A Time to Die (Elemental Rage Book 2) by Jeanette Raleigh Page B

really need her anymore.
    Jade grabbed her
diary out of the bedroom.  The light was still on in the kitchen and the
furnace turned up high enough that the rooms were warm.  Some families turned
the heat down before going to sleep, the Grays included, but lately Aunt Bertha
was cold all the time, and the heat was left alone.
    Scribbling in her
diary, Jade made notes about the time of the attack and her thoughts on how to
overcome the Void.  She flipped back a few pages to read prior thoughts of her
Mom’s disappearance.  Last week Jade had circled the word, Keeper and
underlined it three times.  At some point they had returned to normal life, but
she had never forgotten.
    Jade rested her
chin on her hand.  Where would the Keepers hold an Elemental?  Jade turned back
to the nearly empty page and scribbled more thoughts.  The Keepers traveled
through space from dimension to dimension. Bertha told Wayne to ‘bring her
niece back’. Wayne’s name was already scribbled on the previous page.  Jade
just didn’t know what to do with it.
    She had to find a
way to locate her mom. Soon.  The Void was closing in and Jade wasn’t up to the
task.  Aunt Bertha hadn’t even gotten out of bed with all that screaming. 
    Jade had a sudden
fear.
    She hurried down
the hall to her aunt’s room.  She pushed the door open slowly.  Even Aunt
Bertha used a nightlight.  Jade watched her for nearly a whole minute. Aunt
Bertha had seemed so fragile lately.  When Bertha groaned and waved her arm in
her sleep, Jade shut the door carefully. 
    Notebook and pen
in hand, Jade returned to her place at the kitchen table.  She started to make
a list of all of the people who acted suspiciously around her mom.  Harold, the
old man in town who asked too many questions, was first on the list.  She
scribbled the names of a teacher, banker, gas attendant and a few parents of
friend who asked her personal questions at times. 
    Amy was grabbed
when they were in Oregon, though, when they were on the run. Jade wrote down
the question, Why, after all of our years here, would they find us in
Oregon?
    Three in the
morning.  Jade closed her notebook and sighed.  This hunt for Mom was getting
nowhere fast. And now she had Raven and the Void to worry about as well.
     
     
    ~~ Raven ~~
     
    First thing when
Raven woke up the next morning, she reached for Air.  Air ignored her.  Raven
nudged harder.  It was like talking to herself.  Raven couldn’t remember a time
when Air wasn’t there for her.  Her earliest memory was of Dad throwing her up
in the air while she laughed and laughed.  Only she didn’t always come right
back down.  Sometimes she circled or somersaulted or flew to the ceiling. She
even remembered her Dad nervously calling to his wife, “Amy, can you tell Raven
to come back down?”
    Raven rubbed her
eyes.  The sun was up, but she was the only one awake.  Jade was curled up on
the other couch, her notebook wide open on the coffee table. 
    Knowing it was
wrong, Raven snuck a peek at the notebook.  Jade was always writing in her
diary.  Raven had been so screwed up yesterday she kind of wanted to see what
her sister thought of her.  Not that Jade couldn’t be verbally blunt.
    Seeing Mom on the
page, Raven carefully lifted it, flipping back a page to find Jade’s notes
about the disappearance, her opinions on Wayne and the chapel, her thoughts on
where Mom might be and how they might find her, even thoughts on the Void.
Nothing specifically about Raven’s drinking or sneaking out. 
    Raven carefully
flipped the page back and replaced it on the table before Jade could wake up.
Raven knew something about the Void.  She remembered the words flowing out of
her mouth. When the Void joined her, she knew as much about the master’s
thoughts as he knew about hers.  Servants of the Void didn’t have personalities,
at least not on Earth’s plane, but in the empty space where the Void ruled…men
and women waited, deeply angry