Grey Haven (Book 1: The Dreamer Chronicles)

My first class after lunch was Shade Tactics. The class taught us how to out-think and out-maneuver the stronger shades – typically shades we weren’t facing yet in the dreamworld. It was a safe place to prepare us for our future of shade hunting. We usually did exercises on paper, where Tommy, Carrie, and I brainstormed how to kill the most shades in the least amount of time. Sometimes the teacher, Miss Peck, would lecture the class on tactics or make us watch recorded fights of other dreamers at work. Other times, we would do obstacle courses out on the grounds, which tested our choices and our abilities.

When we got to the door of our class, there was a brief note that directed us to the forest behind the school, which meant a course was waiting for us. Tommy groaned, while I smiled. Carrie was no less excited. She thrived on proving herself, and a course with set parameters was perfect for that. I just liked the rush of action and the fun of punching things in the face.

Miss Peck, a dark-skinned woman with a formidable jaw and bright, intelligent eyes, was waiting on the edge of the forest when we arrived. The others in the class were already gathered around her. Ben was one of them. He eyed me curiously, suddenly aware that I existed. I ignored him, though I felt Carrie shifting awkwardly as his gaze turned to her and Tommy. Miss Peck gazed at her watch when we reached her but didn’t comment on the fact that we were a minute late. Her expression said enough.

“I know that you have the deaths on your minds today,” Miss Peck said. “I would expect no less from you. Many of you have heard the stories and have come to your own conclusions. I am not sure what happened exactly, but this class has never been more important. Today, I am going to teach you what to do in a situation you have no control over, against an enemy you probably are not prepared to face. I am going to teach you a lesson I should have taught you before. How to adapt.”

Miss Peck turned to look at the forest and collected her thoughts. When she turned back to us, she was fierce. Her expression suggested she was about to put us through training we would never forget.

“I have a simulation set up. The crawlers and shades are not real, but the danger is. You can be hurt. You must choose which tactic is best for the situation, and then deal with your enemy. I have a space sectioned off for each of you in the woods. Your name is in your section. Please go find it, and I will start the simulation.”

The class obediently started forward at her command. Carrie and Tommy walked at my side. They didn’t speak or try to guess what was coming. They were too concerned by Miss Peck’s somber words and the challenge we were about to face.

My name was one of the closest to the tree line. It was on a scrap of paper pinned to a tree. Carrie and Tommy smiled encouragingly when I stopped walking, and then paced away with determination to find their own part of the forest to defend.

When they were gone, the forest became unnaturally quiet. My breathing and the wind rushing along the tops of the trees were the loudest things for a quarter mile. The sunlight didn’t filter down beyond the canopy of colored leaves and evergreens, so that the light was dimmer than the bright day suggested. I couldn’t see nor hear anyone else nearby. I was alone – or else the simulation had already started. I wondered what would happen if I failed the exercise. Would I have another injury to add to my body?

I was tense as I waited. There was a different feeling to the tension than when I was dreaming. Dreams were always someone else’s domain. They were a world created by another, where things were never as real or clear as they were when I was awake, except for the pain. The reality and closeness of the looming fight made everything feel unexpectedly frightening. My body tingled with expectation and adrenaline.

Quiet rustling was the first sign that something was near. I put my back against the tree that held my name and zeroed in on the walking. It wasn’t a person. There were too many steps. Either it was an animal that had wandered too close to the simulation or it was a crawler. I peered around the tree carefully, to get a better look, and saw that it was not a fluffy bunny rabbit searching for food in the undergrowth.

The crawler was doing its best to be quiet, but the fallen leaves gave it away. When we connected eyes, it pulled back its lips to hiss at me. I tried to grab my crossbow and realized I didn’t have a weapon. I was limited to what was in front of me. It was clearly part of Miss Peck’s plan for us to learn to adapt.

The forest was covered with leaves, sticks, rocks, and an occasional large branch. A branch was best, but the crawler was too close to the nearest one. I bent down and picked up a large rock from the base of the tree. As I shifted my stance, I inspected the trees for more crawlers. I had learned last night’s lesson well.

At first, there was nothing. Then I saw a glimmer of dark in the dim light. A crawler was in a tree to my right. It was camouflaged to be the color of the tree, but the light flittering through the autumn leaves gave it away. I scoured the rest of the forest but didn’t see any others.

