He looked at, then ran his fingers through his hair and stared at us. He looked, I suspected, a bit like Dr. Lichtenstein had looked when he had created his first successful monsters. "Why, yes. Is that... is that what happened in... there?" He pointed toward the hallway we had just stepped out of. Or stumbled out of.
"It was," I said.
"But... but I had one such dark angel be, in fact, a vampire. And the other, a witch."
This is freaking me out, Sam, thought Allison.
Me, too.
And so we stood like that for a few more seconds, each wondering who had influenced whom. Truth was, I really didn't want to know.
Charlie motioned toward our phones on the nightstand. "Both have been buzzing non-stop for the past twenty minutes. I hope everything is okay."
I really, really hated when my phone buzzed non-stop. A non-stop buzzing phone only meant one thing: bad news.
I approached it carefully, working out mentally where my kids were, and knowing they were safe with Kingsley. They had to be safe, right? It was Kingsley for crissakes.
I picked it up and saw that I had missed nine calls from Kingsley.
He had texted me no less than twenty times, too, most of which said the exact same thing: "Tammy's gone."
Chapter Thirty-seven
I didn't live far from Charlie Reed's house, and I was home in minutes. Had Kingsley known where I was, he might have come to find me himself, although he'd also thought it best to stay home with Anthony. Not a bad idea.
Of course, I had done all I could not to panic. After all, this wasn't a brazen, midday kidnapping, as had been the case with my son. No, this was just a moody teenager ditching her babysitter. A babysitter with perfect hearing, mind you. A babysitter who would never, ever let her out of his sight without my permission. I could call Sherbet. And tell him what? That my daughter was missing for an hour? I couldn't pull him away from real police work for just that.
Kingsley met me at the door. His thick mane of hair was askew. The look in his amber eyes was particularly wild. "She put me to sleep, Sam."
"But how?"
Despite all my best efforts, I heard the panic in my voice. Hearing the panic made me panic more.
While I ran through the house, searching her room, her closet, Anthony's room, Anthony's closet-my office, the garage, the backyard, Kingsley followed me and explained: "I was watching TV, and then I heard... something. A whispering. A soft whispering. It was... suggesting that I sleep."
"And did you?"
"I must have, Sam. When I opened my eyes again, she was gone." He produced a familiar phone. "Strangely, she left her cell phone."
I scrolled through it quickly, bypassing her password, which I had created for her. "No calls," I said. "No texts."
"Unless she deleted them," said Allison.
We were all standing in the living room. My son watched us from the hallway.
"Did she say anything to you, Anthony?"
"No, Mom."
"Did you see her leave?"
"I was sleeping, too."
I stood there in the living room as my world threatened to spin out of control, especially when I realized my sixteen-year-old freak of a daughter had somehow taught herself a brand-new trick. Or worse, someone had taught her mind control. And I damn well knew who that someone was.
Allie, who had been picking up my thoughts, said, "You can't be serious, Sam."
"Serious about what?" asked Kingsley, not privy to our mindspeak.
But I was serious, and I knew I wasn't wrong. I took in some worthless fucking air and discovered my fists were clenched.
"He has her," I said to no one in particular.
"Who has her?" asked Kingsley.
"The devil," I said. "And we're going to get her back."
The End