Free The Secret by Taryn A. Taylor

mountains. “The Equinox.”
    Marsha sat next to Karen, pulling the paper to her and pointing to another part of the page.  “Obviously, the date means something to you.” Her eyes looked at me suspiciously. She pointed to the smaller picture beneath the mountain. “Now look at this.”
    There was a man dressed in a robe with his hand held high in the air. Four stick-figure people were laid around a fire, flat on their backs. Their names—Marsha, Reed, Jake, and Karen—were written next to each figure. An arch symbol stood out in silver next to the fire. ‘The Gathering’ was written underneath it.
    My blood turned cold and I knew. I knew that they would die. I could feel it.
    Reed grimaced. “Freaky, huh? See…we are dying—or will. And we don’t even have our powers to defend us.” Raising his eyebrows, he looked at me. “Will you help us, Lanie?”
    The question hung in the air. Rob stiffened beside me.  Jake’s eyes fell on mine and I felt a spark of energy pulse through me in waves of purple and red—it was the same energy that I’d felt on the night I’d first talked to him.
    He couldn’t die.
    “Yes…I will help. I’ll help you figure this out and I’ll help you get your powers back.” I turned to Rob. “But I’m still going to get rid of mine.”

Episode 10: The Book

    “So how do we get information out of your mom?” Marsha sipped on her diet soda and looked over her shoulder, scanning the lunchroom.
    Instantly annoyed, I let out a breath and pulled an apple out of my backpack. I hated having them know about my mom. “I told you—we just have to wait for the facility to call us when she wakes up. It’s usually every couple of days…but sometimes longer.”
    Snapping her head back to me, she raised an eyebrow. “There’s only seventeen days until the Equinox—we are kind of in a time crunch.” She scowled and looked away.
    Reed tore into a doughnut. “We wouldn’t have this problem if we had our powers.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Really, Captain Obvious.”
    Marsha turned back to me. “You don’t understand—we were our powers, they were us. We didn’t run from them.”
    Inhaling, I leaned forward over my backpack and kept my voice low. “I get it. You think I should just love my powers. I don’t.”
    Karen sat down at the table, looking between the three of us. Seeming to sense the tension, she let out a breath and picked up her milk. “How’s Rob doing with the new software he’s designing?”
    Reed scowled at Karen and then pointed at me. “If she still had her powers you wouldn’t even have to answer. Seriously, Lanie, whatever information that was in people’s thoughts in connection to Karen’s question, she could take.” He pushed his hands together, making an explosion motion. “It was like, bam—she was synced to everyone within a ten foot radius.” Cocking his head to the side, he winked at Karen. “So freakin’ cool!”
    Karen cleared her throat but blushed. “It wasn’t that cool.”
    Marsha leaned in, giving Karen an annoyed look. “Yeah, it was.”
    Reed bumped Marsha’s shoulder. “If someone had cancer— she could cure it. The cells would, like, go back to where they were supposed to go. A bone broke—Marsha fixed it.” He pecked her on the cheek. “I spent a lot of time at the mercy of her healing hands—my training was brutal.”
    Marsha bit the inside of her lip and looked away. “Fat lot of good any of our training did us.”
    For the first time, I felt a little bit of jealousy. They’d had each other to help explore their powers.
    Karen nervously pushed her glasses back. “Um…did you use your powers…like in a training aspect?”
    The way she said it struck a chord inside of me. They had all been pressuring me the past week to show them something—draw something—talk about it. “Yeah...I don’t think you could call it training.”
    “What?” Reed leaned closer. “Why?”
    I took the cap off my water bottle and glared