I woke up in my own room for the first time in more than two years, groaning as highlights from the day before played in my mind like a silent film in fast-forward. Burying my head beneath my pillows, I willed the morning away, but it refused to go. Instead, it greeted my ill-humored grunt with bright, irritatingly cheerful sunlight and the incessant trilling of a bird from the branches of the stunted blackjack oak outside my window.
“I haven’t had breakfast yet, you know,” I grumbled in the general direction of the racket. You’d think birds would know better than to irritate a sleep-deprived cat.
Resigned to rising at last, I sat up in bed. My eyes roamed the walls, settling on the mirror over my dresser, where several photographs were wedged between the glass and the oak frame, climbing the edge of the reflective surface like a vine of memories. I glanced over them, experiencing my life as a series of moments frozen in time, neat and orderly in their full-color, glossy splendor.
At the bottom of the mirror was a snapshot taken at the ranch the summer I was seventeen, less than two months before I left for college. It showed a group of eight girls, ranging in age from twelve to twenty, beaming bright white smiles from the front gate. That photo represented the future of the American Prides, because it showed every unmarried female cat of childbearing age in the entire country.
Ours was one of ten territories in the continental United States, each protected and governed by a single Pride Alpha. Each Alpha was the head of that territory’s core family group, consisting of the Alpha’s mate and their children—typically several boys and the long-awaited daughter—and a group of loyal enforcers. In addition, each Pride had between twenty and forty other loyal tomcats, mostly the Alphas’ uncles, brothers, sons, and nephews, who led their own lives spread out across the territory. Unfortunately, in contrast to the surplus of tomcats, no Alpha in recent history had sired more than a single tabby to give birth to the next generation. And for that reason, we were very, very valuable.
Our ranks had shrunk and swelled since the photo was taken, as older girls got married and younger ones entered puberty. There were eight of us again, spread out over all ten territories, but now I was the oldest—by several years. In the picture, I stood in the middle of the front row, my left arm around my cousin Abby and my right around…
Sara.
My stomach growled, as usual, announcing its demands first thing in the morning, and I wondered if Sara was having breakfast, wherever she was.
With a stretch and a sigh, I threw back the covers and swung my legs over the edge of the bed into a patch of sunlight pouring through the window. Wait, that’s wrong. Sunlight shouldn’t hit that part of the room until midmorning.
I glanced at the alarm clock. Ten twenty-four. That couldn’t be right. The last time my mother let me sleep through breakfast was the day my grandmother died. My mother hadn’t changed a bit in the last few years, so something had to be wrong.
A search of my suitcase produced more books than clothing, but I found a pale blue stretchy tee that would work. It read It’s not the length of the word; It’s how well you use it. Daddy would love it. I pulled my nightshirt over my head and tossed it onto the bed, then donned the shirt and stepped into the jeans I’d worn the day before.
I was tugging a brush through my nest of black tangles when the first polyphonic notes of “Criminal” rang out faintly from somewhere behind me. My phone. Where did I leave my phone? I’d been home for roughly twelve hours and had already forgotten I had a life outside of the Lazy S. That was one of the dangers of coming home. Home traps you. It swallows you whole, like a sandpit of nostalgia, sucking at you until you can neither move nor think, and you choke on your own panic.
Or maybe I was just being paranoid.
I tossed the contents from my suitcase, searching for the source of the music. The bottom layer of canvas stared back at me, empty, but still the music played. Grunting in frustration, I threw the bag across the room. Its plastic-reinforced corner left a dent in the wall. Great. But Fiona Apple’s sultry, alto crooning grew louder. There it was, half an inch of shiny chrome sticking out from under my bed skirt. I lunged for it, glad I’d disabled my voicemail.
Still panting from my frantic search, I pushed the Talk button, cutting Fiona off in midsyllable. “Hello?”
“So I woke up this morning thinking something was wrong, and it took me a moment to figure out what it was.”
Huh? I held the phone out at arm’s length, staring at it as if it were to blame for the speaker’s lack of sense.
The caller spoke again. “This is the part where you ask me what was wrong.”
Ah. It was Andrew. I should have known.
“Faythe? Are you there?”
I put the phone back up to my ear, but a long moment passed before I could answer. Hearing his voice in my father’s house was disorienting and vaguely uncomfortable, as if two very separate halves of my life had collided, crushing me between them and making it nearly impossible for me to think, much less speak.
“Faythe?” Concern raised Andrew’s pitch, exaggerating the stuffy sound of his voice.
I swallowed, wincing at how dry my throat felt. “Yeah, I’m here.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah. I just woke up.” I sank onto the bed facing the mirror, where the photographs mocked me from various points in my own past.
“Me, too. That’s what was wrong.”
“Huh?” My eyes settled on the photo of me and Marc at my senior prom. Try as I might to drag my gaze from it, Marc’s eyes kept pulling mine back. They seemed to follow me from the photo, glinting in amusement at my futile attempt to concentrate on what Andrew was saying. Or maybe they were just reflecting the clear Christmas lights used as prom decorations.
