“Neither do I!” I shouted. “I was only a couple of minutes behind her. I don’t get how she could just vanish without me even hearing anything.” I paced for a couple of seconds, trying to think. “They had a car. There are one-way streets around her estate, so they may not have driven past me. I don’t remember any cars passing me, but I… I don’t know.”
“We found her bracelet close to the motorway,” Byron said. “She must have left it there on purpose.”
“This might not be our business,” Opa said.
“He scented werewolves at her house. Of course it’s our business,” Byron said firmly.
“Ryan,” Amelia said, “you’re a tracker. You found her before, so you can find her again, right?”
“It’s not that simple.” He shook his head, looking distressed. “I have to be given a clue.”
“What kind of clue?” I spat. “A bloody postal code?”
His lips tightened. “Vin works with humans who see things the rest of us don’t. Psychics, maybe. All I know is that I would be given a location, and I would have to work it out from there.” He glanced at Amelia. “This could be your chance.”
“I have no idea where to start,” she said, her face paling.
“You’ve been with her lately,” Ryan said.
“Yeah, she’s been helping me try to find information on the whole gypsy thing. But we hadn’t gotten anywhere. Joey found some websites, but I haven’t had the chance to look properly yet.”
“If you can trace her, I may be able to track her the rest of the way,” Ryan said. He turned to me. “Does your wolf still see her as mate?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Good. That may help. We should all go to where you found the bracelet, drive around, and split up to cover more ground. She could have left other traces on her way. If she was able to get away with a bracelet, then who knows what else she did? We have to stay positive, but we can’t let them get further away. If they do, then the only way to find her will be to rely on Amelia, and that might be too late.”
“Don’t say that,” I whispered.
“If Vin has her, it’s for a reason. He may play his hand before we can get to her. Be prepared is all I’m saying.” Ryan’s face hardened. “We should move before the scents fade even more.”
“Right,” Byron said. “Amelia, you stay—”
The front doorbell rang. Repeatedly. We all glanced at each other, a wave of fear thundering through the room.
A scent wafted through the air. “It’s her dad,” I said. “He thinks I did something.”
“Come on,” Byron said in a weary voice, and we followed him toward the front door. “We need to deal with this.”
Stephen Rivers stood on our doorstep, apoplectic with anger. “Where. Is. She?” He ground the words through clenched teeth.
“We don’t know,” Byron said. “But we’re going to help look for her. The dogs are good at picking up scents. We’ll help you find your daughter, Mr. Rivers.”
“Goddamnit, you people did something to her. Something you’re involved in. Where is she?”
“I swear to you, if we knew, she’d be back,” Amelia said, getting in front of the rest of us. “Have you called the police?”
“Of course I’ve called the police. I’ve to go to the station and make a proper report and convince them that she hasn’t run away with her idiot boyfriend.” He glared at me. “They’re going to come here, you know. You lot will be top of the suspect list. If she’s here… if she’s…” He bowed his head, and all of the fight left him.
“I’m going to find her,” I said. “I’m going to get her back, no matter what it takes.”
His phone rang, startling everyone, but when he answered, all of our ears pricked up.
“What? Where? Yes, yes, of course. I’m on my way.” He hung up, breathing heavily. “The police got a call from someone claiming to have seen a girl matching Perdy’s description. I have to go with… with pictures. To make sure.”
“To the station?” I asked.
“Screw that,” Mr. Rivers snapped. “To the place they saw her.” He turned and ran back to his car.
“We need to follow him,” I shouted.
“Nathan, Ryan, Amelia, with me,” Byron called out. “Dad, Jeremy, take the dogs and follow us. Be ready to run.”
We jumped into the car and followed Perdita’s dad. He drove toward where we had found the bracelet, then he kept going and turned off onto a smaller road, one I had never been on before. A few homes were scattered here and there, and in the distance we saw a police car parked outside one of the houses. Perdita’s dad pulled in behind them, and we followed suit.
Another car appeared before we all got out, and Joey and a man who looked like a chubbier version of Perdy’s dad jumped out, both of them glaring at us.
“What are they doing here?” Joey asked loudly.
A policeman who had been to my house before to question us beckoned us over, but Perdita’s father got to him first.
“Are you taking it seriously now? Are you treating it the way you should have after my first call?” he yelled, gripping his walking stick tightly.
The policeman didn’t bother to even look his way. He kept his eyes on us, and his lips barely moved as he spoke. “Mr. Rivers, this isn’t the first time you’ve called us about your daughter. She’s a young adult. She has a history of running. We treat every case with the level of seriousness it deserves.”
“She doesn’t have a history of anything!” Mr. Rivers spluttered. “How dare you imply—”
“We follow procedure. Sir, I’ll have to ask you to step aside. I need to ask these men some questions and figure out what happened here. If you want your daughter home, I suggest you allow me to do my job.”
Byron and I bristled at the garda’s rude tone.
“Are these the men you saw?” the garda asked an agitated woman next to him.
