While Cassie and Joe were waiting in the dark for Chris to arrive, Cassie was alternately entertaining the twins and listening to Joe talk. She played her best games, put forth a few smiles, and made halfhearted comments when the conversation required her to do so, but her thoughts were not inside the vehicle.

Hours passed. Once the twins had fallen asleep and Joe had dozed off, Cassie climbed onto the dashboard for a better view of the street. At first she sat cross-legged. Then she lounged on one hand. A little later, she was lying on her stomach. Her cheek was resting on the back of her hand, and her feet were swinging up and down. She never meant to, but she fell asleep watching and waiting.

She lost a sense of time and place until a car zoomed by with music blaring. Their vehicle shook from the motion and rattled her back to wakefulness.

Why did I let myself fall asleep?

Cassie slid off the dashboard, walked along the passenger side armrest, and turned to see the dashboard clock. 4:02 a.m.

She eased herself onto the seat and bounded over the center console. "Joe," she called while tugging on his shirt. "Wake up!"

He didn't respond. In his human state, he was a giant to her, and she was probably just a whisper to him.

She kept trying—she yelled, she shook his clothes, she jumped all over his leg—but she could not get him to stir. As a last resort, she took a sword from her knapsack and stabbed through the denim of his pants. This time she successfully startled him.

Joe's groggy eyes took their sweet time, but they eventually found her. "Ow! What was that for? You know, you're not the first small one to stab me."

"Have you seen what time it is?"

Joe squinted at the digital display. "It's 4:06." He shifted the sweatshirt he was using for a pillow and shut his eyes again.

"And?"

He peered at her with one eye cracked open. "What?"

"Where is Chris?"

He closed his eyes again, but this time he was smirking. "I don't know. He's not here yet?"

Not amused, she stabbed him again, harder and deeper than the first time. "Do you think I would be asking if he were?"

"Ow, stop doing that! Princess, it sounds like you're panicking. Do us both a favor and stop. And it might help to breathe. . . ."

She gasped out her held breath, though she continued to panic. "Shouldn't we try to find him? He is about eight hours later than he said he would be. What if he's in trouble? What if the Royals have found him? What if he's stuck, or hurt, or . . . or. . ."

Her mind jumped to the most unthinkable scenario. Tears were pooling in her eyes. They were about to spill into a humiliating cascade of despair.

"Let me reiterate: breathe. You don't know Chris like I do. He doesn't handle bad news well. He would need some time to himself."

"That could be one theory. And then there are my theories."

Joe grunted and grabbed his already disoriented hair. "We shouldn't even be having this conversation. We could be starting some secret fairy society in the mountains of Nepal by now. But no. We're waiting in a cold car, at four in the morning, right in the heart of danger, all because Chris is too stubborn to listen."

Cassie climbed off Joe's lap. Arguing with him was time-consuming and futile.

"C'mon, Princess, don't be like that. And don't let the joking fool you. I'm worried, too."

On the passenger seat, she shouldered her knapsack. "That's why I'm going out there to find him."

"You're not going anywhere!"

"Watch me."

Cassie climbed onto the armrest by the window. While she was trying to figure out how to open the door, Joe picked her up by the back of her cloak and brought her to eye level. "You're staying here and that's final!"

She thrashed around and tried to squirm out of her cloak. "Put me down!"

"Aren't you a feisty thing today? Don't make me put you in the glove compartment." He pointed his finger at her as a warning.

"You will do no such thing!"

"Will you calm down?"

She refused to answer.

"Can I be the voice of reason for one second?"

"Reason," she said coolly, looking away, her arms crossed, "can be a crutch for those who are crippled by a lack empathy."

All of the good humor drained from his face. He set her down in the cup holder, but not with the delicacy to which she was accustomed. Then his head turned toward the window. "We'll give him a little more time. If he doesn't come back before dawn, I'll go find him. You shouldn't be wandering around in a world you have no experience with. You don't know the neighborhood and the house like I do, and you never know what's still lurking around. It's just not safe."

Cassie slumped into the cup holder until she could no longer see Joe and he could no longer see her. If she remained quiet and out of sight, she thought Joe might mistake that for compliance. She really intended to wait him out. He would go back to sleep soon enough.

But perhaps it didn't matter. There was a tapping noise on the passenger side of the car. Joe leaned over and opened the door. "Speak of the devil. . ."

Chris, still in fairy form, jumped from the curb to the floor of the car. "We should get out of here," he said as he removed a size-appropriate bag from his shoulder.