“I slept through my alarm and missed my first class.”
“Oh, no.” I turned my back on the photo, pleased at my victory over Marc’s picture-self.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t feel like learning anything today anyway. My cold’s worse, and I think I have a bit of a fever. Anyway, I’d much rather talk to you than go to class.”
“Thanks.”
Thanks? Okay, I’m a moron. My brain just doesn’t kick in until I get some caffeine, but even after a gallon of coffee, I wouldn’t have known what to say to Andrew. Talking to him felt awkward, like we’d been out of touch for months instead of for a single day.
“What did your dad say about me coming to visit between summer terms?”
“Oh. Uh… I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet. But I will.” I punched my fancy pillow, glad he wasn’t there to see the dread on my face. I did not look forward to having that conversation with my father. Or any other conversation, come to think of it.
“Good. I’ll be there in three weeks.”
Yeah. Great. He’d never make it out alive.
I was only vaguely aware that Andrew was still talking, until the lengthening silence told me it was my turn to speak. Crap. “You faded out for a second there.” I rolled my eyes at my own lie. “What did you say?”
“I asked you how many you have.”
“How many what?” Over the phone, I heard his sheets rustle as he moved. He really must feel bad if he’s still in bed, I thought.
“How many brothers.”
“Oh. Uh, four.” I saw no reason to explain about Ryan being MIA for most of the last decade. Or about anything else, for that matter.
“Four. Wow. Your parents must have really been trying for a girl, huh?”
You have no idea.
“Faythe, is anything wrong?”
“Yes. No.” I frowned in confusion, one hand hovering over my face to shield my eyes from the sunlight. If only it could shield me from my life too… “Everything’s fine. I’m just still half-asleep.”
I sat up, glancing at my bedroom door as footsteps hurried past in the hall. “Hey, I was just about to get something to eat. Can I call you back later?” I sniffed the air, trying to identify the owner of the footsteps. No luck. I was too slow.
“Sure,” Andrew said. “I was about to head out for breakfast anyway. I’m starving.”
“Okay, go eat. And I hope you feel better,” I said, too preoccupied with the footsteps in the hall to inject any sincerity into my reply.
“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 all. That had always worked in his favor before.
“That’s sweet,” I said finally, cringing at my own dim-witted response. “I’ll call 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. All 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 pillow 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 hall, 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 well. Daddy had called 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 hall before it hit the carpet.
With my ear pressed to the office door, I strained to hear something. Anything. I got nothing but unintelligible 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 small 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 brilliant 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 all 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 eventually, so you might as well 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 bill. “Abby’s missing,” he said, glancing at me in sympathy for an instant before staring back down into his mug.
I made myself swallow 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 tell me?”
“No.” My father cracked one thick knuckle. “We got the call five hours ago. Her parents wanted to make sure she was really gone before involving anyone else.” Abby and her family lived in North Carolina, which was an hour ahead of us. According to my quick mental math, she could have been missing for as many as thirteen hours.
My hand clenched around my mug, and I lowered it carefully to the blanket, knowing that if I didn’t put the cup down, I’d crush it. The edges of my vision blurred as the first tears threatened. I blinked them away, impatient for more information. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“We thought you might take the news badly, dear.” My mother watched me through eyes glazed with shock. Maybe they shouldn’t have told her either.
Abby Wade was my mother’s niece, her brother Rick’s only daughter, and in a community with very few women, we were all pretty close, in spite of the distance between us. I’d always thought of Abby as my little sister, and my mother indulged her as she’d never indulged me, because she could send Abby home at the first sign of trouble. Not that Abby ever caused trouble. She was a good girl, liked by literally everyone who knew her. She was the only family member I’d kept in contact with from UNT. In fact, I’d spoken to her less than a week earlier.
And now she was missing.
“Who’s doing this?” I demanded of the room in general, knowing no one had an answer.
“We’re going to find out,” Daddy said. I looked at him with simultaneous hope and doubt. I was way too old to believe my father could make everything okay, but I still desperately wanted it to be true.
“They asked for help?”
Daddy nodded, brushing the tip of his chin with the knuckles of his clasped hands. “I’m convening the council. They’ll need a description to start with.” He watched me expectantly.
I nodded. “Shorter than Marc but taller than me. Small-to-medium build. Black eyes and dark curly hair. Foreign scent—probably a jungle cat.” I glanced at Marc, thinking about what he’d told me the night before.
“Anything else?” my father asked.
“Yeah.” I met his gaze, unblinking. “A broken nose.”
The smallest hint of a smile teased the corner of his mouth, like a twitch. Then it was gone, but it had been enough. He was proud. I could see it. “Thank you, Faythe. I’ll pass the description on.”
“The Di Carlos’ plane lands at one, and they need a ride from the airport,” Michael said from behind me.
I whirled around, and Ethan sputtered as my hair smacked him in the face. I ignored him, surprised to realize I’d slept through Michael’s arrival. I should have known that teaching myself to sleep through the incessant noise in an apartment building would come back to bite me on the ass.
“How many are coming?” Daddy asked.
