Cassie's mind was foggy, like she was caught in a nightmare. Her momma was dead.

Her momma was dead.

Her momma was dead.

She couldn't think of anything else, and she couldn't stop crying.

Aunt Marnie made her bathe and had given her some oversized clothes to wear. She served a hot breakfast, but Cassie could only pick at it. Her stomach was knotted, and she worried she might vomit.

They sat in a bedroom Aunt Marnie told her was now hers. She looked out the window but wasn't really seeing anything. Aunt Marnie was brushing her hair. It always made Cassie feel good when Momma brushed her hair, but now she felt nothing except for sadness and fear.

While she brushed, Aunt Marnie asked, "Can you talk about what happened yet?"

She didn't want to but knew Aunt Marnie needed to hear the story in order to figure out what to do next. "I don't know how Momma realized the hunters had come, but she woke me." Cassie told her the rest of it, all the way up to when she called her from Sunset Beach.

Aunt Marnie never interrupted while she spoke. When done, Cassie felt a little better for having shared what happened to her.

"Your momma was always careful, so I need you to think really hard. Did you visit the school nurse or a doctor or have any kind of test done that you never told your momma about? Has anybody taken a sample of your blood?"

Momma warned her all the time about blood. She had warned her so often that Cassie had mouthed off to her the last time. She felt so guilty now for having done that. "No. I would never let them take my blood." She thought about being in the nurse's office the previous week when school first started. "They stuck a cotton stick up my nose to test for virus but there was no blood."

Aunt Marnie sighed and squeezed shut her eyes. When she opened them, she looked sad, like a person feeling sorry for a hurt animal.

Her reaction frightened Cassie. "I didn't do anything wrong did I?"

Aunt Marnie rested a hand on her arm. "No, sweetie, what's done is done. Don't think about it anymore."

Although she tried holding back her tears, she couldn't. Aunt Marnie held her while she cried. When she stopped, the hiccups started again. "Why do the hunters want to kill me, Aunt Marnie? What have I ever done to them? I'm just a fifth grader."

"Cassie, those men are not hunting you because of anything you did. They're hunting you because of who you are."

Her new tears were angry ones, not sad ones. She raised her voice. "Who am I? I'm a girl like all the other girls in my class at school."

"Yes, sweetie, you are a girl, but you're also something other."

Cassie pounded her fists into her knees. "I don't want to be something other. I want to be like my friends. I want Momma."

Aunt Marnie stood and pulled back the covers on the bed. "You're exhausted. Take a nap and I promise you we'll talk about it some more after you wake up."

She climbed into the bed because she was too tired to argue. "Aunt Marnie, are you special like my momma and me?"

Her aunt pulled a sheet up to her chin. "No, sweetheart, I'm not descended from your bloodline. I'm your aunt through marriage. My ex-husband and your daddy are brothers."

Cassie couldn't remember her father. He was killed when the fishing boat he worked on had capsized during a bad storm. It happened when she was three. "Does that mean my daddy was special?"

Aunt Marnie wore a puzzled look. "Didn't your momma ever explain things to you?"

Tears filled her eyes as she remembered the last conversation she had with her momma. "She told me she wanted me to have a normal childhood for as long as possible. I think that's why she kept secrets. Now, I need to know everything."

Her aunt cleared her throat. "I don't know much more except to say men don't have your royal blood. It passes only from mothers to daughters."

"What's special about Anclote Key? What's going to happen to me?"

Aunt Marnie pulled the window shades closed. "That's enough for now. Get some sleep." She left the room and closed the bedroom door.

Cassie was so upset she didn't think she'd be able to sleep. She closed her eyes, and to her surprise, she woke up hours later. She heard the television playing. Rubbing her eyes, she got out of bed and found Aunt Marnie sitting on the sofa watching the evening news. She had slept all day!

On the TV screen, Cassie saw a picture of herself from last year's school photo.

"Why am I on the news?"

Her Aunt wore a worried expression, and Cassie also saw fear in her eyes. She patted the sofa beside her. Cassie sat.

The news lady said that someone had killed Mya Drakos during a home invasion and kidnapped her eleven-year-old daughter, Cassandra. The kidnappers had driven away in a silver sedan with Florida license plates. Anyone seeing her or the car was supposed to call the 800-number displayed on the screen.

"That's a lie!" Cassie exclaimed. "I wasn't kidnapped."

Aunt Marnie took her hand. "The hunters made it all up so everyone will be looking for you. They want it to be hard for you to move around in public without being seen. This is not good. It's not good at all."

"What are we going to do?"

Her aunt thought about it before speaking. "First thing to do is to change your appearance. I'm going to cut your hair."

Cassie jumped from the sofa. "Nooo. I love my long hair. I won't let you cut it."

"Sweetheart, it's the easiest way for us to make you look different."

"No." She backed away from her aunt and started crying. "I don't care what you do to make me look different, but I won't let you cut my hair. Anything but that."

Her aunt looked at her with pity. "Okay, I can compromise. I won't cut your hair, but I will dye it, and then I'm going to braid it into tight braids. How would you like to be a redhead?"

She hated the idea. Her thick, light-brown mane had a few blonde strands mixed in. Cassie liked finding and separating out those strands and playing with them. If her aunt dyed her hair, she wouldn't be able to do that anymore. Still, it wasn't as bad as having her hair chopped off. "Jet black. I don't want to be red."

Aunt Marnie giggled. "You want to go Goth?"

Suddenly the idea appealed to her. Some of the older girls in high school went Goth. She thought they and their snooty attitudes were really cool. "Yeah, and since I'll need new clothes you can buy me a black, Goth wardrobe. It'll be a great disguise. I can't wait until my friends at school see my new look."

The pitying look popped back onto Aunt Marnie's face. "Sweetheart, you aren't going to be able to go back to your school. I think you know that."

She did, and tears rimmed her eyes at the thought of never seeing her friends again.

"And we'll have to move away," her aunt said.

Fear tore through her as she remembered what her momma had told her. "Momma made me promise to never move far from Anclote Key. That seemed really important to her."

"Don't worry. I won't take you away from the area. All I'm saying is I'll have to find another apartment and probably buy a different car. You told the man at Sunset Beach where I live. If the hunters find him, they'll make him talk. If he sees the Amber Alert, he'll call. We have to leave, and we have to do it now."

"Where are we going?"

Her aunt sighed. "We have to go to your Uncle Milos."

Question: Do you feel confident Aunt Marnie knows what she is doing?

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