"Not yet."
"Do you think that he will?" She looked at him almost pleadingly. Aiden raised his eyebrows, "I think so, because eventually he wants us to come, doesn’t he? Besides, the fact that you look like a mortally wounded deer on the end perspective of the Video, will make him think things over once again and certainly provoke him."
Leyla had to admit that he was right. She grinned, "Mila looks as if she wanted to clobber someone." They both burst out into laughter and could hardly stop laughing. Gabe passed by with his tray, he was with Greyson and two other guys.
He looked over suspiciously. Gasping they both calmed down. Leyla cleared her throat trying to remain serious, but she chuckled still hysterically. After exhaling a few times, she was in control and able to speak normal again, "The rap sounds a lot better now, since Saul helped them out yesterday, don’t you think so?" She had to concentrate, so that she didn’t start laughing again. The video was just too hilarious. Aiden looked at her and she couldn’t help giggling again. She laughed until the tears run down her cheeks, then the laughter ebbed slowly and an unpleasant hiccup remained. After a while and a sip of water, she was feeling better. Aiden got up to join his buddies but Leyla held him back, "Stop, wait a minute, I have to tell you something seriously," she told him about her dream and the amulet. She showed him the sketch she made after her dream.
He sat down again listening interested. But when she told him that she thought Chayton Moonworthy was originally a Di Santos and had written an article about the Onendas. He frowned, "You think crow man is one of us. To me he looks more like a Vulture. I don’t see him exactly as trustworthy rather kind of devious. He has that air of a double agent about him. Are you sure about that?" Leyla nodded, "I'm sure to 99.9%. I read his article and wanted to ask him about it before, but Greyson and this Danish exchange student got in the way and distracted me, then he got away and I missed him. I wanted to ask him about the amulet, if he has ever seen it during his research." Aiden seemed worried, "I don’t know whether that is such a good idea. The shot might as well backfire. I don’t trust the guy, even if he can’t be as bad considering what he did for Natalie." Leyla looked at him imploringly, "Don’t worry, if he reacts strange, I'll find an excuse why I am interested in the amulet." Aiden was not convinced, "Just be careful."
He got up, joining his buddies. Leyla remained behind. She had not the slightest doubt. She was convinced that Moonworthy was the author of the article, he just had to be. Her phone buzzed, Ana was about to board a plane to Europe and sent her a selfie of her and Saul at the airport. Leyla's heart felt with her, why things had to be so damn complicated in life. Since one found the love of his life and in a blink of an eye it was gone again. Although they said that you always met twice in life, but that was kind of a lame comfort in certain situations. She pondered for a while about what to text back. It wasn’t that easy to find the right words and she finally chose a Jing and Jang symbol consisting of a male and female silhouette. She wrote, - It'll be okay, we have to be convinced and believe it, because everything that we can imagine can happen ... Right? - Her phone beeped and shortly after, she received Ana’s response. -I will keep that in mind, leading my thoughts in the right direction. Saul's, new song is called, - like a tattoo on my brain - and he dedicated it to me, that is a start. I hope that we will all see each other again XOXO Ana. - Leyla read her text a few times more, and then she saw Chayton Moonworthy going back into the school building. Her chance had come. She quickly cleared the table, grabbed her phone and followed him. She reached him just before he got into the teachers’ lounge. Slightly out of breath, she stopped in front of him. "Mr. Moonworthy, do you have a Moment?" He turned and looking surprised. What did this girl want from him? He didn’t have the slightest idea. Normally, the girl made a big circle around him as if she was being afraid of him.
In class, she sat mostly ducked at her desk. As if she was thinking, that he wouldn’t ask her anything if she didn’t try to get noticed. Well, he had noticed that math was not her favorite subject, but actually her marks were not that bad. Either she underestimated her abilities or she couldn’t stand him. Or both. Anyway, he was quite surprised to see her standing in front of him. Wondering what she wanted to ask him he looked at her. Leyla felt petrified under Moonworthy's stare. She didn’t really know what it was about him that scared her that much. Why the heck was she so afraid of him, he was just a measly little man dressing strange. But, every time he looked at her with his piercing eyes, she shuddered and got goose bumps. The guy just scared her and she had a bad feeling when he looked at her. Silently she stood in front of him unable not speak.
Chayton Moonworthy looked impatiently at his watch, "Then shoot, I have other things to do than standing around here listening to your silence." Leyla coughed, but she had no idea how she could ask him what she wanted to know, so she took out the sketch from her backpack, holding it out to him, "I wanted to ask you if you have ever seen this amulet before or read about it?” He looked at the sketch with narrowed eyes. "May I ask why you want to know that?" Crap, that would be worse than she expected. Moonworthy seemed to belong to the people who like to ask many questions. "I’ve seen it in a dream." He looked surprised, "And why should I know anything about it?" She looked nervously around, a few students passed laughing, among them, there was Greta, she waved at her, probably wondering what she wanted from Moonworthy. Leyla lowered her voice, it was barely more than a whisper, "I read your article about the Onendas and the Savior legend." He stood there thunderstruck, staring at her as if she suddenly had grown two heads. "Did you listen to me? I am talking about the article concerning the prophecy, of Chayton R. Di Santos. You wrote that article, didn’t you?" Chayton put a finger to his lips motioning her to keep quiet. "Detention that is what you get, you will stay after school today. I am not allowing such insolence."
