Sabine scowled. “No, the point is that if I let you cross over, when your dad gets back—and he will get back—he’ll kick my ass for letting you out of my sight.”

“No, he—” Sophie began, but Sabine spoke over her.

“The hell he won’t. Face it, tiny dancer. The only real problem you have is that people actually give a damn about you.”

My cousin blinked in surprise. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Sabine stepped closer, her dark eyes flashing in anger, but there was something deeper than that, too. Something more raw peeking through the cracks in the fearless facade she wore like Sophie wore SPF foundation. “I’m talking about this room. This room is full of people who love you. Who don’t want you to get yourself killed searching a nightmare dimension for the father who loves you more than life itself.” Sabine shoved the chip bag at me, and I took it before I realized what I was doing. “Did you know I had six older sisters?”

“I didn’t...” Sophie looked confused. “You have family?”

“Had. I’m a mara—the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter—which means I had six older sisters and presumably a set of parents who liked kids enough to have at least seven of them. They must have loved kids. But they didn’t want me. They left me on a church doorstep, buckled into a car seat, when I was a toddler. So I don’t have those sisters anymore. I don’t have those parents. What I have is this.” She spread her arms to take in all of us. “These same people you have. And like it or not, they have me. And so do you. Your dad just took custody of me, which means you’re my sister now. You’re the only sister I have left—the only one I’m ever going to have—and I’m not gonna screw that up. I’m not going to throw you away, like they threw me away. I’m not going to let you get hurt. And I’m sure as hell not going to let you hurt yourself. So you put your bony little butt back on that couch and start using your head instead of your mouth, because it’s your head we need right now.”

“My head?” Sophie stared at Sabine in shock. We all stared at Sabine in shock.

“You know your dad better than anyone else here,” the mara said. “You know better than any of us where he’s most likely to go. Where he might hide. When we go back in, we’ll go together, and you’ll be the one telling us where to look. Got it?”

Sophie opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She blinked at Sabine. Then, finally, she nodded. And sat back down.

Luca sat with her, and while they talked softly about where her dad might have gone, I headed into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee, partly to give my hands something to do, partly because I like coffee, and partly because I could already tell it wasgoing to be a long night—those who needed sleep would appreciate the offer of caffeine instead.

“So, how bad is this?” Em said from her bar stool, while I ran water into the glass carafe. “I mean, it feels like we’ve been in a constant state of emergency for the past few months, but is it just me, or do things seem extra dire today?”

I turned off the faucet and poured water from the carafe into the reservoir at the back of the coffeepot. “It’s not just you.” Avari had been taking things from us for months. People we knew and loved. Opportunities we could never get back. He’d taken Sophie’s naivety, Nash’s emotions, and Sabine’s foster mother and home. He’d been party to the scheme that took Emma’s body and Lydia’s soul. But throughout all of that, we’d always had a support network to rely on. Parents, older and wiser, who encouraged, overruled, and protected us out of love.

Now, they were gone. We were on our own, and beyond that forced independence, we were missing parts of our families, both blood and extended. Our positions had been reversed—now our parents needed us to find and protect them, without the advantage of their wisdom and guidance.

The game had changed. We now stood to lose much more than our own lives.

“So, what’s the plan?” Em asked as I dumped dry coffee grounds into the filter.

“We find them, and we bring them back.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.” That was possibly the scariest sentence I’d ever said aloud. “Footwork? Guesswork? Dumb luck? I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but it has to be done.” And that was the bottom line. “Quickly.”

I’d just pressed the brew button when someone gasped from the living room and I looked up to find Tod standing in the middle of the floor, in front of the TV. I only realized I’d reached for a knife from the block by the microwave when my hand closed over the handle.

I let go of the knife as Tod turned toward me, already fielding questions he seemed to have no answers for.

“Did you find them?”

“What about my dad?”

“Are the monsters hunting them? Was there any sign of blood?”

Emma and I stopped in the kitchen doorway while coffee dripped into the carafe.

Tod sat on the end of the coffee table. “I didn’t find them, and I really think that’s a good sign.”

“How on earth is that a good sign?” Sophie demanded. “They’re still missing!”

“Not finding them is a hell of a lot better than finding a pile of blood, bones, and shredded flesh,” Sabine said.

Sophie sobbed, and Luca glared at the mara, who didn’t seem to notice.