“Whatever.” She rolled onto her back again. “Being a kid sucks. People tell you when to get up, when to go to bed, when to eat, what not to wear…”
I glanced up from my dresser, onto which I’d been emptying my jeans pockets, to see her watching me in obvious—and incredibly
misplaced
—envy. “Have you
met
my parents? In case you haven’t noticed, they still tell me what to do.
All the time.
”
“Yeah, well, at least you get paid for it.”
“Not
this
year.” Enforcers drew a small salary, in addition to free room and board. But as part of the “community service” sentence handed down to me from the tribunal in November, in addition to teaching my fellow enforcers to do the partial Shift, I had to forgo my salary for an entire year. All I had now was what little money I’d saved since college and the business credit card all my father’s enforcers had. And that could only be used for official enforcer business. Which apparently did
not
include a pint of New York Super Fudge Chunk. Or a trip to Starbucks.
Oops.
“You love Marc, don’t you?” In the mirror, Kaci’s reflection stared at me, one cheek pressed into the comforter.
Surprised, I turned from the dresser to find her watching me in undisguised curiosity, as if my life served no other purpose than to entertain her. Yet I
wasn’t irritated, as I would no doubt have been if my mother were the one interrogating me, because Kaci had no ulterior motive. She wasn’t trying to talk me into anything, or manipulate me. She just wanted to know…
everything.
Sighing, I crossed my bedroom and sat facing her on the bed, my legs folded beneath me, yoga style. “Do I love Marc?” I repeated, and she nodded, sitting up with her back against my headboard. I pulled my fluffy pink punching pillow into my lap—if I was going to voluntarily engage in girl talk, I might as well be properly armed.
“Yes, I love Marc.”
So much that it
hurts
not to see and touch him every day.
“What about Jace?”
My chest tightened, and my heart seemed to be trying to beat its way free. “What about him?”
“He likes you. Like
Marc
likes you.”
“What makes you think that?” I gave her my best blank face.
“He watches you.
All
the time. If you need something, he brings it to you. And when he looks at you, his heart beats
really
hard. I can hear it.” She smiled slyly, and her big hazel eyes glinted. “Like yours is doing right now.”
Damn it.
I resisted the urge to close my eyes, or otherwise betray my frustration, which she would probably notice, like she had my heartbeat. “Kaci, that’s really… complicated.”
“Because you don’t like him like that?” Bald hope flooded Kaci’s features, and suddenly I understood. This wasn’t about me and Marc. It was about
Jace.
Kaci had a crush on Jace.
Oh, shit.
An interest in boys was a nice, normal development for a girl her age, and might go a long way toward convincing her to Shift, so she’d be healthy enough to start dating—with several huge, protective chaperones. But Jace was nearly twenty-five, and Kaci was only thirteen. She needed a boy her
own
age to crush on.
Yet another reason to get her enrolled in school.
But as for her actual question… “Kaci, I’m with Marc.”
“So, Jace is single, right?”
Kaci frowned again and glanced at my open bedroom door. Then she turned back to me, and when she spoke, her voice was a barely audible whisper. “How old were you when you and Marc first…”
Mayday, mayday!
Alarms went off in my head, and my eyes snapped shut in denial. I was
not
ready to have this conversation with Kaci. And somehow we were back to her looking at my life as a blueprint for her own. I didn’t want that kind of responsibility! I wanted the freedom to mess up and know that my mistakes wouldn’t screw up anyone’s life but my own.
Unfortunately, I’d kind of given up that privilege when I became an enforcer.
“Whoa, Kaci, back up a bit.” I shook my head and made myself meet her frank gaze. “You’re waaaay too young to be thinking about sex.”
She rolled her eyes, and the gesture was eerily
familiar from my own adolescence. Okay, also from what little of my adulthood I’d survived so far.
“I was talking about
kissing,
” Kaci said, in that exasperated tone she usually saved for my mother, during homeschooling. “I just meant, how old were you when you first kissed Marc? But since you brought up sex…” Her eyes glinted with a spark of mischief. “Same question.”
Damn it!
“Way older than you are.” My head was throbbing and pain was shooting through my chest. I was having a panic attack. The little whelp was giving me an aneurism!
I was a firm believer in telling the truth, but some of my truths weren’t suitable for such young ears, and I did
not
want to screw up someone
else’s
kid!
I had to redirect. Change the subject. Turn the conversation back onto her before my mother decided to step in. But Kaci was still talking…
“Was it your idea, or his?”
Oh, shit.
But she wasn’t done yet.
“Does it hurt? ‘Cause I heard…”
Okay, this has to stop.
