It would have to do.

“Elias, I’m here,” I called as I dumped my duffel bag in the hallway and made my way into the living room. It was wide and open, with two long couches and a TV, and in the corner there was a baby grand piano. The back wall was nothing but glass windows that looked out onto the hedge maze and a pool. I found the drawstring to the curtains and drew them closed.

The refrigerator was stocked, so Elias had to be somewhere. I grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and bit into it as I wandered through the rest of the house. Bathroom, laundry room, abandoned study—

The last door on the first level was ajar, so I eased it open.

Shelves and shelves of novels lined the walls, those cheap dime-store extended-universe sci-fi books you used to be able to find at petrol stations and grocery stores. There must’ve be hundreds of them—Star Wars, Star Trek, Starfield, at a cursory glance.

A library.

Such a pity books were a waste of time.

Footsteps came from the hallway, and Elias, my guardian, popped his head into the library, brown-gray hair and a cheerful face. He threw his hands up when he found me. “There you are! I heard someone come in, but I thought for a moment it was a nosy neighbor or something—Sansa! No!”

Suddenly, a brown and black blur zipped past his legs. The dog leapt at me, pink tongue slobbering over my face. “Ooh, you missed me? You missed me, good girl?”

“She has not been good,” Elias pointedly replied. “She tore up three rosebushes already. Three!”

I scrubbed her behind the ears. “Why don’t we make it four, good girl? Huh?”

“Vance.”

“You know I’m having a laugh,” I told him, and then whispered to my sweetest thing, “Destroy them all.”

Elias rolled his eyes. “How was the flight?”

I shrugged. “Fine.”

Sansa went off to sniff around a box of even more books and snorted, as though it wasn’t anything of interest.

Elias folded his arms over his chest. “Fine, huh.”

“Oi, yeah, fine,” I replied, and pulled my hood up over my head as I left the library. “The bedrooms upstairs?”

“All three of them—Vance, it went viral.”

I paused. Debated my words carefully. “…What?”

“You flipped off every single journalist at the airport.”

“Oh, that.” I spun back to Elias and spread my arms wide. “Just appeasing my fans. And they were hardly journalists. All paparazzi from what I can tell.”

Elias massaged the bridge of his nose. “You can’t keep doing this—”

“Or what?” I laughed. “I’ll be banished to hell? News flash, I think we’re already there.”

“This isn’t hell.” He sighed. “It’s a charming little town, really, if you’d give it the chance—”

“I’m tired,” I interrupted, turning out of the library. I gave him a wave. “Nice chat,” I added as I left for the stairs. The flight had been long, and the car ride to my prison had been a good deal longer, and I was tired and hungry and I just wanted to close myself into a room and sit in silence.

My head was pounding.

* * *

—

  IT STILL IS A WEEK LATER.

As Sansa finishes up her business near the rosebushes, my phone vibrates. I fish it out of my pajama pocket. It’s a headline from one of the gossip magazines I follow. Though they usually publish shite, sometimes it’s good to have a leg up on the rumors circulating around.

HOLLYWOOD’S FAVORITE COUPLE ON THE ROCKS?! it reads, showing a picture of Darien and Elle from the set of Starfield: Resonance. It was a candid shot, taken as Darien’s girl plants a kiss on his cheek. Photoshopped question marks flutter around them like bats.

Well, at least the tabloids have stopped pestering me for the moment.

The less the press talks about me, the sooner I can get out of this damn town.

Sansa comes back with a stick and sits at my feet. I pocket my phone again and scrub her behind the ears. I take the slobbery stick from her mouth.

“The car wreck wasn’t my fault,” I tell Sansa, but she only wags her tail, looking from the stick, to me, and back to the stick. She doesn’t care.

Neither did anyone else.

In anger, I throw the stick—hard. It arcs high into the darkness and disappears somewhere beyond. Sansa takes off running, vaulting over those stupid rosebushes.

I wait for a moment. Then another.

“Sansa?” I call.

But she doesn’t come back.

