Haven Lost: The Dragon's Brood Cycle, #1

By Josh de Lioncourt

Sixteen-year-old Emily Haven, hero of the girls' hockey team at Lindsey High, has spent her young life keeping two secrets: her rapidly deteriorating home life and the seemingly supernatural power that makes her a star on the ice. When she begins seeing visions of a ragged boy reflected in mirrors and shop windows, a series of events unfolds that tears her from twenty-first century Minneapolis and leaves her stranded in another world with horrors to rival those she has left behind. Lost amidst creatures of fantasy and legend, she is forced to confront the demons of both her past and future to unravel the riddle of the mysterious boy and embark upon a journey to uncover long forgotten histories. Caught between opposing forces of a war she does not understand, Emily must find new strength within herself and, above all, the will to remember her friends.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Draconis Entertainment
• Release date: Jun 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781393776987

Book preview

The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts.

—Bertrand Russell, Conquest of Happiness

Part One: Faceoff

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

—William Shakespeare, Hamlet

The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.

—Socrates

Chapter One

Emily swerved to the left even as she continued gathering speed, dodging the bigger girl who moved to block her progress. She felt the cold air as it swirled around her. She felt the smooth flow of the ice as it slid nearly effortlessly beneath her skates. This was it. She could feel it. That sweet thrum in her muscles and the low, distant whine in her head, as comforting as an old familiar sweater.

Just ahead, only one defender stood between her and the net. She could get around her, but she was running out of room. She’d have to be quick and sure. There was no time to think; only time to act. And, of course, acting was all there was when she felt this way.

With another burst of speed, she swung the puck around the defender to her left and propelled her body around and to the right. As she and the puck found each other again behind the scrambling girl, Emily chanced a glance up at the clock. Three seconds…

The crowd was on its feet, roaring. She couldn’t even hear the hiss of blades on ice beneath her anymore. She swept the puck around her body and, in one fluid movement, pulled back for the shot.

She’d always had a great shot. The coach had told her it was the best he’d seen in his twenty-six years of coaching the girls hockey team for Lindsey High. This time was no exception. She let a rocket go. It flashed past the netminder, who never even twitched.

Emily was already raising her fist in triumph when, nearly simultaneously, she heard the puck ring off the far post and the sound of the horn, ending the game.

It hadn’t gone in. They were still down by a goal—and it would stay that way. The game was over. They’d lost.

For a moment, she continued to coast on her skates toward the goalie, then abruptly turned to the right, missing the other girl by inches.

It hadn’t gone in. She’d known it would—known it—but it hadn’t. She spun around as she reached the dasher boards and stared at the traitorous post. Another inch to the left, and they’d be heading into overtime right now. They could win in overtime. They hadn’t lost a game in OT all year long. Instead, the spectators, mostly boys and girls from school and a smattering of parents and teachers, were already filing out of the stands. Some were celebrating. Some were commiserating. All were gathering up their things and leaving.

For a while, Emily stood against the boards, clutching her stick to her chest, and simply waited for the other players to get off the ice. It was as though a pillar serving as the foundation of her world had tottered, leaving her to stumble and stagger as the ground tilted and swayed crazily beneath her, the deck of a ship in rough seas.

She was still staring at the net when she heard the familiar sound of steel on ice echoing through the now silent arena. Coach Anders was skating toward her, a look of friendly concern on his face.

She started moving then, skating to the far side of the rink to avoid the coach, making her way to the bench and locker room beyond. She didn’t want to hear the old stuffy platitudes about how it’s not whether you win or lose… and so on. Bullshit. It was always about whether you won or lost. The old axiom was just what you said to make the losers feel better about lacing up their skates the next time the puck was dropped. She knew better. Either way, that wasn’t the point.

She trudged into the locker room, dripping snow from her skates. She hung her stick on the rack without looking and went straight to her locker, not meeting anyone’s gaze. Casey was already there, nearly finished changing out of her hockey things.

C’mon Em, she said, catching sight of Emily’s face through the visor as she pushed her blonde hair behind her ears. She turned to study her friend more closely.

C’mon what? Emily snapped, throwing herself down on the bench beside Casey. She undid the buckles of her helmet and tossed it down between them with considerably more force than was necessary.

