“Wake up, Candace Brown. You are not ready to die, not yet.” A familiar voice said. It was the voice that had told Nat and I to go to Cairo for our mission.

I opened my eyes and I saw…nothing. I looked around to see if I could see anything, and I thought I had gone blind. Everything was black, as if I was in a pitch dark room without any windows.

“Where am I?” I asked. I had to make sure I wasn’t blind. I needed my sight if I could continue this mission.

“You are between meeting Death or reunite with Life. The Epnicar almost killed you, but like I said you are not ready to die just yet.”

“Death and Life are people? What do you mean not ready to die just yet?”

“No, not people. They are like me. We are the core of what happens. They control the flow of life and death, and I control the magic. As for not ready to die just yet, you’re time is not here, but it will come. Everyone must die, no one can live forever.”

“So, if I’m not dead, is Chad okay?” I had hope. As bad as a start I had gotten off to with Chad, I didn’t want to see him die. I didn’t want his death to be my fault.

“No, that was his time that was his destiny. Your destiny is to die something else. You may have think Chad died for nothing, but Epnicar’s are very hard to kill. He needed to be the one to die. It was fate. You will understand one day.”

“What is an Epnicar?”

“It is the deadliest monster in the world, in our world, the human world, and the land beyond that. You must go now. I cannot keep you long; you need to return to your friends. We will meet again, but next time it may be for a different death.”

“Wait, please I have so many questions.” I really did. Questions were flying through my mind, as I tried to understand all that was happening.

I slowly drifted away and soon saw blue sky.

I woke up staring at the sky and saw that Nat and Brent were leaning over me. Nat had tears streaming down her face and she had her ‘worried’ expression on.

I decided to sit up to cheer Nat up and came very close to hitting my head with Brent, who had very slow reflexes.

“Candace! You’re alive! How are you alive? You were dead! You weren’t breathing!” Nat asked in amazement.

“Sorry, you can’t get away from me that easily. I can’t die yet; I need to bug you more.” Nat gave me a weak smile.

“Is Chad okay?” Brent asked me, which made me sigh.

“Brent, do you honestly think that I would know better than you? I was laying here because I was strangled and half dead. I don’t think that I would know better than you.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know if you knew. You came back, so I kind of assumed that maybe Chad came back too.”

I decided to ignore that, so Brent could use common sense and I didn’t want to admit out loud that Chad was dead. “How did you kill it anyways?”

“Well I eventually realized that the ‘happy’ spells were only making the monster-” Nat started, but I cut her off.

“The Epnicar.”

“The what?” Nat gave me a confused look.

“The monster is called the Epnicar.”

“Um, okay? Sorry I’m not really that familiar with the monster’s names. Anyways, I finally used an....‘unhappy’ spell. It must’ve been powerful enough to kill him. I’m not really sure how that worked, because at first the ‘happy’ spells were killing him, but then he got bigger and stronger because of them, and then the ‘unhappy’ spells ended up killing him. It’s very confusing!”

“Unhappy spell?” I raised my eyebrows.

“Whatever Candace!”

“Nat, help me up.” Nat grabbed my hands and helped me up. The second I left the ground I felt a flare of pain in my abdomen which made me wince pretty badly, and wished I hadn’t, because Nat got a concerned look on her face.

“Are you alright? Do you need to sit down?”

“I’m fine. I’m up now, and sitting’s not going to help. I’ll be fine. We have to go bury Chad now. We can’t just leave his body here.”

I took a step toward Chad’s body and winced again. I turned my head to see if Nat and Brent were coming, and I felt a stronger flare of pain in my neck. I almost cried out in pain, but held it in. I didn’t know why my neck and stomach hurt so badly. They shouldn’t have because the Epnicar’s nails only took some skin off, which would hurt, but it wasn’t the type of pain that would occur from the loose of skin.

“Natalie, Candace, we have a problem.” Brent said. I turned to face him and made sure I didn’t move my neck any more than I had to.

“What is it, Brent?”

“Well, Chad’s kind of gone.”

“Kind of gone? How can someone be kind of gone?” I demanded.

“I don’t know, but Chad is gone. His body is not where it was before.” I whirled around and gasped in pain, which caused more pain. Nat gave me a look, but didn’t say anything.

As soon as I could focus on where Chad’s body had been, I realized it was gone.

“There’s no way that Chad can be gone. He was dead, but then again so were you,” Nat said to me. “But he was deader than you!” Nat sounded almost crazy to me. She had a wild look in her eyes which almost scared me.

Then a thought occurred to me. “I think that the Voice, took him. The one who controls magic.”

“The voice? Like the show?” Nat asked.

“No, of course not the show! What do you think, Nat?”

“What in the world is the voice then?”

“The voice. I don’t really know.”

“That was beyond helpful, Candace!”

“It doesn’t matter who the voice is. We have a bigger problem. We need another magician now, and we don’t have one.” We technically did, in the trunk of our car, but I didn’t want to take Brooke along.

“I bet if we explained the circumstances to Brooke she would understand! She would probably come along with us again.” Brent said happily.

I sighed and then winced again, but I didn’t see any other option. I didn’t want to get another magician right after Chad, and Brooke was our only choice. “Fine, Nat and I will drive to her house and see what we can do. Brent, you go in and get food.”

“I can’t, you have to have your boarding passes or security tickets to get to the food court, and I want to go and convince Brooke to come too.”