She glanced at us. “What? No! Weren’t you listening to me? Four men. Big ones. Two fair-haired, one with longish brown hair, and one skinhead. The car slowed at the light up at the end of the road there, and the girl barrelled out of it. I didn’t know what was going on, if it was a couple of teens messing about or not, but one jumped out right after her and grabbed her by the hair.” She shivered. “It was so violent, and she screamed like nothing I ever heard before. I ran into the house to get my phone, to get help, and as I was waiting to speak to someone, I looked through the window. I couldn’t see very well at that distance, but they packed her into the boot, and I saw one of them…” She gulped. “He closed his fist, and it looked as though he hit her. I was never close enough to make out the car reg.”
“Was this her?” Perdy’s dad showed her a couple of old photos of Perdy.
The woman frowned. “Maybe. The hair colour is the same. I mean, it was all so quick.”
“Wait,” Amelia called out. “I have a newer photo of her on my phone.” She showed the woman. “Think. Is this her?”
The woman stared at the picture for a couple of seconds. “I… I think so. Oh, she’s so young.”
“Which way did they go?” I demanded.
The garda lost his patience. “All right, that’s it. Everyone back off. We’ll speak to all of you in turn, so wait by your cars, and do not leave.” He turned his back to us.
“Small-town idiots,” Byron muttered.
As we walked away, we heard the woman give a description of the car and the direction it had gone.
“I’ll ring Jeremy and let him know so they won’t stop here,” Byron whispered.
Joey pushed against me when we got back to the cars. “I know there’s something going on. I know it. You better not be hiding anything that would help find her.”
“Nothing I can tell you will help,” I said. “I’m going to find her. As soon as the coppers let us go, I’m going to find her.”
“I’ll go with you, then,” he said.
“I… I can’t let you do that.”
&nb
sp; “Dodgy as hell,” Joey muttered. “Amelia, come on. This is all my fault.”
Her expression softened. “It’s definitely not your fault.”
“She wouldn’t have gone to that party if I had just said no. I said yeah, and then I let her go home alone. If I had been with her—”
“Then you would have been hurt or worse,” she insisted.
“You’re acting like you know what happened. Talk to me. Please.”
She glanced at me. “I don’t know what I can say, Joe. But she trusts us. You know she does. Can’t you just try to trust—”
“Trust? Trust people who are only honest about the fact that they’re lying to everyone? Look at my uncle. Hasn’t he gone through enough?”
Perdy’s dad looked broken. Already ill from Willow’s attack, he was the lowest I had ever seen him. Guilt and frustration and pain poured off him, but how could I explain when I already knew it was something they would never believe?
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’d never listen in any case.”
Joey turned to storm off, but Amelia got in his way, laying her hands on his chest to stop him. He seemed startled—by her strength, probably—but he didn’t push her away.
“Help me,” she said. “I need you to open your mind for a minute and understand that Perdita already knows what I’m about to tell you. Okay?”
He nodded.
“Good. You know we aren’t working on a school project. But what I’m working on could help me find Perdita. I need you to keep helping me. Even my family doesn’t trust that I can do it, but I can.”
“What are you talking about, Amelia?” he whispered. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I need you to figure it out,” she answered. “And I need you to help me find Perdita. The stuff we’ve been looking up, you don’t believe in any of it, but what if I said I could do things you don’t think are possible?”
He backed away, shaking his head. “Don’t mess with me, Amelia. Not today. Don’t even try.” He headed back to Perdita’s dad, who was still talking to the man who had arrived with Joey. I could only assume he was Joey’s father. Joey stood by his father and uncle, his face sullen and dark with anger.
“What are you doing?” I asked Amelia.
“Taking a chance,” was her only reply.
Byron and Ryan rejoined us. “They’re going to go straight on,” Byron informed us. “Opa reckons that road is an old one, leads one way only. They probably took the less travelled roads to stay out of sight. Didn’t bet on Perdita not giving up without a fight.” He grinned as if proud of her, but I wanted to punch him. I wanted to hit anyone at all just to see if it felt better than standing around waiting while the werewolves got further and further away.
“We need to go,” I said, my voice hoarse. My spine twitched, and I struggled to keep hold of the wolf.
“It’s important we deal with this first, and then we’ll join them before the police can start a search. We can park somewhere, go on foot. We’ll be done before they can organise anything. You heard her father; there isn’t even an official missing person report yet. They still aren’t entirely convinced that she didn’t just run away.”
“There was blood in her house. Signs of a struggle,” I protested.
“We know the significance of it. They aren’t aware, so we need to move quickly and get the girl home before anyone innocent gets involved.”
“Someone innocent is already involved,” I said.
Byron looked at me with sympathy. “I know. I’m just trying to keep it from escalating. I’m sorry you’re going through this.”
“They killed my parents.” I barely breathed out the sentence. “Now they have Perdita. It’s not me going through it.”
He laid his hand on my shoulder, but I shrugged him off. “Nathan…” He shook his head. “We’ll find her first.”
“What do we do when we find her?” Amelia asked, trembling.
“We get her out of there, by any means possible,” Ryan said, his own voice tight. “Vin could be here.”
“Why would he be here?” Amelia asked.
