War and Order Read online

  "It looks like she was across town," I said. "It says it was last updated twenty hours ago, probably when she last used her phone."

  I looked up and found Amy's eyes. Amy jumped down from her chair and grabbed her bag of cookies along with her backpack.

  "Then what are we waiting for?"

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  It was a slow day at the diner. Jayden spent most of the afternoon hanging out by the counter while watching people rush by in their cars or with umbrellas outside the windows.

  Around five, some guy came in and wanted a soda and a burger, but that was the highlight of his shift. Luckily, Sophie came back at six and, after he had cleaned the kitchen in the back and taken out the trash, he was told he could go home.

  Jayden had made plans with Ruelle and texted her while riding back home in the rain. He then ran to his room, soaking the stairs on his way up. He took a quick shower to get the smell of burgers and fries out of his hair, then got dressed. He had barely put on his jeans when he heard Ruelle drive up in the driveway and honk the horn.

  He grabbed his shoes and stormed down the stairs, kissed his mother on the cheek with a quick, I love you, then rushed outside, shoes still in his hand. Ruelle waved from inside the car, and he sprang over puddles to get to her, hoping that his white shirt wouldn't be soaked by the time he got there.

  "Hi there," he said, panting as he threw himself in the passenger seat, and put the shoes in his lap.

  She smiled her gorgeous smile and leaned over and kissed him. She took off while Jayden put on his socks and sneakers.

  "How was your day?" she asked as they reached the end of their street and she stopped to turn.

  "Pretty good," he said, putting on his seatbelt. "And pretty boring."

  Ruelle turned right, then stepped on the gas. Jayden was thrown back in his seat. He hadn't quite gotten used to Ruelle's driving, but he was trying not to comment on it. He didn't want her to think he was boring and unadventurous. He was still trying to impress her and, so far, it seemed that the more she got to know him, the more she found him to be a little dull. He didn't want to add to that.

  Ruelle took yet another turn, and the tires screeched. Jayden gasped as the car skidded sideways before getting back on the road.

  Ruelle laughed wildly. "Whoop. Whoop."

  "So…where are we going?" Jayden asked, slightly concerned when he spotted a truck coming toward them and Ruelle driving on the wrong side of the road. The truck honked loudly, and Ruelle turned away at the last second. Jayden's heart was still pounding in his chest as they continued down the road.

  "I don't know," she said. "It's Saturday night. I wanna have some fun!"

  Jayden put his hands on the dashboard as she zigzagged down the street, giggling loudly.

  She turned her head and stared at him while grinning. "What are you in the mood for?"

  "How about a movie and some pizza?" he asked.

  Ruelle stared at him for so long he began to wish that she would look at the road instead before they hit something.

  "A movie?" she squealed. "A movie? And PIZZA?"

  "Y-yes, is that so crazy?" he asked.

  "No, baby. It's dull. It's so lame and DULL that I don't know if I’m supposed to cry or laugh."

  "Please, look at the road," he said.

  Ruelle did and avoided driving into someone's yard by an inch. Jayden closed his eyes and shrieked. When he opened them, Ruelle was laughing loudly again. It occurred to him she seemed almost manic.

  "A-are you all right?" he asked.

  She laughed again. "Yes, dear boyfriend, dear little boyfriend, sweet and DULL boyfriend. I have never been better."

  He swallowed, hard, then spotted something on her shirt.

  "Is that blood?" he asked as the car rushed through town. "Ruelle, why do you have blood on your shirt? Ruelle?"

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  "I know who lives here."

  We had found the place where Jazmine's phone had been used last, the place where the map in Snapchat had marked as her last whereabouts. I stood like I was frozen and stared at the house in front of me.

  "It can't be," I said and looked around me. "Maybe she knew someone else here?"

  I looked at Amy, then down at the map. I shook my head. "No. I don't believe in coincidences. She must have been here to visit her."

  "Her? Who?" Amy said.

  I looked at her again. "Ruelle. This is Ruelle's house."

