Page 8 of The Lovely and the Lost

Play.

I needed this, and Free knew it. She feinted toward me, then, with an evil expression on her face, pivoted and turned the hose dramatically on Jude.

Full blast.

Jude shrieked like a banshee, sputtered, and fell smack on his haunches—in that order. “You know, of course,” he said, soaking-wet hair drooping into his face, “that this means war.”

An instant later, the three of us were grappling for the hose. I came out on top—but only for a second.

“Take that, you fiend!”

Jude wrapped his arms around my middle. Free went straight for the flying tackle. It didn’t take Duchess long to decide she wanted in on the action. NATO jumped out of the tub to join in, and soon, allfiveof us were soaked through and soaped up.

Jude climbed to his feet, holding the hose high. “This will not stand!”

I’d just taken a spray straight in the face when I heard the sound of footsteps to our left. I went instantly silent, even as the human part of my brain overrode my instinctual response. I knew those footsteps—light and even, unafraid. There was no threat. No reason to stop playing.

But just like that, the day’s events came roaring back.

I turned toward Cady, and she raised an eyebrow at the fact that Jude, Free, and I were all soaked to the bone.

“Good job,” she told the bloodhounds as they bounded toward her. “You gave the miscreants a bath.”

Part of me wanted to pick up the hose and aim it at Cady. I wanted to play. I wanted to give her what Free and Jude had just given me. But I couldn’t banish the wordsmissingandchildany longer.

“One to ten?” I asked Cady. She was the one who’d invented the shorthand—for nightmares, for flashbacks, for times when I needed out.How bad is it, one to ten?

“I’d say I’m sitting at about a six.” Cady shifted her attention from me to NATO, who was bounding toward her. “Don’t even think about it, mister.”

I squatted down and let NATO jump up on me. I was already soaked, and I deeply suspected that Cady’s six was a normal person’s nine.

“You’re going, aren’t you?” I asked.Missingandchildwere loaded words for Cady, just like they were for me.

My foster mother looked at me the way she had when I was small and angry and caught in a fight-or-flight cycle that neither of us could break.

“I’mnot going,” she said. “Weare. Get packed.”

I’d never been a person who cared much about material things. I didn’t have prized possessions. I wouldn’t have thought the idea of leaving home—the house, this room, my bed—would bother me.

A few hours ago, I’d been gnawing at the bit to get out.

But now that we were going someplace else, someplace new with new people and new rules that most humans never had to explicitly learn, I had the urge to put my back to the wall and hunker down. As I stared at my empty suitcase, I thought about the way Cady had said that Saskia would blow throughmostof her certification.

Not sociable enough. My fingers found their way to a patch of loose fabric on my bed.Does not play well with others.I stroked the threadbare cloth. Once upon a time, it had been a blanket. When Cady had first brought me home, the blanket had lived in Silver’s crate. It had been years since Cady had stopped crate-training the dogs, years since I’d stopped spending my days holed up in Silver’s crate while the German shepherd stood guard outside. The blanket wasn’t just ratty now—it was shredded.

And it was mine.

I bunched the fabric in my hands.Soft. Familiar. I wanted to be happy that we were going. It was agoodthing that Cady had agreed to join this search—and a better thing that she was taking us with her. This was what I’d been training for. It was my chance to show her that Saskia and I were ready.

I could do this, and Cady wouldn’t have to face down her father alone.

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

I glanced up, not the least surprised to see Free sitting in my second-story window. The day Jude and I had met her, we were nine years old. Free had hopped the fence, walked right up to the two of us, and suggested that we join her in rigging up some handmade hang gliders. I’d been on guard. Jude had been ecstatic.

Cady had vetoed the hang gliders.

And Free had taken it all in stride. She’d never said a thing—not a single, throwaway comment—about the fact that I didn’t speak in her presence for a year. She accepted Jude talking for me like it was normal.