Still shaken by the sight of the wilds, I decided to keep it as simple as possible. First, I imagined the front of the house. A light gray flagstone path about three feet wide ran from the sidewalk to a wood porch painted all in white. I picture a green door with a silver knocker. I purposely left the flower bed and row of roses from my image; those might have changed drastically since I last saw the place and might hinder the connection I was looking for.

Though the experience with the pond had shown me I didn’t have to be nearly as accurate as I thought, I still wanted to play it safe. After a few minutes, the path I’d imagined appeared before us. This is where I usually would have used the weave and brought us into the real world, but we needed to get past the wards that guarded the house and hope that there were no more inside.

Cautiously I moved forward, keeping a wary eye on the faint glow of the wards that lined the path, sure that at any moment they would flare to life, ensnaring us. I couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief when we passed the last ward without incident. I shifted my focus to the interior.

Behind the green door was a small hallway, hardwood floors stained with an aged finish, and a row of four steel hooks secured to a cream-colored wall. Donovan hesitated as we approached the door, but I walked right through, pulling him with me. The door wasn't really there, at least not yet. A wooden bench that I hadn't pictured sat against the wall, but the rest of the hall was clear. I made sure that there was plenty of room for both of us, no hands or feet sticking through a wall or piece of furniture, before opening the connection and stepping through.

Donovan practically collapsed on the bench with a sigh as I released my shield. After my encounter with the Vanguard, I could understand how he felt. The feeling of loss and vulnerability that came with losing access to a part of you was almost unbearable.

"Are you okay?" I asked, reaching out to touch his shoulder, but he pulled away.

"Yeah, I’m fine," he said, sitting up straighter. "I just didn't know it would feel like that."

"I'm going to look around," I said, stepping back. He would need a few minutes to recover, and he probably wouldn't appreciate me hovering.

Donovan had been right; most of our things were still here, though now strewn around and toppled over with a fine layer of dust covering everything. Paintings had been removed from the walls and left to rot in a corner, while books that had once sat in orderly lines on shelves were now piled haphazardly on the floor, spines broken, and pages strewn about. Pillows and cushions had been cut open, and upholstery ripped from wood frames. Did they really think my mother would hide something in the furniture? I wanted to cry as I looked over what had once been our home, our belongings, treated like trash.

I’d been planning to look around the entire house, more for sentimental reasons than anything else, but the sight of the living room quickly squashed that idea. I didn't want to see the rest of my home torn apart. Besides, there was only one room with any chance of having something worth finding, my Mom's office.

My heart sank when I opened the door, unlike the living room where everything had been thrown around but still there, here things were just missing. Sitting in the chair behind her desk, I put my head down and let my mind go blank. I could feel the tentative hope that had bloomed, wilting beneath the weight of reality.

"Are you okay?" Donovan stood in the doorway, watching me. When our eyes met, he took a tentative step towards me but stopped as if he was unsure of whether I wanted comfort or solitude in my misery.

"There's nothing here."

"We haven't even looked yet."

"Look around, Donovan; everything is gone. There is nothing here." I waved my arm in the general direction of the bare shelves.

"Nothing obvious at least," he said, walking further into the room. “You give up too easily.”

Rolling the chair back a little, I made a show of opening each of the desk drawers and slamming them shut when they turned out to be empty just as I expected. Sighing Donovan opened the closet door making a quick but thorough examination of each shelve. Even going as far as to run a thin thread of awen across every surface, in case something was concealed there.

Wallowing in self-pity, I sat silently, refusing to help as he moved from the closet to the bookcases, again running his hand and a strand of awen over each surface. He took his time examining the top and bottom of every shelf. He even checked the door and window frames before finishing up with the desk. I rolled the chair back, giving him room. He removed each drawer, inspecting every side and the space it came from carefully. Eventually, he had to admit defeat, setting the drawers back in place.

"What a surprise. The Vanguard's actually good at their jobs," I said, as he wiped the dust from his hands onto his pants.

"Desirae, that's enough." He sighed. "What is wrong with you? Why do I care more about this then you do? Your mother's missing for crying out loud, and all you've done is run away and mope around."

"She's not missing. She's dead."

"You don’t know that," he said, his voice softening as he crouched down in front of me, taking my hands.

"Then, where is she?" I said, blinking back tears. “The Vanguard doesn’t have her; most of their questions had been about where she would have gone.”

"I don't know, but you have to believe there's a chance she's still out there," he said.

"If she's still out there, it means she doesn't want to get in touch with me,” I said, the tears coming in earnest now.

"She didn't leave you." Donovan leaned forward, resting his hand on the back of my head as he pressed his forehead against mine. "You know that."

"No, I don't know that," I said, pulling away and sitting back in the chair. "I don’t know anything about her. Everything I thought I knew about her, about myself is a lie, and I hate her for it."

It was something that I’d never said out loud before, something that I’d never even really fully acknowledge to myself. I’d lost my friends, my home, my family, and even myself. I blamed her, and a small part of me hated her for it. I still loved her, but the anger and resentment were there. It wasn’t just that she had lied to me but because she had decided something else was more important than me, than us. The Vanguard didn’t come into our lives on their own she had drawn them in with whatever she’d been doing that day.

"Desirae, you do know about her." He sighed. "Yes, she was hiding something, but that doesn't change who she was to you. You need to stop thinking that way. She may not be Carolyn Cradle, but she is still your mother, she loves you and would never have willingly left you."

"Then that puts us right back or her being dead." I was being stubborn, and I knew it, but I was terrified that she was out there and had decided life was easier without me.

"She's not." Donovan stood up and walked over to the desk. "Dad won't talk about it, so I can't know for sure, but with the way everyone was acting after you left, they don't think she's dead."

I had convinced myself that there was nothing I could do; she was gone and never coming back. Now a cold dread settled in my stomach. What if I was the one who abandoned her?

"If they couldn't find her, what hope do we have?"

"Not much, but I had thought if we could get some clue on what she was hiding, we might have a chance. I can't imagine she completely wiped out everything she ever was." Grabbing my hands in his, he gave them a squeeze. "Come on, Des, think. Is there anywhere she would have kept private things that she didn't want anyone to find? Somewhere she would consider safe?"

Her office would have been my first guess, but nothing was here, at least nothing that hadn’t already been found and carted away.

"There's a cabin she used to rent whenever she was finishing up a manuscript,” I suddenly blurted out. “She always rented the same one, and if it were unavailable, she would change her schedule until it was. I actually went there after she disappeared, thinking she might try to meet up with me there.”

"Can you get us there?"

"Yeah," I said, standing up.