“Mom was right. I don’t miss Dad. I’m glad he’s gone. He made everything so hard. It didn’t have to be hard. Who cares if I liked to draw at the kitchen table? What did that have to do with him? When I was little, Mom got me a book from the library. How to Draw Animals. I was trying to draw a wolf, and Dad saw me and shut the book. He made me go outside with him. ‘Forget all that,’ he said. ‘I’ll teach you how to hunt wolves.’ ”

Rafe took a step back, then another. “There aren’t even wolves in West Virginia. The hunters killed them all over a hundred years ago.” He didn’t even know what he was saying, but he knew he couldn’t go in there. Even if Emilie was there. He couldn’t go in there at gunpoint because what if—

A light came on in the window. The front door opened. The Bright Boy who called himself Ripper came out and waved. More Bright Boys…they all rose from the ground, poured out from the trees, all of them grinning, baring their fangs, all in gray rags. Ripper sauntered down the porch steps toward them.

Jeremy tried to move in front of Rafe, but Ripper raised his knife.

“About time,” Ripper said. “King’s been waiting. But first, let’s lighten your load.”

The Boys surrounded them, and Rafe and Jeremy had their weapons taken from them. Even worse, the Bright Boys found the last Golden Sun apple in Rafe’s pocket. They took it like it was a grenade and tossed it onto the ground. The one called Chopper took his ax to it, and that was that. They were on their own with only the light they had left within them.

Unarmed, they were marched toward the front door.

“This is my house,” Rafe said to Ripper, whose sharp fingers were digging into the back of his neck. “Let Jeremy go. He—”

“No,” Jeremy said. “Not a chance. Don’t even think about it.”

“You heard ’em, pretty boy,” Ripper said in a cruel, mocking tone.

Jeremy only said to Ripper, “Didn’t I cut your head off once?”

Ripper pulled his stained collar down to reveal the black thread stitches that encircled his neck.

“Sewed it back on.” Ripper kicked Rafe in the ankle to make him stumble. Jeremy struggled against the two Boys holding him, trying to fight his way free. “Take him away.”

“No!” Rafe screamed as they dragged Jeremy away from him and around the house.

“Sorry,” Ripper said. “King wants you alone.”

Ripper knocked on the door but didn’t wait for a reply before pushing it open. In a parody of Rafe’s mother’s singsong voice, Ripper called out, “Honey, we’re home!”

“Kitchen!”

No. No. No. Rafe knew that voice.

Ripper shoved him into the kitchen.

And there was his father sitting at the table and looking just as he’d looked fifteen years ago, in those last days before Rafe went missing, and he’d aged ten years in six months.

Brown hair with streaks of gray. Big, strong, and scowling like always, lines around his mouth not from smiling but from smoking. He wore his work shirt, gray pinstripes smelling of oil and dust, a patch on the breast pocket that said Decker Electrical, and under it in cursive, his father’s name. Bill.

The table was covered in things that didn’t make sense—a fork, a razor blade, a knife, and a small welding torch.

Rafe took his chance, lunged forward, and grabbed the fork. He jammed it into the thing that looked like his father, just in the arm. He wanted smoke to pour out, but no…nothing. Not a Bright Boy. Something else. The fork fell from Rafe’s hand and clattered onto the floor.

“No,” Rafe breathed.

“Sit down, son,” his father said.

He sat because the Bright Boys made him and because the man in front of him really was his father, and when his father said sit, Rafe sat.

Storyteller CornerYes

In case you were still wondering, yes, that really is the lost soul of Rafe’s father.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Emilie was back home in Ohio, back in her bedroom, and only fourteen years old. Stevie sang “Dreams” to her through her speakers, and the scent of fresh-baked bread wafted up from the kitchen below her, where her mom was cooking dinner. Their dog, PawPaw, lay asleep and snoring on the rug while Emilie folded her laundry. PawPaw didn’t even flinch when she stacked her folded T-shirts along his back, almost half of them Fleetwood Mac tour shirts.

And she wasn’t afraid of anything.

With her eyes closed, she kept singing and remembering all her favorite days, especially the easy days, the lazy days, the days when she didn’t know the definition of fear.

It was working. Skya had told her to do this as they traveled into the Ghost Town. The Bright Boys ate fear, her sister had warned her, and with a gleam in her eyes, she’d said, “Starve them out.”

So far, it was working. Although they’d trapped her in a cold basement room, all concrete and wood paneling, she was safe. Her memories of happiness had kept the Bright Boys away from her. The more she sang, the more the boy-shaped parasites slunk off, seeking easier prey. That morning, she’d jumped off a moving ship into a strange ocean and swum fully clothed to the rocks and told her sister, the queen, she would not leave her. Brave and stupid felt good on her. A good fit. This fake king of a dead world was not going to win, not without a fight.

The floor vibrated with approaching footsteps. Emilie smiled at the fear and sang to it. She raised her voice and belted out the chorus just as the door opened. One of the boys half threw, half pushed Jeremy inside. He landed in a heap on the concrete floor. She was on her feet and at his side in an instant.

“Jeremy? Jeremy? You okay?”

She grabbed him by the shoulders, pulled him into a sitting position, and rested his back against the wall.

“Been better,” he said with a grunt of pain. His nose trickled blood, but otherwise he seemed to be in one piece, more or less. “Can you help with this?”

He held up his wrists. They’d been tied tight with a cut-off length of electrical cord.

“Oh my God, Jeremy, no…” She started to panic as she frantically worked at the cords.

“Deep breaths. Stay calm,” he said. “They love to freak us out.”

“Why did they do this to you?” she asked between slow breaths.

“For touching the king’s son,” he said. “I’m lucky they didn’t cut them off. And other things.”

“I can’t. They knotted them.” She tried pulling and tugging…nothing worked. Jeremy’s hands were turning red. They’d be blue soon.

She fought back tears. She needed music again, needed Stevie. No, not Stevie.

“Hold on,” she said. “I got it. I got it.”

“Hurry,” Jeremy said. “I’m losing feeling.” She took Fritz out of her hoodie pouch and set him on top of the bindings.

“Chew, baby, chew. You can do this, buddy. Pretend it’s one of my phone cords.”

“Smart,” Jeremy said as Fritz got to chewing, his sharp front teeth making quick work of one cord, then another. “I love rats. Rats are my new favorite animals. Don’t tell the horses I said that.”