It wasn’t until she searched the adjoining rooms, desperate by now for help from any quarter, that she discovered the window in Bennett’s bedroom was wide open. Then the telephone call from Larry Spence began to make sense. She had left him alone in that bedroom while she had gone to fetch the children, and he had used the opportunity to open the window from the inside. Pick had warned that the safety net was vulnerable from within. Larry was still under the sway of Findo Gask, and he had given Cask access without her knowing. He had come to her home specifically to help the demon steal the children.
Worried by the silence, Ross came down the hallway to find her. It was he who found the damp outline of the footprint on the carpet. The footprint wasn’t human; it resembled that of a large lizard, three-toed and clawed at the tips.
The ur’droch took them, she realized at once. And now the demons had them.
She wanted to curl up and die. She wanted to attack someone. She was conflicted and ravaged by her emotions, and it was all she could do to hold herself together as she stood with Ross in the darkened hallway and discussed the possibilities.
“Cask has them,” she insisted quietly, her voice hushed and furtive, as if the walls would convey her thoughts to those who shouldn’t hear.
Ross nodded. He stood very tall and still, another shadow carved from the night that gathered outside. “He wants to trade for the morph.”
“But he already has the morph.”
“He doesn’t realize that. If he did, he wouldn’t have bothered with Harper.” Ross was staring at her, green eyes locked on hers. “He thinks we still have it hidden away somewhere. He’s taken the children to force us to give it up. Nothing else has worked—threats, attacks, breaking into the house. But he knows how you feel about the children.”
She thought again of Larry Spence. “I was a fool,” she said bitterly. She leaned against the wall, running her fingers through her curly hair. “I should have seen this coming. Gask tried for the children last night. I just didn’t realize what he was doing. I thought he was attacking them to scare me. He was trying to steal them.”
“He was more subtle about it this time. He used the deputy sheriff to open up the house and then distract us.”
She made a disgusted noise. “Larry doesn’t understand what’s happening. John, what are we going to do?”
“Wait.” He started back down the hall for the living room. “Gask will call.”
The demon did so, fifteen minutes later. They were sitting in the kitchen by then, sipping at hot coffee and listening to the ticking of the grandfather clock in the silence. Outside, the darkness had chased west the last of the daylight and layered the snow-shrouded landscape. Streetlamps and porch lights blazed bravely in the blackness, small beacons illuminating houses adrift in snowbanks and wreathed in icicles. Thick flakes of snow floated through their gauzy halos as the new storm slowly rolled out of the plains.
“Good evening, Miss Freemark,” Findo Gask greeted pleasantly when she picked up the phone on the second ring. “I have someone who would like to speak to you.”
There was a momentary pause. “Neth?” Harper said in a tiny, frightened voice.
Findo Gask came back on the line. “No more games, Miss Freemark. Playtime is over. You lost. Give me what I want or you won’t see these children again, I promise you. Don’t test me on this.”
“I won’t,” she said quietly.
“Good. I don’t know where you’ve hidden the morph, but I will give you until midnight to recover it. I will call you back then to arrange a time and place for the exchange. I will call only once. Any delay, any excuses, any tricks, and you and Mr. Ross will spend a very lonely Christmas. Do we understand each other?”
She closed her eyes. “Yes.”
He hung up. She placed the receiver back in its cradle and looked at Ross. “You were right,” she said. “He wants a trade. The children for the morph.”