I glanced up and around me, but nothing in the yard had changed. A cool autumn breeze hit the cold sweat on my neck. The fish circled each other, flapping colorful tails in the pond. The large stone lanterns on each side of the bridge stood like sentries. I sucked in a breath, unnerved. Off-balance. Anxious sweat broke out at the small of my back. I glanced over my shoulder, but no one stood on the pebble path from the gate.
Delicately, I tried turning on my phone again.
Ready or not…
Ready or not…
I switched it off again, flinching. I hated this feeling of helplessness. Of being under attack with no way to fight back. Okay, breathe. Think. Maybe there’s a way to block every single number that’s not in my contacts. I could figure out how to do that.
I’d have to turn my phone on again.
But I didn’t want to.
I winced, hitting the On switch, expecting to hear the waves of pinging notices, but surprisingly none came.
Then came a single ping and I jumped.
Here I come.
And then, nothing.
I waited. No more came. My fingers shook as I cleaned up the message list, deleting and blocking the seemingly hundreds ofReady or not…messages. My thumb hovered over the lastHere I come.
Good, asshole, I thought.Come out in the open so I can punch you in the face.
Monsters were always scarier when you couldn’t see their faces.
As I walked to the back porch, I fought off the urge to run, like I used to do as a little kid at dusk, racing up the porch steps imagining ghosts and goblins coming from the shadowed corners of the yard. Their long, clawed fingers reaching for me.
Except now it wasn’t an imaginary monster pursuing me.
It was a real one.
I walked quickly up the back steps and to the back door, the screen slamming behind me. I took one more look back at the empty yard. The sun came out from behind its cloud and shone on the koi pond, making the water glisten and the posts of the wooden bridge seem a shade lighter.
No one was there.
I needed to get a grip.
I took screenshots and sent them to both Oscar and Russo. I got an automated reply that Russo was driving—duh, of course he was. Oscar left me on read, but that wasn’t uncommon at the station when things got busy. He’d seen it. I had to assume he was working on it.
That’s when I heard a burst of laughter from deeper in the house, probably the kitchen. I needed to go save Olivia from Jude and Mateo. Who would save me from Spider-Man Mateo was the real question. I trotted up the wooden stairs and into the lobby of Koi. I took a left down a little hallway that led me to the open, white-marbled kitchen. I saw the three of them laughing as they held coffee mugs, strawberry mochi donuts set on delicate white china on the countertops near them.
Mateo seemed pretty at home lounging on a stool near the breakfast bar, his costume cowl sticking out of his back pocket, but then again, Mateo never felt social anxiety about anything.It was literally his superpower. He had a hole starting in the right pocket of his jeans that wasn’t the trendy kind and 100 percent because he was actor broke and didn’t have money for clothes. He wore extra-scuffed Nikes that he had found at a thrift store. Jude was across from him, leaning near the stove, and Olivia perched on another stool, coffee in hand as she giggled in delight, rings of gold glinting along the cartilage in her ear as Mateo regaled them with one of his stories about driving stunt cars on the set of the Spider-Man movie.
Normally, I loved Mateo’s stories. Just not today.
“Everything okay?” Jude asked me. I felt a little faint and tingly.
“Uh. Yeah. Fine,” I lied. The blood was slowly returning to my numb fingertips.
“You look pale,” Jude said, sounding concerned. He was always the perceptive one.
I gave a dismissive shrug, eager to change the subject. There wasn’t a point in getting into this with Jude. “What are you all talking about?” I asked Olivia, because I wanted to change the subject.
“Oh, Jude was just telling us about that one Halloween when Oscar dared you to go into the haunted hay maze at the apple orchard,” Olivia said. “When you tackled a goblin.”
“Zombie, actually,” I pointed out. “And he touched my hair.”