He turned on his heel and disappeared into the teachers’ lounge. Leyla stayed behind perplexed, "But I haven’t done anything at all." The guy probably wasn’t right in his head. She had just asked him a question, nothing more. How could he keep her in school for detention? Damn, she couldn’t even ease her way out, as the last lesson of the day was actually math. Such a miserable crap, Brooklyn and Mila were not there, so she didn’t have the chance to tell anybody about her misery. The afternoon went on forever, and in math class she tried to make herself invisible, which worked quite well, because today Moonworthy ignored her completely. After the lesson, she remained at her desk, earning pitying looks and encouraging comments from her classmates. Moonworthy closed the door behind him, and then he turned around to face her. He almost looked friendly, which set her totally off track, what the hell was going on? "So," he said. "You are certainly wondering why I gave you detention." She nodded looking suspicious. Something seemed to be in the bush that had nothing to do with math. She hoped that he wasn’t going to make any inappropriate move on her, otherwise she would throw him with a Hane Maki move to the ground. He was small and somewhat skinny, so he wouldn’t stand a chance against her. She was ready to fight, but then his words threw her totally off track.
"I think, that I owe you some explanations. First, you have to know that at this school, nobody knows that my true passion isn’t math, but history. In particular, the history of my people kept me busy for many years. Now, I wonder how a teenager like you would be able to find out that I am the author of that article and thus found out my true identity." She shrugged, this guy really asked some strange questions, "Actually I didn’t even dig for it. It was more like a coincidence, I mistyped when I wanted to find out about trigonometry and found something about previsions. As I don’t believe in hazards, I kind of started to read on and when I saw the drawing of the Savior at the end of the article, that looked like Gregory Rossi I got quite curious. At that time, I had no idea that you were Chayton R. Di Santos. It was only when I found out that you have been adopted I jumped to the conclusion. What does the R. stand for?" "How do you know I was adopted?"
She took the sketch from her backpack and handed it to him. "Actually, it doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not, just tell me if you have seen the amulet before or not, then I'll leave you alone." Chayton Moonworthy looked at the sketch for a while obviously in thought, then he took out his cell phone taking a picture of it. He handed it back to Leyla. "I'll go through my documents, it looks familiar somehow, but if you want me to get into the matter, I think I deserve to know the truth. I want you to tell me the real reason you want to find out more about this amulet."
"Ok, then I suppose that I’ll be doing some detention tomorrow again, if I understand you correctly."
"Not necessarily, you may come over to my apartment after school." Shit, she thought. Being alone with Moonworthy at his apartment? That wasn’t an option and was hardly going to happen. She still didn’t trust him. He was too mysterious. She would need to convince Aiden to come along. She nodded agreeing and left the classroom. Moonworthy seemed to her like some dark double agent, she didn’t trust him at all, who knew what was going on behind these piercing black eyes and it didn’t really matter that he was a Di Santos, he still could be kind a serial killer or whatever, right? But, at the same time he was also her only chance to find out about the amulet. Although it was actually totally ridiculous to look for something she had seen in a dream. She hurried to get home. Her thoughts run wild. Maybe, she didn’t even need Moonworthy after all. She hadn’t asked her best friend Google yet about the amulet. When she got home, nobody was home except for Rogan. She was glad about it, as she could do quite well without her aunt staring at her, still hoping to find out where her son was. She could understand that Shannon was desperate, but she had already told her a million times that she knew that Gregory was alive, but couldn’t tell her where he was. But her aunt Shannon wasn’t giving up that easily. She still tried to get some details and Leyla wasn’t able to give her any.
Now more than ever, as Shannon’s precious boy had dumped her she thought grimly. The scope of the truth would have exceeded Shannon horizon in terms of magical powers by far and Leyla didn’t feel like telling her anything that would make her look like some lunatic who had lost her mind. Therefore, Shannon simply had to settle with the fact that Gregory was alive and would eventually show up again somewhere in the future and no one could tell her when this was going to happen. Well, Leyla had to admit that something like that was probably hard to accept for any mother, even if in this specific case, stepmother. She went to her room and switched on her laptop. Rogan followed her laying down on her feet out of an old habit. Leyla scratched his head, smiling. Then she opened the browser and asked Google for pictures of amulets. God, there were hundreds of them. Leyla scrolled from page to page. What the hell did a picture of Queen Elizabeth do here? She shook her head and scrolled further.
