There’s a ghost in my bed. She’s crying. She is the first, and it has been three days since my Burning—a ritual of my people that resulted in an ashen wound down my back. It healed into the literal shape of a ship on a sea of smoke.

When Nylin saw the ship, she said she always knew I’d be a Ferrier. Nylin’s always right, of course, like most Watchers.

“Don’t take me,” pleads the ghost. “I can’t leave them. My family.”

“I have to,” I say.

The ghost stifles her tears and rubs at her cloudy face. “What’s your name?”

I tell her my name is Gavin, but it feels like a lie. I chose the name for myself two years ago and haven’t used it since. It feels foreign to my ears, in my own voice, but the ghost doesn’t seem to notice. The Disme people don’t need names before they turn eleven.

Her name is Sen. It feels soft, like the feathered edges of her soul.

Sen is maybe nine or ten. I don’t ask because I’ll know soon.

I pluck my dime off the stack of striped, folded tarp beside my bed. Nylin had given it to me, as well as the clothes on my back, the thin mattress beneath me, the lamp that burns only one simple shade of pulsing dim, like a heartbeat.

The dime fits perfectly in my palm, despite not being a perfect circle. It is more akin to a broken ten-piece than uniform currency. The cold metal weighs heavy in my palm and I try not to tremble with it.

I hold my palm flat between Sen and me, then I call my Disme Mark forth, the way Nylin taught me.

The burn comes off my naked back in a wave of chills, as if a cold finger is running a nail down my spine. I roll my shoulders, tense, and my spine pops. The sound echoes around my tent like canon fire. My Disme Mark coils and folds over my head in swirls of black smoke, like a hood being drawn.

It crawls down my face and creeps across my arm. The Mark plateaus on the dime displayed in my palm. It is an empty, silent ship, made of smoke and charred flesh. It is as real as I am.

My ship curls itself around Sen’s wispy, white frame, collecting her. With its first passenger, the Disme ship returns to me, pasting itself onto my back where it had been burned into me not three days before, on my thirteenth birthday.

Sen is no longer in my bed, but she isn’t gone. She is on my ship and for a time, I am ten.

“This is disgusting.”

“You’re just being difficult.” He always accuses me of being difficult.

“No, it’s disgusting.”

“Would you just go with it? This is supposed to help you.” He shifted his weight to his other foot, that way he does when he’s trying to look like he’s not pouting.

I sighed and rolled my eyes at him, even granted him a little smirk. Partly because he’s still cute – the salt-and-pepper at his temples is probably my fault – and partly because the hip-shift caused a weird little disturbance in the hologram being shot up by a hundred little projectors embedded in the floor. “Fine.” I could survive this. I was promised pizza afterward.

“Thank god.” He turned and started a little at the projection he had interrupted. There was part of a woman there, jaw agape in surprise. When he stepped back, the rest of the image was unimpeded, and her arm materialized in front of her. This exhibit was supposed to be solemn. I giggled anyways.

“This isn’t funny.” His pout gone, he now had on his stern eyes.

“I’m sorry.” I hoped it sounded genuine.

“This isn’t going to work unless you at least try to be serious.”

“I know, I know.”

He considered the hologram woman for a moment, now that he wasn’t standing inside her. She was lit up from the front, and her line of sight indicated something horrifying behind us. I knew what it was. I didn’t want to look yet.

“Michael Whitmore.” He read the tag that hovered next to the woman frozen in fright, her hand covering her face.

“Her name was ‘Michael?’” I tried the smirk again.

“Stop.” He sounded real serious this time.

“You like this sort of thing. You brought me here.”

“Because your therapist thought it would be a good idea.”

Pepperoni. “Right.”

He looked down at the glossy pamphlet he held tight in both hands, then back up at me. “It’s a safe way – ”

“It’s a safe way to relive a traumatic event, allowing me to process it with higher-order thinking skills, to help the healing process.” She’d been feeding me that shit for weeks now, ever since the financing came through.