Joe slammed the door behind him. "Yeah, you don't say," he said. Then, in no particular rush, he buckled his seat belt, started the ignition, turned down the music on the radio, and took a sip of his beverage.

Chris braced himself for movement. "Now, Joe!"

"All right!" Joe slammed his foot down. The wheels squealed as the vehicle burst into motion. "We lose almost a whole day because of you, and now we're suddenly in a hurry?"

Chris didn't respond. Instead, he climbed onto the passenger seat and collapsed to a sitting position by the seat's back. He embedded himself near the crack that could consume him at his current size. And maybe that was by design. Whether he was leaving it to chance or choice, there was an underlying need to disappear. After staring blankly for a while, he pulled in his knees and covered his face with his arms. He didn't want to fall, but he did want to withdraw from their strange, ever-changing reality for the time being.

Joe was the first to interrupt the weighty silence. "Do you mind telling us why you're so late? Cassie was starting to hyperventilate."

"That's not true," she mumbled from her hiding spot, shrinking further from view. She was neither loud nor convincing.

Chris rose to his feet. "I'll be right back," he said as he slipped into the backseat.

After he had Modified into human form and dressed, he leaned his head into the space between the seats. "I was stuck in the trunk of a state trooper's car. By the time I managed to get out, I was miles away."

"Better to be in the trunk than in the backseat with handcuffs. How'd you get in the trunk anyway?" Joe asked.

"That's another interesting part of the story. There are fairies still at the house. I climbed into a laptop bag so they wouldn't see me. I knew at some point I would get back out of the house."

Joe peeked over at the sleeping nest the twins had made for themselves out of extra clothes on the back seat. Then he lowered his voice to a whisper. "And Alana?"

"Dead," Chris whispered back. "And if that isn't bad enough, they think I killed her, and our kids. Because I'm the deranged psychopath."

"I am so sorry, Chris," Cassie said, this time loud enough for him to hear.

"Yeah, me too," Joe added.

"Talk about something else now, please." Chris said. "Anything else."

Judging by Joe's pained facial expressions, he had trouble thinking of something else to discuss under such immense pressure. "Do you know where we're going?"

"Yes. Westport."

"I'm aware of that. I'm even driving in the right direction now. But do you have an address in mind?"

"I think I remember how to get to Gretchen's house," Chris answered.

"Wait. You've been there before? When did you ever meet her?"

"I never said I met her. We drove by her house once." Chris shrugged. "This isn't exactly a cheerful story either."

"When you said 'we,' did you mean you and our mother?"

"Yeah, we took a road trip there once. I guess our grandfather disowned her when she married our father. Did you know that?" Chris asked.

"I think I remember her mentioning it. I used to wonder why we didn't have grandparents like the other kids in our neighborhood did."

"Yeah, well, she supposedly didn't speak to her sister after being disowned, so I'm guessing Gretchen sided with Grandpa. But once Mom found out she had cancer, she made contact."

Though Chris paused, Cassie found herself hoping he would continue. She was intrigued, not just because the ongoing MacRae family saga reminded her of her own familial misfortunes, mostly for their differences, but also because this was one of the longest explanations Chris had ever given. He was either at peace with his beloved mother's death or was doing whatever he could to keep his mind off his wife. Cassie had a strong sense that his candor was due to the latter.

"It was through email, I think," Chris went on. "When her health started slipping, they arranged to meet and she asked me to go with her. Why Gretchen didn't drive up to Salem instead, I don't know. . . .

"So, anyway, Mom was feeling okay in the morning, but that changed as the day went on. We made it all the way to the house and waited outside. She thought the nausea would pass, but it didn't. It was just over a year ago. I remember it being December because I was staring at Christmas lights for what felt like forever. The lights in this neighborhood were a bit unreal, like a winter wonderland.

"We never did get out of the car, and Gretchen never came out to meet us. Mom asked me to turn around. So I did. She said we'd go another time, but we never made it back there. And Gretchen didn't come to the funeral, either. No card, nothing."

Joe kept his eyes fixed on the road for a long time. Then he shook his head, subtly but with resentment, and his eyes pointed toward the rearview mirror, apparently to look his brother in the eye. "Why didn't you ever tell me this?"

Chris returned the look with his eyes bulging and he lifted a questioning hand in the air. "There wasn't much to tell. We went for an unproductive road trip to Connecticut and back. And besides, if you called more often, there are a lot of things I could have told you." Then he looked away.

"Last time I knew, phones are bi-directional," Joe said, his eyes now bulging too.

