Chapter 16: The Back Path

I screamed Hamish's name loud enough to wake the house.

He was in the hall before I finished, barefoot, with his jeans half buttoned.

He took one look at the empty bed and went white.

"Where's the nanny?"

"I don't know."

We found her in the kitchen, asleep at the table with her cheek on her arm.

A cup of tea sat by her elbow, and a pale sprig of valerian was still floating in it.

Linnea ran in behind us in her nightgown.

"What is it? What happened?"

"Finlay's gone," I said.

My voice came out flat and strange.

Linnea's hand flew to her mouth.

Hamish grabbed a warden by the collar as he came through the door.

"My mother's rooms. Is she in them?"

"Yes, Alpha. We've had the door since midnight. Nobody's gone in or out."

"Open it."

The warden turned the key.

The bed had been slept in, or made to look it, and the window stood wide.

Nobody was in the room.

Hamish crossed to the wall by the fireplace and pressed a panel I had never seen.

It swung inward on a narrow stair.

"My father built it," he said, in a voice I didn't know. "To get to the nursery in the night. She never told me she kept the key."

"She walked past your wardens," I said. "She stole my son out from under you, and you were asleep."

"I was asleep with you."