"You were bound to miss one eventually, Casey said in a low voice. It’s over with now. It won’t be hanging over you anymore. You might not miss any others for the rest of the year. So we lost. We lost last week too. Shit happens."

For a moment, Emily thought about arguing, thought about telling Casey that it wasn’t that simple. She had known she was going to make that goal. She had known. And then, it hadn’t happened. It didn’t work that way—at least, it never had.

Instead, she decided it was better to let Casey think she was just moping than to convince her friend she was crazy. Maybe she was. Who ever heard of a hockey psychic, anyway? Maybe that was all bullshit, too.

Want to go for hot chocolate or something? I’ll buy, Casey offered, standing and stretching her arms behind her back.

No…thanks though. Emily struggled to keep her voice normal. I’m just going to change and head home. I’m tired. It was a lie, and not a very good one. They’d been friends too long to make the words anything less than transparent. Emily wanting to go back home to her drunk and drugged out mom and stepdad held about the same plausibility as a jellyfish wanting a vacation in the Sahara. But Casey let it go with nothing more than a troubled look.

That look said more than any words, and Emily was suddenly filled with a rush of such gratitude toward Casey that she got to her feet and hugged her. Startled, Casey stood stiffly for a moment, surprised. Emily wasn’t usually the hugging type, but after a moment, she relaxed and squeezed back.

They broke apart, and Casey straightened her shirt awkwardly. Emily looked away, feeling uncomfortable and not exactly sure why. She studied the scratched and dirty numbers etched into the door of her locker. Casey coughed, and Emily met her eyes again.

Well…got my phone, Casey said. Call if you change your mind.

Yeah. Thanks. I will. The two friends stared at each other for a moment longer, then Emily dropped her eyes and muttered, Sorry, Case. Casey made a flapping gesture. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ that gesture said. Emily smiled. She might’ve looked longer—harder—at her friend, had she known what was waiting for her in the next few hours. But she didn’t know. The knowing didn’t work like that either. It never had.

See ya, Casey said as she swung her schoolbag over one shoulder and headed for the door. Emily watched her go.

She moved slowly after the door slammed behind Casey, stripping out of her gear and dressing herself in civilian layers against the snow she’d be facing outside. The other girls chattered and changed around her, departing in twos and threes. Some glanced her way as they went, and a few even told her she’d had a good game. She smiled and nodded and quietly wished they would all just let her be. By the time she was slipping her feet into her sneakers, the door was closing behind the last of the girls, and she was alone with her thoughts.

Casey called it the groove—those moments leading up to one of Emily’s spectacular goals, when she could dance around every other player on the ice, knowing every move to make to evade them and light the lamp for Lindsey High. To her, it was normal. No big deal. They’d been playing hockey together for almost ten years, and Emily had never disabused her friend of the notion.

But Emily knew that what she felt in those moments was not normal at all. It couldn’t be explained away with new-age mumbo-jumbo. It went beyond that. To Casey, Emily had found her groove and had missed a goal. It was bound to happen once in a while.

But Emily had always known when that next goal was coming. Never once in nearly ten years had she ever missed one when that feeling had electrified her muscles and seeped into her marrow. Never—until now.

She sat listening to the silence for a moment, resting her head in her hands. Everyone was gone. They’d want to lock things up soon. She needed somewhere she could think and try to make sense of it on her own.

She stood, swinging her backpack onto her shoulders, and started down the long row of lockers toward the door. She had her savings in her bag; it wasn’t safe to leave them at home, not with her mother constantly ransacking her room for drug money. She’d been saving up for a new pair of skates for months, but she supposed that spending a couple bucks on a coffee on the way home couldn’t hurt much this once. She could sit and pretend to do her homework at a table in Starbucks and give herself a chance to think about…whatever it was that had happened. It was hard for her to even approach the thought in her mind yet. She felt as if the only stable part of her life in these last few years had suddenly and irrevocably betrayed her. It had.

As she turned the corner at the end of the row, she glanced into the full-length mirror hanging on the wall—and froze.

In the mirror, just a few steps behind her, was a boy. He looked to be roughly her own age, dressed in torn and dirty clothes that may have once been jeans and a jacket, though it was hard to tell now beneath the multitude of patched and stitched up places. His hair was long and unevenly cut, pulled back behind his head and tied with a leather thong. On his face was a look of such exquisite sadness that, though she was certainly startled, Emily was not immediately alarmed.

