Once Upon a Second Chance

(32) - What's Sympathy For the De Vil?

"I'm gonna kill them. I'm gonna freaking kill them," Uma seethed as Harry had ignored another one of her calls. They couldn't even track them remotely.

"I swear to the gods, when I find them, I'm going to break Jay's other arm and both of Harry's legs," Mal grumbled as she walked into the hospital room, joining Evie and Uma.

"So, I'm gonna guess you didn't find anything?" Evie sighed as she turned to Mal.

The purple-haired girl shook her head. "Then hospital staff said they ran into the woods. I dragoned-out and searched the entire area for them. No luck. Though Snow White is in the forest, giving the trail a closer look. Apparently, she's one hell of a tracker."

"She was a bandit in the woods, was she not?" Evie chuckled as she put her phone away in defeat after getting off text with Regina.

"Did your mom get any word to you about a locater spell?" Uma asked her.

"Nope. Jay and Harry were thorough, made sure that none of their original possessions were with them when they made their escape," Evie sighed, though it wasn't really that impressive. Really all what Jay and Harry owned and didn't borrow from any of the Storybrooke folk were the clothes they were wearing when they arrived and the things they had on them. Unbeknownst to them, Harry had made sure to burn the clothes.

"We really underestimate the knuckleheads, don't we?" Mal said. "They're more cunning than we give them credit for."

"Obviously a result of spending too much time around us," Evie commented.

"Am I the only one that's worried about them?" a voice chimed in from the doorway. The girls turned around to find Gil standing there with a dismayed expression on his face.

"They'll be fine Gil," Evie assured softy. "Jay can outlive a cockroach."

"And Harry's one hell of a survivor," Uma added with a chuckle.

"But they've never tried surviving in the woods by themselves," Gil argued. And he had a point. Jay and Harry are used to surviving on the Isle of the Lost through methods of thievery, threatening, and violence. The forest was a different story. It was safe to say that Jay and Harry had no knowledge of how to hunt for food, how to build a fire, create shelter, or any necessary skills for the wilderness.

"We don't know they're lost in the woods," Mal tried to ease the blonde boy's nerves. "They could have found their way back to town and are hiding out somewhere there."

They decided that there was no use waiting in the hospital room, so the group left the hospital and made their way to the sheriff's station, where they found the adults.

"Well?" Gil asked them hopefully.

Snow apologized. "I'm sorry. I have no idea why I found no trace of the boys anywhere. And there was no rain, a landslide, anything that could have covered up their tracks. It makes no sense—i-it's almost like magic."

Nobody notice Rumple give a small smirk at the schoolteacher's claim. While some may argue that participating in the shenanigans of two teenage boys is childish and immature of the Dark One, he needed something to entertain him in all the newfound free time he had now that the town was not facing any current threats and he was no longer in the practice of being one of the those threats himself. And watching everybody run around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to find the boys? Well, let's just say the pawnbroker was rather entertained.

"We even attempted mirror magic to show us their location to at least know if they're safe, but it always cancels out on me," Regina said, fearing it meant that it could mean that they were in a place without magic, meaning they could have wandered as far as beyond the town line. However, she decided it was best not to voice her fear out loud to not worry the kids about their friends more than they already are.