  Amy wrinkled her forehead. "Ruelle? But how? How do you know that she lives here?"

  Jayden told me she lives on this street and their name is on the mailbox. See? Loup. That's her last name. I don't think anyone else is called that around here.

  "Okay. So, let's say you're right; what on earth would Jazmine be doing here at Ruelle's house?" Amy asked.

  I shrugged. "I…I have absolutely no idea."

  Amy turned around and looked behind us. "What's that?"

  "What's what?"

  "That looks like Jazmine's bike," she said and pointed.

  She was right. There was a purple bike parked up against a tree. It had a basket on the front. There was no doubt. It was Jazmine's.

  We walked to it and examined it.

  "That's strange," Amy said.

  I turned and looked back at Ruelle's house. We walked up the driveway and rang the doorbell. Nothing happened.

  "I don't think anyone is home," I said. "There are no cars."

  I grabbed the door handle, but the door was locked. "I have a bad feeling about this," I said. "Something is wrong. Jazmine wouldn't just disappear like this. Why was she here? I have to get inside that house."

  "W-why?" Amy said.

  I bit my lip in frustration. "I don't know. I just have this feeling…" I walked around the house and into the yard. I found another door, but that was locked too.

  "Maybe we should just go," Amy said, looking around nervously.

  "I can't do that," I said, then spotted something. "Look, there's a window open up there. Come."

  I pulled Amy's arm, and she followed with a small whimper. "I don't know…it's very high up and it's an awfully small window. I’m not sure I can fit through it."

  "Let me do it. Just help me get up to it," I said.

  Amy looked like she wasn't sure she wanted to.

  "Please? For Jazmine?"

  "Okay," she said, then closed her eyes. A second later, she had transformed into her dragon and was flapping her wide blue wings. It still filled me with a mixture of terror and marvel to see her in this state. She was gorgeous. She bent down with a snort, and I crawled up on her back, then she lifted off into the air, and we reached the window.

  "It's not often I say this but, right now, I thank my mom for not feeding me properly," I said and squeezed myself through the small window. I landed in the hallway headfirst and, when I lifted my head, a parrot was squealing and squawking above me.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  "Get away from me," I said and waved the parrot out of my face. It squawked again, then took off. I got up to my feet and walked down the hallway. I found an office and the master bedroom and then reached a third door that had to be the one leading to Ruelle's room.

  I pushed the door open carefully. "Jazmine?"

  I spotted her right away as I looked inside the room. She was lying on the bed.

  "Jazmine?" I said louder and rushed to her. As I approached her, I saw the blood. My heart started racing in my chest, and I could hardly breathe. Why wasn't she moving?

  "Jazmine?" I said, pressing back my tears. "Oh, dear God, no. No. Oh, dear God!"

  I put a finger on her throat to feel if there was a pulse. At first, I didn't feel any, but after a few seconds of frantically searching for it, there was a weak pulse against my fingertips. I breathed in relief. She was alive. But she was hurt. Badly. She had suffered a great blow to the back of her head and lost a lot of blood. The sheets and covers were covered in it. Next to her lay a baseball bat, also covered in blood. I
gasped for air when thinking about her being knocked out with it. I grabbed her in my arms and, crying, I hugged her, telling her that everything was going to be all right. I was going to make sure she was taken care of.

  Why? Why had Ruelle done this to her? It made no sense. She had no reason to want to hurt Jazmine. Was it even Ruelle? Or maybe one of her parents? What the heck was going on here?

  I started to cry in desperation and fear. I could hardly breathe as panic erupted inside of me. My body was jerking in spasms. Blood from the back of Jazmine's head was soon soaking my clothes.

  "Please, don't die, Jazmine. Please, don't."

  You gotta get her help. Call 911! Why are you just sitting there? Why don't you do something!

  I let go of her lifeless body, then, still sobbing and crying, I reached with my bloody fingers into my pocket and grabbed my phone. I tried to wipe the slippery blood on my clothes but couldn't get it off. Fumbling and gasping to breathe and fighting even to see through the curtain of tears, I pressed the numbers 911, just as I heard the front door slam shut.

