As we were running, I started thinking about what had just happened. I mean, our principal just turned into a monster right before my eyes. On top of that I have fire powers and lava powers. If that’s not weird enough, there is someone else like me and we just covered someone in rock!

Then it hit me, my dad isn’t crazy and he has been locked up for ever for no reason. I hated myself for not believing him. I have to get him out. I thought. As we were getting on to Pine street Skye’s phone started to ring.

“Don’t answer it!” I told her.

“Why?” she asked with a confused look on her face.

“It may be another one of the monster things.” I say in soft voice.

Then we get into an ‘argument.’ Because Skye thinks I’m freaking out. But when she starts to ask about my dad, I ask her to forget what I said about my dad. I could tell she wasn’t gonna let it go that easy. We walk up to a huge white house.

“Why are we here?” I ask Skye, confused

“I’ll answer you question if you answer mine.” Skye replies stubbornly.

“Why do you care so much about my dad?” I ask getting angry

Skye yells at me and I just stare at her. She apologizes and tells me where we are.

“This is my dad’s house. I’m supposed to be with my mom but maybe we can chill here for a while.”

I admit that I was a little angry with Skye. I mean sure, me and her were pretty much the same but still. Why should she care about my dad anyway we just met. It’s not like I know that much about her either. Thinking about it made me even more mad. I looked down at my hands just to make sure. Skye rang the doorbell as I was looking back up.

“What will we tell you're dad?” I ask her.

I could tell she hadn’t really thought of that yet.

“We are both in the straight A program and got off early.” she said shrugging

When her stepmom opened the door I jumped a little not really expecting it.

“Oh. Skye! You're not supposed to be here till next week!” Her stepmom says, surprised

“My mom was at work and I got off school early. I thought I’d visit my dad for a bit?” Skye says.

“Of course! Come in!” We walked inside. “Who’s your friend?”

“This is-” Skye begins

“Hestia, ma’am.” I say, finishing her sentence.

“Oh, please call me Hazel. Thank you. I love your name.” Then she goes on and on about the origin of my name. “Is that right?” She says after a few moments.

“Um, I don’t know.” I say, not really knowing what she said.

We started walking through the house, it was about the size of my house. It looked so different compared to my house, it was all black and white. Me and mom have a really colorful house though, with pillows and curtains everywhere. We end up in the kitchen, it is very big and smells like cookies.

“Would you girls like a cookie?” Hazel asks

I started to say ‘No’, but I was interrupted.

‘Knock Knock’

“Oh that must be you father” Hazel said to Skye.

When Hazel leaves the room Skye leans over.

“She studied greek in college. So she does that all the time” Skye says sarcastically.

“That's cool. My mom did, too.” I say, understandingly.

When Hazel comes back she goes over to the oven to check the cookies. A man walks in behind her…

“Dad!” I say at the same time as Skye.

Me and Skye look at each other.

“What?!” We say at the same time “What?... What?... What is going on?”

Hazel and dad look at each other. I was very confused, but all I wanted to do was run up and hug my dad.

“Oh shoot, well this is bad. Let's go sit down” Dad says turning around. “Come on girls. Hurry before they find us.” He says opening the door.

“Before who finds us? What is going on?!” Skye asks nervously curious.

“You shouldn’t be here Skye and you shouldn’t have brought Hestia!” Dad says sounding a little angry.

“Why?” I ask.

Dad stops but doesn’t answer till he shuts the door at the bottom.

“Because it’s dangerous.” He says.

“We never thought you’d actually meet.”

We end up sitting on a couch across from dad and Hazel in the basement. I was a little nervous, I had so many questions. Where has dad been, do I have a sister, and why do we have these powers? I also wanted to apologize for not believing him.

“Dad, what is happening!?” I ask.

He sighs “Look, this is a long, confusing story that we-”

“Just tell us” We say, interrupting him.

“Ok. Fine. You guys are twins!” He says.

“WHAT!” We shout and look at each other.

“But we are nothing alike! We don’t even have the same pow-” I start. Skye elbowed me in the side before I could finish. “Parents.” I quickly say.

