Zack turned. “Stephanie.”
She cocked a hip, hooking her fingers into her back pockets. “I‟ve baby-sat for Nick plenty of times. They can watch the
movie with us.” She smiled, making her silver lip ring gleam. “If that‟s all right with you.”
“That would be . . .” Emotion clogged Zack‟s throat.
“Fine,” the police chief said.
“Great.” Zack cleared his throat. “That would be great.”
Liz thrust the wet, wadded-up napkins into the garbage and grabbed the cleaning bucket from under the sink. Her hands
shook. It was getting harder and harder to pretend even to herself that everything was going to be all right.
Dumping the bucket under the faucet, she twisted the tap. As long as she was mopping up puddles, she might as well scrub
her floor. Keep busy. Keep the fear at bay.
What if Zack had been home when the fire struck? Or Em?
Panic glazed her mind. She struggled to focus, drawing up a mental list of Things She Could Control, clean the floor, check
on the cat, buy a new fire extinguisher.
Not that the old one had done her any good.
She drew a ragged breath, standing next to the sink, waiting for the bucket to fill, waiting for her life and her heartbeat to
return to normal, and saw Morgan pull the scorched remnants of the dish towel out of the trash.
She shuddered. She never wanted to see that thing again. “What are you doing?”
“Gau must have had a way in,” Morgan said, spreading the wet and blackened towel on her kitchen table. “I am trying to
find it.”
He was doing something. Maybe she could help.
“Try the stove,” she suggested.
A long shadow fell across the doorway. Her heart raced as she braced to face this new threat.
But it was only Dylan Hunter, Regina‟s husband, standing on her back stoop. She sagged against the sink.
Morgan glanced up. “About time you showed up.”
Liz‟s gaze searched beyond him, looking for Em.
Nothing.
A different anxiety squeezed her chest. “Where‟s Emily?”
“At the community center with your son Zack. And my son Nick and my brother and Margred.” Dylan smiled reassuringly.
“She is in good hands.”
He stepped over her threshold, surveying the wet floor, the shrinking foam, the black V on the wall above the stove. “What
happened here?”
“Gau,” Morgan said.
Dylan‟s black eyes widened in shock. “That cannot be. We buried him under half the ocean, Lucy and Margred and I.”
“Buried, not extinguished. I told you he was back.”
“But the island is protected.”
Protected how? Protected from what? Demons? Whatever they‟d done, it hadn‟t been enough.
“Not sufficiently,” Morgan said, echoing her thought.
Dylan scowled. “I know my job. He could not have breached the wards without an invitation.”
Liz shut off the water in the sink, struggling to find a footing in the conversation. “I thought that was vampires.”
Both men looked at her.
“Buffy?” she offered. “The Lost Boys?”
Morgan turned back to Dylan. “She did not invite this. She would not.”
“What about the kid?”
“Zachary is my son,” Morgan said, cold as ice.
“That‟s what worries me.”
Their eyes clashed, black and gold. There were undercurrents here Liz did not understand, but she could feel the tension
swirling in the air. “ Not everyone shares your confidence in my loyalties, ” Morgan had said.
She stiffened in his defense, in Zack‟s defense. “It couldn‟t be Zack. He isn‟t even here.”