Episode 19: Apologies and an Unexpected Arrival
- Crystal Crawford
- Mar 24
- 6 min read
Updated: Apr 1
I stared at him expectantly, hoping he might provide some explanation that made the past few days—the past two years—make sense.
Instead, he looked at the cheer hawks. “Girls?”
Jillian turned toward us. “We believe Chloe and Emery were taken by the same group of individuals, two years apart. We’ve narrowed the suspects to a few—mostly supernaturals hiding among humans.”
Even just that statement took my brain a few moments to process.
Collin was a step ahead. “Wait. Are you saying there are others who have supernatural abilities, and they’re all just hiding among normal people?” His eyes shot wide open. “Who? Where? How many are there?” He narrowed his eyes. “How do we identify them?”
Jillian shrugged. “You usually wouldn’t, unless they wanted you to.” She skipped his other questions—and his gaping expression—and glanced at Meredith. “Anyway…”
Meredith looked at me. “We know you have unusual dreams, Aubrey. Can you tell us more about them?”
“My dreams?” They’d mentioned them before, but I still wasn’t sure how they knew about them, or about Emery’s notebook, until a thought occurred to me. “Wait. Have you been spying on me? Like, in hawk form?” I’d seen a hawk that day above the parking lot at school, when I’d noticed only two of the cheerleaders were with Lockley. The realization settled on me with a sudden certainty. “You have been watching me.” I glared at them. “How long?”
The girls looked at each other, then Tory spoke.
“Just since Chloe got taken. But we weren’t spying, we were watching out for you. We thought someone might try to take you, too.”
I gaped at them. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We’re in kind of a need-to-know situation, Aubrey,” Jillian said, glancing back at Trenchcoat Man.
“We are a need-to-know situation,” Tory added.
Trenchcoat Man nodded. “We had to be sure you were ready.”
Jillian turned back to me. “After this morning, we figured you wouldn’t stop poking around until you figured out more, especially once Lockley showed you those papers we’d given her—which we knew she eventually would. We gave those to her to help you, you know.” She narrowed her eyes at me, then shrugged. “Anyway, we could’ve waited for you to figure things out on your own, but since you’d already decided to ask us for help at school today, we decided this way was easier.”
Nothing about this was easy.
“These girls are very good at what they do, Ms. Lance,” Trenchcoat Man added in his smooth, southern drawl. “You were in good hands, even if you didn’t yet know it.”
“Not good enough to protect Chloe,” I snapped back, “or Emery.”
Jillian’s face fell. “We didn’t know Emery was a target until she was gone. And Chloe…We were watching you, not her. We didn’t expect her to be taken.”
“They don’t sound like they’re very good at this at all,” Collin said, staring down the Trenchcoat Man.
The three cheer hawks looked miserable.
“We are sorry,” Tory said softly. “Honestly, we had no way of knowing any of this would happen until it was already in motion. We can’t see the future.”
Her pointed stare as she said that made a chill race down my spine. Was she implying that I could?
“But we are trying our best to make this right,” she continued. “Jillian, Meredith, and I aren’t supernatural by birth, which allows us to go undetected by those who can track such things, but our gift also has its limitations. Getting into all this was kind of an accident at first, but I suppose we got pretty good at it, so he gave us a job.” She glanced at the Trenchcoat Man.
I stared back at her, my breath catching. How the three of them accidentally became cheer hawk detectives was a story I’d have to ask more about later, but right then I was more worried about the rest of what she’d said. “Why did you look at me like that, when you said that about seeing the future?”
She blinked at me. “Your dream ability.” Her eyes widened. “Do you still not realize what your gift does?”
“What do you—?” I asked, but then I stopped.
When I’d finally let myself board the crazy train with a one-way ticket—sometime after Collin and I saw three girls turn into hawks—and accepted that my dreams might, in fact, involve some kind of magic or supernatural wonkiness, I’d assumed that Emery had been the one sending me dreams. After all, she’d been trying to talk to me in nearly all of them, and she’d also left me that page of quotes I still couldn’t make sense of. I’d assumed my ability, if I really had one, was to be some kind of receiver for Emery’s messages. Even that was still crazy, but Tory was implying something else.
“You think my dreams predict the future?” I asked her.
Tory looked back at Trenchcoat Man, as if seeking his help to explain.
He cleared his throat. “We suspect you and Emery have offshoots of the same gift—both are gifts of projection, and yours is stronger than hers, but hers also includes the gift of transfer.” He smiled. “Dream gifts, like most gifts, run in families… but as it is with genetics, they have a way of stamping each person with a unique blend.”
I had no idea what any of that meant, and I was certain my confusion was evident.
Meredith looked at me. “Emery’s gift is rather strong. When she spotted us at that cheerleading competition and approached us, saying she knew about our shapeshifting ability, we were totally surprised. She said she’d seen us in a dream, seen herself telling us about her gift. Those sketches we gave to Lockley… those were sketched from what Emery told us she’d seen in her dreams, things she thought might point to other hidden supernaturals. We recognized some of them right away—they were tied to cases we were already working. The others, we’re still trying to figure out.”
Trenchcoat Man smiled at me. “Emery had been researching and working her gift on her own for quite some time before she reached out to us. You seem not to have consciously worked yours yet, but I suspect, once you’ve honed it, it will also be quite spectacular.”
I cast a bewildered glance at Lockley and found Collin watching me from behind her with an expression of awe.
A realization hit me square in the chest. “Wait. If our gifts are genetic—”
“Then one or both of your parents must also be a supernatural?” Trenchcoat Man asked with an amused smirk. “Yes. They must.”
I drew a sharp breath. “Do they know?”
“Have you asked them?” Trenchcoat Man responded.
My shocked, silent stare provided answer enough.
“I thought not,” he said with a smile. “Gifts can skip a generation, in rare cases, but also, humans have a way of reasoning away anything that doesn’t make sense to them. It’s not unheard of for some humans to never realize they do possess a thread of the supernatural. Every time something odd happens to them, they explain it away. Or perhaps you haven’t noticed that?”
I looked at him. What he described was the very thing I’d done—rationalizing away everything supernatural about my dreams, about my hunches over Emery, about her notebook page. All of it. Of course I hadn’t asked my parents about mine or Emery’s supernatural powers—I’d been too busy convincing myself it was all in my head.
“Hmm,” the man grunted, seeming to perceive my thoughts. “Have you told your parents about the dreams you’re having recently? Not just that one recurring nightmare, but the newer ones?”
I shook my head. “No. I didn’t want to worry them.”
Collin stepped forward, facing Trenchcoat Man. “Look, I’m sorry to interrupt, but are you saying Mr. or Mrs. Lance—or both—have supernatural abilities, and they don’t know it?”
Trenchcoat Man grinned. “I’m not saying that at all.” He turned to the woods beyond him, where the trees were shadowed. “You’ve arrived,” he said to the trees. “Took you long enough. Would’ve been better if you’d told her yourself.”
I spun toward the trees.
My dad stepped out of them, wearing an apologetic expression. “Hey, Aubs.”
***
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