“Listen I know about the powers I have them too.” He says

“Oh. You know about that?” Skye asks.

“Of course I do. You guys are ghosts like me.” He said. I interrupt.

“Wait, What? Do you have powers? Which one?” I ask him

“Fire. Which powers do you two have?”

“Water.” Skye says

“Fire.” I say right after

“Have you girls learned how to use them?”

“Um… Kind of.” Me and Skye turn and look at each other.

“What do you mean kind of?”

“We may have used them to defeat Mrs. Jones at school today.” Skye tells dad.

“You used them in a public place!?” He say angrily. “Do you know how dangerous that is?” He asks rubbing his forehead.

“Well she was probably going to kill us if we didn’t” I reassure him.

Then me and Skye tell dad about the fight and how we defeated Mrs.Jones. I admit we may have over exaggerated the story just a little bit, but i’m pretty sure he could tell. Everytime we said something happened then looked at each other and smiled he just laughed.

“Well, that was an amazing story girls. I did not expect you powers to be this strong.” He says when we finish.

“Yeah we were pretty proud of ourselves.” I say smiling at Skye

“Yeah. Anyway back to your story dad.” Skye says impatiently.

“Ok. Hestia, you're mom actually adopted you from me and Skye’s mom.” He says sympathetically.

“Oh… why” I ask a little upset.

“Because you're two moms are best friends. And your mom…” He looks at me. “Rachel can’t have kids, so we let her adopt you to keep both of you safe” Dad says.

“What about the ghosts? We aren’t dead, are we?” Skye asks.

Dad chuckled. “No. A ghost is… I don’t know how to explain this. I’ll have to go really far back. Before the start of time, there were only stars, right? Well, these stars, were different. They formed together and made a planet, Earth. They had powers but couldn’t use them. After a few...thousand centuries, along came the humans. A few rebellious stars decided they wanted to be human. When a new baby was born, the stars would become that human.”

“What? That is gross!” I says.

“The stars were picky, though. They could only enter a human whose personality matched their powers. For example, Hestia is fire. You are like flames. You can be calmed down by water, but you can also be crazy deadly.”

“Wait. So we are part of the planet?” Skye asks before I can.

“Uh, yes. Anyway, that’s why you have powers. That's why we are called ghosts. That and this.”

Suddenly, dad was gone. Me and Skye looked around..

“What? What was that? Where did he go!” I ask.

“Invisibility. It’s how ghosts identify each other. Male ghosts get invisibility and female ghosts get brightness. You're body becomes a ball of light that blind the opponent.

My mind was blown I mean I was just getting used to being weird, and now I had to deal with all of this to.

“There’s also other ghost powers depending on genetics. And,  bonus powers.” He says quietly. “Only the most powerful ghosts have those.” He got even quieter. “You must tell me now, If you have them before it’ too late?”

“In the office I saw water waved at me and I could hear it talk to me to.” Skye says.

“You communicated with a ghost?” Dad asks. I nod. “If you have one, Hestia must have one too.”

“I have visions sometimes. They are almost like dreams. I guess...” I say a little worried.

“What do you see in the visions?” Dad asks.

When he asked that I was a little reluctant to answer

“Monsters,”

All of the sudden I start to have a vision. I can’t hear anything, but I can see a lot. It almost looked like I was standing high above the clouds looking down on a huge war. I saw huge monsters destroying buildings and catching glowing orbs. Then my vision went in fast forward and I saw the world. It just looked like a huge ball of black smoke. This makes me so angry, I just want to explode. When I came back to, dad, Hazel, and Skye were staring at me.

“Well that was strang, was it a vision” he asks. I nod, “What did you see” dad asks.

“Well. um… I think uh. Maybe... the end of the world.” I say worriedly.

“What! What do you mean?” Skye asks.

Then I tell them exactly what I saw in the vision. When I was done dad was nodding. Then he looked at us, then the floor and back at us.

“Well that is very interesting.” he says rubbing his chin.

