SEVENTEEN
“ET TU, BRUTE?” I muttered as I walked along the beach, pulling my cardigan a little tighter against the salt-scented breeze. It would be hot soon, as per usual in Miami, but at this predawn hour, the spring air was a little cool for the knee-length dress I’d thrown on to look for my missing pet.
“Brutus!” I called out, loudly this time. “Where are you?”
I’d been calling him for over fifteen minutes with no response, and I was getting worried. He had never been away from home this close to dawn before. I might not have wanted Brutus when he’d been dumped on me, and he definitely wasn’t anyone’s idea of a normal pet, but over the past couple months, I’d really come to care for him.
Every night for the past two months, he left the house at dusk and was back by 5:00 a.m. at the latest. Before me, Brutus had spent his entire life in darkness, so he didn’t just hate sun; he was afraid of it. That’s why, when he hadn’t shown up by five thirty this morning, I’d gone looking for him. North Shore Open Space Park in Miami was one of his favorite places, and at this hour, the stretch of beach I walked along was deserted.
I scowled at the slowly lightening horizon, my worry increasing. “Brutus!” I yelled again. He’d better not be avoiding me because he’d broken the rules and had eaten someone.
Even if he’d done nothing wrong, if I didn’t find him soon, he’d probably break into someone’s house to avoid the sunlight. If that happened, God help the homeowner if they noticed him and tried to shoo him outside. Talk about an incident that would make the evening news.
“Did you lose something?” an unfamiliar male voice asked from right behind me.
I stiffened. No one else had been on the beach moments ago. Even with the sounds of the surf, my recently upgraded senses should have picked up on someone running straight at me, and he would’ve had to run to cover that much distance in mere seconds.
There was another explanation for how the man behind me had so suddenly and soundlessly appeared, but if that was the case, then one of us wouldn’t be leaving this beach alive.
I couldn’t let on that I knew something might be wrong. I turned around and fixed a false smile on my face.
“You startled me!” I said, hoping I sounded more surprised than scared.
A lock of black hair fell over the stranger’s face as he smiled back at me. “Sorry. I heard you yelling, so I came over to see if you needed any help.”
He looked a few years older than me, putting him in his early to midtwenties. Though he was on the skinny side, he was also cute in a boyish sort of way. If I’d have met him when I was back at college last semester, I would’ve thought the shadows that appeared and disappeared
