IT WAS STRANGE TO CREEP back into the Smythewhite home without my pelt slung across my shoulders. Strange not to see Luke or anyone else when I entered.
To ease my mind, I cracked open the door to the teenager’s bedroom. Padded closer until I was sure the lump beneath the sheets was human and alive.
A tiny red light on the bedside table caught my attention. The indicator LED on a baby monitor, the other half of which I suspected sat in Luke’s bedroom.
So Clarence was taken care of. Time to return to my primary objective—finding Bastion’s pelt.
The bedrooms were off limits at the moment, but this was my opportunity to tear apart public spaces I’d been forced to avoid the previous evening. So I searched. Picked up vases and stuck my hands inside them until dust bunnies rubbed against my