She spun around to face the boy, wondering as she did how on Earth she hadn’t heard him creeping up behind her in the silent echo chamber of the locker room.

There was no one there. The long row of lockers stretched out in front of her, still, silent, and she was very much alone.

She knelt quickly, looking under the benches on her right. Nothing. Only an abandoned sock at the end of one row. Nowhere else for anyone to hide either.

She looked back at the mirror. Only her own confused green eyes stared back at her, framed by her plain dark hair. Had she imagined the boy? Had it been a trick of the light? She frowned up at the fluorescents above her, casting their clear and unforgiving brilliance on everything below. Not very damn likely.

She shook her head. Stress from the…incident…on the ice. She thought she’d seen a boy in the mirror. Obviously, she hadn’t. Best not to think about it too hard.

She squared her shoulders and headed for the door again, walking just a little faster than was usual for her. She suddenly didn’t want to be quite so very much alone.

By the time she reached the door, she was nearly running. She hurtled through it and collided with someone standing just outside. She bounced off the large body and nearly slipped in the melting snow that dampened the tiles beneath her.

A pair of large, strong hands clasped her shoulders, steadying her on her feet, and she looked up to find herself staring into the face of Coach Anders. He offered her a small smile, the familiar mischievous twinkle in his eye beneath the crow’s nest of graying hair.

You sure are in a hurry. Determined to avoid me, too, I guess.

Emily flushed. No, sir…I just… she floundered, searching for a lie, but he only shook his head at her.

Don’t, Em. I know you don’t want to talk to me right now. Probably you don’t want to talk to anyone much. That’s fine. But I want to talk to you for a minute or two. Humor an old man, won’t you? I won’t keep you long. Would you come down to my office?

He was giving her an out. He could have easily ordered her to come with him, but he was leaving it up to her. Somehow, that made all the difference.

Okay, she said and followed as he led her down the hall and into his tiny office.

Coach Anders’s office was, to the outside observer, utter chaos. An enormous metal desk took up nearly all the space, with a chair on each side of it and a dented file cabinet shoved into a corner. Emily wondered, not for the first time, if he actually had anything in that old cabinet. It was so tight behind his desk that it seemed anyone trying to get the cabinet open would have to climb up onto the desktop to have enough room to slide the drawers open. Since the desk was piled high with papers, hockey equipment, office supplies, and mounds of other detritus, much of which looked like it dated back to the 1970s, getting up on the desk without causing a minor catastrophe would be a challenge in itself.

The image of her coach crouching amidst the clutter of his desk, trying to lean over and pull open one of those drawers, filled Emily’s mind for a moment, and she grinned in spite of herself.

Yeah, I know. It’s a mess. Coach Anders squeezed around his desk and dropped into his chair, motioning for her to take the only other seat across from him.

No, it’s not that…it’s just… Emily broke off, sitting on the edge of the cold plastic chair and looking around.

Yes, it is. One way or another, it is. Don’t tell me the picture you had in your head. I’m sure I don’t want to know. But every colleague, student, or parent who has ever stepped through that door has always had that same silly grin on their mug within three seconds of catching a glimpse of this… he waved a hand to indicate the chaos at large. It may not look like it, but I know where every damn thing is in here. It isn’t pretty, but it works. He leaned back in his chair, tried to put his feet up on the corner of the desk, and caused an avalanche of papers to fall off the other side and into Emily’s lap. They both started laughing, and he put his feet back on the floor as she scooped up the papers and attempted to balance them atop a mostly empty box of Kleenex. She wasn’t at all sure where the papers had started. There didn’t seem to be a spot for them on the desk anymore.

Sorry…sorry! he said. That was not a good illustration of the point I was trying to make. Emily grinned at him and sank back into the chair, feeling relaxed for the first time since missing that goal…

That thought, unbidden and bitter, broke the spell of the moment, and the grin fell away from her face. Anders saw it but did not comment at once. He only surveyed her across the mountains, hills, and valleys of debris that made up the landscape of his domain, seeming to study her closely.

So… Emily said at last. You wanted to talk to me, sir?

