Chapter Seven
Someone was shaking me. "Are you awake?"
"Not now, Mommy… just a few more minutes," I mumbled, turning over. This resulted only in being shaken harder.
"Wake up, damnit!"
"Mommy, please! Watch the language."
Two hands gripped my shoulders tightly and shook me back violently. "I'm not your f***in' mommy!"
I peered above me with half-open eyelids. "Fi…?"
"Look, I know," Fi said.
"Know what?"
She sighed, throwing me back to the bed disgustedly and pacing around in small circles. "The panther. He's gone, isn't he?"
I sat up straight, rubbing my eyes in an attempt to see better in the darkness. "How did you…"
"It's this—weird psychic connection thingy I got. That's not important. What is important is we have to get out of here." She paused. "Now."
"Fi, it's like three o'clock in the morning."
"Don't you want him back?" she asked. It wasn't the question that stood out to me, though. Her voice suddenly changed. She didn't sound so tough anymore. She sounded like… like she was about to cry.
I hated to let her down like this. "He's not going to come back. He hates me. He thinks I didn't want him anymore," I added, a tear rolling down my cheek.
"This isn't all about you!" she almost screamed, lowering her voice when Ned began to mumble in his sleep. "I mean," her tone changing to a whisper, "we're not leaving just for the panther. I need to find… my dad."
Her dad? She never told me about this before. I told her all about Panther—why didn't she tell me about her father? But this was no time for questions. My eyes had adjusted to the light a little bit and she gave me a pleading look. I didn't get too many of those from her.
Without another word, I stood up and grabbed my coat. I pulled it on over my pajamas and slipped into my shoes. Together, we crept silently into the hallway. Fi slowed to a stop after we had passed a few doors and gave me a serious, but somewhat possessed look. "I have to do this, Candy." She hurried off again and I stared at her in shock.
"I'm Annie… I'm Annie."