“No, Brent you stay here. I need you to look for the earliest flight to Cairo. Today price doesn’t matter, we just need to get there. We need a direct flight if we can, but if a connecting flight gets there way earlier, then get a connecting flight.”

Brent didn’t say anything and just glared at me, but I glared right back. I knew I would eventually wear him down.

“Please Brent?” Nat asked. She was way better than me at being nice to Brent so she normally handled the situations when we wanted Brent to do something for us.

“Fine.” He finally gave in, but sounded so defeated. I couldn’t do anything about that though, because Brent couldn’t come with us. I wouldn’t let him. He would probably quit the mission if he figured out that we lied to him and then hid Brooke.

“Thank you. Let’s meet at the entrance so we can go and see what flight we’re on.” Nat said. Brent nodded and we all walked around the side of the building.

Nat and I began to walk back to the car. Every step hurt, but I tried not to show it. I knew Nat would probably freak out if she saw me wincing.

As soon as we were out of hearing range Nat turned to me and stopped me from walking. “What in the world is wrong with you, Candace? I have seen you wince way to many times for you to be okay, or for it to be nothing. So spill the beans. What is wrong?”

“Nothing, I’ll be fine.”

“Candace, we just went over that you are not okay and it’s not nothing.”

“I’m fine Nat.” I started to walk away, but Nat grabbed my arm and pulled me back towards her. I felt pain in my stomach and neck and I gasped and bit my lip.

“You are not okay or fine! What in the world did the Epni-whatever do to you?”

“It’s the Epnicar and I’m fine Nat.” I made sure I covered up the hole on my shirt so Nat couldn’t see the blood on my shirt or the wound.

“No you’re not. You have blood all down your neck, so I can see that you were bleeding there, and it doesn’t look very good, and you’re trying to cover up your stomach so let me see.”

“What, my stomach? My stomach’s fine.”

“Then let me see it. I saw the little bit of blood on your shirt, Candace. I’m not dumb.”

“No, my stomach is fine so leave me alone.” I walked away again, but suddenly I had no control over my muscles and I fell.

“Candace!” Nat loudly said. I was glad she didn’t scream, because I didn’t want people to come running and we were lucky that no one was there. I lay on the ground my neck and stomach throbbing, while my bones felt like Jell-O. Nat grabbed me under my arms and dragged me so I was between two cars and then I would be less noticeable.

“Do you have water in your bag, Candace?” Nat asked urgently. I tried to nod, but I felt so much pain that I had a muscle spasm and almost hit Nat in the face. Nat’s ‘worried’ expression grew even more worried.

She grabbed her wand out of the air. “I’m so stupid, who needs human water when you have these?” I tried to respond, but my head was pounding. She suddenly turned her head. “Candace, there are people coming and I need you to stand up okay, just for a minute. I’ll help you up. One, two, three.” I tried to help Nat get me up, but it didn’t work. Nat did all the work and I leaned against a car.

I could barely stand and my legs turned to jelly so Nat grabbed me and walked me behind more cars so that way the people passing by wouldn’t see me pretty much dying. She stood me up against a car again and my legs started to burn but she held me up. The people would see our heads, but they wouldn’t be able to see how I couldn’t stand by myself. My legs began to throb so badly and I wanted to cry out in pain, but couldn’t.

By the time Nat finally helped me down, my whole body was throbbing and tears were running down my cheeks from the pain. “Candace, what exactly cut your stomach? The monsters teeth or nails?” I tried to correct her, but couldn’t because my mouth was on fire and it was very dry. I didn’t think that I would be able to form any words. “Nat, you’re so dumb! Of course it was the monster’s nails!” She said to herself. “Its teeth couldn’t cut her stomach!”

Nat grabbed her wand from the air again and said, “Sana.” Heal, she shot magic at my stomach and at first I didn’t feel anything. After about a minute I felt something pulling at my stomach, but I had no idea what it was. It felt like something was getting pulled out of me.

Nat kept flicking her wand for some reason, but I couldn’t see why. Eventually the pulling stopped and the throbbing pain went away. I felt normal again.

I sat up and didn’t feel any pain. I looked around and saw little piles of green blood around me. It wasn’t the most pleasant thing I had ever seen.

“Nat, what in the world happened to me?” I asked. I looked down at my stomach which felt much better and saw that the layer of skin had grown back.

“I think that the monsters-” I opened my mouth to correct her, but Nat fixed her problem before I had the chance. “The Epni-whatever had poison in its nails. When it strangled you and cut your stomach, the poison must’ve gotten into your bloodstream, hence the green blood. You should’ve seen your stomach though, Candace! It had a greenish tinge to it and it there was pus everywhere and-”

“Nat, thanks for the description, but I would rather not hear about what my stomach looked like.” I normally didn’t care what was inside of me or how much I bled. I normally didn’t care if I heard about insides, guts, blood, or anything like that. It didn’t really bother me, but considering I had almost died from poison, I didn’t want to hear about it.

“Candace, I think you might want to get cleaned up and change. I don’t think it would go over well if people saw you with a hole in your shirt with blood around it and dried up blood on your neck.”

“That might be a good idea.” I still had my backpack on, so when we reached Brooke’s car, I put it in the back seat and dumped my little things out of it. I picked through them until I found a t-shirt. “Cresce.” Grow, I said and my t-shirt became normal size again. That's when it hit me, we were going to begin the mission soon. My life really was about to begin.