And she was.

So I groomed her until the fur on her head and shoulders lay flat. Then I fell asleep beside her.

Twenty-Two

I woke up some time later to find afternoon light streaming through the slats in Kaci’s blinds. I turned my head toward the clock on the nightstand and frustration sparked my temper. Two-oh-four. They had let me sleep for nearly two hours! I didn’t have time for a nap!

But I’d certainly needed one.

Shaking the bed as little as possible, I stepped onto the floor and gathered my shirt and underwear into a pile so I could pinch an edge of each piece between my teeth. Then I padded to the door, which someone had kindly left open for me. Probably my mother, when she’d checked on us.

I Shifted in my own room to keep from waking Kaci, then put on my shirt and underwear and grabbed a fresh pair of jeans from my dresser, since I hadn’t been able to carry the other pair in my mouth.

Dressed and as well rested as I was going to get, I headed straight for the kitchen in search of…anyone who could tell me what I’d missed during my nap. But the kitchen was empty. In fact, the house was quiet all around me, and only when I stood still and listened closely did I hear my mother’s calm, even sleep-breathing from my parents’ bedroom. But I heard nothing from the guys. They must have gone to the guest-house—including Dan.

But they’d left half a pizza on the countertop, still in its grease-stained box. Huh. My mother hadn’t made lunch. Not that I needed her to. However, it was unusual for her not to insist.

I grabbed a slice and ate it cold while I brewed fresh coffee. The fifth pot of the day, by my count. And as my coffee brewed, soft music drifted into the kitchen from across the hall, and I realized my father was in his office. Alone.

When there was enough coffee in the pot, I paused the production and filled two mugs, then carried them into the office. My father sat in his rolling chair with both elbows on his desk, his head in his hands. The stereo on the shelf behind him was broadcasting Mozart softly, several green bars tracking the pitch and tempo of the music as it played.

I set one mug in front of my dad, then lowered myself onto the couch without a word.

“Thank you,” he said, without looking at me. His voice was rough and very deep, but not with anger.

He’d been crying.

“Are you okay?” I asked, relieved to hear my question come out with a gentle, empathetic tone. I sounded like I’d been crying, too, yet my throat was actually raw from holding tears back. The few I’d shed were nowhere near enough, and the rest would have to fall eventually, I knew. But not now.

“Is there any other option?” My father raised his head to meet my eyes, and his were bloodshot, as if he’d been drinking heavily. An empty bottle of Scotch sat on one side of his desk, but he’d finished it long before I’d Shifted with Kaci, so alcohol wasn’t the cause.

“You need some sleep, Daddy.” I wasn’t sure he’d been to bed at all the night before, and knew for a fact that he’d had no more rest than I had over the past few days.

“Yes, I do.” He nodded matter-of-factly and picked up his mug. “But every time I close my eyes, I see Ethan. Or Calvin Malone. Neither of those thoughts seems to usher in sleep.”

“I know.” When I closed my own eyes, images passed behind my eyelids so fast I could barely focus on them. I saw Marc, and Jace, and Ethan, and Manx, and Kevin Mitchell. A slide show of everything that had gone wrong in my life in the past week—my mind bursting with energy, while my body hovered on the edge of exhaustion and collapse no two-hour nap could avert. But there was no time for more sleep, or true rest. “Dad, Kaci’s Shifted, and I have to go back to Mississippi. I have to find Marc.”

A weary sigh slipped past my father’s lips as he pushed his chair back. “I know. Michael and Manx should be back any minute. I want you to brief Michael, then when Dr. Carver has pronounced Kaci fit, you can go.”

As he stood, I glanced at my watch. Two twenty-five. If we left by three-thirty, we could be there by nine. Just in time to take a freezing, after-dark shift searching the woods. “Any word yet from Vic and Parker?”

My dad sank into the armchair at the head of the gathering of furniture, one hand cradling his coffee mug like a lifeline. His free hand curled automatically over the scrolled arm. “They haven’t found anything yet, Faythe.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, clutching my own mug. “We will.” I opened my eyes and stared at him, daring him to tell me the truth. “You believe that, don’t you, Dad?”

“I…” But before he could finish—before he had to finish—an engine growled softly from the front of the property, and I recognized our old van’s labored rumble. “Michael…” My father smiled apologetically at me, then rushed past me into the hall and out the front door. I followed him across the porch and down the steps just as the van rolled to a stop.

Michael was out in an instant, and he barely paused to meet my eyes, his own bloodshot and red rimmed behind the useless lenses of his glasses. Then he turned to slide open the side door and bent into the van to fiddle with something. When he faced me again, he clutched Des carefully to his chest, the baby wrapped in a tiny blue blanket my mother had knitted for him.

For a moment, I stared at him in surprise; Manx never let anyone but my mother handle her son without permission. Michael shifted the baby into a careful, one-handed football hold, like he’d been juggling infants all his life. Then he reached back into the van to help the young mother from the vehicle, his hand supporting her elbow. And that’s when I understood: Manx couldn’t care for her own baby. She probably couldn’t even lift him safely, because her hands were wrapped in thick bandages, from fingertips to wrists.