Wendy knew her phone was in her pocket and on silent, as always. The ringer always made her jump, and she found the vibration setting just as jarring.

“I—” Wendy turned, but Peter was gone, leaving her to stand alone at the edge of the woods, her hands cold, the lantern gone with him. “Peter?” she hissed into the darkness. She stood on her tiptoes and tried to peer deeper into the trees. “Where are you?”

But no one was there.

Wendy swallowed and faced the house. Behind her, the breeze through the woods tickled the back of her neck. They were only slightly more terrifying than her father waiting for her at the door.

She half ran to the fence, clumsily climbed over, and steeled herself against her father’s angry glares and shouts as she crossed the backyard.

He stood there, red-faced, his large fingers gripping the doorframe. Wendy wouldn’t have been surprised if he ripped it right off. “Were you in the woods?!” he demanded. Spittle flew from his lips as he yelled.

Wendy tried to think up some reasonable excuse, but her mind was back in the woods with Peter. “No, I thought I saw something, so I was just looking—”

“Don’t you dare lie to me, Wendy!” he said.

Wendy’s face turned red. She didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t tell him the truth. If he knew she had been in the woods with the boy from the hospital—who the police thought might be connected to her and her brothers’ disappearance—well, Wendy had no idea what he would do, but it wouldn’t be good.

She felt guilty and, to her surprise, scared for Peter. He was out there alone with only the hunting shack as shelter. For the second time in the past twenty-four hours, she wondered if she would ever see him again.

“I—”

“And what happened to you?” His chest swelled and his face darkened from red to purple.

Wendy looked down at her torn pant leg, felt the throb of her head. Luckily, the pain had subsided to a dull ache. “I was sitting on the fence and fell off by accident,” she said.

“I forbid you from going into those woods.” His eyes glared into hers, but they had a glassy sheen. “I thought you were smart enough to know better after what happened!”

Wendy winced.

No, she couldn’t tell him the truth. Not until she figured out what to do about Peter. But this also wasn’t a situation she could lie her way out of.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” she said quietly.

Her father breathed heavily through flared nostrils. Wendy braced herself for more shouting, but his shoulders sank. “Just go to bed,” he told her, his voice now a low rumble. She almost preferred the yelling. The defeated tone just made her feel worse.