but Emmett was faster and grabbed her around her waist.
“Chill out, Saf,” Emmett said. “You crossed the line, and you aren’t Evie’s match. She can easily take you down. You think she drove away the monster and then faced off the two scary men without all those years of martial arts training?”
“That’s just it, isn’t it?” Safiya said, angry tears streaming down her face. “She’s the only one who got all the training. Mom and Dad always made sure she had everything. They revolved around her. They treated her like she was the princess and the rest of us didn’t matter. Why do you think we kept moving around? It’s all because of Evelina! It’s her fault that Mom and Dad are gone.”
My face paled. “What are you talking about?”
“I overheard a conversation between Mom and Dad before you took off for college!” Safiya kept yelling and crying, and my other siblings were frozen on the stairs, watching the drama unfold. “Dad said we’d need to move again since we’d stayed in one place for too long, and then Mom said it didn’t matter because you were in college now and we should be safe. Mom wanted us to settle down like a normal family, so we could finally have a life!”
“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” I asked.
“I’m telling you now!” Safiya said.
“What else did you hear?” My throat tightened, as if I couldn’t get air into my lungs.
“Nothing else mattered because Mom cried!” she said.
That might be one of the reasons Safiya hated me, but then she never liked me. I didn’t put up with any of her crap ever since she was a toddler. I just didn’t have the patience for anyone’s nonsense.
“I’m working on finding Mom and Dad,” I said, scanning my siblings as I tried not to let my voice go weak and croak. “We’ll get them back, I promise. I know you’re all hurting and afraid, so you act out. I’ll do my best to put the food on the table. As long as I’m standing and breathing, I’ll make sure you’re safe and you’ll never go hungry. But in the meantime, you’ll cooperate like soldiers, and I’m your commanding officer. When I say hide, you hide. When I say run, you run, like today. Today you did well. And when I say go to school, you’ll grab your lunchbox and backpack and get in the car. That’s how we’ll operate and get through this crisis together as a family. Understood?”
For the first time since my parents vanished, hope bloomed on my siblings’ faces, and my heart ached.
“Crystal clear, Captain Evie,” Fawn said and nodded at me like we were conspirators. “We won’t let you down.”
Again, she didn’t talk like a six-year-old. But I’d make sure she still got all the things a six-year-old should have.
One of the twins snapped to attention on the stairs. Sometimes I still had a hard time telling them apart. “Is that why you blew the whistle today? Are we your soldiers now?”
As he spoke, I realized he was Nox, the slightly more sociable one.
“Sure,” I said.
“But could you not blow the whistle again?” Asuka, the other twin, looked at me ruefully.
“I can’t promise that,” I said. “But I won’t need to do that if you all behave.”
Cassidy raised his hand.
“Yes?” I frowned at him. He was a troublemaker under any circumstances, though his nuisance was more tolerable than Safiya’s.
“I want to be your lieutenant!” he said.
I stared at him hard. “You’ll have to earn it. I don’t just hand over that high rank to anyone that easily.”
He pursed his lips together in determination and nodded. “I’ll earn it, but you must teach me how to fight monsters!”
I sucked in a breath. I was sure none of my siblings had seen the shadow fire surge out of me and toss the Nightling out the window, or they’d have asked a million questions. They’d only assumed that I defeated the monster when they saw the broken glasses in the kitchen.
I did not want my own family to think I was a freak.
“No more Q&A today,” I said. “We don’t have time for that. Get your asses in the van.”
I picked the car key hanging on the wall and tossed it at Emmett. “Get it started, please,” and scrambled up the stairs to put on a pair of jeans.
When I came down the stairs and out of the front door, my siblings had buckled up the safety belts and sat