"Grace, open up, it's me," she voiced out while knocking and after a minute, unlocking sounds were heard from the other side the door before it swung open displaying a woman.
Without a doubt she was the woman in the picture at the left hand side of the locket but she had moist red eyes and an exhausted pale face.
Her long brown hair was messy and she looked like she hadn't slept for days.
"Jenny," she said in a croaky voice.
"Yes dear. How are you doing?" Jenny walked towards her giving her best friend a hug.
"She's gone, I can't believe it, how did this happen?" Grace sobbed but there was barely any tears being produced which showed that she must've emptied her glands.
"Don't lose hope." Jenny rubbed her back before breaking the hug. "Look." She gestured towards Sylph who Grace hadn't noticed.
"This young lady over here says she's a Sentry and was working on a case when she came across something." Jenny looked at Sylph signaling her to take over.
Sylph walked towards her before bringing out the locket which caused Grace's moist eyes to widen in shock.
Not wasting any time, she swiped it from Sylph's hand before opening it. She brought her gaze back to Sylph with her exhausted eyes now brimming with energy, she grabbed her by her arms.
"Tell me! Where did you get this?!!" She snapped as she shook Sylph who stayed silent with a poker face while increasing the tightness of her grip.
She was beginning to get annoyed at Sylph's silence when her friend brought her back to her senses.
"Grace! Calm down!"
It was then that Grace realized that she was harassing not a police officer but a sentry who might have come to help, but she wasn't to be blamed, this was her missing daughter they're talking about here, and Sylph who knew this well wasn't offended in the slightest.
Rather, she pitied them as they would soon be finding out what actually happened to their daughter.
"I'm sorry about that. I lost my composure," she apologized while bringing down her hand and head.
"It's alright," Sylph said dismissively.
Because of her grieve and shock earlier she hadn't noticed it, but now that she heard Sylph's soothing voice, she noticed the calm and confident aura around the beautiful girl in front of her.
Even though she couldn't completely see her face, she was sure of this.
"May we come in?" Jenny asked.
"What sort of silly question is that? You're always welcomed into my home and you know that."
Jenny smiled as they all walked into the house which was neatly kept unlike her looks.
The living room was simple with most of the decorations being pictures.
They all sat on different sofas.
"Should I get you something to drink?" Grace asked.
"You know the usual," Jenny winked. She tried her best to be as cheerful as she could be in order to try to slowly make her friend feel better, even though she was sad herself.
A slight smile appeared on her face before looking at Sylph. "How about you?"
She shook her head in disapproval. She doesn't take things from people after a certain experience a few years ago.
"Are you sure?" She asked with a frown a little nervous that she might feel offended by her earlier action. Still seeing no response, she walked into the kitchen.
Sylph looked around the room, more specifically, she was looking at the pictures.
She stood up and walked towards a picture which had an 11-year old girl with long brown hair and black eyes. She took the picture while hugging onto a teddy bear.
"That's Grace's biological daughter, Stacey," Jenny voiced out.
Sylph stared at the picture for some seconds before walking forwards and stopping in front of another picture.
"That's Alice," Jenny said, with a shaky voice.
The girl in the picture had red hair and blue eyes. Rather than being cute like the other girl, she had a matured beautiful face.
Sylph shifted her gaze to a picture were Grace, Alice and a man were present.
She already knew that the man had to be Grace's new partner.
"Beautiful isn't it?"
Turning around, she saw the man who was in the picture standing before her.
He was six feet tall with a shaved head and eyes filled with sadness.
Sylph looked back at the picture before slightly nodding. She wondered how her own family were faring, not that she really cared.
She walked back to the sofa she previously sat on before taking a seat and the man followed suit.
Grace walked in with a small plastic tray with a glass cup on top which had an orange liquid which Sylph wasn't sure she recognized. She handed it to Jenny who immediately gulped it down within ten seconds. She dropped the glass cup with a large smile on her face.
"Nothing beats this."
Grace sat beside her husband who wrapped his hand around her as they all focused their gazes on Sylph, waiting for what she has to say.
And Sylph wasn't going to beat around the bush.
"Alice, what time did she leave?"
"It was around 3:30pm. She went out to meet a friend but they say she never got there," grace said with a shaky voice as tears began forming in her eyes.
"When did you notice that she was missing?"
"She said she'll only be out for at most one and a half hours, but after two hours she didn't return and one thing I'm sure about her is that she's very punctual. But rather than jumping into conclusions I decided to wait for another 30 minutes and she still didn't home back, so I decided to go to her friend's house and I talked you the parents, who said she had never arrived.
I didn't want to believe it, thinking that they might be playing some kind of prank. But her friend also told me that Alice hadn't arrived. But I noticed that she was acting weird. Her parents said that it had to be because they grounded her for a week. Maybe it was just my imagination.
It was then I realized that...….., she was missing," she sobbed as her husband tried to console her.
After composing herself a little, she continued.
"I told my husband and Jenny, and along with some people, we searched around the neighborhood but we couldn't find her. We reported this to the police but they haven't had any luck either."
Sylph felt that she was onto something. "Can you describe what she wore on that day?"
Grace went deep into thought before finally remembering the details. "I believe she wore a blue and white spotted gown which fell slightly below her knees...…, and I think white sandals and a small shoulder bag. Yes! That's what she wore."
"Did she wear a hair band?" Sylph asked causing Grace's eyebrow to furrow.
"She doesn't like wearing all those stuffs. "
'Looks like I'll be going back there.' She thought, remembering something she ignored back in the alley.
"Where does her friend live?"
They were a little bit confused why Sylph would ask such a question but decided to reply nevertheless as they believed that it might be important to finding Alice.
They described the house and its location to her, and it turned out that their houses weren't so far apart.
Sylph used her smart intellect to narrow down the possible scenarios. But she still had to do some investigation. She had gotten a lot of information from her point of view as not everyone would find the information she had gathered useful.
But now it was time for the hard part. How to break the news to them.
"Miss sentry, I hope you don't mind me using that term, but would you help us find Alice. We've already reported the case to the police but they haven't been able to do much.
I know its not part of your job and you say you just came across the pendant while on another investigation, but could you please help us find her. We would be very grateful if we have a sentry working on the case," the man pleaded as the women said even more with the way they were staring at her.
Sylph remembered when her sister had also gone missing and she prayed constantly that she would be found while also trying her best to find her. Only to find out that her sister was dead.
She remembered how that almost broke her as she was all that she had as all this happened during the meteor apocalypse.
Now it seemed like she would be delivering such an awful news to someone or rather three people.
She raised her lowered head a bit higher displaying more of her face.
"I'm sorry. I would've loved to help, but your daughter is most probably dead."