Yeah, I did. He rummaged around on his desk for a moment, then came up with a plain blue folder that didn’t look any different to Emily than the other hundred she could see peeking out from amongst the clutter. He flipped it open and began thumbing through whatever was inside. I wanted to show you a few things. I’ve been waiting for the right moment. Didn’t know when that would be, but looks like it finally showed up. Yeah, let’s start with this. He pulled a sheet of paper from the folder and handed it across the desk to her. Emily took it, feeling a bit nonplussed.

It was a photocopy of the front page of the Lindsey Letter, their school paper. She’d seen this particular front page thousands of times, as an original copy was tacked to the wall beside her bed at home. It showed a photo of Emily herself, her stick caught halfway through its fall to the ice, and her fists in the air. She considered it one of the best photographs ever taken of her. What could be seen of her face through the visor was alight with excitement, turning her plain features into someone else’s—someone almost beautiful. The headline read: Sophomore Emily Haven (No. 21) Scores Overtime Goal to Propel the Lindsey Timbre Wolves to Their First State Title.

Emily’s stomach clenched. This was not making her feel better. What if it was gone? What if she never scored another goal like this one? She couldn’t trust the knowing anymore.

Turn it over, Anders prompted, and Emily did.

On the back side was another photocopied newspaper page, only this one was from the Edmonton Sun. Most of it was taken up with a picture of someone Emily didn’t recognize, with a hairstyle that had to be at least thirty years out of date…but below that was what Coach Anders clearly wanted her to see. It was a photo of a player in an old-fashioned Edmonton Oilers uniform. The picture was small and a little faded, but no less striking for that. The man in the shot had been caught with his stick halfway in its fall to the ice and his fists raised in celebration. The angle was slightly different, but it was so similar to the picture from the Letter that Emily was stunned. She simply stared at it.

Read the headline, Anders prompted.

Emily tore her eyes away from the picture and read: Hattrick Goal Carries Gretzky and the Oilers to 8-3 Victory Over Flyers. In surprise, she glanced back down at the picture. It was hard to tell, but yeah, she thought that was a 99 on the player’s shoulder. She’d seen countless photos of Gretzky, but she couldn’t remember ever seeing one where he seemed so very, very young.

Gretzky… she murmured to herself, not taking her eyes from the photograph. How did you find this?

I have a wide range of hockey related materials in boxes at home. My wife calls it…well, never mind what she calls it. Point is, when I saw that picture of you in the Letter last year, I knew it reminded me of something, and I went digging around until I found that old copy of the Sun. Almost missed it. Terrible rag, really…but I’d held onto it. Figuring with a guy like Gretzky, I might want it someday. I was right, too.

Emily stared at the picture for a moment longer, then looked up at Coach Anders.

Why are you showing me this now? she asked. It doesn’t really make me feel better about… She trailed off.

Doesn’t it, though? Look, I’ve been coaching hockey teams for a long time, Emily. Too long, some would say. Some have said it, actually. And yeah, it’s true, you’re one of the best players it has ever been my privilege to coach. You missed a goal today. It wasn’t the first…and it won’t be the last.

Emily opened her mouth to say something, though she wasn’t at all sure what, but Anders raised a hand to forestall her.

Wait…let me finish. He paused, and Emily closed her mouth again. I know what you’re thinking…more or less. Just like I knew, more or less, what you were thinking when you got that silly look on your face at the sight of this miserable little room the school administrators try to tell me is not the janitor’s closet. You’re thinking that I don’t understand. That I don’t get it. That what you have is some kind of magical power, and that it’s somehow been breeched, and you’re afraid you won’t get it back. I don’t know if that is what you were going to say out loud, but it is more or less what you were thinking. Hundreds if not thousands of men and women who have laced up the skates have thought the same thing when they missed their first goal, or missed a save they should’ve gotten, or what have you. Even Gretzky had his off nights. What separates the great players from the rest is not whether or not they miss the goals. It isn’t even about how often or how well they score them, or how pretty they are when they do. It’s how they let the ones they miss affect them.

He paused for a moment, and it seemed to Emily that his gaze was boring into her. She wanted to look away and found that she could not. All she could do was look back into those kind old eyes.

You, Emily Brown Haven, have the potential to be a great player. That doesn’t mean much, sadly, but it means more than it used to. You won’t be playing for the Edmonton Oilers, but a lot can change in the next ten years, and you may have a place playing hockey in some capacity or other at a professional level. If nothing else, you may play for Team USA come 2018 or 2022. I don’t know. But all of that hinges on how you let today impact your confidence. It’s not magic, it’s talent and skill. The only real magic is in not thinking about it too much. He held out the folder to her, and Emily took it.

