So far, the Long-Necked Dog had yet to appear.

Emrys lowered the lenses and frowned at the horizon, where an enormous thundercloud churned balefully. It was like the sky had grown a great purple eye with which to watch them. Lightning flickered between the clouds, made safe and pretty by its distance. But soon enough all that electricity would make it to shore and come crashing down over New Rotterdam.

The town was rainy more often than it wasn’t, though this coming storm had made the news. It would be a bad one. Emrys had counted at least a dozen waterfront shopkeepers boarding their windows that afternoon.

“We should get back,” Hazel said, as if reading his thoughts. She frowned into the distance, her pale-white face nearly gray under the stormy sky. “The weather’s gonna hit before dusk does. We can try another day.”

“Yeah …” Emrys said dejectedly.

Though Emrys had only recently moved to New Rotterdam, he and Hazel had been friends for years. Sometimes it felt like they shared a brain. They’d met at camp when both were in third grade and formed an immediate bond over their love of scary stories. The moment Emrys was allowed an email account, Hazel had been the very first person he messaged.

He could barely believe it when she’d told him she lived in New Rotterdam, a regular top contender for America’s Most Haunted Cities. If Salem was famous for its witches, and New Orleans for its ghosts, New Rotterdam was a hot spot for urban legends. The Laughing Man, Headless Kate, the Shadow in the Mirror—Emrys and Hazel knew all of the city’s cryptids and creepypastas by heart.

Even before he’d moved there, Emrys had been an active participant in the New Rotterdam Wiki Project, a shared compendium of supernatural sightings. In fact, it was he and Hazel who’d discovered the lost WROT-13 interview of Ashton Guyver buried in the far reaches of the internet, and added it to the entry for the Long-Necked Dog.

The wiki mods had gone bananas when they saw that. They tore Emrys and Hazel’s writing to shreds, of course, but once they’d put it back together again, the two of them were rewarded with special admin status. They could contribute to any entries they liked without restrictions. Emrys had hoped to wow the mods again with an actual sighting today—maybe even a photo—but the cryptid proved elusive.

In fact, he hadn’t seen much of anything since moving to New Rotterdam. Sure, the Faceless Founder statue in Centennial Park was creepy, but even after hours of reconnaissance, it hadn’t budged an inch. And no matter how many times he rode the carousel at the Foghorn Fairgrounds, Headless Kate never appeared atop the rusty unicorn. At least the popcorn had been good.

Emrys had spent the final weeks of summer before school began combing every supposedly supernatural inch of town—the Shallows shopping district, purported nesting ground of the Orchid from Outer Space; the downtown Five Points District, where one could accidentally stumble through a hidden gate to hell!

So far, he’d remained firmly in the real world. Emrys had to remind himself that was probably for the best.

He stowed his binoculars in his backpack. “Ready?” he asked.

Hazel nodded. They stood and trudged toward the parking lot.

A lone hybrid minivan idled among the empty rectangles painted onto the pavement. Despite being the only person in the lot, Emrys’s father had parked perfectly between the lines. He sat now in the front seat, a worn paperback mystery novel propped against the steering wheel.

Though his parents were both avid readers, Emrys had yet to open a book he didn’t immediately want to put down. Try as he might to see a forest through the spindly trees of text—to connect with the story, as Emrys’s teachers had suggested—his whirring mind always seemed to whir away from what he was reading.

It would happen before he even realized he was doing it. One moment he’d be settling into a corner with a steaming cup of honeyed tea, a baggy sweater, and several fluffy pillows—all very cozy, readerly accessories. The next, he’d be at his computer in his underwear, with twenty-seven tabs open on WikiQuery about rising sea levels in the Arctic, a phone game chirping in his lap, and his dog, Sir Galahound, licking bread crumbs from a plate at his feet.

A year ago, Emrys’s family doctor had diagnosed him with ADHD—attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. At the time, it had summoned to mind images of people bouncing off walls. But Emrys’s doctor told him it was actually a common neurodevelopmental condition for both kids and adults. ADHD made it hard for Emrys to focus on tasks for very long, especially ones he didn’t find interesting.

But on ones he did find stimulating, it could have the opposite effect. Sometimes Emrys became hyper-focused—like with the wiki—spending hours on a single task, to the detriment of his other responsibilities. Both were just qualities to keep an eye on.

As he opened the door, Emrys caught the tail end of a news piece about the city’s mayor, Selwin Royce. Mayor Royce was giving an interview on the radio.