“Because he knew your grandfather was searching for him, perhaps. Maybe he needed more collateral. But if he’s here, then there’s a good chance my daughters are, too.” He shook from head to foot, barely able to stay in the one spot. “The time’s coming. We get Perdita. We get the girls. We get them as far away from Vin and his werewolves as possible. And then we end this. Once and for all.”
We all stared at Ryan, and I felt the same anger as his growing in my gut. We would end it. We would definitely end it.
A garda approached. “Strange how your family members seem to involve themselves in every kind of drama in this town of late.” He smirked. “Sadly, we’ve no evidence to make an arrest, but I’m sure we’ll find something eventually. So, the girl, where is she, then?”
“If we knew that, she wouldn’t be missing,” Byron said, and his expression was a challenge. The officer stared him down.
“We have plans,” Ryan said, interrupting the staring contest. “Is this going to take long?”
The garda asked us frustratingly similar questions that seemed to have little to do with Perdita’s disappearance at all. When he turned to me, I was livid over the time we had already wasted. Murderous werewolves were getting away with my mate while the patronising idiot kept me standing around for nothing.
“So let me get this straight,” he said after he had asked me variations of the same questions three times. “You were the last one to see her.”
“No, the people who abducted her were the last ones to see her.”
“No need for the attitude,” he murmured, scribbling notes in his stupid little book.
I fantasised about ripping it out of his hands and tearing it to shreds. Then moving on to his Adam’s apple… “There’s every need. You’re. Wasting. Time,” I said through clenched teeth.
Amelia laid her hand on my arm, but I moved out of her reach, unable to bear anyone’s touch.
The garda eyed me. “And you’ve had a relationship with this girl.”
“Have,” I said. “I have a relationship with her, which is why this is so bloody stupid. I can look for her. We can all look for her, so why are you hanging around here? Do something!”
“And you’ve rowed with her. You left the country to get away from her.”
“What? No!”
“You didn’t leave?”
“I didn’t… give me a break. We haven’t rowed. We got back together today.”
“Did you?” He crowded me, his voice rising with every word. “Or did she turn you down? Did you follow her home from that party and teach her a lesson, Nathan? Did you go too far? Lose that temper of yours again? Because I’ve heard stories about you. Breaking noses and hearts, eh? Did your family help you hide her body?”
Byron had his arms around me before I could connect with the policeman’s nose.
“I would never hurt her, you—”
Ryan clamped his hand over my mouth, helping Byron pull me back, whispering for me to calm the hell down before I made everything worse.
Joey’s father stormed over. “Why aren’t you arresting anyone? Who else could have taken her?” He pointed at me, his eyes narrowing. “If you’ve laid one hand on my niece, I’ll—”
“Settle down, the lot of you,” the copper said, but he didn’t exactly sound bothered.
“I have never hurt Perdita,” I insisted.
“If you have any evidence at all,” Byron said, his voice suspiciously calm, “or anything that suggests we’ve done something illegal, then please, go ahead and make an arrest. Question us after we’ve consulted with a solicitor, if you like. But until then, we should be free to go.” I sensed his tension, sensed his wolf coiling up as if ready to strike.
“I have a few more things I’d like to clarify.” The garda flipped through his notebook. “Perhaps a different theory is more accurate, Mr. Evans. After all, a gang of disgruntled
dog fighters who had been promised money or dogs to blood might be mad enough to hurt a young girl to get to your family. What do you think?”
“I think you need to concentrate your efforts on reality rather than fantasy,” Byron replied sharply.
And so it went on.
By the time the police let us go, wolf simmered under the surface, desperate to escape. They clearly wanted to look no further than my family, and that meant it would only be us taking the time to look for Perdita properly.
We sped off as quickly as we dared, Perdita’s dad shooting daggers at us as we left. We drove in the direction the witness had mentioned and found ourselves on a small road that seemed to go on forever. We passed fields and forests, and eventually, we saw the jeep that Opa and Jeremy had taken. We parked next to it and got out of the car.
“We run on in the woods,” Byron instructed. “They can’t stay on the road after being seen, so we run as wide as we can and try to pick up any scent or any sign of an abandoned car or Perdita. We split up on my say so. Meet back here at dark. Howl if you find anything. Twice if you’re desperate. Are you all ready?”
I was more than ready, and for once, I was the first to phase. The four of us ran through the trees, and Byron let out a bark before running across the road, followed by Ryan. Amelia and I stuck close together, ready to split up if needed. They couldn’t keep Perdita hidden in the car after being seen and couldn’t move her far on foot. We still had a chance.
We ran for a long time, trying to pick up any scent of Perdita or werewolves. We hurtled past an endless number of trees, fuelled by determination, until we rushed into a clearing.
A chill ran through me, despite the sweltering day. I stopped short when I spotted an old woman sitting on the step of an old-fashioned gypsy wagon. She was warming her hands by a fire.
The caravan was painted in faded, once-garish colours, but there was no horse or car attached to it. The vehicle was planted in the middle of the clearing as if it had dropped from the sky. The old woman crooned softly and beckoned us over without looking in our direction.
I glanced at Amelia, but she was already trotting over to the woman. The scents in the air were in no way familiar to me.
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