This is yours now, I think, he said. Look through it. Think about what I’ve said. Okay?

Emily nodded, tucking the page she was holding back in with whatever else was in the folder.

Oh, and I almost forgot. He fished around in his coat pocket and pulled out a puck. Here. He held it out to her.

She took it, confused. What’s this? I mean…it’s a puck, but…why?

You missed a goal today. That’s the puck you missed it with. I thought you should have it. Hold it…feel it…keep it. Hang on to it for at least a week. After that, I don’t give a damn what you do with it. It’s just a puck…like any other. Whether you make a goal or miss one, the puck doesn’t know or care. He paused, watching her.

Emily fingered the puck for a moment. It was scuffed and scratched, warm from Anders’s pocket. There was something in his words—something that felt right, but not all the way right. He didn’t understand—couldn’t understand—but Emily found suddenly that that didn’t matter so very much. She felt better without knowing how or why exactly.

Think about it, he said gently. Have a good rest of your weekend.

The dismissal was so abrupt, it took a moment for Emily to recognize it for what it was. She slipped the folder and the puck into her backpack and stood, swinging it back onto her shoulders again. She moved to the door but stopped at the threshold, looking back.

Coach Anders was already absorbed in hunting for something else on his desk.

Thanks, Coach, she said.

Sure…sure… he said absently, running a hand through his hair and not looking up.

Grinning again, despite herself, Emily turned and headed down the hall.

Chapter Two

Emily turned her collar up against the wind as she made her way toward the bus stop. Traffic sped past, spraying sheets of slush and ice in its wake. The bank of snow to her left rose higher than her shoulders in places. It looked almost preternaturally white against the dingy backdrop of the cityscape around her. The sun reflected and refracted off the snow, but it’d be going down soon. The days were getting shorter.

She turned the corner and surveyed the little knot of people waiting for the bus. Many held cups of coffee in their gloved hands, and most were her teammates. She didn’t see Casey among them. Maybe she was still inside.

She sped past the stop, not meeting anyone’s gaze, and slipped into Starbucks. If Casey was here, she’d sit with her for a while after all. She was already feeling the pangs of guilt at having snapped at her after the game. It wasn’t Casey’s fault she’d missed that goal.

The tiny coffee shop was packed. Men and women in suits juggled iPhones and briefcases; teenagers silently bopped along, tell-tale white strands hanging from their ears. She scanned the crowd, but if Casey had stopped here after the game, she was gone now.

Emily pushed her way deeper inside and got in line behind a tiny little black woman ordering what sounded like half the menu.

…no, I said soy. Soy in the pumpkin spice. Yeah…

She waited, tuning out the noise and being jostled on every side by anxious people in a hurry. At last, the woman moved aside, and Emily stepped up to the counter.

The guy behind it looked tired and overworked, but he offered her a wan smile just the same. What can I get for you?

Gingerbread latte, she told him. Grande. He started to open his mouth but Emily beat him to it. Emily. I’m Emily.

Four twenty-eight, he said with a more genuine smile, and Emily dug a five out of her bag and handed it over. He made change, and she moved to join the rest of the crowd waiting for their cups of caffeinated bliss.

Customers came and went in a steady stream as their names were called. Behind the counter, a pretty, young barista dispersed orders, shouting to be heard over the babble. Most of the clientele hustled out with their booty, but a few claimed tables here and there. Emily hoped there’d still be one left for her.

After a few minutes of being shoved this way and that like a human pinball, Emily found herself wedged between a kindly-looking old woman with an unfortunate perm and a fat man in an ugly beige suit with sweat stains at the armpits. One of them, probably the man, though she couldn’t be sure, smelled vaguely of cigarettes and garlic. Fervently, she wished for her name to be called. Trying not to meet the gaze of either of her companions—or to breathe—Emily cast her eyes out the front window, tapping her foot nervously.

The sun was nearly down now, and there was more light from the fluorescents inside than from the street without. In the glass, she could see the ghostly reflections of herself and the old woman beside her—but to her right, where she would have expected to see the fat businessman’s flabby face staring back at her, there was the pale image of a boy. Not just any boy. The boy…with the ponytail and ragged clothes. He looked just as he had in the locker room mirror, as if he hadn’t needed to trudge two blocks through the snow and ice, weather for which he was distinctly not dressed.