I threw up one hand, palm facing her, in the universal sign for
halt!
Then I took a deep breath and glanced at the open door again, this time thinking of escape, rather than of being overheard. But that was the coward’s way out. If I could stand against multiple strays in cat form, wielding only a shovel, surely I could face a single thirteen-year-old and her birds-and-bees inquisition.
And, if not, I could procrastinate with the best of them.
“You’re throwing an awful lot of questions at me all at once, Kaci. And asking for a lot of very personal information.”
Her face fell, and she tugged aimlessly at the frayed cuff of her jeans. “You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”
I sighed. Answering her questions—at least some of them—might go a long way toward getting her to truly trust me. Which might help me convince her to Shift. But no true compromise was one-sided. “I tell you what. I will answer three of your questions—any three you want…”
Her eyes lit up in expectation.
“…
after
you Shift.”
Kaci scowled. Then she stood, more color draining from her already pale face, and stomped across my room and through the open doorway.
“I take it that’s a no?” I called after her.
She slammed her bedroom door in reply, and I flinched.
Well,
that
went well…
“A
gain!” Ethan wrapped both bare arms around the heavy punching bag to steady it, and I shot him a look meant to scorch him from the inside out. Or at least to shut him up. “Harder this time. And a little higher. Hit his knee from the side, and he’ll go down. Then it’s all over but the beatin’.”
“He doesn’t
have
knees,” I snapped, wiping sweat from my forehead with an equally sweaty forearm. There was a clean, dry towel hanging over a folding chair near the bathroom, but I was too tired to cross the basement for it. “He doesn’t even have
legs
.”
“Oh, you got
jokes?
” Ethan grinned amiably, his green eyes flashing in challenge. He dropped his arms, then stepped around the bag, his sneakers sinking into the thick blue mat with each step. “If you’ve got energy to be funny, we’re not working you hard enough. Right, Kaci?”
“Right.” The young tabby tucked her legs up onto
her folding metal chair and sipped from a covered mug filled with hot chocolate. Then she grinned at me and set her drink back on the bench press serving as an end table. The night before, she’d officially forgiven me for pushing the Shifting issue so hard. Still, she didn’t seem to mind watching Ethan kick my ass….
Little traitor.
Our basement was unheated, but was naturally insulated by the earth surrounding it, so the slight chill seeping in from the high windows was no problem for me or Ethan. After only half an hour of moderate lifting, he and I were both covered in sweat, even wearing only light workout clothes. In fact, he’d shed his shirt several minutes earlier.
But Kaci shivered beneath long sleeves, jeans, and a light blanket. She didn’t have enough energy to exercise with us, and she lacked the body fat to keep herself warm, but no amount of begging, coercing, or threatening on our part could convince her to go back upstairs, where my mother waited with more cocoa and an algebra textbook.
I could probably have
made
her go up, but I’d decided not to push the issue because she was still mad at me over the unanswered sex questions. Besides, we’d be heading up for lunch soon anyway.
“You’re not
working
me at all.” I reached up to catch the towel Ethan tossed me. “You’re practicing
with
me, not
on
me. Or do you need another reminder?”
“What I need is an actual
challenge,
smart-ass.” Ethan winked at Kaci, who grinned, enjoying our banter. “Think you can manage that?”
“Oh, you’re asking for it n—” Before I could finish the sentence, Ethan charged.
I lunged to the right, but I was too slow. His shoulder clipped my arm, knocking me off balance. I hit the thick pad on my hip and rolled out of the way. He slammed into the mat where I’d been, but I was already on my feet.
I dropped onto his back and planted my knee in his spine. Ethan howled and bucked. I straddled him for stability. My hand closed around his flailing right arm and I dug in the pocket of my workout pants for my cuffs.
Ethan’s left hand brushed my leg, then closed around the back of my knee. He tugged me forward. I leaned back to counter and snapped one cuff over his right wrist. He pulled harder, and I slid onto the mat with my left leg folded beneath me.
My brother tossed his weight over me, and we rolled. His elbow hit my ribs. His skull slammed into my right cheekbone, but I held on to my cuffs. Dizzy now, I stuck one knee out to halt our roll. We stopped with him facedown, me straddling his back again, and this time I didn’t hesitate. I pulled his left arm back and snapped the other cuff closed over his wrist.
Then I stood and backed away, waiting for the sparks. Waiting to gloat as he ranted and raged, demanding to be let loose.
Instead he shook with laughter.
I stared at Ethan for a moment, a little disappointed, then turned when I heard Kaci giggling behind me.
“That was
awesome!
” she yelled, on her feet now, the cocoa forgotten.