“It could help.”

“This has nothing to do with – ”

“Stop. We both know why she recommended this.”

“Yeah, but you secretly love it. It’s like the Hiroshima museum.” I wasn’t going to go down without saying my piece.

“You’re deflecting.”

“Fine.” I leaned my head way back, stretching my neck. He could have this one. Besides, he did love museums. Who was I to deny him this?

“Michael Whitmore.” He faced the woman again. “She was a zookeeper, meeting the Thai ambassador to discuss breeding a captive Asian Golden Cat.”

“Boring.” I could taste the crust, flaky on the outside, steamy on the inside.

“She was a mother of two. Over there was where the shooting started. At least in this building. She was the first victim.” A red line on the floor indicated her eyeline, just in case visitors were too dense to figure out what she’d be looking at.

A man in a light brown t-shirt very obviously pointed a rifle in her direction. Only, the rifle wasn’t displayed in the hologram. So he just stood there like an ass with one hand twisted up by his nipple and the other cradling the air in front of him. Something about trigger warnings. Triggers. We could have opted into the tour that showed everything, but the therapist had other thoughts about that. Baby steps.

A blue square resolved a few meters beyond the woman, a crowd of people appearing with it, all responding to the same empty-handed assailant. There was a fat man with an unoccupied holster at his belt. He was frozen for all eternity trying to retrieve nothing out of it. Or until they needed the building for something else. Nothing lasts forever.

“Whitman,” he read the security guard’s badge. “He’s the only one named in the group. These were the – ”

“Whitmore and Whitman. No relation.” I tried to get him to crack a smile. “Whitmore and Whitman, attourneys at law? Nothing?”

“Babe.” He tilted his head to the side. Tired now. Another reaction for the bingo card.

“Okay,” I sighed, a little more dramatically than I intended, and he turned away.

I’d been through worse. And there was cheese and tomato at the end of this rainbow.

Cedar means love, never forget that. I made the rockers from cedar.

Aunt Suzie died before the fire, and Uncle Henry’s heart with her. I was glad of the burning, since it hid what I had done.

Black walnut boughs blown down in the forest with stripped bark and green moss, they did well for the arms.

The stomach cancer ate her up, the docs cut her open and stitched in a steel mesh for half her belly but that didn’t stop anything. Uncle Henry wasn’t gonna tell her but how could she not know? She faded from busy farm wife to bedridden frailty in the course of months, unable to keep down but a little this and a little that. Henry went from farmer to nurse, or rather both at once, out of his mind with worry over his wife and panic about his herd of milch cows and neglected fields of corn, not yet waist-high and still needing care. He called me in to help, which must have made him crazy after years of disparaging my living, wildcrafting the woods, harvesting the roots and herbs and berries, living in my own cozy place deeper in the hollow. Their house stood on a hill and I climbed it to sit by Suzie as she died.

Her weathered old rocking chair sat idle in a corner and her bed was stacked with a pile of quilts twice as thick or more than her own body. She’d never been a beauty, plain and tall and proud and with ivory colored hair that hung to her knees. Illness didn’t lend a deathbed glow, just carved her away from her own bones. I saw her with love and she was beautiful for being familiar, my aunt who’d sat me on her lap when she rocked in that rocker and read me Bible stories and sung me choir songs. No more songs, not even words through those ragged lips. I touched her hand so she knew she wasn’t alone.

She passed along a note. She must have written it long before, the writing was steady and measured. A recipe for soup. And a little something extra.

I pressed it back to her.

She didn’t have the strength of illness so often mentioned in stories but she had the persistence of a successful farm wife, used to running a house and a farm and hired help and a husband. Four or five times later I bowed my head and accepted the chore. “Tomorrow,” I said.

She couldn’t reply. She couldn’t nod. But she opened her eyes at me and I swear I saw relief.

The seat was a stone, flecked granite from the hill, carved deep with blue and gray lichen.

