I said, as Marc sat up and clicked on the lamp on the nightstand. I’d expected to hear that Kaci had Shifted, or that Jace and Ethan had arrived home safely with the bodies. Or even that they’d been pulled over on the way home and arrested on some weird murder and illegal-corpse-disposal charge. But I didn’t quite know how to react to the news that my middle—and least favorite—brother, Ryan, had pulled a Houdini. “How?” “I honestly don’t know. I was up tending the incinerator, and went down to the basement for spare flashlight batteries, and he was just gone. The cage door was standing wide open, and the lock was missing.” Damn. But why would he take the lock? Ryan had spent the past six and a half months locked up in our basement prison cell, as punishment for playing the role of spy and jailer in a scheme to kidnap several U.S. tabbies—including me—to be sold to Alphas in the Amazon. When we’d caught him, he was thin and weak. But he’d grown healthier in captivity, eating my mother’s cooking, despite the lack of sunshine, fresh air and exercise.
