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Glint
By Ann Coburn HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2007 Ann Coburn
All right reserved.
Chapter One
Missing
The birthday cake was a rectangular slab, encased in white icing. It was so big it took up half the kitchen bench. Ellie leaned against the fridge, looked down at the cake, and frowned. There was something about the shape and color of the slab that made the skin of her arms roughen into goose bumps. It reminded her of something else. Something disturbing . . .
Ellie straightened up, rubbed the goose bumps away, and made herself concentrate on the immediate problem. What to do with the cake? To make it fit into any of their storage tins, she would have to cut it into quarters and, somehow, that felt wrong. Danny was the only one who should be cutting this cake.
Ellie reached out and gently traced her finger over the words that were piped across the top of the cake in blue icing: "Happy Eleventh Birthday, Danny!" Arranged below the slightly wobbly writing were a miniature chocolate fishing rod and a marzipan trout that bore a more than passing resemblance to a large, brown, speckled slug. Ellie smiled and felt the breath catch in her throat both at the same time. Less than twenty-four hours earlier, she had been trying to mold that same lump of marzipan into a lithe, fishlike shape when Danny had burst into the kitchen.
"Whoa! Slug alert!" he had yelled. "Big slug! On my cake!"
"It's not a slug, stupid. It's a fish."
"Really?" Danny had hitched his newfishing tackle higher onto his shoulder and opened the back door. "Must be a new species. Or a mutation."
"Go away. Go--fish."
" 'Scientists admitted today that they were baffled by the horrific slug creature found on Danny Brody's birthday cake--' "
She had picked up a wooden spoon and sent it flying across the kitchen, but Danny had dodged behind the back door.
"Missed," he had crowed, sticking his head back into the kitchen to grin at her.
"I hope you drown!" she had yelled, and Danny's high laugh had been cut in half as the back door closed behind him. That was the last time she had seen him. Her brother had gone fishing on the morning of his eleventh birthday and he had not come home again. Now, a day and a night later, Danny was officially missing.
Ellie felt her eyes sting with tears as she stared down at the cake. I hope you drown! Those were the last words she had said to him. "I didn't mean it, Danny," she whispered. "I didn't mean--" The words choked in her throat and her eyes widened with horror as she suddenly realized what the cake reminded her of. The white slab with "Danny" written across the top looked horribly like a marble tombstone.
"No!" The word came out in a fierce hiss. "He's not dead!" Blinking away tears, she opened a drawer and yanked out a clean tablecloth. She threw the cloth over the cake and turned her back on it.
Picking up a plate of toast and honey, she left the kitchen and walked down the hallway, passing the closed door to the living room where her dad was talking to two police officers. She climbed the stairs and edged into Danny's room, stepping over the mushroom piles of clothes that were growing all over the carpet. Mrs. Brody was sitting on Danny's unmade bed, clutching his pillow to her face.
"Mum. . . ? I've brought you something to eat."
Mrs. Brody nodded.
"And I've cleared all the party stuff away. I threw out the sandwiches. Everything else is in the fridge. Except the cake."
Mrs. Brody nodded again, then, with her face still buried in Danny's pillow, she took a deep, shuddering breath and wailed until her lungs were empty.
Watching her mother slump down onto Danny's bed, Ellie felt a lonely terror prickle up her spine. Danny was missing. Really missing. This was the sort of nightmare that only happened to other families. She looked around Danny's bedroom. A bowl of soggy cereal was sitting on his desk, and his Xbox game had been left on pause. She turned to the door, half expecting him to come hurtling in, grab the handset, and continue his game. The doorway was empty. Suddenly desperate for something to do, Ellie put the plate of toast on Danny's desk and bent to pick up his clothes.
"Leave them!"
Ellie jumped. Her mother was glaring at her from red-rimmed eyes.
"Sorry." She dropped the clothes, and her mother slumped back onto the pillow. Ellie stood for a few seconds, at a loss. It was as though two members of her family had gone missing. First Danny had disappeared and then, overnight, her mother had been replaced with this strange, wild woman who howled and snapped and refused to come out of the den she had made.
Downstairs, the front door slammed. For one second, two, there was silence, and Ellie held her breath. When quick, light footsteps started up the stairs toward them, she and her mother both turned to the doorway with identical expressions of hope.
"Danny?" called Mrs. Brody, hastily putting the pillow back in its place and smoothing out the creases. "Is that you?"
"Only me. Sorry." Lisa appeared in the bedroom doorway, smiling sympathetically. Ellie tried to return the smile but only managed a disappointed grimace. Mrs. Brody groaned and hid her face in the pillow again. Lisa did not seem to mind at all. Ellie supposed that she must have learned to cope with all kinds of behavior in her job.
Lisa was one of the two police officers who had been talking to Mr. Brody downstairs. She specialized in family liaison work and she did not wear a uniform. Instead, she was dressed in creamy linen trousers and a pink, fluffy sweater. Her hair was soft and fluffy too. She was slim and pretty, with a smooth, round . . .
Continues...
Excerpted from Glint by Ann Coburn Copyright © 2007 by Ann Coburn. Excerpted by permission.
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