I poured the soup, herbs, marrow, mushroom, into a fat blue coffee cup sitting unused in the kitchen. I held the mug to her lips and she sipped, slow and steady, the first meal in ages. The last. I closed her eyes with a penny each and settled her hair and clothes and quilts then sat and rocked. Henry would return from the fields soon enough, no reason to bother him now.

The back was a tangle of morning glory vines. In time they’d take over if they got ahold.

Henry knew what I’d done, of course he did, why else ask me there? He beat me and drug me from the house. He followed a few minutes later, leaving behind flickers of flame. We stood and watched the house light up and burn down, the shingles smelling rich of cedar. Henry stood thin in his cotton shirt and overalls and boots and said, “Nothing left.” I think he went to sleep in the barn.

I waited the flames out. Morning dew damped the embers though the ruin was still hot. Heat never bothered me none. I found her room, her bed, her body under the quilts, and I gathered her up. I’m neither big nor strong but I was sufficient to the task. Henry had prepared the plot and I set her down in it. And got to work on that rocker.

A body needs a place to rest and so does a soul. Suzie’s rocker was her headstone, now.

He raged his way across the field yelling how dare I and too soon and leave her be and when he saw the rocker he stopped cold. He raced up the knock it over and stopped cold again.

“What are those?”

“Dunno.” He meant the crystals lighting up like fireflies but I meant the new-sprung flowers and herbs I’d never met before.

There was no breeze and yet the rocker rocked. No breeze yet the wind of its passage riffled my hair and dried the cold sweat on the nape of my neck. The scent of her perfume grew large, overflowing the rocker, engulfing me. I believe it was her silent voice that said thank you.

I hadn’t liked Aultmar Artos much when I’d worked for him in the past, and studying his flickering image now reminded me why. Something about those deep-set, hooded eyes in that long, lugubrious face resembled a serpent; and what I knew of his cold, calculating personality did not help much. Rumor said the Chairman of the StellarCast combine rarely smiled and never, ever laughed. I was fully inclined to believe it.

However, our business together had been mutually profitable despite my dislike–a sentiment I suspected was returned. I also suspected he did not care for the position in which he now found himself: supplicant to the Pantheon. But I could only guess at that, for I could read nothing in his expressionless face.

“It’s been a while, Chairman,” I said.

“The same, Athena.”

“I received a message from the Pantheon informing me you had requested my services.” A loose network for those of us who did black work and had risen to the top–the best of the best, and proud of it–the Pantheon gave those clients who could afford us an easy way to find us while preserving our own secrecy.

Those steely gray eyes blinked–eyes as gray as mine, and supposedly as artificial as they looked. Rumor had it that his eyes–along with almost every other part of his body, including his heart–had been replaced, modified, amplified, so that there was very little of him that was human.

Almost as little as there is of me. I buried the thought.

“I have a contract for you. If you will accept it, of course.” It must have cost Aultmar to ask that; he was not a man accustomed to asking if his will would be carried out.

“Details?” While I spoke, my mind accessed the starnet, pulling up background information on Aultmar: partners, associates, colleagues–not friends, for he had none. Info feeds scrolled directly through my mind, characters flashing in fully-formed, three-dimensional images, then dissipating.

His lips compressed. “There is a woman.”

That narrows it down. A little. Even cut in half, Aultmar Artos’ enemies list was truly impressive.

“Her name is Arakhne. She lives on Arcadia.”

Arcadia. Hmmm. I’d heard of the planet–a recent acquisition of the StellarCast combine–and after a moment I was able to call up some information on Arakhne. “An artist, is she not? A light-weaver?”

“Yes.” Those lips compressed further. “Find her. And kill her.”

“For a simple killing of a simple weaver, you don’t need me. Or my fee. What else?”

Those eyes flickered down toward my fingertips. “I want her memories.”

Now it starts to make sense. Perimortem memory capture was a skill very few possessed, and among those few, I would vouch with no false modesty that I was the best.

“That might be tricky. I’ve told you before, the process is not always precise or accurate.”