“What do you think it means dad?” I ask curiously.

“I don't know.” He says shaking his head

Suddenly Hazel gets up.

“I think I do. Come on.”

She starts walking up the stairs and we all follow, still eager for answers. She goes into the large room they use for a library, I’m guessing. She grabs one of those ladders in old libraries and climbs to the top shelf.

“I keep it up here so the boys won’t get it.” She says as she grabs a very, very thick book of the top shelf. She climbs down the ladder and opens the book on one of the tables. Then she flipped through it as we waited.

“Right here.” She points to a small paragraph on a page towards the end. Skye takes the book and starts reading it out loud.

“When the time comes a-” She’s interrupted by a knock at the door.

“Mr. Johnson?” We hear a deep voice shout. Dad looks at out the window a lets out a small gasp.

“Stay here.” He walks out of the library and we hear the door open.

“What is this anyway?” Skye asks.

“It’s a history of the ghosts.” Hazel says. “They are hard to come by.”

“Can we come in and look?” We hear the voice say again. Suddenly a lamp nearby ignites.

“Oh, no. Come on girls. You have to get out of here.” She started leading us through the house to the back door. I see Skye grab the book as she leaves.

“Are you sure you’re daughter isn’t here?” The voice says.

“I think I would know if she’s here, and she’s not.” Dad lies.

Suddenly a man in a black suit turns the corner we are turning as well. “She’s back here!” He yells.

“Through the back. Now!” Hazel yells as she makes an earth wall in front of him. We run to the back door.

“We have to split up!” I tell Skye when we get out of the house.

“What?! That’s a _horrible_ idea!” She replies.

“We’ll meet up. We can send signals like dad did or something.” I said as the door opened. “Run!”

Then, we were off…

I  ran forever. The only time I stopped was to catch my breath for a few seconds. When I finally came to a road I recognized I was so tired I didn’t feel like running. I walked for a while turning on and off streets. When I got onto boulevard I stopped at Mcdonalds and got something to eat. When I finally finish eating I was too tired to walk.

I’ll just go take a nap in field over there. I think to myself. I go and make a little bed of grass to take a nap. After a little while af laying there I fell asleep. While I was asleep, I of course had a vision. All I could see in my vision was the glowing orbs again, but this time they were in cages.

Then I woke up with a jolt as someone was coming through the field. I sat up slowly and peaked over the grass. It was a large group of the officials!

“Keep an eye out. She’s dangerous.” I hear one of them say.

I stood straight up to face them. “Hey! Over here!” I yell.

They look at me and raise their guns. “Well look at what we have here. A little girl.” They started laughing, so I took this chance to make a wall of fire and ran. As I ran I heard them close behind. I stopped and turned around quickly to make another wall of fire. When I did, it wasn’t the officials, but people who looked my age. I didn’t trust them though so I still made the wall of fire but instead of running I waited to see what they would do.

“Listen we don’t want to hurt you. Ok? So why don't you just come with us.” I heard someone say. Then the fire slowly went away as one of them used water to put it out.

“How do I know I can trust you?” I ask

“Well… you don't, I guess.” A tall boy with short black hair says. This guy was super cute. He had bright green eyes, and caramel tan skin.

“I don't even know your names yet.”

“Oh, of course. These are the twins, Ella and Emma. This is Aiden,”

“Sup.” he said raising his hand.

“And I’m Parker.” he says pointing at himself.

“Okay... I’m Hestia.” I say nodding my head awkwardly.

“Well, I hope you enjoy the ride.” Aiden says with fake smile.

“What-” Then everything is black.

When I woke up I was in a dull pink room. On the other side of the room there was another bed Skye was still asleep. The room was very plain, everything was one color kind of like dads house. Just the thought of dad made me so sad and mad at the same time. I didn’t really know were I was so I open the door and walked out into a long hallway. I walked down to a door at the end, I opened it and peeked in.

“I don't think we should let them stay I mean, they are both really dangerous.” Aiden says. I assume he is talking about us.

“Scaredy cat.” Parker says, teasing him.

