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"Kit, I’ht not even have spoken the words aloud Regardless, Kitsune understood well enough Anger and betrayal flashed in her jade eyes Her brow furrowed and she glanced away, though she did not htly to his

"I understand," she whispered "You must have time"

But he shook his head She should not speak For so in the roo leaves far away reached hi It was not the girl that stirred

Grains of sand danced across the wood floor It began as a light spray, but soon a fine covering lay upon the floorboards, a dust devil of sand When it began to rise, to sculpt a forid He knew this was not their enemy, not the creature who had taken Collette, but it was an aspect of the sa How could they predict as to come?

The breeze died and a bit of sand scattered upon the floor

The Dust, Sara Halliith the dawn Warht streamed in the s of her father’s house She had slept on the sofa in the living roo the long night she had awoken in the dark with only ehts outside frohborhood, and she’d been tempted to move to her father’s bed

But Sara stayed on the sofa instead, too tired and unnerved toin her father’s bed would constitute soone forever

When the light of Christ woke her, she turned over, burrowed into the sofa, and tried to go back to sleep Her eyes burned and her head felt stuffed with the cotton of exhaustion, but no matter how early it was--surely no later than seven--she could not force herself to go back to sleep Her neck ached and her mouth felt dry

How easy it was to res, when she had awakened before dawn and run to her parents’bedroo that they rise and escort her to the living rooes that lay beneath

In those days there would be plastic candles burning are bulbs co the house was dark No Christlow in the s When she forced herself to rise and look outside, the whole town lay blanketed in crisp new-fallen snow The blue sky was perfectly clear and the sun shone brightly on the snow, giving the whole world a feeling of unreality, as though the town itself existed inside a snow globe

Christht Not in this house

Even with the glare off of the snow, the sunshine could only reach so far and could not dispel the gloo back into sleep, she went to the kitchen andbreakfast She expected to find very little that was edible in the ho, divorced police detective and received a pleasant surprise when she discovered four eggs that had not fossilized, as well as a package of bacon and a half-eaten slab of cheddar cheese that had yet to turn green

Sara fixed a palatable omelette with those remnants She wished for toast but refused to attees cut off Spots of bluish row on it One final bit of luck presented itself in an unopened container of cran-apple juice Not her first choice, but it would do

"Merry Christmas," she said, her voice a bitter whisper, and she toasted the elass that had been--in the once upon a time of her own childhood--a jelly jar Why her father had kept it ht, and did not allow herself to wish for another reason, a deeperin silence broken only by the drone of the refrigerator, she stared around the roo floral wallpaper and the faux-tile linoleum floor and the lazy Susan on the table that carried salt and pepper and napkins--who did he ever have to spin it for? The ansas obvious No one The lazy Susan never spun, because there was only ever one person at the table

TheSara felt both a terrible restlessness, her everyhost in her father’s house She washed her own dishes and the frying pan by hand, then went out into the living rooating officers had left in a neat pile on the coffee table A single postcard--a wish-you-were-here sort of thing froirls in bikinis on the back and a Florida postmark on the front--lay atop days’ worth of junk st them were precisely five Christmas cards, two of which were fro that Sara would not have recognized them on the street One was from Sheriff Norris or, rather, from his wife, Sophie The fourth had come from Sara’s mother, and it stunned her--mainly because she had been unaware that her parents still exchanged Christmas cards

Don’t be an idiot, she chided herself Mom sent one Doesn’t mean Dad did No, Ted Halliwell had never been that kind of father He loved her, she knew that, but there were never any grand gestures froestures

The fifth card had come from Sara herself She wondered if her father would ever return to open it It lay on the coffee table like a sone

The restlessness in her greorse and soue Sara checked her cell phone several ties, but there were none Christ with their families She existed in their worlds only peripherally on this day, outside of everything they cared about Those friends who had been calling since learning of her father’s disappearance would forget about her today, and Sara was surprised to find that she did not begrudge them this freedom If they needed peace on this one day, out of all of them, as she to intrude?

For nearly two hours she set about tidying her father’s house She was far froirlfriends, she spent nearly all of her tiirls she was attracted to were almost invariably scared off by her slobbishness before they even had time to fall in love with her, so Sara tried to hide it well

Yet here she was, cleaning

But what else could she do?

Shortly before noon she plunked herself down on the couch and blew a stray lock of unwashed hair out of her face A shower, she thought God, how nice would that be?

Sunken into the cushions, she found her gaze straying to the stereo systest books and plants on a tall shelf against one wall Any distraction would do, and so she rose and went over and turned the radio on A static hiss filled the roolanced stupidly at the speakers for a an to turn the dial

The first channel she could tune clearly played an old Sinatra Christh her and she twisted the knob The next station had Bruce Springsteen singing "Santa Claus Is Co froave it one final chance and found the jazzy piano that Vince Guaraldi had written and recorded for "A Charlie Brown Christht a tear to her eye and made her bite her lip She swore and punched the power button off, furious at her father for allowing her the bittersweetthe

She stood leaning against the bookshelf, forehead resting against the smooth wood, and was in that very position when, a moment later, she heard the slow, purposeful crunch of tires rolling over snow Sara glanced out theto see a police car pull into the driveway and stop

Jackson Norris clih her, but then she saw the expression on the sheriff’s face and she knew he had not coid as a mannequin’s, yet sympathetic

Her blood ran cold as she went to the door and opened it, watching Jackson come up the front walk