“I already do, after hearing your voice.” His tone was as warm and pleasant as spring sunshine, yet for my life, I didn’t know how to respond. Maybe if he’d sounded more like moonlight…But Andrew had nothing in common with the night.

Nothing at al . That had always worked in his favor before.

“That’s sweet,” I said final y, cringing at my own dim-witted response. “I’l cal you later.”

“Sure.” Was that a tremor of doubt in his voice? Andrew didn’t deserve doubt.

Not because of me.

I knew I should say something reassuring, or at least friendly, but again words failed me. Al except for one. “Bye.”

“Bye.”

Faythe, you are such an idiot! I thought as I pressed the End button.

Andrew was everything I wanted, in the only place I wanted to be, but I couldn’t think of a thing to say to him.

It would be better when I went back to school. It had to be better, because it certainly couldn’t get any worse.

Disgusted, I threw the phone at my headboard. It bounced off a pil ow and onto the floor. As I bent to pick it up, another set of footsteps rushed past my door.

I froze, sniffing the air, and caught just enough scent for identification. Parker. His footsteps stopped farther down the hal , replaced by the creak of hinges. Tense whispers rose over the creaking. I heard a faint click, and the whispering stopped abruptly.

Only one room in the house blocked noise that wel . Daddy had cal ed a meeting in his office. Without me.

That’s just freaking great. Irritation flowed through me like the tide, cold and numbing. He drags me back here, then lets me sleep through all the excitement. I tossed the phone onto my dresser, where it slid across the smooth surface and off the far end. I was in the hal before it hit the carpet.

With my ear pressed to the office door, I strained to hear something. Anything.

I got nothing but unintel igible mumbles. Stupid solid-oak door! I tried the knob gently, but it wouldn’t turn. They’d locked it. Nice try, but it would take more than a thumb-press lock to keep me out.

I gripped the doorknob with one hand over the other and jerked it to the right, hard. The lock snapped, and when I let go, the door swung open to reveal seven surprised faces, gathered around a picnic blanket scattered with the remains of their breakfast: two slices of French toast, a smal pile of bacon, and two half-full pots of coffee.

“Is this an exclusive party?” I asked, coming in uninvited. Everything looked different this morning than it had the night before. The room was brighter, shadows cast from the bril iant overhead fixture, rather than from a dim floor lamp. Light shined in the beveled edges of the matching glass end tables and sparkled on awards in the curio cabinet behind my father’s desk. Yet in stark contrast to the bright, cheery morning, every face in the room was shadowed, seemingly from within.

“We thought we’d let you sleep in, dear,” my mother said from the leather love seat, where she sat next to Owen. Her eyes and nose were red from crying.

Something was definitely wrong.

“Do we always have breakfast on the office floor now?” I arched an eyebrow at my father, but he just glanced at my shirt and raised one back at me.

“Remind me not to subsidize any more of your wardrobe,” he said, waving a hand generously at the remaining food. I plopped down on the floor between Ethan and Jace, grabbing a paper plate from the stack. They must have come from the guesthouse, because my mother never bought paper plates. She said they were emblematic of society’s trend toward al things disposable, along with plastic razors, foam coffee cups and shotgun weddings.

Jace handed me a mug, and I washed down a mouthful of bacon with a gulp of tepid coffee. It was black. Yuck. “So, what’s with the picnic?” I glanced at my mother, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. Neither would Owen or Parker. I lowered the coffee slowly and looked at Marc, but he only stared at the syrup-sticky crumbs on his plate. Definitely not a good sign.

“Oh, come on. I’m going to find out eventual y, so you might as wel get it over with the easy way.”

Jace squirmed and I pinned him with my eyes. A good hunter can always spot the weakest animal in the herd. Regarding classified information, Jace fit the bil .

“Abby’s missing,” he said, glancing at me in sympathy for an instant before staring back down into his mug.

I made myself swal ow my mouthful of coffee, and then clamped my jaws shut to keep from throwing it back up. If it had just been Jace, I could have safely assumed he was playing a tasteless joke, but my parents would never go along with something like that. Neither would Marc, no matter what I’d tried to bite off.

“Abby?” I prayed silently that I’d heard them wrong. “She’s just a kid.”

“Seventeen last month,” my mother said. Her glass shook in her hand, sloshing coffee onto her unironed slacks. Owen took it from her gently, and she never even glanced at him.

“Since when?” I asked, my breakfast forgotten.

“She went to a party last night and never came back. The host said she left around ten o’clock, and no one’s seen her since.”

“Ten o’clock last night?” I glanced from my mother to my father, trying to remember what I’d been doing at that exact moment. Probably faking sleep on the drive home. “You’ve known since last night and didn’t tel me?”

“No.” My father cracked one thick knuckle. “We got the cal five hours ago. Her parents wanted to make sure she was real y gone before involving anyone else.”