"Sure, but I was busy with a wife, the kids, a thankless job, our sick mother, bills, a will, hospitals, insurance companies, blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, while you were off living the dream in 'Cali.'"

"Trust me." Joe's full attention returned to the road ahead. "My life there was no dream."

"Then why didn't you come home?"

"You never asked me to."

"Did I really have to? Wasn't it obvious Mom wanted you to come back? You never heard her all those times she said 'Joe, I miss you' and 'Joe, it's not the same without you'?"

"She was never honest with me about her health. You should have told me how bad things were getting."

"I did!" Chris snapped.

"Yeah, but by then it was practically too late!" Joe sighed and his knuckles clenched on the steering wheel. "At least I made it back in time to say good-bye."

"Whatever . . . New topic. . ."

Chris receded into the darkened backseat.

Joe's eyes flicked to the mirror again. "So are you going to be pissed at me for the rest of our lives?"

"I'm not pissed. At least you had an address and phone number. If there's anyone I'm pissed at it's. . ."

Cassie was still in the cup holder, hugging her knees and hanging on to the brothers' every word. Disappointed that the conversation seemed to have reached its conclusion, she stood up and cleared her throat, ready to be loud and clear. "What was your mother like? I apologize for the intrusion. Yet, I thought, perhaps, I could redirect the conversation to the good times."

"Wise move, small one." Joe looked down at her for a lingering moment. "Our mother—Skylar was her name—was an average-sized woman, but she had a presence about her that made her seem more domineering. Don't get me wrong, she was friendly to almost everyone she met unless she had a reason not to be. She had a high threshold, but if you ever crossed over the line, man were you in trouble! There was this one time, during a little league baseball game—I think it was a championship game or something, right, Chris?"

"Uh-huh," he agreed from the backseat.

"Well, there was this obese kid who didn't listen to his coach on third base, and he rounded the turn for home plate. Chris was the catcher, and he had the ball right there and the kid should have just accepted the tag. But the kid plowed into Chris like he was going for the kill. Chris would have landed on his back or shoulder or even his neck if he hadn't thrown his hand down. Even the spectators heard the bones in his wrist break, and my mother sprang into action like a lioness protecting her cub. I wanted to hide under the bleachers. I imagine my father did, too. He tried to calm her down, but she didn't relent until the officials kicked the kid out of the game and probably baseball, maybe even society, for the rest of his life. Then she bossed the paramedics around like she was a doctor."

"That wrist still isn't right," Chris added. "I was lucky it was my left hand or my baseball career would have ended at thirteen."

"Did you play baseball as well?" Cassie asked Joe.

"A little, but I was always small for my age, and had bad eyes. I was more of a theater nerd and a musician."

"Oh, what instrument did you play?" Cassie asked, with genuine curiosity.

"Percussion. Piano or keyboard mostly. Do you play an instrument, Princess?"

"I can play anything with keys or strings, though for me an instrument's purpose is to accompany my vocals."

"Oh, yeah? A fairy princess with a voice like a bell. There's one I haven't heard before! Do you want to sing something for us? A little impromptu concert? Mi mi mi miiiiiii, you you yooouuu," he sang in a hideous parody of a soprano. Then he bit his lip, and thankfully stopped singing. After that, and not a moment too soon, he quieted the chuckling. "Sorry. I'm done now. Since we're halfway there and the sun hasn't even risen yet, where should we go?"

Chris's body returned to the gap between seats, and he looked over Joe's shoulder. "You should put some gas in this thing. That orange light has been on for a while now."

"We've got plenty of time left. Do you happen to have any money in that cute little bag of yours?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact." Chris grabbed the pink doll purse from the front seat and pulled from it a wad of money. Then he set the purse inside the empty cup holder beside Cassie. "There are mostly girl's clothes in there if you want to take a look, Cassie."

She nodded and pulled out three dresses. The first was simple and gray, the second, a rich green color, and the third, floral with a white background. She held the tiny dresses to her body, estimating their likelihood to fit. They were oversized, but not by much. She could easily fix them with the needle and thread she'd brought with her. She started right away on the floral one. It had the most beautiful print she had ever seen.

"Should we find a gas station and something to eat?" Joe asked. "I'm famished. How about you?"

"Yeah, I suppose. We better pull off now or we might have to push this thing," Chris said, pointing to a sign on the road.

"All right already about the gas! You were never one for living dangerously, were you, Chris?"

"Don't give me a lecture about dangerous. I was in Iraq for how many years? And besides, driving with an empty gas tank isn't dangerous. It's just stupid."

Joe rolled his eyes but pulled off the road without comment. 

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