“AND WE REACH THE STARS, THE STARS, FOREVER IN THE STARS, THE STARS,” I howl with the music, sobbing as I clutch my Sond figurine to my chest, trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to tell my dad so that I’m not the glaring disappointment that I most certainly am. I had one job—one!—to keep my job at the grocery store to save for college. And yet here I am driving through the back streets of Haven’s Hollow, North Carolina, so I can avoid going home and telling my dad that yes, his daughter did get fired and therefore will never be able to earn enough money for room and board, not to mention tuition.

I am an utter failure. But at least I finally got Sond.

And so, I sing.

“REACH INTO THE STAAARS WITH ME, FLYYYY WITH ME, FOREVERRRR—”

A bear of a dog darts out in front of my car.

“—OH SHIT.”

I slam on the brakes. My poor hatchback squeals to a stop, and by the time it does, the dog’s gone. I couldn’t have imagined it, could I? No, there was definitely a dog, but there aren’t many houses around here. The poor thing’s probably lost.

I pull over to the side of the road and pop on my hazards before I get out of the car, my keys between my knuckles like my dad taught me. Not to defend against a dog, obviously, but from everything else.

Always be prepared for zombies and murderers.

Perhaps not in that order.

I wipe my eyes dry and look about the road. The evening is humid—on par for September—and fireflies spark to life as night descends. It’s the kind of evening that’s ripe for a murder.

I can see the headlines now—LIBRARIAN’S DAUGHTER KILLED WHILE TRYING TO RESCUE GHOST DOGGO.

How mortifying.

Gravel crunches behind me, and I whirl around—

There, standing at the edge of my car by the rear bumper, is the same large brown-and-black dog. Her tongue flops out as she wags her tail.

“Oh, hey there, girl,” I croon, clicking my tongue to the roof of my mouth to get her to come closer.

It’s super effective!

The dog bounces up to me and begins to give me kisses on the face. I laugh, about to tip over from the very force of her, and scratch her behind the ears. “What’re you doing around here? Are you lost? Where’s your owner?”

The dog doesn’t answer, and there’s no one on this road. She must’ve escaped from someone’s backyard, because she has a pretty pink collar with a dog tag. But when I try to get a closer look at it, the dog shies backward. I can’t grab hold of her quickly enough before she darts across the street and down a dirt road.

“Hey—no, wait!” I cry, and follow her, aiming my key behind me to lock my car. The horn beeps, lights flash, and I tell myself that this is not how I’m going to die, being led down a dirt road after a runaway canine. Besides, most terrible horror movies don’t have nice dogs that lead you out into the middle of nowhere—but that would be a good beginning to one of those Saw movies.

…Don’t think about that.

“Hey—slow down! I’m not going to hurt you!”

The dog doesn’t seem to care. She darts across the street and into the lawn of…

I come to a stop at the edge of the driveway.

Oh.

It’s the old abandoned castle-house. It’s not really a castle—it’s too small—but whoever built it made it look like one. It’s kinda notorious in our town; the castle-house is tall, at least three stories—maybe four with an attic—with two turrets that may or may not be just for show and stained glass around the large wooden front door. There’s a moat that cuts in front of the house, fed from a small stream in the woods, and a drawbridge to the front steps. The house is a weird blend of medieval and modern. There are even lions on the cement posts at the end of the driveway.

When I was little, Mom used to tell me that the house was built by fairies for a very special prince. His parents sent him to live there, hoping to hide him away from the rest of the world and protect him.

“But doesn’t he get lonely?” I had asked her when she first told me the story. “In that house all alone? Why would his parents send him there?”

She wrapped me in her arms and said, “Because the world is big and terrible sometimes, and parents want to protect their children.”

“Then I’d visit the prince! I’d make sure he wasn’t lonely!”

My mom laughed. It was a silly, stupid story, but somehow it stuck with me. Even though there are no such thing as princes.

And fairy tales are a bunch of bullshit.

If they weren’t, then my Dead Mom plot twist would’ve given me the ability to speak with animals. Or something else suitably Disney-esque.