“I understand. Your standard fee if you simply kill her, double if you bring her memories back.”

My curiosity rose. The only reason Aultmar might want her memories would be if he suspected they contained something damaging. But what could a weaver know that would trouble him? I would dearly have loved to ask, but that would have been unprofessional.

“I’ll do it,” I said. “Usual conditions. I’ll inform you when it’s done.”

He nodded. “Thank you. And give my regards to the rest of the Pantheon.”

“I will. Zeus and Hera in particular have spoken of you with great regard.”

“That is pleasant to hear. Until next time.” He leaned forward and touched a control. Aultmar’s image winked out before me. And I was left with a mystery. Who is this Arakhne of Arcadia and why on earth does Altmar want her dead?

Carriel felt like a cloud of gloom hovering over a parade. The morning sun cast the snow into piles of glitter. Excited, bubbly people swarmed around her sister, Lionye’s golden child, winner of the Emberithshire Skating Championship, Junior Division. Bree laughed and chatted with friends, rivals, and fans.

Even Garray looked excited. Well, of course he did. Their grasping brother had set up this race to give himself another reason to gamble. He’d be thrilled all day, unless their little sister lost.

A whisper, like a sudden gust of wind, ran through the crowd. She turned, following the ripple. The crowd shifted, allowing a woman and a girl about Bree’s size to cross the park to the pond. She shielded her eyes against the glare of the sun on the snow, but even standing on tiptoes, she couldn’t catch more than a glimpse of the competition’s knit cap through the press.

Whistles sounded. Cheers erupted. Her sister flashed an elated grin. The head of the Lionye’s Skating Commission stepped away from the judges’ table and raised a megaphone to his lips.

“Welcome to today’s special event race. We’re pitting our very own Bree, the Winter Wind, against Tayla of the Peolline district of Feballiase.”

The crowd roared. Bree waved to her cheering fans. Tayla turned at her name and gave a tentative smile. Carriel blinked. What?

“Ladies, please take your places at the starting line.”

Snapping out of her shock, she grabbed her sister’s arm before she could hobble more than a couple of steps towards the starting line.

“What?” A bemused smile on her face, Bree turned. She clearly expected wishes of luck or advice. The usual before a race.

“She’s not human.”

“Huh?” Her sister glanced at the starting line.

“She’s some sort of winter Fae. I think she’s an ice sprite.”

Wild excitement filled her sister’s face. “Really?”

She gritted her teeth. “I know what I see.”

“Bree of Lionye, please join us at the starting line.” The ice sprite already stood there. She smiled, too innocently to be believed, when they looked at her.

“I’ve got to go.”

“You can’t–”

“So she’s an ice sprite. It’s just a race.”

“Bree–”

“It’ll be a laugh. Tell Stacia.”

“You cannot hope to win.”

Her smirk turned mischievous. “Tell my coach. Let the word spread. Think about it. Racing an ice sprite? Sure I can’t win, but depending on how close I come? How fast and famous does that make me?”

The officials called for Bree again. Laughing, she spun and hobbled quickly to the ice sprite.

Carriel dashed over to her sister’s coach. Stacia cursed at the news and ran to the alert the head of Lionye’s Skating Commission. Blood drained from his face. Stacia continued to talk for a few minutes. The Commission Head turned and raised his whistle to his lips. One bleat.

Ice sprayed from their skates. The crowd roared. Neck and neck as they neared the first curve.

Carriel’s heart pounded. This wasn’t right. She shouldn’t have allowed this.

The ice sprite pulled ahead on the first curve. On the opposite side of the pond, the ice sprite lengthened her lead. The crowd screamed for their Winter Wind to speed up.

A determined frown creased Bree’s face. Carriel had watched her sister skate enough times to pick up the minute increase in speed. She skated as fast as she could, perhaps faster than her fastest time. They wouldn’t know for sure on that until she crossed the finish line.

Which she did a good forty-five seconds after the ice sprite.

A crack echoed across the park.