I was about to step forward, my rock held low, when an overwhelming stench filled my nose. It was unlike anything I had ever smelled, even the stench of the crawlers. A heavy feeling, like mini-earthquakes, rattled the earth. It shook me, urging me to stay low and wait.

Peering around the tree, I saw the closest thing I had ever seen to an ogre. It was eight-feet tall, with grey-green skin and a large lower jaw that highlighted tusk-like teeth. Its body was large and round. It didn’t have a weapon, but its sharp claws were deadly. My eyes widened. I had rationalized that shades could take any form – imagination was the only limitation – but I had never seen something so unearthly and massive stalking through the forest at Grey Haven.

I wasn’t skilled enough, or well-armed enough, to face down all three enemies at once. I needed a way to force them to come at me one at a time. It was the only way to win.

The first crawler skittered closer, preparing to jump. The space between us was running out. I reared back and threw my rock. It hit between the crawler’s eyes and it dropped to the ground, dazed. The second it fell, I sprinted away. The ogre roared once and chased after me, crushing through the foliage with inhuman strength. The second crawler was faster, less weighed down by the bulk. It was closing in. The crawler I had stunned with the rock quickly joined its companion in the trees. They jumped from tree to tree effortlessly. They would reach me before the ogre could. I had to get rid of them first.

I spotted a thicket. Trees, azalea bushes, and thorns grew close together and made it difficult for anything larger than me to pass through. I ducked under a row of thorns and scrambled my way around the trees. The crawlers had caught up. They jumped over my head, taunting me with their closeness. The ogre roared in rage at the blockade of trees and started knocking against the large pine trees to get to me.

I ducked behind a tree and picked a branch off the ground. The weight of the branch was reassuring. It would be deadly against the crawlers if I put the right force behind my swings. I heard them above me. Their mixture of clicking and hissing filled the air. I circled around the tree as they dropped to the forest floor. Before they could jump at me, I jumped at them. Using my stick like a baseball bat, I swung at one and then the other.

One crawler flew and hit a tree. The second slammed into the ground with a grunt. I hit the one on the ground two more times, to be certain it didn’t get up again, then ran over to the other crawler. I hit it across the face with the stick as it wobbled to its feet. The sound of its neck breaking was muffled by the sharp crash of a tree falling.

The ground rattled. The shade was coming. I threw my stick away, knowing it would be useless against something so massive, and snuck through the trees.

The ogre was pounding against a tree with aggressive rhythm. The tree was close to two hundred feet tall – one of the largest I had seen in the area. It wobbled precariously against the ogre’s blows. It was close to falling and I smiled as I realized that a two-hundred-foot tall tree was a better weapon than anything I could forge. I would use the shade’s strength against it.

It wobbled again, creaking alarmingly, and I stepped out from my hiding place. The shade noticed and roared, angry that I was out of reach. I let its anger and desperation build, then I ran right at it.

The shade swiped at me with its large, clawed hand. I ducked and dove between its legs. I rolled beyond it, out of reach. It tried to swipe at me again but couldn’t adjust its aim in time. Instead of hitting me, it hit the tree. The tree trembled one last time before it tipped towards us.

The shade, unaware of what it had done, turned away from the thicket and stomped toward me in a slow jog that made my teeth rattle. I rolled to my feet and held my breath, aware that if the tree didn’t work, I would fail.

I watched the tree fall, my body coiled and ready to dodge.

The ogre reached me, hands extended, and I sprinted to the side. The shade slid to a stop and tried to correct its course, to get me, but it was too late. The tree had gained momentum and fell on top of the ogre with a resounding thud, crushing it as easily as one of its large hands would have crushed me. It didn’t try to get back up.

The ogre was dead.

I let out an explosive breath as the shade dissolved into grey ash. When the shade was dust, the world flickered, and I was back at the tree that held my name, the forest unchanged by the fight.

Feeling triumphant, I meandered back to Miss Peck.

I had gone ten feet when I heard the unmistakable sounds of arguing. At first, I thought it was two of my classmates, but the voices didn’t sound familiar. I was instantly intrigued. The idea of a traitor lingered. I followed the sound silently.

