Even if she told them it was the third day in a row she had seen him.

Larissa ate her cereal in silence, said good-bye to her parents as they left for work, then went upstairs. As she passed her brother’s room, she saw him sitting at his desk instant messaging with someone, probably one of the large number of seemingly identical adolescent boys who were his friends. They were polite and more than a little shy when she answered their knocks at the door in the evenings, but she nearly always caught their eyes crawling over her chest, and it made her shudder.

“Morning, Liam,” she said.

He grunted, which Larissa knew was the best she was likely to get from him.

In her room, Larissa apathetically flipped through Emma for the next couple of hours, her mind on anything but Jane Austen. She made herself some lunch, downloaded some music, lay on her bed, paced around her bedroom, and generally killed time until it was time to go to the fair. Her father was getting out of his car when she stepped out of the house, and he waved a halfhearted greeting at her. She returned it with an equal lack of enthusiasm, and he stopped her as she passed him.

“Are you OK?” he asked, peering at her from sleepy, hooded eyes.

“I’m fine, Dad,” she snapped. “What about you? Are you OK?”

Her father looked at her, then dropped his gaze.

“That’s what I thought,” she said, and walked down the driveway and out onto the street, the heels of her boots clicking furiously along the pavement.

The fair was an annual event, beloved by the town’s teenagers and children alike. The kids loved the bumper cars, the small roller coaster, the Barrel Roll, and the Chair-O-Planes; the teenagers loved the neon lights, the dark corners where they could kiss, the games and the arcades. It was, in truth, little more than a collection of sideshows with two or three half-decent rides, but the strips of lights mingled with the scents of cotton candy and roasting nuts and the tinny sound track to create something that was slightly magical.

All this was lost on Larissa’s friend Amber, who was enthusiastically kissing a boy from their history class, her back pressed against the wall of the coconut-shy booth, her hands holding his firmly at his sides so he didn’t get any ideas about putting them anywhere else. The rest of the girls had wandered off to smoke a spliff behind the bumper cars, and Larissa found herself alone. She waited a few minutes for Amber to disentangle herself from the boy, who had greasy hair and acne, but Amber seemed in no hurry to do so, even though he was the third boy she had kissed in the little over an hour they had been at the fair. Eventually Larissa wandered away.

She walked down the fair’s main street and out into the darkness of the park, following the fence that separated the fields from the main road. Cars sped past her, their headlights blazing, snatches of music floating from open windows, and she was overcome with a sense of sorrow and loss. Her hands shook as she dragged a pack of Marlboro Lights from her pocket, pulled one from the box, and applied the small yellow flame of her lighter to the tip.

“Those things will kill you.”

Larissa jumped, her heart lurching in her chest, at the sound of the old man’s voice. She knew it was him even as she was turning toward the source of the words; the voice was extraordinary, unlike any other she had ever heard. It rolled and swooned, as deep as a double bass and as smooth as honey, full of whispered promises and dark secrets. She turned to the fence and saw the old man on the other side of it, standing on the pavement with his hands in his pockets. For the first time since she had seen him two days ago, standing quietly on the corner of her road as she walked home from the library, he was not smiling. Instead he was looking at her with an expression of great sadness.

The fence between them was more than six feet high, green metal topped with wicked spikes, and it emboldened her. She took a step toward the old man.

“Why are you following me?” she asked, her voice sharp. “What the hell were you doing in my garden this morning?”

The old man’s smile returned. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You look like someone I used to know.”

She opened her mouth to ask who, but before she could form the words, the old man moved. He stepped into the air, as casually as most people would climb a staircase, and floated up and over the fence. His coat billowed out behind him, the sleeves riding up, and Larissa caught sight of a narrow black V tattooed on the inside of his left forearm, before he landed gently in front of her. She opened her mouth to scream, but he closed the distance between them impossibly quickly and clamped a hand over her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his breath hot in her ear. “I truly am.” Then he buried his face in her neck. She felt pain, so sharp it was almost sweet, and then she was gone.

It was still dark when Larissa awoke. She was lying on the grass beneath an oak tree, and she was cold and damp with dew. Her head felt heavy, and she struggled to her feet. She walked through the quiet stalls and rides of the fair, kicking through piles of litter and abandoned food, heading toward the park gates.

She remembered nothing about the previous night, nothing after she left her father standing in their driveway. Where were Amber and the rest of the girls? How could they just leave without her—hadn’t any of them bothered to look for her when they left? In the back of her head, a deep, gentle voice told her that everything was going to be all right, but she didn’t think it was.

She didn’t think that was even close to the truth.

The house was dark as she turned into the driveway, shivering, her arms wrapped tightly around her. She hoped that her parents were worried out of their minds, but she knew they would probably not have even noticed that she hadn’t come home.

She crept up the stairs, not because she cared if she woke anyone up, but because she didn’t want to be asked questions that she had no answers to. She would get some real sleep in a proper bed, then phone Amber and find out what had happened. Larissa undressed, lay down on her bed, pulling her duvet around her like a cocoon, and was asleep in less than a minute.

An hour later, she awoke and buried her face in her pillow so she didn’t scream. Her head was splitting in two, a huge thunderbolt of agony running through her forehead, as though someone had buried an axe in it. She rolled over, the pillow clamped to her face, her eyes wide with pain and terror, and then the hunger hit her, and she doubled up into a fetal ball. It was like nothing she had ever felt before, a pain so huge it felt as though it must have come from somewhere outside the universe, an enormous, howling emptiness that filled her entire body. She screamed into the pillow, her body convulsing, thrashing back and forth as though she was having a seizure. She screamed and screamed, and after what felt like an infinity of time, but was probably no more than a minute, the hunger subsided.

Larissa pushed the pillow away from her face. She felt as weak as an infant, and saliva was running down her cheeks and chin in sticky rivulets. Pushing the duvet away, she rolled over and flopped out of bed and didn’t hit her bedroom floor.

She floated a foot above the carpet.

Incomprehension flooded through her, and she was overcome by a terror so profound she felt her eyes begin to roll back in her head, as unconsciousness fought to claim her. She thrust her hands down and felt rough material under her fingers, and her vision cleared. The floor was still there; at least that was something. She twisted in the air, tears of panic springing involuntarily into the corners of her eyes and spilling down her cheeks, and she spun slowly, rotating so she was looking down at the floor. Then suddenly, whatever was holding her in the air was gone, and she thudded face down on to the ground.