Bree flashed out of existence.

The ice sprite pivoted. The glee on her face twisted into a good facsimile of shock.

When Eliza returns from the bathroom, after fifteen minutes that saw me sliding from calm to fretful, she looks pale underneath the low lights produced by the restaurant’s chandeliers. Moving listlessly and a little awkwardly, she drifts along until she pauses in the empty stretch of hardwood floor between the kitchen and the dense puzzle of tables. A distracted waiter nearly runs her over, apologizes, but she doesn’t notice. Her eyes roam through space like she’s forgotten why she’s there. They glaze over me, unseeing, and I raise a self-concious hand, give it a few limp waves. Eliza misses it but starts heading my way, the essence of noncommittal.

She sits down, but doesn’t pull her chair into the table. Her eyes fall on the candle flickering at its center, beside the bottle of wine, half of which has been distributed into our glasses.

“Are you okay?” I ask. I’m careful with the next sentence, lest I offend her. “You don’t look like you’re feeling so great.”

That’s an understatement. Eliza’s so pale I’m worried she’s about to fall out of her chair. She slumps back in it, half-dead in the face, and doesn’t answer my question.

“We can go if you want,” I say. “If you’re not well we don’t have to stay. I’ll pay for the wine and we’ll get out of here.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“Eliza.”

Still nothing. I lean back in my chair, brushing my cheek with my knuckles, aware that something’s gone terribly wrong.

The restaurant, which I selected, is a newish place surfing on a wave of delayed hype, the kind of place everyone talks about for a week but no one remembers to actually visit until a couple of months later. In response to rising demand, the powers that be have crammed in as many tables as possible, creating a maze through which the staff careens, running glasses and plates back and forth with manic intensity, near-misses happening all the time. It’s anxiety-inducing to watch, but beautiful in a way.

To the left and right of our table, couples dine so close I could reach out and touch their shoulders without locking my elbow. At a loss with Eliza, I shift my head to the man sitting on a diagonal from my right. Catching me, he raises his eyebrows.

“Are you really not going to say anything?” I return to Eliza to find she’s tilted her head back, to stare up at the distant ceiling. “If something’s wrong, you can tell me. I’m not going to mind.”

The woman at the table to my left is studying me, but when we meet eyes she drops hers, embarrassed.

Perhaps she’s wondering if she’s witnessing a first-date trainwreck. She’s not. Eliza and I have been seeing each other two or three times a week for a couple of months now, ever since our introduction at a brunch outing with mutual friends. It’s been going well, or so I’d thought until the moment she returned from the bathroom–well enough that I was inspired to hope for the first time since Mikayla and I broke up, plunging me into a morass of bad dates, poorly conceived Tinder messages, and too much drinking on weekday evenings. Eliza and I had similar views of life and relationships, our failures in each inspiring a healthy cynicism that still couldn’t break our natural tendencies toward optimism. She laughed at my bad jokes. I listened to stories about her narcissistic parents. We went to movies, to plays, to bars, to the planetarium. When we weren’t together, we texted regularly, sharing the little things that happened to us on average mornings and typical afternoons, things that didn’t usually leave our heads. I thought we were becoming something. When I rounded onto Congress Street and saw her waiting for me beneath the awning, in her black dress and denim jacket, the pulse in my neck started going faster, and sweat leaked out of my palms.

But now the speeding train has derailed. I observe the wreckage, which doesn’t amount to much–we were in the restaurant only fifteen minutes before she got up to find the restroom–and try to locate the fault, the crack where blame might fit. Our evening had been going well, at least as well as the others. Eliza referenced a joke from our text messages. I complained about my dentist’s appointment. She complimented my new shirt. I told her about the colors in the sky that morning, how I’d meant to send her a photograph like the one she’d sent me.

The waiter comes over. He introduced himself when he brought us glasses of water, but I’ve forgotten his name.

“How we doing over here?” he asks. “How’s the wine?”