The boy seemed sad and lost, looking around at the other faces in the window, as if desperately trying to find someone. Maybe only looking for a friendly face among the multitudes of stressed and harried commuters. Something in his manner, or perhaps simply in his eyes, gave the impression that he was far younger than he appeared. His posture was that of a child who is weary and afraid.

For a moment, the rumble of the crowd around her seemed to fade out and was replaced with the steady white noise of static, like a radio station moving slowly out of range—or maybe the hiss of skates on ice. She felt the old familiar thrum in her muscles, that electricity that she associated so strongly with the knowing. She heard the low whine in her head, mixing with the static in discordant harmony.

The boy’s eyes found hers, and his expression lightened a little. The faint ghost of a smile touched his lips, and he raised a hand as if to reach out to her. There was such hope—such recognition?—in his eyes that it made Emily’s heart ache. Here was someone he knew, his face seemed to say. Here was someone who would help him find his way, those sad eyes proclaimed.

An elbow hit Emily square on the side of her face. She staggered and flailed her arms, trying to catch her balance. All at once, the din of the crowd came crashing back over her again. The old woman reached out to steady her, then shouted after the fat man in a thick New York accent. What the fuck are you doin’, asshole! Jesus Christ!

She looked down at Emily with genuine concern. You okay, sweetheart?

Fine…yeah…I think so. Emily touched the side of her face gingerly. It didn’t really hurt. She’d been knocked around much worse than that by number 17 from Kennedy High, but still…

She looked back at the window. There was no sign of the boy reflected in the glass. She started to search the faces in the crowd around her. Surely, he must be here somewhere…

Did you see someone…a boy? she asked the old woman, still looking around. She felt a vague sense of urgency about him, though she had no idea why. She’d never seen him before in her life.

Naw, the woman huffed. Then, raising her voice, Just a fat old bastard who doesn’t watch where the fuck he’s goin’.

Emily barely heard. There was no one around who remotely fit the description of the boy with the ponytail.

Emily! Gingerbread latte for Emily!

In a kind of daze, she pushed her way through the crowd and took her drink from the girl behind the counter.

Thanks, she muttered and turned away quickly, still scanning the crowd. He had to be here somewhere. Nothing else made sense.

She found a small table that was miraculously unoccupied and sank into its chair. She clutched the warm cup between her hands and relished its heat. For a while, she continued examining each customer who went by, then gave up and began staring at the window, willing the boy to come back and half afraid he might.

I’m losing it, she thought. The knowing misfired today, and it freaked me out, and now I’m losing my fucking mind.

She sipped her latte. It was still too hot to drink, and it burned a little going down. She went on staring at the window, casting her mind back and trying to think of anyone she knew who looked like that boy. He did look a little familiar, but she couldn’t think of anyone she’d ever known whose appearance was quite that disheveled. Even her mom and stepdad, after the worst of their binges, came home with their clothing mostly intact—usually.

In her pocket, her phone buzzed against her thigh. She fished it out and looked at the screen. A text from Casey.

Call me when u get home?

Emily tapped out the same reply she’d sent in answer to that question a thousand times before, without even thinking about it.

If Mom’s out.

Her mom didn’t know about the phone. Emily wanted to keep it that way. It had taken her six months of shelving books at the used bookshop down the street from her school to save enough for it. Her mom would just pawn it or trade it for coke or something.

Casey’s response came back almost instantaneously.

K.

It was followed at once with a photo of Casey’s dog, a mutt that appeared to be two parts dachshund and one part everything else. He had a Christmas wreath around his neck and was half buried in the snow. Emily laughed. Casey was still trying to make her feel better. And God, she’d snapped at her. The thought made her insides squirm uncomfortably. She wasn’t sure what she’d ever done to deserve a friend like Casey, but she was grateful.

She switched over to her photos and began flipping through them, searching for something cute she could send in return. The first few she passed were goofy shots of various other girls on her hockey team. None of them quite fit the bill. She kept going, watching the steady stream of images as time flowed backward toward the beginning of the school year. Here was a shot of Lindsey High from last month, the morning of the season’s first snowfall. Here was another of Mr. Piper, her algebra teacher, wearing an Angry Birds mask for Halloween.

