I'll admit it, it was my fault. I'm the one who got us, Em and I, stuck in the bridge. It was my fault the mall's north parking lot is now a huge mess and won't be cleaned up for a few months. It's even me who suggested to go to the mall in the first place. I may never live this down, yes, but let me tell you, the witch is just as much to blame. Sure I may or may not have opened the door and then proceeded to lock it so she wouldn't get in, only to find out what we had walked into, or rather what I had pushed us into, was, in fact, a door to another bridge.

This, I'm sure, is probably confusing because I didn't start at the beginning. I should go back to why we, Em and I, decided to even go to the mall. Then tell you what had happened there and how we ended up here, stuck. I guess, really, it started when Emma transported into my room, thus scaring me while I was relaxing.

I should really stop thinking I will ever have a moment of quiet. There hasn't been a moment of stillness, of calmness in over three years. So silly me for thinking I could just read for a few minutes in my room, alone, in peace. It was going well for about ten minutes, then popped in Emma. I love my friend dearly, but her timing was not the greatest, even though she had a good reason.

After having jumped slightly in my bed and then having Em pace my room for a few minutes, I asked what in the world she was doing in my room.

"Well, today is a training day and we should be training," she states this as a fact, but I can tell her mind is on something else.

"Right. So, why are you really here? What's on your mind?" I asked her.

She then looked at me, for the first time, might I add, and I could almost see the wheels turning as she realized what I was holding.

"Oh, did I-I interrupted you from your reading? I'm sorry Val. Do you want me to come to talk later?" She says this apologetically and starts biting her lip nervously. I guess that's when I finally look at her. She was upset, no not upset. She was questioning something, something she needed advise on and since that's is pretty much one of the jobs of a best friend, I was here to help.

I sighed and swung my legs over the side of the bed and patted the bedding next to me. She sat while tucking in her long, curly, blond hair behind her ear. I've always kinda wanted hair like hers. I loved my light brown hair, don't get me wrong, but I wanted her curls instead of the straight hair I had.

I nudge her shoulder with mine. "Come on, tell me what's going on. Tell old, Valerie."

She takes a big breathe and then proceeds to tell me about her and Zane's little adventure. She tells me about the vision of the door to the bridge, the conversations they had, her writing all this down later so she won't forget, and then she started telling me about the dragon.

"Well, right when it arrived I got sucked into a vision and-" she suddenly stopped when Jake materialized right in front of us.

We both jumped and made a surprised sound when we saw him which made him double over, laughing.

"You should have," laughing, "seen your," more laughing, "faces!" He says while he still continuing to laugh. "Okay, okay. I'm done. Come on, we have to go to the cabin to train."

Ah, yes. Training. Really it seems that's all we do nowadays. Train, fight some sort of magical creature, train some more, go to school, find and destroy magical bridges that can be anywhere, train even more, and then, with whatever time is left, that is for family, relaxing, or hanging out with each other or with our human friends. Even if any of us were to hang out with our normal friends, we can't talk about any of this stuff anyways. That would make our lives way more complicated then it already is.

Em and I stand up to go to the cabin when Jake suddenly grabs my waist and says "I almost forgot." And then he kisses me on the lips. It's quick and sweet but it still makes me feel warm and special.

"After that show of affection, are we ready to go?" Em asks.

"If you want a kiss go get Matt. I'm sure he would be glad to." Jake says in reply, while Em and I both wince. "Oh, wait sorry. I forgot you two broke up, sis. I'm really sorry." He nervously starts threading his fingers through his hair.

"It's okay. You didn't mean it, little bro." She may say this in a joking matter, trying to lighten the mood, but both Jake and I can tell she is upset. Though, for the sake of her trying, we let the comment be forgotten by Jake telling her not to call him "little bro".

What would make sense, and what all five of us usually joke about, is that Jake and Emma are twins. Though, that isn't at all right. Sure they are both the same age and are in fact brother and sister, but Em is older then Jake by about a month or so. You see, they are step siblings. Not at all blood related. What is funny though, is that they look a little alike with their face structure, even though Jake has dark brown, wavy hair and light brown eyes and Em has gray eyes and blond hair.

While I may think they look like siblings, some girls, from what I have been told by Em and Jake, think that they would make a very cute couple. All three of us strongly disagree and are completely grossed out with this assumption. Although, Jake and Em find it very amusing, however I do not at all. Sure I may sound a little sour but give me some credit. I am his girlfriend after all.

"Alright! That's enough. We are going to be late for training if we don't leave right now. Zane will be furious if we are." I say, trying to break up the stupid fight.

