The Brocks continued to make their change and in seconds they’d vanished into the forest. Maria continued to take photos well after they were gone, hoping that she’d gotten something she could use against that bitch Tora Brock. But when she checked the photos, there were only two that showed anything. One was of a wolf’s rear end, framed by the green needles of a pine tree, and the other was of two front paws in mid-stride as one of the wolves raced across the snow.

In short, she had nothing. They were pictures of wolves all right—wolves that had, just seconds earlier, been teenage humans—but there was nothing in the photos that would prove the wolves had ever been anything other than wolves. What she needed was a better camera, one that could take a real action shot of the Brocks in the middle of their transformations. Something like Tora’s human head on top of a wolfen body. That would be something. Even newspapers like the National Enquirer and the Weekly World News would be interested in something like that.

She’d be back for that picture tomorrow, with a better camera, warmer clothes, and a pocketful of snacks to keep away the hunger of a long, long wait.

But that was tomorrow.

Today she needed to find her sister and get home before her parents called and started wondering where in the world their children were.

Sister… thought Maria. Where has she gone?

Maria hurried back to the spot where she’d last seen Angelina. She arrived at the snow-covered log and saw the happy face her sister had drawn in the snow. She looked left and right, but the forest was dark now, and getting darker, and her sister, her younger sister, was nowhere in sight.

“Angelina,” she whispered. “Where are you?”

No answer.

“Stop fooling around. We have to go now…we have to go home.”

Still no answer.

There were footprints in the snow. Maria decided to follow them. She went roughly twenty yards before she realized that the tracks in the snow were her own. She had returned to the spot where she’d taken the pictures and her sister was still nowhere to be seen.

“Angelina,” she shouted. “Please come back!”

But there was no response other than the sound of the wind through the trees.

Maria made her way back to the snow-covered log, sat down on it, and started to cry.

Chapter 14