Across from the woods, near one of the back entrances to the school, was Bernard. One of the security guards was with him. Bernard’s voice was the louder of the two voices. “I don’t care if you’ve already checked the system,” Bernard said. “Mrs. Z. wants it checked it again!”

“What am I checking for?” the security guard demanded, red faced and irritable. “There haven’t been any breaches in the security! I would know if there had been!”

Bernard pointed up at the camera that had been placed over the door. Someone had spray painted over the lens, so that the forest wasn’t covered by the camera. It had been that way since before I had come to Grey Haven.

“What do you call that?” Bernard asked.

“No one comes and goes this way!” the security guard tried to argue. “Except for kids wanting to smoke or make out.”

“You can’t be sure of that,” Bernard argued.

I left them to their arguing, my tension leaving my body at the sight of them. Checking the security made sense if Mrs. Z. was worried about a traitor. No stone left unturned, or some other wise saying…I just hoped she checked the right stones. My life was kinda relying on it.

Miss Peck was standing in the same spot from before my fight with the ogre, keeping vigil over the woods. She held a small monitor in her hand that she was watching carefully. I saw flashes of other fights on the screen. She nodded approvingly when she saw me. “Nice work, Miss Aim,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You can leave,” she said.

“I’m gonna wait for my friends,” I said.

Miss Peck nodded absently and refocused on the monitor. I saw glimpses of Tommy fighting hand-to-hand with a vicious-looking man, but I dared not look over her shoulder longer than what a glance could tell me. Miss Peck would never stand for it.

As I strolled away from her to sit down, I noticed that the grassy hill was already occupied. Ben had also finished his fight. He was sitting, patiently waiting for his friends. I groaned inwardly, though I kept my face impassive. I sat down as far from him as possible while still in view of Miss Peck to wait for Carrie and Tommy.

Ben didn’t take the hint to stay away. He jumped to his feet and sat next to me, as casual as if we had known each other our entire time at Grey Haven. “Julie Aim,” he said, friendly and warm.

“Ben Even,” I replied, less cordial.

“How’d your meeting with Mrs. Z. go?” Ben asked.

I smiled sharply at his question and didn’t reply.

“Are we not talking now?” he asked, confusion settling into his expression.

“Did you come over here to get some good gossip for your friends?” I asked back.

Ben frowned at me. “No. You seemed worried about it before you went in. I was just checking on you,” Ben said.

“Ah,” I said doubtfully.

“You really don’t trust me, do you?” he asked.

“Nope,” I replied.

“I’m not Dana, you know,” Ben said.

“But dating her kind of suggests that you’re not so dissimilar,” I said.

Ben’s expression hardened. “So, when did you decide that you knew everything there was to know about everyone?” he asked.

“I don’t know everything,” I said. “And I don’t want to. But you gotta admit that not noticing anything outside your little circle of superstar dreamers says a lot.”

“I don’t see you trying to be Miss Social,” Ben pointed out.

“That’s an informed choice,” I said. “Not one of ignorance. I hang out with people who are awesome, not people who think they are.”

“Did that high horse come with a saddle, or did you jump on bareback?” Ben asked with a vicious smile.

My reply was cut short as Carrie walked out of the woods. Her red hair was a tangled mess. She had twigs and dirt hanging in the tangles and her face was covered in dirt and sweat. Her jeans and shoes were covered in mud, but she was pleased with herself. Miss Peck congratulated her as she had me, then Carrie sauntered over to join me. She was smiling brightly at Miss Peck’s compliment, but she stopped when she saw Ben. Her hand shifted to her hair automatically. She pulled out several sticks, but it only made her hair look wilder. Her expression suggested she was uncertain if she wanted to join us.

I smiled at her encouragingly, hoping Ben would go away when she sat down. She sat on the opposite side of me from Ben, her eyes searching the forest as she tried to hide her blush. Her hands still worked to comb the dirt and twigs out of her hair.

“How’d you do?” I asked her.

“Pretty good,” Carrie admitted. “The shade was a shifter, so he kept changing into different creatures. I finally managed to trick him into a shape easy for me to kill. What about you?”

“Mine was an ogre,” I said. “I killed him with a tree.”

