“Her name is Brandy Kerry,” Geraldine said. “She is seven years old. Her parents are on a business trip to Charlotte. They left her here in the Keep in the boarding school in the south wing. She took a nap at five o’clock with the rest of the children in her class. The room is on the seventh floor. The windows are barred. Ruth, the teaching aide, sat by the door, reading a book. At the end of the hour, she came in to wake the children and found Brandy’s bed empty. Ruth searched the room. None of the other seven kids saw anything. Brandy just evaporated from her bed and nobody had noticed.”

“The rest of the staff searched the floor,” Colin continued. “Every room was checked, and to get to the staircase, she would’ve had to go past the school receptionist and a guard, and Connie swore she did not see a child leave. When it became evident that Brandy wasn’t anywhere on the school floor, we were alerted to the situation.”

Of all the clans, Jackals were the most paranoid when it came to their children. Where boudas spoiled their kids with too much freedom and cats encouraged offspring to go on solitary wanderings, the jackals always stressed family. In the wild, unlike wolves who formed packs or rats who swarmed, jackals mated for life and lived in pairs, raising their children on their own little slices of territory.

“I yelled at Ruth.” Geraldine clenched her hand into a fist. “I thought she walked off or fell asleep, and Brandy had snuck out.”

“We checked the bars on the window and did a complete sweep of the wing and the outside,” Colin said. “No sign of her.”

“He took that baby.” A snarl slipped into Geraldine’s voice. “He plucked her right out of her bed, that fucking bastard. I will tear his guts out.”

“If you confront him, he’ll kill you and her,” Kate said.

Geraldine whirled to her.

“It’s not an insult,” Curran said. “She’s stating a fact. He has power over jackals.”

“So what do we do?” Geraldine raised her hands.

“We do nothing,” Curran said.

“But—”

“We do nothing,” he repeated. “We don’t know where he’s keeping the child, but he won’t hesitate to kill her. We will meet his demands. For now.”

“He wants Andrea and I to help him,” Raphael said. “We will do it.”

“We’ve discussed it,” I said. “As long as we play ball, no more children will be taken.”

Colin’s voice turned into a rough growl. “So you want us to sit on our hands, then?”

“No,” Kate said. “Find out everything you can on him. Go to the books, visit experts, get as much information as you can on him. Find out his weaknesses, if he has any. As soon as the moment presents itself, we will hit him with everything we have.”