“I agree.” Ethan’s words were muffled with half of his face pressed into the mat, and I turned to find him watching me, now lying on his right shoulder. “That was damned impressive.” He smiled, looking almost as pleased as he would have been had our positions been reversed. “But let’s not tell anyone, ‘kay? We’ll keep this a private victory, just between the three of us.”
“No way!” Kaci shouted, grinning so hard her cheeks were flushed with excitement. Or maybe with the cold. “Faythe
owns
you! I wish I had a camera. Wait till Jace—”
Ethan’s phone rang, Puddle of Mudd singing “She Hates Me.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Whose ring is that?”
He let his head hit the mat. “Angela’s.”
Kaci glanced at the bench press, where two cell phones lay, alongside her hot chocolate and two bottles of water. She picked up his phone and glanced at the display, her eyes shining in mischief. “You want me to tell her you’re all tied up?”
“No!” Ethan shouted, scooting awkwardly across the mat on his side. “Don’t answer it. She wants to ‘talk about our relationship.’ I’ve been dodging her calls all week.”
I rolled my eyes and dug my handcuff key from one side of my sneaker. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just tell her you’re no longer into white rice? Or that you’re moving to Yemen? Or whatever you tell those poor
girls when your attention span turns out to be smaller than your—” I hesitated, censoring myself on Kaci’s behalf “—
IQ,
and you get bored with them?”
“No.” Ethan went still as I freed his hands, then he sat up, rubbing his wrists as Puddle of Mudd played on. “It’s easier to avoid her calls until she gets the picture on her own. That way, no one gets dumped. Really, I’m doing her a favor.”
“You’re an ass.” I was seriously considering answering his phone myself. But then the ringing stopped, and Kaci dropped the phone onto the padded bench next to mine. “And just for that, I’m not letting you up next time.”
Ethan had barely regained his feet when I rushed him. My shoulder slammed into his chest. I drove him backward onto the mat again, and his breath exploded from his chest in a massive “oof.”
“Yeah!” Kaci shouted, and I twisted to see her standing again, her smile almost as big as mine.
But I shouldn’t have looked.
Ethan grabbed my left shoulder and rolled me over, sitting on my thighs. “So much for a challenge,” he taunted.
I retorted with my fist.
My first blow landed on his ribs, and I shoved him off me. But before I could flip him onto his stomach and go for my cuffs again, more music rang out from the bench next to Kaci.
Papa Roach, singing “Scars.” That was my phone. Marc’s ring.
I was halfway to the bale of hay when something hit my back, fast and hard. I fell face-first onto the mat, Ethan’s weight pinning me.
“You’re too easily distracted,” he scolded. “Are you going to ask the bad guys to stop beating on you for a minute so you can answer your phone?”
I twisted beneath him but couldn’t get any leverage; he’d pinned my arms to my sides. “Get
up!
” I shouted, as loud as I could with his weight constricting my lungs. “That’s Marc!”
Ethan slid off me reluctantly. “You don’t see me going all starry-eyed when my girlfriend’s on the line,” he huffed.
“You’re not even taking her calls.” I glanced at Kaci and held my right hand up, palm cupped. “Toss it here, please.”
Her aim was good, but mine wasn’t. The phone flew past my hand and landed on the mat behind me. Ethan dove for it, an impish grin lighting his whole face. But I was faster. My fingers closed around the plastic just as his closed around my arm, and I put the phone in my other hand, flipping it open as Ethan groaned in defeat.
The look on his face was so comical that I was laughing when I spoke into the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Faythe? Is that you?” At first I didn’t recognize the voice, either because I was expecting Marc’s, or because the speaker sounded so panicked. But understanding didn’t take long. “This is Daniel Painter.” He huffed into the phone like he’d just run a marathon.
My heart stopped beating for a moment, even as my pulse tripped so fast the surge of adrenaline actually hurt. “What’s wrong?” I shoved Ethan when he tried to snatch the phone from me, still playing around. But my tone froze him in place, and the smile drained from his expression. He glanced at my phone, and I knew he was listening in.
“Marc’s gone, and there are two dead toms in his living room.” Painter’s words all ran together and at first I thought I’d misunderstood him. I
must
have misunderstood him. “Some of the blood is theirs, but lots of it is his, too….”
There was blood?
My heart seemed to burst within my chest, flooding me with more pain and confusion than I could sort through at once. I fell off my knees onto my rump and could barely feel the mat I sat on. My hands tingled as if they were on hold, waiting to receive signals from my brain, and I was afraid I’d drop the phone.
Painter was still talking in my ear, babbling words I couldn’t understand. Phrases that wouldn’t sink in.