  My eyes grew wide, and I held my breath. Someone was in the house. I stared at Jazmine, then at the door. There was no way I could make it out with her without being seen. What would they do to me?

  I had to try anyway. Maybe I could get her to the window where Amy was. I grabbed Jazmine in my arms and lifted her up, crying helplessly. I carried her three steps toward the door when two figures appeared in front of me. I recognized them as Ruelle's parents from when I had seen them come to Jayden's house.

  They looked at me, then down at Jazmine in my arms. Blood was dripping onto the carpet beneath her.

  Chapter Fifty

  Amy felt anxious. After she helped Robyn get in through the window, she stayed in the air for a few minutes, in case Robyn needed her to get back down again. She watched her disappear into a room, then Amy felt tiredness in her wings and let herself sink to the grass below, panting. She realized she was in terrible shape.

  I really should fly more often.

  She hadn't been flying for weeks. She didn't really know why. Or maybe she did. She was scared of being seen. It was as simple as that. Ever since those spider-men came to her house and then sent in their little spies, she hadn't dared to even change into her dragon and fought it if it was about to happen on its own. She couldn't control it if it happened while she was asleep at night, but she had found a technique to stop it if she sensed the change coming during the day. All she had to do was to close her eyes and hold her breath for about a minute. That usually stopped it from happening.

  "Please, don't get us in trouble," she mumbled, looking up at the window where Robyn had disappeared.

  Amy was tired of living life afraid of being seen. It was exhausting. When Jazmine had bound Mr. Aran to that Yeti, she had been so sure that was it, that now she could go back to living her life and not worry about being chased down by him and his stupid vacuum cleaner. But then there had been more of them. Suddenly, they seemed to be everywhere. Even in her own home. When would this end?

  There was a sound behind her as someone stepped on a branch, and Amy turned her head to look. Behind her stood two spider-men, swaying on their long legs, their lipless mouths grinning. They were each holding a vacuum cleaner, pointing them toward her.

  Apparently, not now, she thought to herself, then swallowed hard.

  "Aha," one of them said addressed to the guy next to him. "I told you there was something fishy about her."

  "You killed Finn," the other one said. "Adolf saw you do it."

  Amy wrinkled her forehead before it finally sunk in. The spiders. They had to be talking about the spiders. She stared down at the vacuum thingies in their hands. They both turned them on simultaneously. The sound filled her with panic.

  "We have followed you since then," the first one said again. "Waiting for you to mess up. Changing in a backyard of someone's house where everyone in the neighborhood risks seeing you must apply as breaking the law, wouldn't you agree, Mr. Webster?"

  "I sure would, Mr. Venom. I absolutely would."

  Amy took a step backward as they approached her. She had once felt the suction of that thing on her body and thought she was going to die. She had felt how her soul had started to let go of her body. It was the most terrifying thing she had ever felt. It was like being ripped apart. The sound of it alone was enough to make her want to scream. She tried to fly away and spread out her wings when Mr. Webster opened his mouth wide and shot out a web that completely enveloped her, so she couldn't move her wings at all. Frantically, she tried to break out of it, but it was too strong for her. Anger rose in her, and she felt the burning sensation in her throat and let it happen. She spewed out fire toward the web, but nothing happened.

  "Fire-resistant," Mr. Venom said. "Newest invention. We get a lot of creatures like you who can do stuff with fire, you see."

  Amy walked backward, thinking she could try and escape on foot, but Mr. Webster shot out yet another web and enclosed her feet. Amy fell headfirst into the grass and, as she lay there, she realized she couldn't move at all. All sounds were drowned out by the noise from the vacuum cleaners approaching. She didn't even hear the wolves as they jumped from the window above her. But she saw them. Oh, boy, did she see them.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Luckily, they believed me. Or at least they gave me the benefit of the doubt. At first, they thought I was the one that had killed Jazmine, that I had somehow snuck into their house and killed her. I kept repeating the story to them over and over again and, much to my surprise, Ruelle's parents didn't find it hard to believe what I was telling them about their daughter.

