Jude wrapped his arms around my middle. Free went straight for the flying tackle. It didn’t take Duchess long to decide she wanted in on the action. NATO jumped out of the tub to join in, and soon, all five of us were soaked through and soaped up.

Jude climbed to his feet, holding the hose high. “This will not stand!”

I’d just taken a spray straight in the face when I heard the sound of footsteps to our left. I went instantly silent, even as the human part of my brain overrode my instinctual response. I knew those footsteps—light and even, unafraid. There was no threat. No reason to stop playing.

But just like that, the day’s events came roaring back.

I turned toward Cady, and she raised an eyebrow at the fact that Jude, Free, and I were all soaked to the bone.

“Good job,” she told the bloodhounds as they bounded toward her. “You gave the miscreants a bath.”

Part of me wanted to pick up the hose and aim it at Cady. I wanted to play. I wanted to give her what Free and Jude had just given me. But I couldn’t banish the words missing and child any longer.

“One to ten?” I asked Cady. She was the one who’d invented the shorthand—for nightmares, for flashbacks, for times when I needed out. How bad is it, one to ten?

“I’d say I’m sitting at about a six.” Cady shifted her attention from me to NATO, who was bounding toward her. “Don’t even think about it, mister.”

I squatted down and let NATO jump up on me. I was already soaked, and I deeply suspected that Cady’s six was a normal person’s nine.

“You’re going, aren’t you?” I asked. Missing and child were loaded words for Cady, just like they were for me.

My foster mother looked at me the way she had when I was small and angry and caught in a fight-or-flight cycle that neither of us could break.

“I’m not going,” she said. “We are. Get packed.”

Chapter 6

I’d never been a person who cared much about material things. I didn’t have prized possessions. I wouldn’t have thought the idea of leaving home—the house, this room, my bed—would bother me.

A few hours ago, I’d been gnawing at the bit to get out.

But now that we were going someplace else, someplace new with new people and new rules that most humans never had to explicitly learn, I had the urge to put my back to the wall and hunker down. As I stared at my empty suitcase, I thought about the way Cady had said that Saskia would blow through most of her certification.