My House is NOT Haunted

“What’s Brooke doing here?” I asked.

Whitney motioned for her to come over to me. I just noticed that I didn’t recognize the room we were in. “Um, Whitney? Where am I?”

She bit her lip, unsure of whether to tell me or not. “Well, this is where I’ve been for the last month… It’s… um… well, we’re not all that sure. You’re at an assassin’s camp.”

Ok, I may have been a tad bit detached from the conversation, so I seriously thought she was joking. “Ha. That’s a good one. Seriously, where am I?”

Whitney and Brooke exchanged glances. “Whitney was serious. We were kidnapped, and these people are trained assassins.”

Despite the dizziness, I shot up. “WHAT?”

Taylor laughed. “Jeez, Whitney. Even you handled this better.”

Whitney shot him the look. No, not the flirty look, the one that I know all to well. The shut-it-or-I’ll-tell-mom-you-broke-that-vase-last-summer look.

“Well, what am I supposed to do?” I demanded. “You guys are going to kill me! Whitney?”

She just laughed. “Kelly, we’re not going to kill you. Brooklyn couldn’t kill a moth, and Taylor… well, I suggest you don’t cross him.”

I’d paid enough attention to realize that Brooke was going by her full name, for some reason. She scowled at Whitney’s insult.

“I’ve only been here for three days! What do you expect?”

Whitney ignored her. “Look, I agreed for you to start training here, ok? I’ll help you escape later, but for now it wouldn’t be a bad thing for you to learn how to defend yourself.”

By then I was close to hyperventilating. “But… you… he… what… huh?”

“Taylor, go find Aiden, or something. Brooke, I need to talk to my sister alone, if that’s alright.”

Taylor and Brooke glanced at each other, and left without a word. Rude much?

“Listen, Kelly. You need to cooperate with them in order to get what you want. These are not the kind of people you want to cross. I’m only in training, and I can already hit a moving target on the first shot, with an arrow. Ok? Get it? We’re dangerous. So watch out.”

“I know that now, thanks. But why do I have to stay here? Why am I here in the first place? Why was that guy looking at you funny? What happened to Jason?” I panted, seeing as how I’d said everything in one breath.

Whitney chuckled. “Ok, answers, in order. You already know this place exists; they’re not going to willingly let you go. You do realize this is illegal, right? You’re here because you were kidnapped, probably because Jack noticed our resemblance. Taylor… I’ll come back to him in a minute. And Jason was with you?”

I nodded vigorously. “He went into the store, and then someone hit me on the head.”

She scowled. “Jack, that son of a-”

“Who’s Jack?”

“Jack’s the big guy, with the buzz cut, and reaaaally likes to show off his big knife.”

I sat back, taking everything in. Ok, so I was in an assassin’s camp. My sister was trained to shoot a bow and arrow, for some reason. The blonde guy had a crush on her. Brooke, of all people, was here. Jason didn’t know where I was. A guy named Jack had a buzz cut and obsession with his knife.

What did I get myself into?

Whitney paused for a minute, and then sighed. “Well, Kelly, we’re in quite a mess aren’t we?”

I raised an eyebrow at her. Since when did she talk like a politician? “Uh… yeah, I guess we are.”

She folded her hands in front of her, on my bed. “Well, the way I see it, we have two options: stay, or leave.”

Both of my eyebrows went up. “What do you mean leave? Whitney, as much as I want to go home, do you really think they’d let us? You said so yourself, like, thirty seconds ago!” My voice rose with every word.

“I know, I know. But I’m not about to let my baby sister spend the rest of her life killing people.” I opened my mouth to speak, but she raised her hand to silence me. “Personally? I really like it here. And I really don’t want to go home, although I miss Mom and Dad more than you can imagine. I have friends here now. Real friends. And… I don’t want to go.”

Wow. All this time, Whitney had been a snobby cheerleader, incapable of feeling anything other than confident and, occasionally, jealousy. That was one of the longest speeches I’ve heard her make. And, the first time she’d ever admitted being protective of me.

I looked down at my lap. “Ok. I understand. But I’ll miss you.”

With no warning, I started to cry. Whitney did, too, after a moment. We sat there, sobbing like little kids, her mascara running down her face and mine… well, I didn’t wear makeup, so my face just had tears. Not that I could see it.

After the crying had subsided enough to where I could talk, I managed to croak, “Whitney?”

She wiped her face, smudging her makeup more and making her look like a five-year-old who’d gotten into their mother’s beauty supplies. “Yeah?”

“I want to go home.”

She opened her mouth to say something when she was cut off by a male voice.

“Why, what do we have here?”