  "Things have been off with her for quite some time now," her mother said, while the dad called for an ambulance. "I can't even recognize her anymore."

  "They're on their way," the dad said and put the phone away.

  "I can't believe she would do this, Pierre," the mom said. "That she would…hurt this girl? Our…Ruelle?"

  "She's not Ruelle," Pierre replied. "That girl is not my daughter."

  The mom, Rochelle, looked up at me, her eyes strained. "We found a dead dog in her closet yesterday. In a black plastic bag, the same ones we use for trash. I…I couldn't believe it. She didn't even try and deny that she had killed it. I mean, we…kill animals in the mountains all the time, but this one was someone's pet. And she's not even…a wolf yet."

  "You can't tell her this stuff," Pierre said. "She's…human."

  He received a look from his wife. "She rode on a dragon's back to get to our window. The girl in her arms is a witch. I think she knows what we are," Rochelle said to her husband.

  "Okay. Okay," he said and rubbed his temples. "I just don't understand it, you know?"

  "The worst part is that…we know whose pet it was we found in the closet," Rochelle continued.

  "Rochelle," Pierre said.

  She gave him another look. "We have to get it out there, Pierre. Those poor parents, they don't know. What if it was us?"

  And that was when it struck me. I finally understood what they were trying to tell me.

  "Alyssa?" I asked, baffled. "She…Ruelle…I mean…you think she killed Alyssa?"

  "I don't know if she killed her," Rochelle said. "But the girl went missing, and the dog she was walking is found dead, the same dog that has been all over the news was ripped to pieces and placed inside her closet, so, yes, I assume she has done something to the girl, something awful. And now, we come home to find…this…you and her…a bloodbath in her room?"

  Tears piled up in Rochelle's' eyes. Her husband put a hand on her neck. "Oh, Pierre. Where did we go wrong? Was it when we moved to this country? With all its violence?"

  "There’s just as much violence where we came from, Rochelle," he said. "We must not blame ourselves."

  "It's hard not to," Rochelle said.

  Jazmine was getting paler by the second and her pulse weaker and weaker. I was so scared of losing her and kept petting her bloo
d-soaked hair, whispering between my tears that everything would be all right, that help was on its way.

  Pierre looked at his watch. "Where is that ambulance?"

  And that was when we heard it. The sound of vacuum cleaners being turned on. It was coming from the yard.

  I shot up from the bed where I had put Jazmine.

  "Amy!"

  It all went by fast. Ruelle's parents looked at one another, and I could tell they knew that sound too. They also knew exactly what to do. Their faces changed; they grew claws and fangs and became huge as they turned into wolves, then ran out of Ruelle's room with me after them. I saw them jump out of the window and, as I reached the window and looked down, I could tell they had landed on top of each of the spiders. With their huge claws, they destroyed them. They pulled off their legs one by one, using their teeth, and ripped their bodies open in a vicious bloodbath. They were on top of them so fast, the spider-men weren't given a chance.

  Meanwhile, Amy was still on the ground, fighting against the web, huffing and puffing smoke out of her nostrils in anger. The more she moved, the tighter it seemed to get.

  After leaving the spiders in pieces in the grass, Ruelle's parents attended to Amy. The dad ripped the web open using his claws and Amy bolted out of there, half dragon, half human. She panted in fear and panic as her human body slowly returned. She looked up at the two big wolves, and I heard her thank them as they too slowly returned to their human selves. Ruelle's mom had a huge scratch on her arm, but it healed quickly.

  The two spider-men were dead and gone, and I realized that the hope of bringing peace and preventing the war from happening was now completely gone.

  It was out of my hands.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  They took Jazmine away on a stretcher while Ruelle's parents told the police about the dog in their daughter's room and—crying helplessly—they told them how they thought that maybe Ruelle had done something terrible to Alyssa, but they didn't know what nor did they know where their daughter was.