Bastards. Dead. Blood. Missing.
I could barely hear him over the static in my head, the ambient noise of my own denial.
“Faythe!” Ethan muttered. I blinked and shook my head, then forced my eyes to make sense of his face. “Slow him down. Make him give you the facts.”
Right. The facts.
And just like that, the world hurled itself back into focus around me, the entire barn tilting wildly for a
moment before everything seemed to settle with an eerily crisp clarity. I met my brother’s eyes, thanking him wordlessly for the mental face-slap. “Take Kaci upstairs and get Dad. I think he’s in the barn.”
By the time I’d gotten a deep breath, Ethan was on the bottom step, one hand beckoning Kaci to follow him, the other flipping open his own phone, because he could call the barn much faster than he could get there, even with a werecat’s speed.
“Faythe?” Dan was shouting now and I took a moment to be grateful that I got a strong signal in our basement. “Are you there?”
“I’m here. Calm down and explain it to me slowly.” I stood, and almost lost my balance when one foot hit the concrete floor and the other sank into the thick mat. “Marc is gone, but you smell his blood. Is that right?”
“It’s everywhere,” Painter said, with no hesitation, and I pictured him nodding, though I couldn’t see the gesture over the line. “There’s a thick trail of it leading across the carpet to the front door. Like someone dragged him off.”
Oh, shit. Oh, noooo!
Stop it, Faythe. He’s lost a lot of blood, but that doesn’t mean he’s dead.
Marc would be fine. We just had to find him.
“Where does the trail go?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice calm and even. If I panicked, Dan might panic, and we’d lose valuable time that would be better spent looking for Marc. “Does it continue out the front door?”
“Yeah. Across the front stoop, down the steps and over the grass. That’s how I knew something was wrong when I got here.”
“So, it ends in the grass?”
“On the edge of the driveway.” Painter paused, and I heard a metallic groan, as a screen door creaked open. “It looks like they put him in a car and took off with him. There’re big ruts in the gravel from where they peeled off too fast.” He hesitated again, then asked the question I hadn’t even posed to myself yet. “Do you think he’s dead?”
My eyes closed, and I inhaled deeply. Then exhaled slowly. “I don’t know.” I sucked in another breath and forced my concentration back to the work at hand, and away from thoughts I couldn’t bear to entertain. “Did they take his car?”
“No. It’s up next to the house. Along the south side, where he always parks it.” The screen door slammed shut with a horrid tinny screech, and Painter’s voice echoed slightly, now that it had four walls to bounce off again.
“Should I go look for Marc, or start cleaning up the mess?” Painter inhaled deeply, obviously trying to calm himself. “And the
bodies…
?”
I wanted to tell him to forget about the bodies and start driving around town on the lookout for Marc. Or into the forest, keeping an eye out for fresh tire tracks. But the truth was that if there were enough of them to take Marc down, there would be too many for Painter to handle on his own. Assuming he found them.
My mind was flooded by the possibilities. Maybe they’d taken him alive. But if so, why? And where?
Maybe they’d killed him, and had left to dispose of the body. My eyes watered, and my fist clenched around the phone, the nails of my opposite hand biting into my flesh. No. That’s not what happened. If they’d killed him, why not dispose of all three bodies at once? Why leave the others?
Unless the killers drove a compact…
“Okay, let’s take it one thing at a time.” My feet moved as I spoke, and I found myself on the aisle formed by two rows of weight-lifting equipment. “The other bodies. Are they strays? Do you know them?” I thought about going upstairs, but didn’t want Kaci to overhear anything that might upset her.
“Yeah, they’re strays. I recognize the scents, but don’t know the names.”
“There are two of them, right?” I ran my hand over the leg press, cursing silently when a flake of paint slid beneath my fingernail. “And they bled on the carpet?”
“Yeah.” Floorboards creaked, and I pictured Painter leaning over the bodies. “The carpet, themselves, each other. The biggest one has a huge gash on the top of his skull. Near the back. And the coffee table’s broken and covered in his blood. Looks like he fell and hit it. Or else someone hit him
with
it.”
Yeah, that sounded like Marc. An odd pang of pride and pain rang through me, as I hoped fervently that he was still alive to repeat that performance someday.
“What about the other one?”
“Side of his head’s caved in. Looks like someone took a rung-back chair to ‘im.”
“Okay, now I need you to sniff around. Concentrate. Do you smell any scents that don’t belong to either Marc or the dead strays? Did anyone else bleed in there recently? Or sweat? Or touch anything? Sniff the doorknobs first, then anything that might have been used as a weapon. Did you touch the doorknob?”