“Four.” Michael smoothed the front of another in his collection of nearly identical suit jackets. “Bert and Donna, and two of the boys. Vic’s staying behind to help search for Sara.”
“I’ll pick them up in the van,” Parker offered, and Daddy nodded.
“What about Abby’s parents?” Mom asked.
“Uncle Rick and Aunt Melissa are coming to meet with the council, but the guys are staying behind, in case they find her.”
“Fine. Thanks, Michael.” Daddy stood to excuse himself, handing his mug to my mother. “I’ll make the rest of the calls personally. We’ll have a houseful by this evening, so I don’t need to remind you all to be on your best behavior.” He was looking at me. Why was he only looking at me?
“What?” I couldn’t be in trouble already. I’d just gotten up.
“We’ll talk about Marc’s leg later.”
Oh. That.
“It was an accident, Greg,” Marc said without so much as a glance in my direction.
Daddy eyed Marc with one hand resting on the back of his chair, his gaze unwavering. “She accidentally bit your leg through to the bone?”
Marc blinked but remained silent.
“That’s what I thought.” Daddy turned on his heel and headed for the hall, apparently planning to make the calls from the phone in his room. He was gruff at times, but almost never truly rude, which meant that he was either really mad at me for biting Marc, or really worried about Sara and Abby. I wasn’t sure which I preferred.
With my father gone, my mother fluttered uselessly around the office, clearing away food and generally getting on everyone’s nerves. She couldn’t help it. She was visibly upset, and the only way she knew of to deal with strong emotions was to clean everything in sight.
I hadn’t inherited that particular problem. I dealt with my emotions the old-fashioned way: by tearing things apart. With my teeth and claws.
What the hell, I thought, glancing at the cold remains of their indoor picnic. I’m hungry anyway. I pulled my top off and dropped it on the floor. The guys stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. Okay, so I’d never stripped in my father’s office before, but I’d have to be naked to Shift, unless I wanted to spend most of my time and money restocking my ruined wardrobe. Which I did not. Did it really matter whether I took my clothes off inside or on the lawn?
My mother turned toward me with a coffeepot in each hand, her jaw dangling somewhere near her collarbone. You’d think she’d never seen me naked, when I knew for a fact I’d been born that way, and she’d seen me sans clothing on countless occasions since. We’d all seen each other naked; there was no practical way to avoid it, even if we’d wanted to.
Nudity was too routine in a houseful of werecats to be considered sexual. It took a certain context—a particular kind of intimacy and erotic intent—for bare skin to cross the line between ordinary and arousing. In fact, tight or skimpy clothes were more exciting to most toms because they were intentionally sexy, whereas nudity was simply natural.
But my mother lived in some kind of 1950s fantasy world that even most human households would consider prudish. “Katherine Faythe Sanders, put your shirt back on this instant!”
Uh-oh. All three names.
“Really, Faythe, was that necessary?” Michael asked, but the glimmer of amusement in his eyes was unmistakable. I smiled. Like Daddy, he probably genuinely disapproved of most of my wardrobe, but he had no problem with nudity, so long as it served a valid purpose. Only my mother did.
I glanced around the room, taking in the guys all at once. “I’m going hunting, if anyone wants to join me.”
“I’m in.” Ethan’s shirt hit the floor a second before Jace’s. Parker laughed out loud.
“Boys, please don’t encourage her,” my mother groaned, setting down one coffeepot to prop her hand on her hip. “She’s wild enough on her own.”
“They’re just blowing off steam, Mom,” Michael said. He hadn’t taken anything off, but he hadn’t stopped us either. Good for him.
Still fully dressed, Owen stepped over the growing pile of discarded clothes. “I’d love to go,” he drawled, “but I’m coverin’ for Marc in Oklahoma.”
I crossed my arms beneath my bra, noticing his ensemble for the first time. He wore a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. No boots, or even a cowboy hat. He was going incognito, as a normal, non-western human.
“I’ll be back tomorrow, and I’ll hunt with you then, okay?”
“Promise?” I asked.
“I promise.”
“Be careful.” I hugged him, squeezing as hard as he’d squeezed me the night before.
He gave me a goofy grin. “What was that for?”
Sneaking a sideways look at my mother, I tugged him toward the hall. “I’ll walk you out,” I said, pulling the office door shut behind us. We ambled slowly toward the front door. “Marc thinks the stray is involved with Sara, and now maybe with Abby.”
“I only said it was a possibility,” Marc corrected me.
I jumped, flushing from embarrassment. He was right behind me, but I hadn’t heard him slip out of the office. I was definitely going to have to work on my listening skills.
“I’ll be careful,” Owen said, a grin teasing the corners of his mouth. “I have to go now, or I’ll miss my flight. But I’ll see y’all tomorrow.”
Behind me, the office door flew open, and nude men poured out into the hallway, my mother right behind them. Choruses of “Bye, Owen” echoed across the foyer, and Mom took time out from her tirade on youthful anarchy to give him a kiss. She gave me a scowl.
I smiled at her, and unbuttoned my pants.