Flip…flip…flip…

Here were the photos from the House of Horrors she, Casey, and a couple other girls from the team had gone to the weekend before Halloween. They set it up in the old warehouse across from the Walmart every year now and filled it with mechanical monsters and counterfeit cobwebs. The four of them had run through it, screaming like maniacs and laughing their asses off.

Here was a picture Emily had taken of Casey beside Madame Macabre’s fortune-telling table. She was leaning over and looking solemnly into a cheap, oversized crystal ball full of misty, indistinct shapes.

Here was one that Casey had taken of Emily in the hall of mirrors. A dozen versions of Emily, all tall or short or fat or thin, stretching out in either direction beneath the black lights.

Emily paused.

Along the far right edge of the photo, difficult to see with the crazy lighting and the mirrors, was the profile of someone else. It was little more than a silhouette, and still there could be no mistaking the slumped shoulders or the long hair pulled back and tied with something—something like a leather thong.

It was the boy. That goddamned boy.

Here, though, was also concrete proof that the boy was real. Unless, of course, she was seeing things in this photo, too.

She stared at the picture for another minute, debating, then tapped the share button and sent it to Casey with the text:

Who is that way over on the right?

She stared at the conversation screen, sipping her latte and tapping her foot impatiently for Casey’s response. At last, it came:

Not sure. Can’t see too well. Doesn’t look familiar. Probably just some guy from the college or something.

Emily read this over twice. She wasn’t sure if it made her feel better or not. Casey could see the boy. But was it really the same boy she’d seen in the mirror and the window? How could she know for sure?

She went back to her photos and flipped through the rest of them from that night, hoping to find another shot with the mysterious stranger. There was nothing.

She locked her phone, slipped it into her pocket, and downed the rest of her drink. She grimaced as the cooling remnants of it slid, sickly sweet, down her throat.

Should’ve drunk that faster, Em, she thought wryly, getting to her feet. It was time to head home.

* * *

As she approached the corner where she’d turn onto her street, Emily slipped a hand into her pocket and fumbled with the mute switch on her phone. It was well and truly dark now, and the streetlights were giving everything a sickly pallor. Far off in the distance, she could hear a man shouting at someone, punctuated with the faint pleadings of a woman’s voice. Nearer by, a child was crying and a dog was howling his displeasure to the cold night air.

But all of it was filtered out by Emily’s own internal mute switch. It was just part of life here. And besides, she had other things on her mind.

All the way home, her thoughts had been dominated by images of the mysterious…what? Apparition? That was crazy. He had to be an actual person. Some kid from school playing a trick on her? It seemed like a lot of trouble to go to, and Emily couldn’t think of anyone who hated her enough to waste that much energy on pranking her. What then?

Shoving her hands deeper into her pockets, she quickened her pace as she rounded the corner, and nearly fell headlong over the old man who was sitting on the sidewalk, his back against a fire hydrant. An old and stained tweed coat was thrown around his shoulders, and his legs were wrapped in a frayed and filthy blanket. In his lap was a dilapidated McDonald’s Happy Meal box.

He looked up at Emily with bloodshot eyes that seemed to lack any emotion. Faintly, in the glow of the streetlight, Emily could see festering sores around his mouth, only partly hidden by the graying beard and whiskers around them. Quickly, she looked away.

Gotta quarter? he croaked. He sounded like an actor repeating lines of dialog written in a foreign language he did not understand, and which were, to him, only meaningless gymnastics of the tongue.

Emily fished the fistful of coins that had been her change at Starbucks from her pocket and dropped it into his Happy Meal box without really looking. Stepping over his legs, she kept moving.

Thanks, babe, he said in a dull voice, and Emily hurried down the sidewalk, past the row of shabby and decaying houses toward her own.

Stupid thing to do, really. What if Mom—or worse, her stepdad—had seen her giving money to that bum? They’d ask her where she’d gotten it and search her for any more she might have. Of course they would find her savings, and all those months of working for her new skates would be for nothing. Stupid! Stupid stupid stupid!

