• ~Tory~

    “Okay, okay! Enough with the ignoring me already!” Charlotte had cracked, she couldn’t take the silent treatment anymore.
    This was the thought I had, she couldn’t stand people not paying her any attention. In some cases that was alright, but with her being a possible Drake agent it wasn’t.
    I passed a look at her as if to say that we were punishing her, she closed her mouth and sat back in her chair with crossed arms. At least she could take a hint.
    Amelia had told me that Charlotte was her new student since me but she didn’t treat Charlotte like she did me. Guess she thought Charlotte wasn’t ready for a hard training session or maybe, that she thought that the training I had was to hard or something stupid like that.
    “Oh, Oh Amelia, we should show Tory that book,” Charlotte piped in again. But this time, I finally paid attention to her.
    “What book?” I asked at the same time Amelia growled, “Charlotte.”
    That was something I wasn’t meant to know about considering Amelia’s reaction. As I thought, Charlotte wouldn’t make a very good Drakette. I didn’t know why Amelia let her get away with half of it, I never could.
    “May as well tell me now.” I shrugged like I didn’t care, but really, I did. I was a little interested.
    Amelia sighed, hating that her little secret was out. “What’s the point, no one can read it anyway.”
    I raised my eyebrow at her, “You make a habit of keeping books that you can’t read? Do you just like people to think you’re smart or something?”
    Charlotte giggled, letting the tension around us disappear. Amelia growled at me but it wasn’t a nasty growl, it was a playful one.
    “Oh, ha ha. Very funny,” she said, trying not to let the smile that was tugging at her lips show. But I knew it was there.
    “But seriously, what’s with this book?” I asked, making everything serious as usual.
    Again, Amelia sighed but got up and went to the only desk that sat in the library. She pulled open the last draw in the desk with jerky motions, reaching in she pulled out a thick, red leather covered book. It looked old, the steam was worn and on the back cover, one of the corners was torn.
    She brought it over in slowly, steady motions, she still didn’t want me to see it and she was showing it with every pore of her body.
    I reached for it as she got closer, she handed it to me and back away with a look that said she wasn’t happy. It was soft, almost like velvet but it didn’t feel old at all. I ran my hands along the cover, there was an indent of words then there was a symbol underneath it.
    I felt along the indented words, tried to make out what it said in my head. But it wasn’t working. Ex preteritus ut posterus.
    “What’s the indent mean?” I asked, repeating the words over and over in my head hoping that they would make some sense.
    Charlotte and Amelia looked at each other like they didn’t know what I was talking about. They probably didn’t, they probably just opened the book because they were excited with the find. I ran my hands over the words again.
    “The indents on the front…get me a pen and pad,” I said, thinking that if I wrote it down, I could make more sense out of it.
    Charlotte handed me a small note pad from the side table that was next the her lounge seat, Amelia gave me a pen from her ear. I scribbled down the words that made no sense inside my head.
    Ex preteritus ut posterus, they still didn’t make any sense…the words suddenly shifted in front of my eyes. In my head the words moved to something that I could understand.
    “’From the past to the future’,” I whispered out.
    “What?” Amelia asked, as stunned as I was at the words. But she was stunned because I had made sense of it, where I was stunned at the words themself.
    “You can read that?” Charlotte asked, moving to the edge of her chair.
    “By reading, yes.” I felt the cover again; more writing was underneath the title.
    Written per Alexander Hicks, written by Alexander Hicks. It was coming easier to me now.
    “It’s written by a guy called Alexander Hicks,” I told them, I didn’t know who he was but someone else should.
    “Who?” Charlotte asked with a confused look on her pretty, little face.
    “Alexander Hicks, he was a foreseer in the 1870’s. He was one the original ones to have powers in England, they were called WhiteStar. But why would he write a book?” Amelia explained and asked an important question.
    “Maybe to tell us something?” I suggested. My hands running over the symbol on the cover.
    It felt like a star, with a ribbon wrapping around it. I’d never seen anything like it before but I guessed it didn’t matter at the moment. It was probably the symbol of the group, ‘WhiteStar’.
    “Read it Tory, please,” Charlotte begged me.
    “Alright, I’ll read it.” I turned the page over. There was big, bold writing alongside pictures. Medieval pictures of war and people fighting.
    I started to read the words out loud for them. “’In this world, darkness lies. Scores of have tried to slay it, scores of have had victories. But it has a means of coming back in another’s appearance’.”
    It was all gibberish to me. I really didn’t understand it, and it wasn’t because of the old fashioned wording. Unless the darkness meant…
    “They mean NightDust, he’s talking about NightDust,” I exclaimed, looking up at Amelia and Charlotte’s horrified faces.