Soft chirping woke me from my deep slumber. That, and a pair of rough hands shaking me awake with no remorse.

"Dude! Lay off the shaking. I'm awake," I groaned.

"So is Rhiannon."

I shot upwards, knocking Dakota off of me and rubbing my eyes to help myself wake up. "She's awake?" Sure enough, I looked over to see a very-awake Rhiannon sitting up against a tree with her head buried in her arms.

"Have any of you tried to talk to her yet?" I asked.

"Well, of course," Parker replied, rolling his eyes. "But the second she heard us asking her about her power she went, like, ghostly pale, and stopped talking to us. All she's done since is sit by that tree and sulk."

"And have you tried since then?"

"Of course not! For all we know she'll make me 3'4" again!" Delilah piped in. "Then again, she'd probably make me under 100 pounds, so maybe I should talk to her..."

"I'm going over," I sighed. "She probably didn't even know it happened." Ignoring their worried glances, I made my way over to where she was sitting. Her gray beanie was crooked and was almost falling off her head. Her gray tanktop was stained and dirty. She wasn't a pretty sight to see- in fact, she was even worse than the rest of us. This girl had already been through Hell and back, and now she was going through it again for us.

"Rhiannon." No response, and no indication that she'd heard me. "I know you can hear me." Still nothing. "Look, I get it-"

"You don't get anything," she shot back, her head rising from where it rested on her elbows. "The only thing you get is that there's a crumpled up mountain lion in the bushes oozing brain matter. You don't know what's wrong with me or what my power entails. You don't know me, period. I should've kept to myself and tried to get a job or something instead of trying to help out a group of people two years younger than me that can't even talk to each other for five minutes without arguing." I stiffened. As true as all of those statements were (especially the last one), it still hurt to think about. We really didn't know anything about her or what she was going through, and we probably never would hear the full story.

"You don't understand how terrifying it is to be trapped inside your own body without control of what you do or what you accomplish. The second I see anything remotely dangerous or I see anything that's going to hurt someone, I lose control. I turn into a totally different person, but I can still see what's happening. Still feel the blood splatter on my face. Still hear the bones crushing and the creature gargling. And yet I can't do anything to stop it. I have to sit and watch as I do things that no seventeen-year-old should even have to hear about, let alone witness."

"Oh, boo hoo," A voice growled. I felt myself grow pale as I turned to see Delilah taking a few steps forward. "So you're cursed. Get. Over. It." She stuck her finger in Rhiannon's face. "You've lived with this for what, two years now? You certainly aren't giving up now. Just because you're seventeen and you've seen a lot of things doesn't mean your life is over. You have a purpose here and you're, like, way stronger than this. So stop feeling sorry for yourself and get off the ground. We're going to finish this and we're going to stop it from ever happening to anyone ever again, but we can do that with or without you. Preferably with you. What's it gonna be, Rhiannon?"

"Uhh, Delilah?" Parker whispered harshly. "I know you'd love to be under 100 pounds and all, but this is not the way to go." I elbowed him. If Rhiannon was about to blow up at her, we didn't need to be interfering. We'd get sucked in too.

Utter silence followed those words. Rhiannon's face focused on the ground ahead of her rather than on any one of us. She seemed slightly shocked that Delilah had just told her to "Get. Over. It.", but otherwise, there wasn't any apparent emotion on her face. Her eyes turned up to meet the girls'. "You know what, Princess? You're right." The girl stood to face the four of us. "I know that you're probably all terrified of me, and you can choose whether you want me to stay or not. But no matter what you decide, I need to get over this." Rhiannon turned to Delilah. "This is the only thing I've ever heard you say that makes sense, so I shouldn't get used to it, should I?"

"Umm, what the heck is that supposed to mean?" she asked.

"Just take the compliment and ignore the rest," I told her. She huffed and plopped down on the ground, staring at her feet. "We're going to have to talk this over, but I'm sure you knew that already." The girl nodded. The rest of us made our way to the other corner of our camp to talk.

"We're leaving her behind," Dakota stated.

"Woah dude, chill for a second," Parker ordered. "Let's at least discuss this civilly. Who, besides Dakota, would like to go first?" Delilah shot her hand in the air. "Yes?"

"I kind of feel like we should keep her. I mean, like, she's been really helpful so far, you know?"

"Besides when she tried to kill me," Dakota interjected.

"Well, duh," she giggled. "But otherwise, I think we need her. We can't let one little accident stop us from achieving our goal, and having her on our team is the best way of achieving it. As long as we take some precautions, we should be fine."

"That's a big word there," he muttered.

"Thank you," she responded curtly.

"Anyway," I growled. "I agree with Delilah. We're better with her than we are without her."

"I agree with Delilah as well!" Parker stated proudly.