“It’s good,” I say, taking a sip as if to prove it. When I ordered the bottle, Eliza giggled at my clumsy pronunciation. “I like it.”

“Excellent. Would you like to put in any appetizers, or should I give you a couple of minutes?”

Between my initial rapture with Eliza and my current state of confusion, I haven’t even glanced at the menu.

“A couple of minutes.”

“Certainly. I’ll be back.”

As he dashes off to tend to his other tables, I realize that he never once looked at Eliza. On the far side of the table, she’s sitting upright, with an expression of waiting-room boredom. Her roaming eyes never once land on me. And it might be a trick of the light, or of the wine, but I swear she looks less defined than she did, like she’s steadily fading from view.

“I should’ve slapped him,” says the woman to my left to the man across the table, who’s leaning on his elbows. “I would have, too, but my friend was, like, dragging me away.”

Determined to ignore Eliza as she’s ignoring me–an unsatisfying form of revenge, because I know she’s not going to care–I make a point of inspecting everything in the room with an expression of casual interest, as if that could make her reconsider how she’s treating me. Inside, meanwhile, I’m threatening to boil. In an abstract place behind my stomach, a box that doesn’t really exist contains all the worst parts of me–penchants for self-pity, revolting neediness, and narcissistic anger, all of which I can’t help but indulge, self-flagellation working as an excuse for emotional self-pleasure. These fragments of my narcissism, unleashed by whatever minor stimulus–a message gone ignored, another guy’s joke laughed at, an offhand comment interpreted as a slight–have spoiled every relationship I’ve ever managed to start. With Mikayla I became a seething, touchy, obsessive shell of a person; in the aftermath, I vowed to shut my bad parts away, to weigh them down and bury them somewhere from which they might never resurface. But as I don’t look at Eliza, with pressure mounting behind my eyes, the anchors fail and the box drifts free. Its flaps open and its contents release into my chest, where they merge into a storm. The closest point of egress is my mouth. For five seconds, I fight off words I know I’ll regret.

“I’ve made you an appointment at The Clinic,” her mother announced as they finished luncheon on their private terrace– the one that overlooked the south pond. “With Dr. Gabedian. He’ll see you this afternoon.”

Gabedian. Thayta’s hand nervously drifted to her stomach. Her mother saw and pointedly averted her eyes. Thayta pretended she meant to remove her napkin from her lap. “I have a doctor, Mother. The one who–”

“Gabedian has agreed. He says it can only help his reputation. Lord knows what it will do to ours.” Her mother rose, signaling that the conversation was over.

“Would you like to come?” Thayta called after her.

Regal as ever, her mother turned, hands lightly clasped under her bosom. “Why,” she said in glacial tones, “don’t you ask Finchly’s mother to join you?” She didn’t wait for an answer but disappeared into the house.

Thayta had known her mother was embarrassed by her, maybe even ashamed; still, she’d hoped the high-handed appointment-making meant a thaw in the permafrost. Her hand drifted back to rest on her belly. Oh, Finchly!

Mallory couldn’t pinpoint when she’d first noticed the monster. She supposed she’d heard it scuttling around in the walls for weeks before it had first attacked, but she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it. Though she knew it was stupid, a part of her hoped that if she ignored it, it would turn out to be a figment of her imagination.

It wasn’t.

When Mallory stumbled back to her apartment one evening after a long day of classes followed by a busy shift at work, it sprang out of nowhere and tackled her. Mallory’s back hit the floor, and she caught a glimpse of a shiny black exoskeleton and many, many eyes before it savaged her. Claws cut into her legs and sides, and teeth bit brutally into her shoulder. She screamed and flailed, but it made no difference. She could only close her eyes and cry until it ended.

Eventually, the monster crawled away, leaving Mallory a sobbing wreck on the floor. Nearly thirty minutes passed before she managed to pick herself up and limp to the shower. Once she was clean, she rifled through her cabinets and found the first-aid kit, every shadow and creak making her jump. But the monster didn’t attack again. She bandaged her wounds and went to bed, but the hours passed sleeplessly. She could hear the monster scuttling behind the walls.