"My bet is that he will be late and we will be there on time." Jake replies looking down at me. Did I mention he is really tall? Taller then my older brother, Matt, and Zane.

"Well let's go then because Em and I were talking about important-"

"What important stuff?"

"Just girl stuff that you wouldn't get or care about." Em replies right away.

"Right so we should go now-" I start to say as Jake tightens his arm around me, takes Em's hand, and transports us right in front of the cabin.

Of all the ways to transport myself somewhere, I would have to say that fire is definitely my least favorite, which happens to be Jake's way. I'm pretty okay with water and air traveling and of course earth transport, which happens to be my element, but fire has always felt, well, unnatural. When transporting somewhere, we turn into our element and travel by it. For explain, if I was traveling I would become part of the earth and move to a different part of the earth and then become flesh and blood again. Don't ask me how we can do that. All I know is that we can, so don't question it.

After Jake lets go of Em's hand, she goes straight over to the shed to get a bow and arrow for all three of us. Jake then, after kissing me again, let's go of his hold on me. Em comes back with the gear right when we all hear a whoosh. Since there were no flames and by the way Em freezes, I could only guess Matt arrived. He stands there for a few seconds just staring at Em's back not even realizing that Jake and I were there. His panic, light blue eyes catch my green ones, silently asking for a way to get out of this and not face her. I give him a pointed look and try to tell him, he can't leave now and to get over to us now. Then, after a few more seconds, he gets enough confidence to walk over to us. Still, no one has said a thing.

Now I may not be a mood reader, like all the boys are, or be a seer of the future, like Emma is, but I could tell that both Em and Matt were feeling a combination of hurt and guilt and this whole training session was just going to be plain awkward.

"Well it was nice of you to join us, Matt. We were just about to get started shooting the arrows." I say, trying to break the tension while retrieving the bows and arrows from Em.

"Yeah." Emma says, trying to sound genuine. "It's great that you arrived before we started." She looks up at him and even smiles to further convince him she is happy to see him.

But it's hard to trick someone who can read your emotions. Without saying anything and just giving her a small glance, Matt pulls his iron bow and arrow out of thin air and walks over to a target. That's right. Out of thin air. We can all do this, Matt, Em, Zane, Jake and I, pull weapons out of thin air, but we each have a different one. I mean, we can each pull out a sword and then shrink it down into a knife. Then the sword can transform into some other weapon which is unique to each person. Since none of the rest of us have a bow and arrow, we have to train with wooden ones.

Jake, Em, and I each walk over to a target start nocking an arrow. After releasing six arrows into the target, all in the golden ring in the middle might I add, I try to start up the conversation we were having before we were interrupted.

She looks pointedly at the boys, silently asking if I put the sound barrier around us. You see, I can control sound waves and smells as they pass through the air. This allows me to hear from long distances and hear the softest of things and I can also keep conversions private when I'm close to people who I don't want to overhear.

I give her a thumbs up and she starts where we left off. She describes the vision of seeing Zane being killed and then how she used her ability to destroy the dragon's form. I wince when she starts describing the feeling. She does this quite enough, getting off topic and then pausing for a second as she starts thinking. I clear my throat. She apologizes and continues the story.

"And, well... he kissed me." She says this in a melancholy way, as if it nothing.

"He kissed you?" She shrugs. I ponder for a moment, thinking of the idea. Shooting arrows is now completely forgotten. "How was it?"

"Well, I don't know." Her cheeks turn bright red. "It wasn't a real kiss. It was just on the cheek."

Before I can ask her to explain the blush, we hear a shout from the targets. Speak of the devil. There he is, in all his glory, standing right off to the side of Em's target. When Em and he look at each other, Zane smirks and Emma grimaces, blushing even more red.

"I can see your technique needs some practice, Emma." He say this as he pulls out an arrow that hit the ring right next to the middle. In reality, it's not really a bad shot. In fact, for Em, it's pretty good. She seems to be good at every other weapon, but archery. She glares at him, not saying anything to her defense.

"You're late." It was the first time my brother has even talked today. I quickly look at him and see that he is, and no way trying to hide it, angry that Zane is here. I then look back at Zane and see that his joking manner that he used on Em is gone. His eyes go to slits and his lips press together as he looks at my brown haired brother. I look back at Matt, just the same as Zane, except his face has turned a slight shade of red. It wouldn't have been that noticeable if he didn't have fair skin.

Em stiffened next to me as I looked at Jake. Poor awkward Jake, he didn't know what to do and neither did I, but Emma seemed to. Just as Zane suddenly super speed over to Matt so that they were practically nose to nose, Em jogged over to them. With both guy's fists clinched about ready to fly, Em puts one of her hands on each guy and pushes them away from each other, a few feet at the most.