"What a surprise," Dakota sighed. "I guess this means I'm overruled. Just so you know, I'm not walking anywhere near her. Unlike you three, I actually value my life."

"At least that's settled. Let's go tell Rhiannon," I said.

We walked back over to where the teenager was drawing in the sand with a stick mindlessly. "Figure out what you're doing yet?" she asked me.

"Yeah. You can stick with us for now." We clasped hands and I pulled her off the ground. "I mean it when I say for now. Unless we can find a way to prevent this kind of thing from happening again, you're on thin ice."

"Understandable." She nodded and stared me in the eyes intensely. "I'm stronger than letting this control me. I'll figure it out and it won't happen again."

I wasn't so sure that her power involved a lot of conscious effort, and it was pretty much inevitable that this would happen again, but I agreed anyway. After all, I knew very little about her power — much less than she did, at least. As long as everyone ended up living through this, did it really matter what she did?

Ouch. Headache. Really, really bad headache. Was this what a migraine felt like? I felt like I was getting stabbed in the head. Instantly, my hands reached for my head and I grimaced in pain. My ears rang loudly and my vision blurred. This lasted what seemed like hours until my vision cleared, my hearing returned, and my headache lessened. It was still there, just... muted. I looked around to see a lot of very pale, very confused teenagers, with bloody scrapes and bruises all over their legs, arms, and face. They were no longer right next to me and had instead dispersed around the clearing, leaning against trees as if they couldn't possibly be far enough away from me. "What happened?" I asked tentatively, looking down to see my own cuts and bruises along my legs. A sting on my face prompted me to touch my cheek with one finger, and I drew it away to find a red stain on my skin.

"You essentially just rose all of the objects around you with your mind," Rhiannon stated, brushing herself off. "You have telekinesis, right?"

Oh, yeah. I'd forgotten about my second power. It just seemed so inconsequential compared to the gigantic wings on my back. "Yeah, I have telekinesis. You're telling me I just made a few objects float for a few seconds? That doesn't explain the scrapes and bruises everyone has."

"Well, it was more like a whirlwind of sticks and rocks," Parker amended. "Instead of just making things float, you made them swirl around you really fast. And it was more like all of the objects around you rather than just a few pebbles. You made some pretty large stuff rise off the ground, logs that Dakota probably couldn't even carry. Did that affect you at all?"

"Uhh, hell yeah it did. I've never had a migraine before, but that's probably how I'd explain what just happened." Another sharp sting echoed through my mind and I winced. A large rock flew into the air near Dakota and he barely managed to catch it before it landed on his head and crushed him. Sweating, he carefully rolled it off of his back and glared at me as if I had done it on purpose. "Hey, this is a side effect, Dakota. I'm not exactly doing this on purpose."

"Sure you aren't just using that as a coverup?" He grumbled, rubbing one of the bruises on his knee.

"I'm pretty sure," I responded dryly.

"Let's get back on topic," Rhiannon interjected, attracting my attention. "You're very clearly more powerful than we originally thought."

"Well, I completely forgot I even had telekinesis, so that's the understatement of the year."

She rolled her eyes. "My point is that you need to work on calming yourself down. We need to determine whether this can be controlled by your emotions. If so-"

"There is no we here, honey," Dakota growled. He took a few steps toward the two of us. "You might still be allowed to travel with us since I was overruled, but you'd better watch your back. I'm still not convinced by your little 'accident' last night."

Rhiannon never even blinked. She stared him directly in the eyes and took one step toward him. "I think you're the one who needs to watch himself, little boy."

At that, his face brightened with rage. Despite his apparent grievances, he remained silent, and instead of rebutting, he turned around and sat on a log with a huff.

The girl brushed herself off, dust visibly floating away from her dingy tank top. "Anyway." She turned back toward me, and I shifted uncomfortably. My wings suddenly felt very out of place on my back. "We need to get a move on, yes?"

Thank god. "Yeah, we do."

Quickly and silently, we rolled up our sleeping bags and cleared away all traces of our campsite. We cleared the remains of our fire and ate a couple of granola bars to prepare us for the long day of trekking ahead. At this point, it was about noon. We had wasted half a day arguing and dealing with side effects. That was, objectively, not a very efficient use of our time.

I took to the air wordlessly to scout ahead. The wind ran through my hair and over my scalp, traveling over my back and through the feathers of my wings. I instinctively took an air current to float higher into the sky, feeling the air carry my anger and fear away with it. Remembering I was supposed to be scouting for the graveyard, I reached my hand back to feel the map in my back pocket and pulled it out, careful not to let it go and have it fly down thousands of feet and hit someone on the head. I opened it just as carefully and glanced down to find I was right on track.

Time to circle back to the others. I tilted slightly and made a wide U-Turn so I was going back the way I came. I dipped lower so I could see them and made a shaky landing a few feet in front of Rhiannon, who was in the lead.