Ben and Carrie stared at me. Carrie finally shook her head, a genuine smile of surprise overriding her blush. Ben refocused on Carrie as she smiled. He blinked a couple of times as if he was trying especially hard to remember where he had seen her before. “So, is this one of your awesome friends?” he asked.

“Yep,” I agreed. “She also has four classes with you. Care to guess her name?”

“Julie…be nice,” Carrie chastised me. “I’m Carrie,” she added to Ben.

“Nice to meet you, Carrie,” Ben said. “Is Julie always this…?” Ben sought a way to explain our encounters so far. I knew I had been nothing but rude, but he seemed willing to humor it. I wasn’t sure why.

Carrie was instantly defensive. “Julie’s real. You either get it or you don’t. She doesn’t particularly care if you don’t. And I don’t either.”

“I see,” Ben said.

I smiled at Carrie’s defensiveness. “See the difference between being awesome and thinking you’re awesome?” I asked him, bumping shoulders with Carrie playfully at her defense of me.

Ben shrugged and didn’t reply, though his expression turned serious with my question. He finally stopped talking, content to sit and wait, and we turned our attention back to the woods. They slowly emptied of dreamers. It was close to forty-five minutes after the start of the class when Tommy finally walked out. He didn’t have any fresh wounds, but the bandage from his face was gone, replaced by dirt. His hair was covered in mud and his breathing was ragged. He collapsed in front of us on the hill without looking at Ben.

“That was fun,” Tommy said dryly, his throat hoarse. “I mean, who wouldn’t want to run into a pack of wolves, surrounded by crawlers, surrounded by a forest that keeps rearranging itself? Then the shade shows up…”

“It’s a learning experience,” Carrie pointed out haughtily.

Tommy rolled his eyes. “That’s only fun to you,” he said.

“Julie had fun,” Carrie said defensively.

“That doesn’t make it better,” Tommy said. “Jules likes punching things too much.”

“We should get cleaned up before our next class,” I interjected, to keep them from arguing.

Carrie closed her mouth, stopping the retort she had on the tip of her tongue. She could tell from my expression I wasn’t in the mood to listen to them bicker. She also knew she wouldn’t be able to win an argument with Tommy. He had a way of punching through her logic and leaving her with nothing beyond the bitter taste of agreeing with him. She hated it.

“Yeah,” Tommy agreed.

Tommy finally noticed Ben, who was looking at Tommy with an amused smile on his face. “What’s he doing?” Tommy asked, eyeing Ben suspiciously.

“Sitting, from what I can tell,” I said.

“I’m waiting for my friends,” Ben said.

Tommy frowned, then shrugged in reply. I watched him physically stifle his natural chattiness. Perhaps he thought Ben had finally noticed Carrie and resented the fact that it had taken him so long. Or else he thought Ben was there to get gossip out of me. Either way, he didn’t consider Ben a friend. Tommy jumped to his feet and waited for us to join him. Carrie was the last to stand. “Nice to, uh, meet you…I guess,” Tommy said before he turned away.

Ben gave a friendly wave of parting and refocused on the woods. Before we went inside, I saw Ben get up and move to the woods again. It was away from where the others were finishing their fights. He hadn’t been waiting on someone after all. Tommy noticed Ben’s path into the woods and we shared a frown, but neither of us mentioned it, not with Carrie so near. It would just start a fight. Tommy went into detail about his shade and I pushed aside the curiosity of Ben for later.

My last two classes were easy compared to my fight with the ogre. I stared out the window through both lectures, thinking about the strangeness of the day and the weight of the idea that a traitor was at the school. I also thought about Sully and the meeting we had planned. I was excited. I hadn’t seen him outside of the cafeteria for a week, and I needed a break now more than when I had agreed to meet him.

Seeing him was more complicated than it seemed. We weren’t allowed off the school grounds during the school week. The weekend was the only time we could go to and from school without risking punishment. But Harry’s indifference made sneaking away easier. If we were in our rooms and hooked up to our monitors by curfew, he didn’t really care where we went. The only difficult part was getting around the fence that surrounded the property without the cameras catching me.

My typical way off the grounds was at a part of the fence near a drainage pipe. The fence was loosely placed on top of the pipe, to make maintenance on the pipe easier. It had a video camera that rotated from left to right at a consistent speed, but the camera was easy to get around. Escape was about timing.