If anyone noticed her limp or the dark circles under her eyes the next day, they didn’t say anything. When she finally got home, her hands shook so hard that she could barely unlock the front door. She slunk cautiously inside, the muscles of her back so tense they hurt. Whipping her head around, she looked for any sign of the monster. Nothing. Was it gone? She couldn’t be so lucky.

She sat on the couch, waiting for it to appear and attack, every second that passed making her feel more nauseous. But the minutes ticked by with no sign of it. Eventually, she opened her web design textbook and tried to read tonight’s assigned chapter, but she couldn’t concentrate. She kept glancing up and looking over her shoulder.

By the time she got ready for bed, she thought that maybe—just maybe—the monster had left. But then she opened the linen closet and saw its many eyes gleaming from the shadows behind a stack of towels. Mallory slammed the door shut and stumbled back, gasping for air. The monster didn’t burst out of the closet and attack, but it didn’t have to. Mallory knew it was there and barely slept all night.

It went on like that for weeks. Sometimes, the monster would attack; other times, it would just lurk. There was no pattern that Mallory could detect. It happened in the morning, afternoon, and even the middle of the night. An entire week went by once with barely any sign of it, but then it attacked three days in a row. It happened on good days, bad days, and every kind of day in between.

The constant fear and worry ate away at her like termites gradually gnawing down wood. Her grades slipped, and she appeared so lethargic and worn at work that her boss asked if she needed to cut back on her hours. Mallory couldn’t afford that. Falling behind on rent and getting kicked out of her apartment would be tempting if she didn’t know in her bones that the monster would follow her wherever she went.

She slept-walked through her days, exhausted from the anxious nights and constant attacks. After class, when she talked to Grace Cheung—the girl with vibrant blue hair who usually sat next to her—it wasn’t until the conversation ended that Mallory realized she’d agreed to have Grace over for a study session tomorrow.

Cue the panic. Mallory couldn’t let anyone else come into the apartment. Grace wasn’t in any danger—somehow, Mallory knew it was her own personal monster and would only attack her—but Mallory couldn’t bear to let anyone see the ugly, awful thing she’d let come into her life. Her face heated with shame just thinking about it.

Lying was her first instinct. She could text Grace and say something else had come up, but she’d only been going through the motions when she’d written down Grace’s number, and she couldn’t read the scrawl of her own shaky handwriting. All night, Mallory tossed and turned, debating every option from suggesting a coffee shop instead of her apartment to dropping the class and running away. Hearing the clicking of the monster’s pincers as it lurked in her bedroom corner, watching, didn’t help.

By the time Grace knocked on her door the next day, Mallory had thrown up in the toilet twice and was trembling from head to toe. She looked over her shoulder as she shuffled to the door. The monster was nowhere in sight, and she prayed it would stay that way. When she opened the door, it took her a moment to gather the courage to open her mouth and propose the coffee shop down the street, and by then, Grace had already come inside, complaining about their professor and whatever sadist had invented grading on a curve.

Feeling as if she’d lost all control, Mallory reluctantly settled on the couch next to her and opened her notebook. They reviewed their notes and flipped through the chapters of their textbooks, discussing concepts and what was likely to be on the exam. Mallory didn’t have much to say; she was too busy checking the doorway to the bathroom, the space behind the TV, and the cracks in the couch cushions for any sign of the monster. Luckily, Grace was one of those talkative people who could carry a conversation practically by themselves and didn’t notice Mallory’s silence.

They paused for Mallory to make coffee, the hot liquid sloshing out of the mugs and onto her quivering hands as she carried them to the couch. She handed one mug to Grace and sat down. They were just getting back to work when movement caught her eye.

The monster emerged from the coat closet, squeezing its glistening black body under the door like oozing slime. Fear lodged itself in Mallory’s throat, cutting off her air. The monster’s numerous eyes were focused on her, and drool dripped from its mandible in anticipation. Then it shot across the floor towards her on its spider-like legs, and Mallory could only whimper.

