Something was horribly wrong. It had to be for Laura to take off like that. As usual, welcomed or not, Libby refused to let her best friend suffer alone. Whatever it was that upset her, Libby wasn't about to let the Yosemite trip have an encore.
"I'm so sorry, tonight wasn't supposed to turn out like this," she said, apologizing profusely to Sean, heading back towards where her truck was parked. She prayed he wouldn't take it personally. "I hate to ask, but can we please... can we just drive to the Preserve. Laura seemed really upset. I want to make sure she's okay."
As they walked, Libby felt increasingly not so great. It was a churning in the pit of her stomach. Maybe it was something she ate. She knew she shouldn't have nervously consumed so much caffeine and sugar so quickly. By the time they got back to the Cheyenne, waves of dizziness was coming on. She handed Sean the keys, citing her dizzy spell, but insisted that she didn't need to go to the doctor's even though she felt like she was about to pass out. She was just a little queasy. It was no big deal.
But she knew it wasn't just a little queasiness. As they drove, windows rolled down in an attempt to ease some of her nausea, Libby began to recognize the signs. The closer they got to the Preserve, the stronger her sense grew of something terrible about to happen. The static flickers sparked at the edge of her vision. Oh no...
They pulled up to the edge of the Preserve. As soon as she jumped out of the truck, she could smell burning. Forest fires weren't too unusual in California, but the bright orange glow against the night sky told of a more foreboding tale. She caught sight of a particularly strong flicker to her side as a dark figure snapped into visibility next to her.
Libby turned to look and her breath caught. A familiar dark-haired woman stood there with her hands folded in front of her. Someone she's met more than once. Someone who came out to visit her two children in the big city and extended her warm maternal quality towards Libby as well. If she was here, like this, Libby knew exactly what that meant.
"Talia..." The name was painful to utter. Her throat felt tight. Constricted. And it was not merely due to the heavy waft of smoke in the air.
"Take care of them," said Talia Hale, before the image of her flickered and faded away.
Libby took off at a run towards the Hale house. She didn't even care at the moment that Sean was witnessing this. He probably thought she'd gone insane, talking to people who weren't there and running off into the middle of the woods at night. She didn't care about anything but getting to Laura's side as quickly as possible. Her mother was dead. Who knows what that meant for the rest of the family. Where was Derek? Her mind raced. She needed to find him.
Every step she took that brought her closer to the blazing inferno was like a punch to the chest. She's never felt this before, the feeling of people dying. Many people. Violently. She hasn't cleared the hill yet, but she knew what she would find on the other side of it. The smell of burning was almost cloyingly sweet, enough to make her want to choke. That awful taste of smoke, like burnt sugar and arsenic, will never wash clean from the back of her throat. It was all too much. She wanted to hurl. The dizziness grew.
Like a tidal wave, blackness washed over her and Libby suddenly didn't know down from up. Dimly, she felt her limbs like lead as she sank, knees giving out and the ground rushing up to meet her. The tidal wave crashed and the blackness claimed her.