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Rain drummed on my shoulders as I shifted upwards on Clarence’s balcony. My legs wobbled twice as badly as they’d done on Luke’s stairs. Still, I straightened, taking a step forward. My twin was so close now....
Unfortunately, the shades were drawn across Clarence’s glass doors, blocking my view inside. My twin-sense was ominously quiescent within my chest. All I knew was that the deadline was well past and Clarence had never claimed patience. I depressed the lever and stepped inside.
“Phhhbbbt....” A whoopee cushion beneath my foot exhaled pseudo-flatulence. From the other side of the room, Clarence complained: “You’re late.”
I spun, bracing myself for attack. Nothing happened. The room was empty.
“He-llo. Ho-nor.”
I paced forward. Lupine eyes would have made short work of the shadows left by the storm clouds. But even my human senses promised that Clarence was close....
“Marco!” Clarence cackled in amusement at his own cleverness before answering himself. “Polo!”
No sign of life from my sister. Air conditioning flowed across my rain-slick skin and I shivered. Wouldn’t my twin-sense have told me if Grace was cowering under the bed or hiding in the closet?
I knelt beside Clarence’s half-made bed anyway, refusing to accept the alternative. Grace wasn’t dead. I hadn’t been gone that long.
Swiping at the hem of the comforter so I could peer underneath it, I yelped at an explosion from the other side of the room.
No, not an explosion. The door to the hallway had shattered inwards. Justice stood in the opening, panting as his foot dropped back to the ground.
“Bastion?” I asked.
Justice pointed back over one shoulder in lieu of an answer. His twin was, presumably, propped up against the wall outside.
“Grace?” he countered.
My nostrils flared as I shook my head. I was almost glad when Clarence answered for me. “Oh, so you are interested in her survival?”
A word at a time hadn’t been enough to pinpoint the teenager’s location. But a complete sentence....
I turned my head. The serial killer wasn’t under his bed. Not in the closet....
I yanked open the drawer of his desk to reveal a cell phone with video chat active. On the screen, Clarence’s t-shirt was dry despite the slick tree trunks in the background and the rain I’d run through to travel from Slim’s car to this bedroom.
The serial killer winked at me, all teenage impishness. “Wow, the look on your face. Totally worth it. Nearly as funny as when you interrupted me going after Luke then tried to console me for ‘kidnapping’ myself.”
This was my chance to find out more, so I did my best to keep him talking. “You’re right. You’ve outsmarted me. How did you...?”
Unfortunately, he was having none of it. “Time’s nearly run out,” he warned.
Then he ended the call.
***
“I KNOW WHERE THEY ARE.”
It was all I could do to keep my feet moving slowly enough so Justice could keep up the pace while weighed down by a sodden Bastion. My bare feet kept trying to skip past him as we strode two abreast down the curving front stairs.
Bastion’s eyes were closed, but he was still the one to answer. “Hopefully nowhere in high society. I don’t think the naked look is in this season.”
He was right—I hadn’t been able to talk myself into wrestling back into the sodden clothes dumped in the master bedroom. I shrugged. “I doubt there’ll be anyone in the park to see us after that hailstorm....”
But we hadn’t made it to the park yet. We were dripping our way through a heavily trafficked residence...and the lady of the house had just stepped into the foyer at the foot of the stairs.
“Honor? Good.” She’d heard me but not yet seen me. “Are you with Clarence? I....”
I tried to hide behind my cousins, but there was no covering my nudity as my employer turned to face the stairwell. No wonder her cheeks turned as pale as the lace curtains half-blocking our view of the front lawn.
“Oh my.”
“Mrs. Smythewhite, I can explain....”
I couldn’t. But speaking gave me an excuse to keep walking forward. Speaking prevented my boss from calling out for clipboard lady to escort me off the premises...and possibly to the nearest psych ward.
The distraction wasn’t enough. She raised her cell phone, slid one finger across the screen...
Then the big front doors banged open behind her. In the doorway, Slim stood soaked to the skin beside Luke in wolf form. The pair of them might as well have been living rough for decades, skin smudged while burs knotted fur and hair alike.
Despite his disarray, Luke’s presence was as good as a shot of espresso mainlined into my bloodstream. He barked once. Short, sharp, and meaningful.
Mrs. Smythewhite spun.
And Justice, Bastion, and I hit the bottom of the stairs before breaking into a run.
***
SHE DIDN’T TRY TO STOP us. Nothing stopped us. Streets steamed as sun baked away the remains of the hailstorm. We parked in an empty lot surrounded by trees.
Car doors slammed. Luke and Justice hefted Bastion between them. Slim offered me a weapon, but I shook my head.
“No, I’ll be faster....”
I blinked. I’d forgotten. Slim was only human.
Human...yet quite perceptive. “Go ahead, Freckles,” he told me. “Do you mind if I watch?”
Luke growled out a complaint, but I didn’t wait to hear it. Grace, Grace, Grace. My stomach warned of imminent danger.
Unlike at the DAR brunch, I didn’t ignore the twin-sense. Instead, I was lupine and running. Lover’s Leap was a mile away along the footpath, but my queasy stomach promised a shortcut. Grace was up this hill and down another....
I’d thought when the time came that I’d hesitate. Would second guess throwing myself into danger to protect my sister.
But I wasn’t fifteen years old and afraid of my shadow. I’d grown into my self-name. Grace was my sister. Her danger yanked at me like a fishhook attached to my gut.
So even though leaves dripped leftover rain into my eyes, I could have traveled blind for all that deterred me. A bedded-down deer exploded into motion, yet my tunnel-vision was interested in one thing only—the huge cliff coming into view ahead.
Clarence had been dry, which meant he was underneath that rock ledge. The same one his third victim had played beneath. So I looped around to come in sideways, waiting for my nostrils to pick up the teenaged killer’s musk.
Pausing among the jumble of tree-covered boulders where the little girl had stashed her action figures, I perused the landscape. Plastic dolls and horses were gone now, carted away as evidence by meticulous police detectives or gathered up by her parents to commemorate her short life.
And nothing had replaced them. Rain had wiped Clarence’s trail clean, assuming he’d ever been here. The space beneath Lover’s Leap was devoid of life.
I huffed out confusion. The rain dampened sound and smell alike. Lupine senses weren’t helping. Maybe the evidence would look different in my human skin.
It was annoying to shift hidden behind a boulder. My elbow banged against the rock and I stifled a curse when a thorn pierced the soft flesh above my ribcage. But everything I’d seen and felt told me Grace was close. I couldn’t afford to transform in the open, revealing my ace in the hole to a serial killer’s eyes.
Of course, there was nothing to be done about my nakedness. I didn’t even try to cover it. Just draped my sodden pelt across my shoulders and rose onto two bare feet.
Which is when I remembered what else was missing. The swing. At first glance, the long rope with its two-by-four platform appeared to have been removed just like the dead girl’s toy menagerie. But when I tilted my head back and peered up at the limb it had been attached to, the line was still in place.
The rope didn’t dangle, however. Instead, it was looped in a complicated manner that led around tree after tree before disappearing on top of Lover’s Leap.
And there, leaning over the edge to peer at me, was Clarence’s smiling face.