Amy did her best to stuff down her panic and spoke to her sister softly and sweetly. “Can you ask Rover to let us out? Can you let him know you’re in here, and that you need to leave? Can you think it at him?”

Katie nodded. She clenched up her face in effort.

The door flew open in Mom’s hands.

The three of them piled out into the cool night, coughing and sputtering, Dad following soon after with the cats bolting past his legs and out into the night. A fire engine turned the corner a couple of blocks down, sirens going full blast. At the edge of the curb, Amy thought she could see Rover, watching them between flashes of light, his one exposed eye flickering bright red.

Chapter 19: Background Check

They stayed in a motel for the night.

The cats were nowhere to be found, hiding or run off.

Rover, they left behind.

Silently, they prayed he wouldn’t be able to find them.

The only room left had two single beds, so Amy and Katie had to share one, curled together tightly on a creaky mattress under scratchy blankets. Not that Amy minded—it was nice to be close to her sister without Rover around. As she went to sleep, she remembered the look on the fireman’s face when Mom had told him they’d be leaving their dog in the house overnight.

The next morning, they had off school—Dad had told them that they could use a couple of days’ break after everything that happened—but Katie shook Amy awake while the light was still pale gray beneath the blinds over the windows.

“Katie?” asked Amy groggily. She’d been so deeply asleep without the nightmares …

“I don’t know what to do about Rover,” Katie whispered.

Amy pulled herself out of her haze pretty quickly. She sat up and faced her little sister. “What do you mean?”

“He loves me so much.” Katie stared down in her lap. “When it’s just us two, he’s the nicest puppy ever. But he gets mad, and then he does things that upset Mommy and Daddy and you. I tell him not to, but he just keeps doing them. And I’m scared that you all hate me for it!”

Katie’s lip curled out, and she started to cry. Amy scooched over and put her arm around her little sister.

“We don’t hate you, Katie,” she said. “We could never hate you. We love you so, so much. We’re just scared.”

Amy thought about last night, how Katie had communicated with Rover using her mind. Bit by bit, a plan began to form.

“Listen, has Rover ever told you where he came from? Or shown you where he lived before our house?”