“Joaquin! Where are you?” I could still feel the warmth of his fingers against mine. “Where are you?”

Silence, as complete and total as death. My fingernails drilled into my palms. I was alone.

Someone blew on my neck. I let out a screech and whirled around. Nothing but the mist.

“Stop it. Please,” I whimpered. “Please. Please don’t hurt him. I just want to find my sister. My dad. Please just leave us alone.”

“Rory!” a voice sang out teasingly. “Rooooreeee!”

And then, the whistling. “The Long and Winding Road.” It was being whistled directly into my ear.

I ran for my life, forgetting everything other than my own survival. I sprinted straight ahead—away from the voice—barreling through the fog, certain at every moment that I would run right into the waiting arms of my tormentor, Steven Nell. I looked over my shoulder, to the left, to the right. There was nothing but the mist. The unforgiving, unrelenting mist.

As I kept running, an awful thought began to scratch at the back of my mind. What if I ran right into the Shadowlands? But no. It wasn’t possible. I needed a coin to open the portal. My only hope was to stay on the bridge. To keep going. If I kept going, maybe I’d find Joaquin or Tristan or Nadia—someone. Anyone who could tell me how to find my way back.

I was panting. About to pass out. How long had I been running? How long did I have to go before I—

“Rory, honey, stop.”

“Mom?”

I tripped. My knees hit the metal roadway with a jarring slam. I gasped in relief. I’d heard my mother’s voice. I’d heard her. I sucked in a few breaths, my lungs on fire, and tried to focus, pressing my palms into the grooved metal ground. I took comfort in its very existence. At least it was familiar. It was something real.

“Mom?” I pushed myself up again, turning around in circles. “Mom?”

“…which way is she…”

“…doesn’t know…”

“…so naive she is, so very…”

“…straight ahead, honey. Straight ahead.”

Something moved in the mist, and I ran toward it. “Joaquin?” I paused and gathered myself, squinting. Suddenly I smelled something familiar. The spicy scent of Tristan’s shampoo. I felt his presence as clearly as if he were standing beside me, holding my hand. It was as if I could hear his heartbeat.

“Tristan?” I said, my voice cracking. “Tristan, is that you?”

There was a clearing up ahead. I could almost see. Was it the portal to the Light? The Shadowlands? Was it Joaquin? Tristan? Was my mother really here? I ran as fast as I could, holding on to hope, trying to blot out the fear. But as I ran, something pulled at my hair. Not the fog, not the rain, but something alive. Long, hungry fingers reached for me, snagging in my hair, trying to drag me back. The harder I ran, the farther they reached, now scratching at my ears, now whisking against my cheeks.

“…don’t go, don’t go, we can’t let you go…don’t go, don’t go, we can’t let you go…”

“Help me!” I screeched. “Someone, help me!”

I stumbled forward, my lungs burning. All I could feel were my feet pounding the ground and fear coursing through my veins. I ran and I ran and I ran until the rain suddenly battered my face—and I collided with Joaquin.

“Rory?” he said, grasping my elbows. “Oh my god. I thought I’d lost you.”

“You’re here!” I threw my arms around him and hugged him. “You’re all right!”

Joaquin cupped the back of my neck with one hand and tilted his head into my hair. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

When I finally got control of myself, I looked up, over his shoulders. The others were still standing there, in the exact same poses they’d been in when we left. I looked over my shoulder at the bridge, disoriented. I’d run in a straight line, hadn’t I? How could I have come back to the exact spot I’d left?

“I don’t understand,” I said, grasping Joaquin’s jacket as I tried to calm my racing thoughts. “How long were we gone? How long were we in there?”

“Three seconds,” Bea replied. “What the hell did you see?”

Joaquin and I locked eyes. I shook my head. I’d run for at least five minutes. Maybe ten. After three years of cross-country races I knew how to judge the length of my run.

“He wasn’t there,” I said, unable to imagine trying to explain what had gone on inside the mist. “He wasn’t…He wasn’t there.”

Joaquin held me to him, his arms locked tightly around me as the rain consumed us. Then, through my wet lashes, I saw a flash of pink, and suddenly Krista was running through the muck in our direction.

“Krista? What’s wrong?” Bea called out.

“The mayor sent me to get you. She’s losing it, guys,” Krista said, gasping for breath as she braced her hands over her knees. “You better come back. Like, now.”

Standing under the same white party tent we’d used for Krista’s anniversary party almost a week ago, which had been erected over the flagstone patio behind the mayor’s house, we could hear the patients inside getting ready to move out. Between the pane dividers on the French doors, I saw the mayor hovering over a map of the town with a few visitors, explaining where to go as a group headed to the front door. The clinic was emptying.

“Dude, your boy’s on the prowl,” Fisher said, tilting his head toward the side of the house.

Joaquin walked around to see better, and I automatically went with him. Jack Lancet, one of Joaquin’s more evil charges, was pacing outside one of the east-facing windows, looking through the panes with a creepy smile on. The man had been executed after murdering three helpless children.

“Sonofa—”

Joaquin stormed right over to him, grabbed him by the back of his coat, and flung him away. Lancet hit his knees, muddying the front of his pants, and looked up at Joaquin with pink shame painted across his cheeks.

For a split second, I felt sorry for him. He looked sad, almost disgusted with himself, as he cowered in the rain. Part of me wanted to go help him up, offer him a kind word. But then my logical side kicked in.

The guy is sick, Rory. Sick. He hurt—killed—little kids.

It was that one word that wedged itself inside my chest, though, and stuck, like something jagged and raw. Sick. Who was to say what made people do the things they did? Was it nature? Nurture? Their own logic? Their needs and their longings? What had made me kill Steven Nell that day? Why was it my instinct to lash out and take his life rather than to turn the other cheek?

This horrible ache settled deep inside me, and I longed for my mother and the comfort of her words in a way I hadn’t in a long time. At the same moment, I wished like hell that Tristan had made good on his promise to be there for me, to be trustworthy, to teach me everything I needed to know. He’d been doing this for so long that I was sure he had the answers to my deep, dark questions.

What if he’d been telling the truth in that note? What if there was still a chance…?

Suddenly Jack Lancet looked me in the eye and laughed. I felt my face harden, my jaw clench. It was as if he’d read my mind and was laughing at my naive hope.

Tristan was evil. I wouldn’t give him the chance to fool me again.

“Get the hell out of here,” Joaquin growled at Lancet. “We don’t want any trouble from you.”

Lancet pulled his lapels up around his chin and scurried off in a zigzag line, his laughter carrying back to us on the wind. I peeked through the window and saw two boys playing video games, a few little girls—including Darcy’s charge—busy with a tea party, and a handful of others reading books and stacking blocks. Krista’s makeshift playroom. Suddenly I went dizzy.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” I said, touching a hand to my head.

Joaquin gently took my hand. “It’s okay. They’re safe. For now, anyway.”

Still, I made sure to watch Jack Lancet until he was finally down the hill and out of sight. When we rejoined our friends on the patio, Krista was lifting a cardboard box onto the table.