I paused and swore when I reached the pipe. Someone had put bars on either side of the drainage pipe, and then had secured the fence to the bars with heavy wire. I cursed Bernard and Mrs. Z.’s heightened security measures and surveyed the fence and the trees that blocked the camera’s line of sight critically. If I couldn’t go under the fence, I would go over. Based on how fast it took the camera to rotate versus how fast I could sprint, I would have just enough time to get over the fence and behind a tree before the camera swiveled back around.

When the camera started its swivel to the left, I made a running leap at the fence. I was over the top in a matter of seconds. I slid to a stop behind a tree and watched the camera pivot back toward the drainage pipe, missing me entirely. I smiled in triumph and continued my path toward Sully.

I angled my way through the forest, so that I came out on the dirt road far away from the guard station at the front gate. As I walked, I felt sharp stabs of guilt. I had left Carrie in the homework room, a normal occurrence, but tonight was different. Though she couldn’t have the book Mrs. Waite had recommended, it hadn’t stopped her from checking out all the books on shades she could find. She had wanted me to stay and help her look for clues. She had also hissed a sharp admonishment over sneaking out when it was so dangerous. The guilt was worse because I wasn’t sorry in the least. It was good to have fun now and then, especially when things were dangerous. She forgot that sometimes.

The light had faded into twilight, and the wind had turned frosty, as I walked through the woods. It wouldn’t be the most comfortable way to see Sully, but it was worth the chill. The narrow road, which was the only way to and from Grey Haven, was barely large enough for two cars to pass comfortably. A hundred yards before it came out to a larger road a mile down the mountain, there was a small bridge that crossed a stream. An old truck was parked next to the bridge. It had the logo for Sully’s shop on the door.

I walked around the truck with a smile and made my way deeper into the woods, following a stream for a couple of minutes. Finally, a warm light guided me to my destination. Sully had started a fire, and a blanket was spread out next to it. He was staring at the fire as I stepped into view.

“Cozy,” I said.

Sully turned with a smile. “Thought you’d like some heat,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said, stepping closer to the fire, my hands extended.

“How was your day?” Sully asked. “Learn how to recite your Periodic Table backwards?”

“That was so last week.”

“Oh, I see,” Sully said playfully. He put one arm around my waist and pulled me in close. His touch was welcome, but my injury wasn’t forgiving. A sharp pain made me flinch against him. He felt the bandage under my shirt as I bit my lip to keep from crying out.

“What happened?” he asked. He turned to look at my back, lifting my shirt gently to get a look at the bandage.

I batted his hands away and faced him again, trying to downplay the hurt. The lie came easily, naturally. “I fell while riding my bike. The tire locked and knocked me over. I looked like an idiot,” I said. “Happened this morning.”

“Ouch,” Sully said. “I’m sorry.”

“Accidents happen,” I said with a shrug.

“Doesn’t make it hurt less,” he pointed out.

“I know what will,” I told him, moving so that we were close again.

“Yeah?” he asked with a small smile.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

I put my arms around his neck and smiled at him. As I smiled, I realized I had made the right choice despite Carrie’s unhappiness. My worry, fear, and pain disappeared with his touch. Having things outside the mayhem was a truth that most at Grey Haven were too distracted by studying to learn. I had learned the lesson years ago, knew how ephemeral joy could be.

Eager to get lost in him, I kissed him. He met my kiss halfway. He was just as passionate and eager for the feel of my body against his. His hands drifted to my waist again, then under my shirt and up my back to undo my bra. We pulled away from each other long enough to pull our shirts off before our lips met once more. We scrambled over to the blanket, the fire warming us as much as our passion as we undressed each other. His hands were certain and confident as he explored my body, though he was careful of my back and sensitive to the pain he had already caused me.

The cold was forgotten as he pressed his body against the length of mine. His lips and his touch were the only things in the world that mattered. The crackle of the fire was muted against the sound of my heart beating a heavy, racing rhythm of passion and excitement. Time dissolved to nothingness and nothingness gave way to happiness.

When our passion was spent, we dressed, and Sully held me in his arms in front of the fire. As we watched the flames flicker against the night, I felt warmth that went beyond the fire. I could rationalize how fleeting my happiness was, or that I was never lucky enough to keep what I had, but I wasn’t in the mood. I accepted the illusion and willed my mind to shut up, to allow me this.