She slowed again as she approached her house. It stood out a little from the others on the street, thanks to her own efforts. There were fewer weeds choking the front yard, and the rosebushes on either side of the front steps were trimmed, albeit clumsily. No beer cans littered the walk. No trash or rusting old car parts showed themselves from beneath the blanket of snow, as they did in front of every other house on the street. She’d done the best she could with what she had and turned this broken little corner of the world into somewhere she could call home.

She made her way up the walk and climbed the steps. As she reached the top stair, she felt the first prickles of unease. The house was silent. The familiar babble of the television was absent for the first time in Emily’s memory. The windows were dark, too.

She crossed the porch and paused at the door. It was closed, but not far enough to latch. That, by itself, didn’t mean much. Neither of her parents was particular about keeping the house locked up. But coupled with the strange stillness around the house, it made her uneasy.

She reached out and pushed the door open. She stepped inside, feeling an acute sense of foreboding.

Hello? she called. Only silence answered at first.

She heard a low rumble from across the living room and let out a breathless screech that turned into relieved laughter.

She came the rest of the way inside and closed the door softly behind her. Standing there in the gloom, she waited for her eyes to adjust, dripping snow onto the stained and threadbare carpet.

Her stepfather was asleep on the sofa. His head was flung back on the arm at one end, and he had a bottle of booze wedged in the fork of his crotch. He was snoring with the utter abandon of the absolutely drunk. The harsh, almost medicinal smell of whiskey stung her nostrils and made her eyes water. She wiped at them with her sleeve and sighed with resignation. After years of coming home to that smell, and others that were far worse, she thought she ought to be immune to it by now.

She moved quietly through the living room, not wanting to wake him and have to answer questions. She just wanted to get to her room.

As she reached the hall, she glanced back at him. He was facing away from her, and clearly far gone enough that she could risk turning on the light.

She reached into the pitch darkness ahead of her, found the switch on the wall, and snapped it on with the palm of one hand.

Much later, when she would have time to think back on that night and try to make sense of the crazy sequence of events that followed, it was the flipping of that switch to turn on the hall light that she kept coming back to. Such a simple action. Such a mundane gesture. And yet it was that ordinary decision that changed the entire course of Emily’s life. How would things have turned out if she’d just not flipped that switch? There was no way to know. Things probably would have been different—but not necessarily for the better.

As the light flared on above, and Emily blinked against the glare, the world subtly shifted on its axis—just a notch or two to the left—and everything changed.

Lying on the floor, just outside her mother’s bedroom door, was a small, crumpled, and naked figure with needle tracks up and down her bare arms and legs. Her skin was nearly translucent in the harsh light of the overhead bulb, and her eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the far wall.

Emily stood stunned for three long seconds, hearing the deep snores of her stepfather in the living room, the tick of the clock on the wall behind her, and the accelerating thud of her own heart. Like one in a dream, she took two quick strides toward her mother and knelt beside her motionless form. She knew before she reached her that she was dead. No one alive could be so still. No one alive could look so pale beneath that yellow light.

She reached for her wrist to check for a pulse, just as Mrs. Dudley had taught them in health class. There was nothing. Her mother’s skin was cold and loose beneath her fingers.

For a long time, Emily only continued to kneel there, cradling her mother’s wasted arm between her hands. Her brain fought to make sense of it. Her mother was dead. Her mother was dead. Her terrible, wonderful, crazy mother—the woman who had beaten her for the dollar she’d earned recycling bottles four summers ago, but also the woman who had held her hand on the first day of school and promised her a treat when she came home. She was dead.

The confusion of images and mix of conflicting emotions washed over her in an immense tidal wave, and when the tide rolled back out again, they had all coalesced into a single stone of fury, lying at the bottom of her stomach.

Shaking, she rose and stared down at the lifeless form at her feet. She felt something stir inside her for a moment. It was, perhaps, pity for the sorrowful creature before her. Maybe it was simply the sudden loss of the hope that one day things would be better again—the way they’d been on that long ago first day of school…first day of hockey practice…first ride on a bicycle…first…first…first…

There had been so many firsts, but rarely any seconds.

The rage pushed all else aside, and Emily’s feet began carrying her back down the hall of their own accord. Her fists clenched themselves at her sides. She felt like a marionette under the control of a particularly unskilled puppeteer—one who was pulling the strings wildly but was too far away to see the fruits of his labors.

She crossed the living room in near total silence and stood above the man who had led her mother to this