"Maybe make yourself a little more known next time, okay?" Delilah gasped, clutching at her heart like she'd witnessed a murder.

"No, I'm good," I responded. To the rest of the group, I began the important part of the conversation. "The graveyard is only a few miles away. We should be there at about..." I checked my watch. "2:30."

"2:30?" Parker's eyes widened. "We're seriously going to be wandering for another two hours?"

"Even better, this might not even be the right graveyard!" I answered gleefully. "Yay, road trip!"

"We don't have much more time," Rhiannon added. "If this really isn't the right graveyard, we're going to have to seriously haul ass to get to a few more before 5 PM."

"That's the plan," I stated, using one foot to push down my stupid, dumb, made-in-hell capris. Did I mention that I hated capris?

"That means start moving," she ordered dryly.

"Okay, sheesh," I responded with a huff, taking off and making sure to blast her with a puff of air as I did so.

"Nice shot," Dakota called up to me, and I turned my head to see him glaring at the windblown girl. Whatever. He'd get over himself soon enough. We needed to move.

-
-
-

"We're here," I called down, glancing at my watch to check the time. Perfect. It was 2:15; we were early. My wings ached from carrying my body weight for so long, and as I glided to the ground and landed I felt immense relief throughout my entire body. Who knew flying was so tiring?

"What time is it?" Rhiannon asked, adjusting her beanie again. I relayed the information and she visibly relaxed after hearing that we had made time. "Let's not waste the boost that we have here. We need to keep moving and cross these graveyards off as soon as possible."

"You don't say," Dakota muttered. I shot him a look. He had two hours to seethe, plus the entire night. How was he not over this yet? Sure, she went for him like she was going to hurt him, but did it happen? No. And if we had any hope of making it through this, he would need to keep his grievances to himself and stop complaining.

I turned around and stared at the graveyard again. It wasn't much for being one of the large graveyards in Henderson, but after the other eight that we'd already explored I wasn't totally sure what I was expecting. Henderson wasn't the most developed place; not as far as I'd seen, at least. This particular graveyard was a little more well-maintained than the others, but it seemed to be just as small. There wasn't exactly a green field stretching into the distance littered with gravestones; it was more like a small forest with gravestones so old that the trees were growing around them. There was a mausoleum in the center surrounded by a black iron fence. I could see from here that there was a thick chain wrapped around the gate leading into the small building, but the gate would be easily jumpable if necessary. I felt a cold breeze rush by me, and even though it was very welcome in the hot air surrounding me, I felt a shiver travel through my bones.

"Will you guys hurry up?" I yelled behind me.

"We're right here," Delilah deadpanned.

"Oh," I answered, turning around to confirm that yes, in fact, they were right here. "Good."

"Let's hope this is the right one," Rhiannon sighed, walking past me and surveying the area. "If you were hiding notes and clues somewhere, where would you hide them?"

"Umm... the mausoleum?" Delilah asked tentatively. Rhiannon shrugged and walked over to hop the fence, unphased. Her tank top caught on the top and tore a hole In the back; she cursed and ripped the fabric more trying to get it off. I looked on with pity. It was already dirty and grungy from years on her own, and now it had a hole in it too. Even though fashion wasn't exactly a huge worry when you're living... wherever she was living, it was still sad to watch.

Wordlessly, the remainder of us hopped the fence and began to search around the exterior of the black marble mausoleum. It was unlabeled and seemed to be nothing special on the outside, but I wasn't too sure if we wanted to open literal graves and search through dead bodies.

Rhiannon began to pull open the mausoleum doors and, shockingly, they were unlocked. "Dude!" I exclaimed. "Are you actually going to search through dead bodies for a clue?"

"No one was ever buried in here," she corrected. "It's some weird mystery here. The folks had a mausoleum built and then requested to be buried next to it rather than inside of it. Weird people, but it meant that there was no reason to lock the doors or keep people from entering. They even let people tour it, though you can't even walk inside of it because it's just heavy marble compartments. It's more like they open the doors and people take a picture and then they close it and leave."

Well then. At least we weren't searching the bodies of corpses for the next few hours. "Open it up, I guess," Parker told her.

She pulled the doors open, and just as she said, it was four marble compartments. "I'm gonna need Dakota to pull these things off." He nodded and ripped the panels off. The first three he had to strain a little bit, but the last one was so easy that he flew backwards into Parker, and the two of them tumbled backward, falling on their backs. Without even asking if they were okay, the three of us immediately went for the opened compartments. There was nothing in any of them, not even the last one. "What..?"

"Welcome!" A voice called. Dakota and Parker scrambled to their feet and I could see Delilah and Rhiannon visibly stiffen. For the first time ever, we faced our tormenter together.