"Would you guys stop acting like idiots?" Em says angrily, looking between the two.

"We haven't even done anything." Zane replies with ease.

"Yet." Matt says threateningly.

"Yeah and I know exactly what you two were about to do and that is so not going to happen on my watch." When she says this, I realized how hot and even more breezily it was a moment ago. Now that Em was angry, or rather frustrated, the temperature was quickly dropping to the point where I could faintly see my breath. In the back of my mind, I was curious to know what would have happened if Em didn't have a vision and hadn't stopped the fight, but I mostly thought of how I really needed to step into this argument before we started getting crazy weather.

"Hey Em, I think we should go on a walk for awhile, so they can cool off and you can, hmm, cool off metaphorically?" I meant it as a statement but it came out more as a question. I mean, I can't just tell her to cool down when she was doing exactly that.

Her face became less hard and her stance less stiff. "I don't think that's such a great idea-"

"Sure it is." Jake says cutting her off and giving me a wink. "You guys go on a walk or whatever and just us guys will stay here and do something to get along."

I walk over and grab Em's elbow just as Jake puts both his arms around the two guys shoulders. Before she can say anything else, I pull the earth around us to transport ourselves somewhere else, leaving the picture of three boys. Two looking as if they are about to kill each other with the middle one smiling mischievously.

The mall, that's where I brought us. I know I said a walk but I really wanted to do something more normal and besides I haven't been for awhile. Em looks around disapprovingly and gives me a pointed look. She starts walking away.

"What? Why are you upset?"

"They both just get on my nerves, you know? I can't stand it! Can they not fight for five minutes?"

"What? Two guys fighting over you? Doesn't every girl want that?" I say now walking beside her.

She gives me a confused look. "What are you talking? They're not fighting over me."

I sigh and shake my head. For the girl who can see the future, she can never see what is so obviously bound to happen and soon, since she is no longer dating my brother. "Zane is definitely into you. You're just to blind to see so."

"He may fool around and joke to make me uncomfortable, but he doesn't like me that way." She says this with such convection that I almost believe that she is right. Almost. She hasn't seen the way he looks at her when she's not looking or the way his face lights up when she walks into the room or how I know he makes all those smart comments, so that he might hear her laugh. It's so obvious to me, Jake, and even Matt has noticed and believe me that guy can be so blind.

I was about to tell her what I thought but instead I noticed the women standing a few feet away. She wasn't at all out of the ordinary, quite normal looking indeed. Black shirt and dark jeans was what she wore, nothing weird expect maybe she needed more color in her life. No, it wasn't the way she looked or dress; it was the way she stared at Emma through slitted eyes, as if she was studying prey.

It was the moment when I was about to tell Em about her, that the women looked right into my eyes. A jolt went down my spine. This made me stop which then made Em stop and give me a weird look. Witch. That's what she was. A witch. She, the witch, started lifting her hand toward me, about to send a spell my way.

I did the logical thing. I took Em's hand, turned swiftly around, and started running toward an outside door. Thank goodness we were on the bottom floor. I pushed open the door and ran through just as a spell went past our heads. It landed on a car, which instantly exploded in flames. I heard Em suck in a breath as she sees this. I turn away and see the witch launch two more spells. I pull us over to the wall as more cars exploded from the contact.

Humans were staring in shock at the cars as they burned but I know they couldn't see what we saw. Who knows what they see, but the witch, the spells, and Em and I are completely blind to them. I spot the witch looking around in the crowd, that has now gathered, for us. Em starts pulling me away from the scene slowly so we don't attract the witch's attention. It was a good try but it doesn't work. The witch spots us and we start running. I know you're probably thinking, why don't you just fight her and be done with it? Well, the witch wants to kill us but we don't want to kill her, but if push comes to shove, well, we aren't about to let that situation happen.

I start gathering the earth around us to transport us somewhere else and we almost do, but the witch grabs on to Em's arm just as we are disappearing. Right as I feel solid ground on my feet, it's no longer there. My feet are now water, because Em is bringing us somewhere else. I fall on the ground, this time without transporting somewhere else right away.

Em falls right next to me as she gets her arm out of the witch's grasp. I quickly put up a wall of earth between us and her. I look around. Since it was around noon, at least I thought so, I could see everything perfectly and I really wish I couldn't. Every building was abandoned and as dirty as the very, very filthy ground. When I got home, I was going to have to take about three showers, at least, to stop feeling disgusting. I look at Em, trying figure out what we could be doing here, but that all goes away when I see what she is doing. Her right hand is raised and outstretched pointed at the witch. Do you want to know the most terrifying part? Her eyes are a light greenish, yellowish color, which means she is about to or is using her "secret weapon".

