“You should be outside. I think I hear the fire pit calling.”

Buttons lay watching them from the opposite chair. He looked back at the window and uttered a low howl.

“See, even the dog knows you should be out there.”

A strange look passed over Andrew’s face. It was gone before she could grasp it.

“Here you go, sis.” Ryker handed her two pills and a glass of water. “Now that you’re up, are you hungry? I could make you a meatball parm like I used to when we were kids.”

“You mean the ones I forced you to make if you wanted to hang around with me and Carol?” She smiled and even that hurt.

Crouching beside the bed so they were eye to eye, Ryker said, “I still remember how you liked them. Toast an English muffin partway while heating up three meatballs in the microwave. I had to smoosh a meatball and a half onto each side of the muffin, cover them in cheese, garlic, and oregano, then pop them in the toaster oven. When the cheese was melted, I cut them in fours.”

“With a pizza cutter,” she said.

“Right. That time I used a knife and made the muffin all ragged, you told me I couldn’t come with you guys to the movies.”

She patted his hand and could see by the look on his face that hers was red-hot. “It sounds great, but I couldn’t eat a thing if I tried.”

“Aren’t you supposed to feed a fever?”

Nikki arrived with a folded, cold washcloth. She wiped Kate’s face down and then settled it on her forehead.

“I think that’s for a cold,” Nikki said.

Andrew covered her with the sheet. She was on fire, but she’d started to shiver. Her back throbbed, devoid of the initial burst of heat that now broiled the rest of her body.

“It’s just a fever. It’ll go away,” she said. “Really, I’m fine. Thank you, everyone.”

She wasn’t fine, but she suddenly wanted them to go away. The more they doted on her, the worse she felt. She was the sick, crippled child surrounded by cloying adults. It made her feel helpless and angry. So, so angry.

Andrew ushered Nikki and Ryker away. “I bought a deck of cards. Who’s up for some gin rummy?”

They were mercifully sliding their attention away from Kate when the most inhuman of all screams echoed through the woods, turning everyone inside the cottage to stone.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Nikki stopped in midstride, her eyes gone wide as softballs.

“What in the holy fuck was that?”

Ryker and Andrew exchanged nervous glances.