I walk in slowly and go stand at the end of the table and sit down.

“Listen. I want answers. Like now.” I say impatiently. I caught my hand on fire for effect.

“Ok, ok. Calm down.” Parker says, rolling his eyes. “This is… well um I guess we don't really have a name for it. We just call it camp or hideout or base.” He says shrugging. “Anyway you can call it whatever you want to.”

“So...a ghost orphanage.” I say snarkily.

“Sure. Whatever.” He says, rolling his eyes again.

“Well whenever my sister wakes up we are leaving.” I say

“So… she is you sister?” Aiden says from the corner.

“Duh. We’re twins.” I say rolling my eyes back at him.

When I do he grins at me. I don't know why, but this made me feel happy again. Of course I grin back, I mean this dude is super cute. He shakes his head as if he was zoned out or something.

“Anyway, why do you want to leave? I mean for ghosts this is the safest place on earth.” He’s not looking at me anymore, but at the table in front of him. I look around and I see the twins reading something. I squint my eyes to get a better look. It was dad’s book.

“Hey what are you doing with our book?” I ask them.

“Reading. Duh.” They say at the same time. I’m not gonna lie they freak me out.

“Well, I can see that, but why do you  have it. It is supposed to be in Skey’s bag.” I say getting angry.

“So what it's just a book.” Aiden says.

“NO! It is not it is my dad’s book, and I would like it back. So we can leave.” I say

“They are hunting you. If you leave, you could get killed.” Parker is yelling now. “Don’t you get that?”
“Of course I do, I’m not stupid. But we’ve made it so far.”I started yelling, but I tried to calm down.
“It’s a bad idea.” A twin said.
“Monsters are all around.” The other one said.
“You are lucky we found you in time.” They both said.
“Don’t freak her out.”Parker says “I think if they decide to leave, they should leave.”
“That’s not up to you, Parker.” Aiden said with a laugh. Of course he was playing with the fire in his hands. I feel like he is going to be a huge show off.  “It’s up to the-” He starts
“Well I don’t care who it’s up to. Me and my sister are leaving tomorrow morning at the latest.” I interrupt.
“Well, I’m sure he’ll make an exception, Aiden.” Parker said.
“I doubt it. They won’t let anyone leave. Not since-” Aiden says
“Since what?” I ask.

“It doesn’t involve you.” Parker says, glaring at me.
“I’m checking on my sister.” I say.
“There’s no need to check on me because I’m already up.” Skye says walking through the door. “What’s going on?” She says
“They brought us to an orphanage for ghosts.” I say, still mad.
“It’s not an orphanage.” Aiden says.
“Oh, really?” I ask sarcastically. “If your parents are dead, raise your hand.” Everyone raised their hand.
“Either way, It’s not an orphanage. It’s a hideout for ghosts so the monsters don’t find us. Our leader works hard to make sure they can’t sense our powers in this area. And eavesdropping is not permitted.” Aiden says
“It’s not eavesdropping if your speaking loud enough for people to hear.” Skye says.
Aiden looks at Parker. “I like this one.” He says. “Can we keep her?”
“They’re leaving.” Parker says.
“It’s not up to you.” Aiden replies.
“Stop fighting.” The third girl said, looking in pain. I thought she was about to burst. “You are not helping.”
Aiden and Parker looked at each other. “Sorry, Kimm.” Aiden says.
“When did she get here?” I ask.
“It’s none of you business.” Aiden and Parker says. Kimm walks out. “And it’s not up to them.” She says
“It’s not up to who?” I hear someone say. A guy walks out of the corner a man actually. It was dad.

“DAD!” I yell surprise
“Oh. Hestia, Skye I’m glad you got here safe.” He says smiling
“Thank you for getting them here, Parker.” He says

“No problem, sir.”

“Where did Kimm go?’He asks

“Where she always goes.” Parker tells him.

“Did she overexert herself again?”
Everyone in the group nods. The man sighs. Just then, a boy comes running from the hall.

“Guys. It’s Kimm.” He’s out of breath. “It’s happening again.