navigates through an intersection. Both my dads are quiet for a while, giving the two of us space. Ellie, Maddie and I are also quiet, just enjoying each other’s company.
Of course, the happy feelings fade all too soon, as the reality of our situation sets in.
“Fuck,” I say quietly, as we cruise through the neighborhood, “they’re really gone. I almost can’t believe it.”
“Almost?” Ellie asks with a questioning eyebrow.
“After everything else that’s happened so far? This is exactly the kind of shit Spar warned us about, right Maddie?”
Ellie’s expression and posture shift to be a bit more guarded. “That’s right Dawn,” Maddie says.
Five minutes later we pull into the driveway and get out of the car. We kick up a flurry of orange, brown and red leaves as we all walk across the driveway and onto the path to the front door.
Once inside the house we split up. Jay goes up to his office to look through the audio file and Sky’s phone in general, Ellie and I go into Sky’s room to get as much info as we can from their desktop computer, and Aiden goes to his first-floor office to ‘make some calls’.
I settle down into my sibling’s soft rolly chair, and put my fingers to the keys. Ellie stands just behind me, peering over my shoulder at the screen.
Time to get serious and, hopefully, find some clue as to where my sibling went.
---
Sky’s ‘BPI’ file doesn’t have a ton of info on it, just the acronym guesses, a crude digital drawing of a logo, and a list of names, dates, and GPS coordinate pairs. I don’t recognize any of the names. The dates are spread out throughout the last year, and plugging the GPS coordinates into an address converter shows the indicated spots are spread throughout the western Chicago suburbs.
“Well, that’s the last one,” I say, leaning back in the rolly chair and looking up to Ellie at my side. “What do you make of that?” I ask her, gesturing towards the screen with eight little pins marking the coordinates in the file.
“No clue really,” she replies with some consternation. “But given that they said ‘It’s BPI’ in the recording, this must have something to do with why they got kidnapped.”
“Yeah, I agree. Let me see if I can find anything else useful,” I reply.
I start to look through the other open applications on Sky’s computer. There’s a few other word documents with various assignments on them, a handful of communication apps which I avoid reading too much of after verifying none of the recent messages are important, and an idle game that I minimize. I find their various chats with Eve and make a note to compare them with what Jay finds on the phone later.
All of this random info doesn’t really give us anything to go off of, so I stand up beside Ellie and we file out of the room together. Aiden rounds the corner at the top of the stairs just as I make it out Sky’s door and we nearly collide.
“Oop! Sorry hun,” my cyan-haired dad says, “Did you three find anything useful?”
I shake my head. “Not really, there’s a list of names, dates, and locations, but we don’t know what they’re referencing.”
“Yeah,” Ellie agrees, “Hard to know what they’re referencing without more context, so we’ll need to do more research on these people.”
The forest green door to Jay’s office opens and Jay’s head pokes out into the hallway ahead of us. He locks eyes with Aiden and smiles. “Come on in y’all, I’ve found some interesting stuff on Sky’s phone.”
“Do tell,” Aiden says with interest. Ellie and I follow him into the study.
Jay explains that he’s already got the audio file extracted from the phone, and that he made a much smaller clip of just the interesting bits from the start so we can play it back whenever we need to reference it. He also found a number of texts on the phone with pertinent information.
“Apparently Sky and Eve were going to meet someone named ‘Drew’ last night, and they were expecting trouble of some sort. They’re very cryptic in their texts, but it definitely seems like Eve is more than she seems, and that Sky knows about her uniqueness,” my shorter dad explains. “It also sounds like there have been other people disappearing in Eve’s extended family, so that could be what those names, dates and locations you discovered are.”
“Oh, that could make sense,” I say thoughtfully.
Ellie frowns. “We still don’t have any idea what we’re up against, or why Sky and Eve were taken.”
“True, but I’ve put out some feelers in the weirdo community, we should know if anyone else has been kidnapped around these parts soon,” Aiden says. “Plus I called in a favor with an old friend.”
Jay looks up interestedly from Sky’s phone. “Claire?” he asks simply.
Aiden nods. “Claire,” he says, then he turns to Ellie and I. “Claire is a witch we knew in college, she’s kept up with her practice and has a lot of ties with the supernatural community in Chicago last I heard.”
My eyes widen. “You guys know a witch and you didn’t tell me?!” I exclaim.
Jay shrugs. “We know a lot of people, Claire’s just special to us because, well...” He trails off, glancing at Aiden with a questioning expression.
“Because we helped her out and she claims she owes us a debt, is how I would explain it,” Aiden says. “She’s a damn good investigator to boot.”
“How did you help her?” I ask interestedly.
My cyan-haired dad nods at me seriously. “There was a stalker casting nasty spells on her and some others. We tracked him down and, ah, ‘convinced’ him to leave her and everyone else alone.”
“That sounds like a hell of a story,” I say.
“It is,” Jay replies.
“Well, dang, I want her on our team then,” Ellie says.
“Same,” I echo.
“Oh she’s definitely on the team,” Aiden says. “I just had to check and see if she’s able to play ball anytime soon, and she is.”
I cross my arms, nodding. Internally, I can’t help thinking about what exactly it means to be a witch. What mysterious powers does this ‘Claire’ have?
And is it something that can be learned? I think to myself. Because uh, I’d kinda like to learn it.
KristenOfTheCoven
Dear discerning readers,
Thank you all so much for joining us on this journey! Welcome to the beginning of the second act of Acceptance of the Self. We hope you enjoy the ride ^^.