Suddenly the English flag appeared several times too. What the heck did the British Empire have to do with amulets? She sighed her feet had become numb. The dog was extremely heavy on her now completely numb legs. She pulled her feet out from under it moving her legs until she could feel her toes again. Rogan got up visibly offended and trotted out of her room. "Sorry Rogan, but you're just too hot and too heavy. Love you!" she called after the dog grinning. Then she sat down on her desk again. Maybe she had to ask Google Web without Pictures. As it always happened when she was looking for something specific in the Internet, she found a whole lot of other stuff that she wasn’t even looking for, drifting away. There were constantly new possibilities opening up and new items to look for. Well, so what? Then she had just landed at the British Empire, no big deal. Suddenly she read something about English colonies and the fact that the Mediterranean island of Malta had been a British colony for a certain period until its independence in 1964.
Now the island was even a country in the EU. Gee, Leyla hadn’t even heard of the island and it was even a country. Actually, she had been initially looking for that damn amulet, but the island looked very inviting and interesting to her. For some time, she scrolled through the pictures and she definitely liked what she saw. There was something wild, intriguing, and inexplicably beautiful about it. She got a strange feeling that she absolutely had to go there sometime. People went there because of the language schools. Well, she didn’t have to learn English anymore, but still, maybe she could learn Maltese? She didn’t know what to use it for, but the Island was still fascinating enough. Who knew, maybe she could go there later in her life, when things were normal again on a holiday. She clicked on the subtitle "Maltese legends."
There was a legend about the Milan, some locals that were into fishing and viticulture and there was this tragic love story, as so many others that had ended in disaster. The legend said that the two lovers even tried as ghosts to get back together. Leyla smiled to herself, how romantic, she thought. She read on, they could only be united, Leyla gasped when two amulets were activated by a certain descendant of the Milan. The wooden amulets with traditional symbols could be bought all over the Island and was quite popular as a souvenir for tourists, but the second, a silver amulet with identical Symbols on it, disappeared and no one knew where it was, or if it even existed. Leyla's heartbeat quickened and was about to burst. She went back to the picture view typing the words Malta, amulet, Milan.
Immediately she was faced with a wooden version of the amulet in her dream. No one would ever believe her, it was incredible, and she really had what it took to become a detective. She printed the picture and looked at it for a long time. No question the four gems represented the elements. A blue sapphire, a green emerald, a red ruby, and a white crystal. She got back into the web, looking for the Milan. It was clear to her that the word Milan alone was a revelation. Black Kites the English word for them meant that they were damn birds of prey like the Vultures. Ok, Vultures feed on carrion, but they were still birds. Suddenly she knew where Gregory was. He was in Malta. The only question was how she managed to dream about the amulet? Was she simply going nuts? Or was there some weird mental connection between Gregory and her, they both didn’t know anything about? Was it the power of his unconscious thoughts? She didn’t know and for now she didn’t need Chayton Moonworthy any longer to decrypt the amulet. She had managed to do it all by herself, which was somehow quite frightening. She dialed Aiden's number telling him the short version of what she just found out. He seemed to be a bit perplexed. But, he promised her solemnly that he would go to Moonworthy tomorrow after school with her. The complete detective thing made Leyla very jittery. She could hardly wait to get to Moonworthy.
After having told Mila and Brooklyn about the amulet, she was literally sitting on pins and needles at her desk until school was finally over. When the last hour was over and she went along with Aiden to Moonworthy's apartment, Natalie opened the door. Damn, she looked perfectly normal now and was wearing no Makeup at all. Leyla had almost not recognized her, "Hi Natalie, is Mr. Moonworthy around?"
"Yes I’ll get him. Come on in, he is waiting for you." Then she saw Aiden who had been partly hidden as he stood behind Leyla on the wall. "Uh, I mean come in both of you." They entered and Natalie led them into a modern and bright living room. Leyla had expected a kind of dark tomb due to Moonworthy’s sinister appearance. But, maybe she shouldn’t give too much thought into appearances. "Would you like to drink something?" They shook their heads and sat down on a large, gray fabric sofa. Natalie sat down opposite them and twisted a strand of her hair around her finger. She looked at them curiously. "I didn’t know that you liked my father. I always had the feeling, that you thought he was pretty odd."
Aiden and Leyla didn’t really know what to sa
y. Looked like Moonworthy hadn’t told her why he was expecting a visit from his students. It took a few minutes until Moonworthy came through the front door with a laundry hamper under his arm, truly an invaluable sight, and almost grotesque. Aiden and Leyla looked at each other and had to pull themselves together not to burst into laughter. "Hi Leyla," he handed Natalie the laundry hamper sitting down on the opposing sofa, "I see you brought some reinforcement. Glad you're here Aiden. I found the picture I was quite sure, that I had seen the amulet before," he laid the picture on the table between them. "It is - " Leyla cut him off, "A Maltese legend."
"How do you know that? "Moonworthy seemed surprised. Leyla put the print out on the table." I’ve done some research as well. The question is, why did I see the damn thing in a dream?" Chayton Moonworthy looked at her thoughtfully, "What did you see? A silver or a wooden amulet? Think about it!" Leyla closed her eyes trying to remember the dream she had some days ago. " I think it was made of silver," she saw the amulet in her mind as it hovered over her before she rushed into the depths, "but I am not completely sure about it."
"And where did you see the amulet in your dream? Who had it?"
Elementary Virtue: The Prophecy Page 24