Chapter 18: Unveiling

“What are you doing?” Clara asked Sage, who was cutting a large mango in the kitchen.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Sage scoffed.

“Whatever,” Clara rolled her eyes lazily. “Hope you did the laundry I asked you to,” she said as she lifted herself to sit on the kitchen counter beside Sage.

“Of course I did,” Sage replied, with a weird grin plastered on her face. “Ouch!”

“What?”

“I cut myself,” Sage said, holding her bleeding finger.

“Okay. But where’s the cut?” Clara, sitting close to Sage by the counter, had a close look at Sage's finger. There was a lot of blood on the kitchen counter and on the mango Sage was peeling, so Clara assumed the cut to have been really deep. However, to her great surprise, there was no wound on Sage’s hand.

Sage herself was perplexed. She didn’t know what answer to give Clara. She had cut herself, felt the pain, and her blood was on the counter, but there was no cut on her hand. She must have imagined cutting herself, but the blood on the counter said otherwise.

“I…” Sage tried to come up with an answer.

“What’s popping?” June asked as she walked into the kitchen.

“Sage just cut herself but there’s no wound,” Clara believed she sounded stupid saying this. She had not seen when Sage cut herself, she only heard her short cry in pain and saw the blood on the counter. She had no strong evidence. “Just look.” Clara took the knife that was still in Sage's hands. “I was right all this time.”

“Just stop it, Clara, you’re going too far with this,” June pleaded. “Oh my god! Clara, what did you do that for?” June cried as she saw her sister draw the knife against Sage’s skin, but she quickly took her eyes away from the wound to avoid the sight.

Sage stared at her hands in disbelief as she watched the cuts on her hand seal back up as if there was never a cut there. Clara had suddenly cut Sage to prove to her sister, but the moment Jane exclaimed, she looked away.

“Can you just stop?”

“Take a look for yourself,” Clara stated as she returned her attention back to Sage’s hand. “Wait a minute, Jane; I gave her a cut, two cuts! You saw me do it, right?” By the time the twins looked back at Sage, her hand had healed completely, and there was no trace of blood or a cut. “I must be hallucinating or something.”

“Yeah, maybe it’s just the drug you took that’s messing with your head,” Jane stated, staring at Sage who was also a bit shocked.

“You’re right,” Clara concurred with Jane. “I’m just out of my mind right now,” she said, placing the hand that was holding the knife on her forehead, but she soon looked up at Sage and gave her three more cuts. This time around, they all saw the hand heal right back without leaving a single mark.

Jane was now shocked, and Sage stood still, holding both of her arms out. This had never happened to her, and now Clara was going to make a big drama out of it.

“Ha-ha ha-ha, I told you, Jane. Your secret’s out now, witch.”

Jane backed up running to her room, and Clara went after her, singing the same words over and over again. “You have been exposed. The witch has been caught.”

Sage was left in the kitchen alone to think about her being. Was Clara right about her being a witch? She stared at her hands again; she could still feel how the cold metal went through her flesh, but there was no sign she had been injured. If her body wasn’t capable of healing, she would have bled to death from the first two cuts Clara gave her.

“Bruno!” Sage called out with a shaky voice as she took his leash. She needed to take a walk to help her think properly. “I know it’s late, boy,” Sage said as she walked out of the house with Bruno ahead of her.

“Sage, what have you done?” Clara screamed from upstairs through her window.

“What now, Clara?” Jane inquired.

“You shrunk my clothes!” Clara threw the ruined clothes at Sage through the window, but Sage was able to catch them before they hit her.

“Look, I’m sorry about that, but I’m not in the mood to deal with your drama right now. Something strange is happening to me, and I hate the fact that I don’t know what it is. So if you’d please just let me be,” Sage opened up to her cousins, which was something she had never done and never thought she'd do. However, it wasn’t because she wanted their help; she just wanted to be alone.

“I don’t care, Mum’s gonna hear about everything when she comes back,” Clara said as she walked away from the window, leaving Jane.

Jane had also been quiet since the time she saw Sage’s wounds heal at a very fast rate. She had read Sage’s reaction to the situation; she was as shocked as they were. The only persons she should be able to find comfort in were them, but they hadn’t been so nice to her from the beginning, and now she’d have to deal with this strange problem alone.

Jane looked away from Sage, who was staring at her, and quietly closed her window before walking away.

****

Venzy sat at the top of a tree beside the building Clark had described for her. She watched as the blond girl at the window yelled at the girl outside the house.

“Damn it, why didn’t I ask for her description?” Venzy thought. She was so excited when Clark gave her the information about his friend that she left in haste. She couldn’t feel any supernatural energy from either of the girls, marking them as human. “I’ll need to get every detail before I make a move,”

Venzy planned on running back to where she left Clark and forcing the information she wanted out of him. With the description of his friend, she would run back as fast as she could and snatch the real hybrid.

Venzy watched as the black-haired girl walked away from the building into the woods with her dog before she jumped down from the tree she was on. She was about to take off running when she sensed an odd energy. Her eyes widened in shock when she realized what it was.

“Demons? Here?” Venzy was not ready to come in contact with a demon, so she decided to follow another direction in the woods.