When she gets to her front door, Olivia is already there. Lorene heads into her home, and her friend quietly follows. “…What’s going on, Lorene?”

Lorene stares at the kitchen table silently. Her dad’s note from last night is still there, in the same spot. She takes a deep breath. “When I got back home last night, my parents weren’t here. All I had was this, saying they’d stepped out briefly to get something. They never came back. I tried calling multiple times, but they never answered. …I’m not sure what I should do.”

Olivia puts a hand to her chin. “Have you called the police?”

“No, not yet.”

“I can let my dad know. He’ll bring it up to the rest of the department.” Olivia’s dad was an officer.

“Thanks.”

Olivia taps her foot, thinking deeply. “…Lorene. You can’t let anyone know about this, but… apparently there’s been a good number of disappearances the past few months. My dad and everyone at the station have been swamped, trying to follow up leads, but he said that none of it seemed to line up or connect. I… we’ll find your parents, alright. Let me call him real quick, then let’s see if we can try to trace their steps.”

She gives Lorene a brief comforting hug, then steps away to make her call. Lorene just continues to stare at the table. …Was there a Witch involved? If others had been going missing too, there had to be, right? She’d made sure to hunt down every Witch she’d detected, but maybe it was possible there were ones she’d missed?

Olivia returns. She peers down at the note, reading each word twice. “Hmm… they weren’t very specific about what they were buying. If they were getting something for dinner, maybe they went to the grocery store or a restaurant, but if they went shopping for a gift, they might have gone to the mall.” She turns to look at Lorene. “Any idea which? We can try going to one of those places, to see if anything happened last night?”

>Where to? Or perhaps some other idea might be better?