"NO!" I scream and I grab her hand to stop her from using it. This was a really, really bad idea on my part, because right as I touched her hand I felt drained, dizzy. My knees buckled, my eyes rolled in the back of my head, and I fell to the ground.

I must have blacked out a little because the next thing I'm looking at is a wall of ice protecting us from the witch. Then I see Em's face. To say the least, she's freaking out. She has her hands on my shoulders trying to give me back my strength. She's repeating over and over again "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." I can't actually hear her right now but I can read her lips pretty well.

It's when I'm in this state of not really knowing what's going on around me that I spot the door. Logically, it wouldn't keep our attacker out but as I was in this state of not thinking clearly, I thought it was the best idea in the world. I slightly pushed Em off of me and stood up and started pulling her toward the door while the witch was preoccupied with the wall of ice. I reached open the door and pulled us both in and locked it shut.

My ears still weren't working really well, so Emma must have said what she was saying a few times before I registered what she said. "This is the bridge door! We can't get out now that you locked it! You shouldn't have brought us in here! We're stuck!" Her hands were flying everywhere; she was frantic. It wasn't till then that the words sunk in, that I realized what I had done.

I started feeling guilty for getting us stuck and for not stopping the witch's spells from hitting the car and making them explode. I really hoped no one got hurt and made a mental note if there was anybody with even a scratch, to heal them. Em continued to talk about ways to maybe get us out of this predicament. So I was little concerned when she suddenly stopped. She could have been having a vision for all I knew, but when I saw she had her head tilted, I knew she was listening to something.

Then, after I paused to listen too, I started hearing rattling on the other side of the door. Almost as if someone was trying to get in. Em and I look at each other anxiously. Was the witch finally able to open the door? Was it the guys somehow? Did they find out we needed help and came after us?

After some more rattling and pulling on the other side, the door slowly opened. The scene before us was quite a sight in deed. The good news? The witch was on the ground unmoving. The bad or surprising news? It was around midnight, time in bridges is a little different, and she wasn't the only one lying on the ground. There must have been about twenty others. I mean, sure they're all down, but how and why were they all like this? And who opened the door to let us out?

Em went out the door first and bent down to the closest witch. I half expected the witch to jump up and attack Em, but she stayed unmoving. When Em puts her two fingers on the women's neck and sighs with relief, I know the witches are okay and, in fact, if I were able to slow down my heart rate and able to really listen, I would be able to hear all their heart beats and the one behind the door.

I only spotted her because of her really curly, red hair. I mean it's a little hard to miss. She stayed quiet and just looked at us, waiting, I guess, for us to notice her. When I did, I immediately pull out my sword and pointed at her and nudged Em to get her attention.

The girl puts up her freckled hands. "I'm not going to attack you or anything like that. Why would the person who took out all of these witches and get you out of the door to one of the bridges, do that?" She states all of this without breaking eye contact with the tip of the sword.

I narrow my eyes. "Why would you do that? We have never met before." Em says this in a calm voice. I glance at her. Her pupils keep dilating and constricting as she goes through the girl's history, to see if she can be trusted.

"I want to be on the winning side of the war and that is your's, Emma." The witch replies. I will admit she's good with words and making our side seem as if it has a winning chance.

"I see," I say. "And how do we know we can trust you...?"

"Gabriella."

"Gabriella." I liked the name. "How do we know we can trust you, Gabriella?"

"I will make the Oath if that's what it takes." I know that may not sound like a big deal, an oath, but this is the Oath. In our world, if you say the words of the Oath, then you must fulfill all the agreements, for if you don't, you forfeit your life. It's when she says this that I really look at her. She was about as tall us, Em and I. She had that hair that could stop traffic. But I guess what really stumped me about her, were her eyes, for they were very intense. They were a dark gold color which gave her that look of don't-mess-with-me-becuase-you-will-deeply-regret-it.

"I don't believe that's necessary. I can see that we will not betray us, at least as of right now. In fact, I believe you could help out Val with a few things." Em says.

Then Gabriella smiled. A nice smile that changed her whole face and made her actually look approachable. Although Em may have seen the the past and future of this girl, I won't trust her till she proves it to me that she deserves it. I know Em feels the same, because we all have doubts about people, especially those who claim to want to help us. The boys will probably be hard on her and be very untrusting, too. Zane, more so then the others, even if it is ironic, since he used to be on the opposite side of this war. As I said before, I may not be a emotion reader or a seer as my friends are but I had a feeling in my gut that this witch, Gabriella, would not disappoint us.