“I think my record on the environment speaks for itself,” he said soothingly. “I love the environment! But I’m not a scientist. I don’t think we have enough information to draw any real conclusions on clim—”

Emrys’s dad turned the knob, quickly cutting off the sound.

As far as Emrys was concerned, Mayor Royce was the one downside to living in New Rotterdam. Back in Cape Cod, it seemed like their whole town had been dedicated to fighting climate change. Here …?

Mayor Royce epitomized everything Emrys feared about grown-ups and the world they were leaving behind. He fought efforts to move the city to clean energy, and once even sued the New Rotterdam city council for attempting to regulate local vehicle emissions.

Sometimes, when he thought too much about the climate crisis, Emrys found himself struck by an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness, like a great gray tide was pulling him out to sea. How did a kid fight against something like that? He couldn’t even vote yet.

So they’d created a new family rule: no Mayor Royce in the apartment. It was a Royce-free zone. An island sanctuary amid the churning waves.

Apparently, the family minivan didn’t count.

“Hey, Scoobies,” Emrys’s dad said as the two of them ducked inside. “Good timing—I was about to come get you. Did you catch the monster terrorizing the beach? Was it Old Man Jenkins in a rubber mask?”

“Dad, nobody gets your weird references,” Emrys said, sliding into the front passenger seat. Like his dad, Emrys was white with brown hair. He supposed they looked alike, though Emrys had apparently inherited his mother’s eyes. (“And her good judgment—thank the stars,” his dad liked to joke with a wink.)

“We appreciate you bringing us here, Mr. Houtman,” Hazel said from behind them.

“No problem at all. Who doesn’t love driving into an approaching superstorm? Though I suppose I’ll need the practice, in this town.”

“There are some nice days,” Hazel said. “I think I saw the sun last Wednesday. For a second.”

Emrys caught a flicker of something in his dad’s expression that was gone before it was really there. He smiled, sealing away an unspoken response. Emrys knew his dad tolerated New Rotterdam, but he hadn’t exactly been thrilled when Emrys’s mom got the job offer. Renner Houtman had grown up in California; he liked to joke that his batteries were solar-powered. And while Cape Cod had been bleak in the winter, its bright summers were enough to recharge his depleted reserves.

Emrys’s dad didn’t make that joke so much anymore. If the last few months were any indication, he’d need to find alternative energy sources. Still, he was loyal enough to Emrys’s mom that he held back his complaints. Usually.

“So, what are you two gonna do with your afternoon off?” his dad asked. “Extra credit homework? Pontificate about the meaning of life in the Socratic method?”

“Horror movies!” Hazel cried from the back.

“Horror movies!” Emrys confirmed.

His dad chuckled as the first swollen raindrop splattered against the windshield.

“Don’t know how you can watch those things,” he said, reversing from the parking spot. “Stiff spines must have skipped a generation. Neither your mom nor I can stand the scary stuff. No, all you got from me is great hair and a sparkling sense of sarcasm.”

“Real life is scarier than any movie,” Emrys said, watching the line of water slide toward the car hood. “Climate change is real. If monsters are too, then they’ve done a good job of hiding it. Why be afraid of made-up stuff, when the future is really frightening?”

Emrys felt his dad’s eyes on him as the car lapsed into silence.

Oops.

He’d said something weird again. He hoped it wouldn’t result in another family talk about anxiety. Emrys didn’t want to talk anymore. He wanted to change things, to make the world better. Until that could happen, what use was talking?

A warm hand gripped his shoulder, giving it a squeeze.

“Monsters are real, Em,” his dad said.

Emrys glanced to his father with surprise.

“They just don’t look how we expect them to,” he continued. “They’re people, like us, who took a wrong step, and then another and another. Until they couldn’t even imagine a better path.” He gave a wan smile. “But since they’re not vampires or werewolves, that also means they’re not invincible. It means other people—smart, compassionate, clear-sighted people like you—can walk those better paths and set the world straight. Right?”

“Right,” Emrys echoed, though he couldn’t quite force himself to believe it.

“I bet a stake through the heart would still work on Mayor Royce, though,” Hazel chimed in from the back.

As they rounded out of the Cold Beach parking lot, Emrys watched the beachfront gift shops roll past. Ceramic mugs crowded the shelves, each apparently meant to be filled with CRYPTID TEARS. T-shirts boasted I FACED THE FACELESS FOUNDER AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS … WAIT, DID YOU HEAR THAT?