The foot I’d been moving stilled. “I’m going to take a wild guess and say Dee told you?”
Adam nodded as he leaned back, folding his arms. “Dee really likes her.”
“Hmm.”
“I haven’t said anything to Ash or Andrew. Not planning to, because you know how they’re going to react. I’m guessing Matthew knows?” When I nodded, his thoughtful expression returned. “Got to admit, though, I’m kind of surprised you haven’t said anything.”
I sat the bottle on the table. “Don’t know why you’d think I’d actually bring it up. Not like I sit around and think about the girl.”
Adam cocked his head to the side, his grin slow to appear. “Well, I wasn’t insinuating that you sit around and think about her, but normally, you’d be bitching to anyone who’ll listen about Dee making friends with a human girl.”
A muscle flexed in my jaw. “It’s not important.”
“It kind of is,” he replied.
“And I don’t sit around bitching about things.”
Adam’s shoulders shook with a silent laugh, and I started to tell him exactly what I thought about that when my phone vibrated in my pocket. Stretching to the side, I yanked it out of my pocket. Dee’s name flashed across the screen.
I answered it. “You done with that dinner thing already?”
Adam perked up across from me, and I decided I really didn’t like that. “I think we have a problem,” Dee started, her voice pitched high.
Pulling my feet off the table, I tensed. “What kind of problem?”
“Is there any chance that Kat is with you?” she asked, sounding hopeful.
A ball of dread settled in my stomach like lead. “No. No chance in hell.”
“Oh no. I just got back to the house and her car is not in the driveway. So I stopped over to just be sure she wasn’t there and no one answered.” She paused, her breath ragged over the phone. “She’s left the house, and she has a trace on her.”
I was standing without even realizing it, walking over to the edge of the deck. My voice was low. “You said she was staying in tonight.”
“I know.” Her voice rose. “That’s what she told me, but she didn’t.”
“Dammit.” My hand tightened around the phone. “Of course she didn’t.”
“Is everything okay?” Adam asked from behind me.
I ignored him as Dee spoke up. “Don’t be mad at her, Daemon. She doesn’t know it’s not safe for her out there right now. She has no idea. This isn’t her fault.”
Her fault or not didn’t matter. It was still a huge pain in my ass.
“I’m going to go and see if I can find her. I bet she’s at the library and I will—”
“No, you won’t. You aren’t going anywhere. You keep your butt at home.” Anger rushed over me, but underneath that, dread was expanding. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Daemon—”
“I’ll text you as soon as I find her.” I resisted the urge to turn the phone into a missile. “I’m sure she’s fine. Just…just stay home and don’t worry.”
Hanging up, I dropped the phone back in my pocket. “I’ve got to go.”
Adam stood, concern etched into his features. He already had his phone in his hand, and I hoped like hell Dee knew to keep the whole trace thing to herself. “Is everything okay?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I placed my hands on the railing. “Tell Andrew I’ll catch up with him later.”
I vaulted over the railing, dropping a good fifteen feet below, landing in a crouch. I rose and took off toward the front of the house. I almost started to go past my SUV, because I could get to the library faster on foot, but how would I explain that to Kat when I found her?
Hell.
Pivoting around, I hurried toward my car and climbed in. Turning the engine on, I threw the SUV into reverse, navigating it around the cars and trees. The drive into town felt like it took an eternity, and I had to have gotten behind every slow-moving ass on the highway. Fat drops of rain splattered off the windshield. Since it started raining, it appeared no one could drive more than twenty miles an hour. My hands clenched the steering wheel until my knuckles bleached white. Anger rolled through me like the storm brewing outside.
I was angry at Kat for not staying put, furious with myself for putting her in a position where I was going to have to search her ass down and come up with some lame-ass reason why I was there.
And pissed off that I hadn’t been home to catch her ass leaving.
When I made it into Petersburg, I was ready to run over a small village with my SUV, and since parking was a bitch in the evening and I wasn’t in a hurry or anything, I ended up having to leave the car three blocks over, parked behind a diner.
There was a lot of traffic on the main streets, so I had to watch myself. The rain was tapering off and the street lamps were flickering on as I headed down the sidewalk, toward the town library. My mood was dark, matching the clouds ahead, and when I spied the library and didn’t see her car, I was ready to destroy something.
Either she had already left or she’d never been here. There was only one other place to check, a less trafficked side road that was behind the library. I picked up my pace, cutting across the narrow lawn in front of the building, and rounded the side.
An icy chill exploded along the base of my neck and powered down my spine, kicking my instinct to shift into my true form into overdrive. The dread exploded like a buckshot.