As he held me, Sully and I talked. He talked about his shop and his mother, who he helped around the house a lot. His stories were full of things I didn’t get to experience at Grey Haven, a normalcy that was as foreign as it was peaceful. I had far less stories to share with him, though I did talk about Tommy and Carrie. They were family. I wanted to share them.

Neither of us asked more than the other was willing to share, however. We had an unspoken agreement not to push the other more than we were willing to go. Sully was probably one of the few people in Sweetbriar who wasn’t curious enough about Grey Haven to ask a million questions. He had learned the art of enjoying someone without having to know everything there was to know about them. It was nice, though it left a lot unsaid between us. There would be a time when that was a problem, but it wasn’t today.

At a quarter to nine, it was time for me to go. Sully gave me a kiss to send me on my way, then focused on putting the fire out and gathering the blanket. My mood considerably improved, I ran to make it back to Grey Haven before curfew.

I heard the motorcycle before I saw it. It broke the calm silence of the night and shattered the peacefulness my visit with Sully had brought. I scrambled off the road and crouched down in the underbrush to watch it pass. My first instinct, after a day of catching up to secrets, was that the person was headed toward Grey Haven for a malicious reason. Maybe this was the clue that Carrie had been hunting for in her books.

The motorcycle was familiar. I had seen the black and chrome design only this morning. The stranger that had visited Mrs. Z. was coming back to the school. The question was why he needed to so late at night.

As if he could hear my thoughts, the man stopped ten feet in front of me on the road and cut the engine. After a pause, where he hid the bike behind a tree, he started up a steep incline, following the mountain terrain deeper into the woods. He prowled with the strength of an athlete and the grace of someone trained to fight. His path was silent, and he disappeared quickly.

I hesitated and considered the fact that his business wasn’t mine, then I thought of the people who had died and the shade that had attacked me. The stranger wasn’t a student at Grey Haven, but it was possible he was still a dreamer. Mrs. Z. might have called him in to her office because she thought him guilty. If I caught him in the middle of betraying us, I could take the truth to her, catch the killer, and go back to fighting shades without the fear of being hunted.

I left my hiding place and crossed the road silently. I passed the man’s motorcycle and followed his path up the mountain, which wasn’t that easy. He hadn’t left a trail. I paused behind a tree as I tried to find signs of his passing in the leaves. I didn’t see him, but I was certain he was headed toward the school. If I went that way, I’d run into him again. I started to take a step forward, to follow my instinct.

Sharp steel pressed against my neck. I froze, cursing myself. “I know you’re thinking about disarming me,” a rough, masculine voice said. “It would be a bad idea.”

“It would be a better idea than letting you kill me,” I snarked back, sarcastic to the last.

“It would be,” he agreed. “What are you doing here?”

“I was out for a walk,” I lied. “You know, taking in the sights, smelling that mountain air. What about you?”

“A strange time to catch some air, don’t you think?” he asked.

“No stranger than a man hiding in the woods in the dark,” I said. “Or is it only okay for you to be somewhere you shouldn’t?”

The blade pressed firmer against my neck at my words. With the knife holding me hostage, I felt as if my suspicion had been proved as fact. He was responsible for the deaths and was about to finish what he had started last night. He would kill me. My body prepared for an epic fight. I wouldn’t make it easy for him, despite his warning. I had to survive. The people who had died deserved justice.

Before I could attack, he put a hand over my mouth and forced me to the ground. He pushed his body on top of mine, to keep me in place on the forest floor. I struggled against him, but he was stronger. He kept his hand over my mouth, but he didn’t try to calm me down. He was too focused on the forest in front of us. He trusted his skill and weight to keep me in place. I stopped struggling, curious over what he was looking at despite my fear.

A light had appeared. It was dull and muted, as if the carrier of the light didn’t want it seen. The person stopped on the opposite side of the road, far enough away that details were impossible to see. It was a man, and he had come from the direction of the school, but that was all I could make out. Voices floated across the road, distorted by the trees. The first person had been joined by a second. The wind carried their words to us.

“You’re late,” a male voice said. The voice was sweet and toxic, a poison.

“They’ve tightened security around the school,” the man holding the flashlight replied.