That’s when Grace chucked her textbook at it.

The heavy book struck the monster in two of its evil eyes, and it reared back and shrieked. Grace was already on her feet and charged it.

“Hey! Get outta here! Go on!” She kicked it with her red sneaker.

The monster shrieked again. Then its thick claw shot out and clamped around Grace’s ankle. She hopped on one foot, trying to keep her balance.

“A little help?” she called back at Mallory.

Mallory had been frozen on the couch, coffee mug clutched in a death grip between her hands. For a moment, everything seemed to slow, from the monster’s flickering eyes, to Grace’s waving arms, to the very molecules of air in the room. Mallory’s stomach twisted into a knot so tight that it threatened to pull her into ball. She took a deep breath, forcing her diaphragm to expand as the world sped back up.

The mug was the only thing Mallory had, so she flung it at the monster. The steaming hot liquid splashed into its eyes as the heavy ceramic mug smacked it. The monster screeched, its legs twitching, and it leg go of Grace. She immediately stomped on it, and before Mallory knew what she was doing, she ran to help. Kicking and stomping, the two of them drove the monster into the coat closet. Limping, it squeezed itself back under the door, where it let out a muffled, chittering whine.

Mallory stood there, panting, unable to believe what had just happened. She’d fought it off! It was possible to fight it—it was possible to win! She turned to Grace, who was flushed but smiling.

Mallory’s euphoria crashed like a torn kite. Grace had seen it. She knew Mallory’s repulsive, shameful secret—one that Mallory had been too weak and pathetic to handle herself. She’d seen everything. She wouldn’t sit next to Mallory, wouldn’t want anything to do with her. Oh, God, what if she told other people what had happened?

“I’m sorry.” Mallory was crying before she knew it. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean— You shouldn’t— I—”

“Whoa, whoa, it’s okay.” Grace put a hand on her shoulder and led her back to the couch. Mallory sniffed and wiped away tears, her face hot.

“Really, it’s cool,” Grace said. “I’ve got one of those things, too—and mine has tentacles. I know it’s rough.”

“What?” Mallory would have never imagined Grace, with her bright blue hair and effortless confidence, could have her own monster.

“Yeah. They’re easier to deal with when you have someone’s help.” Grace looked at her thoughtfully. “Have you talked to anyone about it?”

Mallory shook her head forcefully.

“Well, think about it. Talking about them makes them weaker. Do you want to…?” Grace waved her hand, indicating they could talk now.

Mallory’s throat tightened just thinking about it. Her body was shaky and weak, and her mind was still reeling from shock. “No. I don’t think I could. I—I need more time. Thanks, though.”

“No problem.” She shrugged. “I’m around if you change your mind, and you should check out some forums online if you don’t want to talk face to face.” She walked over to where her textbook lay on the floor and flipped through the pages. “Let’s answer these last few questions, and then I’ll get out of your hair.”

They finished studying, and Mallory thanked Grace profusely while walking her to the door. Grace waved the whole thing off, and when she was gone, Mallory grabbed a plastic bottle of carpet cleaner to deal with the coffee stain on the floor. Scrubbing with a rag, she thought about what Grace had said about talking to people online. She’d never tried that before. Part of her had been afraid someone would find her search history and discover her secret. The rest of her had feared what she’d find: that she’d confirm there was no getting rid of the monster, or that its attacks would eventually kill her.

Now, though…

Mallory put away the carpet cleaner and grabbed her laptop. She would just find a forum and look tonight. Then, once she’d built up her courage, maybe she would post something herself.

She heard a scuttling in the walls as the monster moved from the closet, probably still licking its wounds. Mallory froze in instinct, hunching over, but then she caught herself and determinedly straightened up. It hadn’t left. Maybe it never would. But it didn’t have to rule her life anymore.

Smiling to herself, she clicked on a link and started reading.