Morning Meeting

Early the next morning, the five of them plus Chira met up in front of the school for a final check. Tristan folded his arms. "Okay, does everyone have their assignments?"

They nodded. Each of them was going to talk to one of the other candidates and try to convince them to come. Working together, they'd be able to get to everyone. Jared would spend most of the day getting everyone's mailing address and home number. If he could, he'd get emails and cell numbers as well.

Chira started snuffling in the grass as Tristan said, "A word of warning: stay away from Destiny and Blair. I don't know what they can do, but something about Destiny's off, and Blair's been spending a lot of time with her lately. Maybe I'm being paranoid, maybe I'm just mistaken, but I think last night proved that we have no idea what we're getting into."

Kyle started turning red and tried to shrug it off. Thanks to his ability, he'd wandered outside sometime during the meeting and almost gotten hit by a drunk driver. Luckily for him, Chira had had enough presence of mind to first yip the alarm, then get him out of harm's way.

And then the wyverns came. "So just be careful. Okay?"

They nodded again. Jared glanced over his shoulder. A group of teens had gathered around the flag post, and they kept looking at him. "I have to take care of something. See you at lunch."

He saw the others off, then waded into the middle of the knot and looked his key informant in the eye. "Okay, Greg. Whacha got for me?"

Greg handed him a thin manila folder. Jared started leafing through it as the taller teen said, "A few students watched Hunt's house like you asked. Hunt and Ross were the only people who went inside, and Ross left around six."

"No sign of her parents?"

"Not even their cars. The only other living things they saw were two big dogs."

Jared pulled out a trio of photos. "Breed?"

"Best as we can tell, some sort of Irish Wolfhound-German Shepherd mix."

Jared nodded, looking at the pictures. The two brindled gray-black dogs looked playful enough, gamboling around Destiny like puppies, but their shoulders were higher than her waist. Add in a husky, powerful build and the potential hazard became obvious. "Okay. I want to know next is who owned the house before she came here and what happened to them." He pulled some papers from a pocket and passed them around. "Also, I need the contact information for these people. Addresses and home phone numbers at the very least, more if the information can be found. I'd like it by lunch, but after school's fine."

The informants nodded and split up. Jared glanced at his watch and headed for class. He had about two minutes to get to computer programming, and Mr. Sanders was not a forgiving teacher.