The second voice was vaguely familiar. But it was as if the man was deliberately talking different from how I remembered him talking. I tried to place him but came up blank.

The pair walked deeper into the forest. “We need to talk about the list you gave me,” the sweetly toxic voice said.

“I-” the second man tried to say. His voice trembled with fear.

“We’ll talk about your failure later,” the first man said. “The girl who survived…tell me about her.”

“Her name is Julie…Julie Aim,” the second voice said.

The voices faded away as they moved out of range of my hearing. I wanted to follow them, to hear what they said about me, but the man was still on top of me. I refocused on him.

He was hyper-focused on the two men, and I felt his tension through our touch. I took advantage of his distraction and rolled out from under him, with a swift elbow to his gut for his trouble. I jumped to my feet, ready to run away, but he was faster. He kicked out my feet with a swift shift of his body. I hit the ground hard. My wind was knocked from my body, and my back lit up with a painful fire. I felt the scratches start bleeding again. The pain kept me in place more than my lack of air.

The man settled a knee on top of my chest and held the knife to my throat again. As I looked into his eyes, I realized they were the clearest blue I had ever seen. They were a stark contrast to his dark hair and black stubble. After surviving six months of shades and training I was going to be killed by a human man with pretty eyes in the forest. It really pissed me off.

His eyes brightened with recognition, and I knew he remembered me from Mrs. Z.’s office. “You’re a student at Grey Haven,” he announced.

“And you have a knife to my throat,” I retorted. “Want to talk about anything else that’s obvious? The weather, maybe? Oh! How about how much of an asshole you are?”

His face twitched. I wasn’t sure if it was anger, laughter, or some other emotion I couldn’t place around my fear. He didn’t remove the knife to my throat, but I finally sensed hesitation. I wasn’t the enemy he was expecting. I confused him, and that was enough to keep me alive.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Answer me honestly, and I’ll let you go.”

“I snuck out and was trying to get back to the school before curfew,” I said. “But then I saw you pull up and got curious.”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” the man said.

I rolled my eyes at his dramatics. “And satisfaction brought it back. Would you just get on with it?” I asked. “Either kill me and be done, or let me go, so I can make it back to school and don’t have to deal with Harry’s half-assed speech about curfew rules.”

The man considered my words for a moment that felt like an eternity. He finally pulled the knife away from my throat and rolled away. I was surprised when he slid the knife back into his sheath. If he were guilty of something, wouldn’t he have killed me? My death would have meant little to him. He could disappear without anyone ever knowing the truth.

I rolled to my feet, feeling confused. I didn’t understand what he was doing in the woods, beyond sneaking suspiciously, but I also knew it was stupid to hang around and ask questions. While I wasn’t as smart as Carrie, I knew when my situation was precarious. I had a thousand questions, but none of them seemed healthy with the phantom feeling of his knife against my throat lingering.

My heart pounding with adrenaline, I backed away from him. The man didn’t seem to care or fear that I might attack him. He turned toward the direction the two men had disappeared without bothering to watch my retreat, confident I wasn’t anything he had to worry about.

The conversation wound its way through my thoughts with more questions I couldn’t answer. It was easy to dwell on the list of possible answers. Instead, I focused on a situation that was solvable. I had ten minutes to get back to the house before Harry gave us our nightly missions. My house was fifteen minutes away at a walk. I would have to run if I wanted to make curfew.

I gritted my teeth and took off in a sprint. I had a day’s worth of training and a painful back injury bogging me down, but the run was nothing compared to being held at knifepoint and potentially dying. Perspective was everything.

I ran until Grey Haven’s black gate appeared around a bend in the road, then returned to the drainage pipe. I jumped the fence impatiently and ran for the house.

The streets were deserted, but a security guard made his rounds in his electric car. I crossed over lawns and around houses to avoid him, feeling as if the weight of the conversation I had heard was following me. Again, I tried to place the voices, but my brain wouldn’t cooperate. Despite the fear the man with the knife had inspired, I knew that placing the voices in the woods was more important. The unseen man was the one who had known my name.

When I finally reached the door to my house, I realized that I was no closer to the truth than I had been before the conversation. It was frustrating and terrifying. They knew my name, and I knew I hadn’t seen the last of them. I hoped that I could catch up to the truth before the voices I had heard caught up to me.