We entered through what looked like the mouth of a giant harlequin head, though its paint was peeling and it had seen better days. A black-lit hallway stretched to the left, striped walls glowing, strange optical illusions in frames along the way. We touched the walls and laughed at the illusions and let other people rush past while we lingered. And then a giant, slowly spinning tunnel, lit with neon red lights, which we moved through while stumbling into one another. Next a claustrophobic space with hanging blue foam and parti-colored fabric ribbons, flashing lights, and it was like wading through seaweed, being underwater, with strange rubber fishes and seahorses suspended every so many steps. Henry kept close to me through the confused flashing rainbow. Doors afterward--a room of different-shaped doors, made to look like something from Alice in Wonderland, with bottles labeled "Drink Me" taped to the walls and paint spirals that looked like rabbit holes. But only one door actually opened, and through it we went, into the maze of mirrors.

As old and run-down as the rest of it had been, this dark space flickered with insufficient light and borderline creepiness, especially because we seemed to be the only two people in it. It wasn't a hall of mirrors, that funhouse staple where there are those mirrors that show your body wavy or tall and thin or short and fat. None of those. It was more a maze whose actual walls were mirrors, although the mirrors were both reflective as well as translucent, in a place between mirror and glass. I saw myself and Henry in the panel before me as well as the panels beyond and beyond . . . it was disorienting, to say the least. When I moved, I moved in twenty panels, depending on the angles, and there were so many Henrys next to so many mes. We watched ourselves in wonder for a moment, enjoying our multiple images copying every gesture and motion.

Henry's reflection grinned at mine. "This is interesting." He turned to the real me. "Shall we?"

I followed him through a few of the pathways, until we seemed to be in the middle of the thing. It wasn't very big, but it was rather unsettling. The erratic lighting didn't help. Everything was cheap tricks, I knew, but I kept thinking I saw movement in one corner or pane and would turn only to see myself staring back at me. No one else came through, either; it was just the two of us in there, reveling in the weirdness of the trickery.

"Here, stop." Henry paused in a particularly strange spot, where the glass panes whirled in an almost-circle, where all our other selves appeared to be looking at one another across the way, their eyes intersecting in invisible lines through our actual selves.

"This is uncanny," I said quietly, reaching out to touch my image in one particular panel. I looked like a stranger to myself--always had--but I was kinder toward my image than I had been in the past. Perhaps the wideness of my eyes didn't cause me to look startled, as I'd thought, but pretty; maybe the mouth that had always resembled a frown to me was lovely to others. I couldn't be sure how anyone else saw me, but I'd begun to soften my self-impression since the days I'd awoken at Oliphant and first seen myself in a mirror.

"No one else is here," Henry said unnecessarily. I could tell we were alone. The panels were somewhat lucid. He took my hand, turned me away from the mirror.

My backpack was to the panel; he was close enough to me that I thought I felt static even in the limited air between us, without us actually touching one another. Was that possible? It seemed to be. Maybe it was the intensity of what I felt in that moment, looking at him, knowing that he was mine, at last. Rather than say anything to him, I lifted a hand and brushed some of his silvery hair out of his eyes, reveling in his reaction to my caress. He took hold of his hat and pulled it off, messed up his own hair as if to satisfy me. Pressed one arm against the glass, above my head, while his free hand dropped the hat and gently took hold of my elbow, drawing me slightly toward him. Was he leaning a little closer? I thought he was bending slowly toward me, and he brought a hand up and, barely touching his fingertips to my neck, my jaw, my cheek, brushed his thumb slowly across my lower lip. My mouth opened slightly as I fell into the euphoria his skin on mine brought. He was so much of everything I needed, and I wanted to stand on my tiptoes, meet him halfway and kiss him more than anything I'd ever wanted, but something inexplicable called me back--made me suddenly afraid.

And then, cutting through the rush of emotion within my mind, my inner voice sounded:

Get out.

I put my hands on Henry's chest, reluctantly separated him a little from myself. "Did you hear that?"

He wasn't in any way upset that I'd ruined the moment but grew alert, as I was. "No. Hear what?"

Of course he hadn't heard it. I knew he hadn't. I knew the voice I heard was my intuition. It had come from within, and it had warned me, each time something was about to happen. It could only be sincere, now.

"I think we have to go. I think something bad is going to happen."

"Are you sure?"

"It's a--a feeling. I just have a feeling."

"What kind of feeling?"

Go. Now!

I lifted my hands to my head, gripped it in frustration at the inability to stop that voice.

Henry mistook my gesture for annoyance with his questioning. "I trust you. I'm sorry. Let's go." He moved away and through an opening back out into the actual maze; we had to be near the end of it. This thing wasn't all that big. But after we'd gone only a few steps, Henry realized he'd left his hat.

Did it matter? He seemed to care. "Hold on, Henry, I'll get it. It's right there. I can see it through the glass." And I could. It was only a turn or two behind us, sitting on the floor. "Hold on." My fingers slipped from his grasp as I retraced a few steps to find the knit cap. But when I got to where I thought I'd seen it, the hat was gone, and before I could wonder at that, the voice came again. It had never been so persistent:

You're in danger.

My heart raced, and I turned a quick circle, seeing only my own reflection spinning around me in a host of angled panes of reflective glass. I stood frozen for a moment, just from the shock of what the voice had said, but then knew to forget the hat--go to Henry. If there was some sort of danger, I had to be back with him. Looking through panels, which in their shadowy translucence were like spider-webby curtains, I couldn't see him where I thought I'd left him. Quickly, I moved through the turns, only to find my solo reflection looking back at me from every pane. He must've gone a little ahead of me, of course--a different way. I moved along the most logical path. This couldn't be too complex a maze, after all. And my own reflection moved along with me, looking a little more serious than I thought I looked. There was something severe in my expression, but it wasn't as if I stood still long enough to study it. A slight panic began to bloom inside me--Henry had to be right there. I called his name, trepidation increasing in my chest, and then, to my relief, a flicker of another person in the mirrors, back from the way I'd come.

"Nadia!" he called softly. "Hurry up!"

How was he behind me? There must have been some turn I'd missed, some trick path. I hurried to him, relieved yet still anxious. "Your hat! How did you get it back? I--"

"Let's get out of here. You said it yourself--something bad is going to happen."

I had said it, and yet . . . something suddenly made me question it. "Maybe I'm wrong! Didn't we want to wait? Maybe it's good if they find us--"

"I don't want to risk it," he insisted. "Not now."

We retraced our steps through the funhouse, though there was none of the amusement now as there had been earlier, and exited out the entrance, leaving the eerie illusion of the place and entering the calm darkness of the night. I could see nothing immediately concerning. There were no people nearby, but there were certainly people beyond, laughing and riding rides, lights spinning into the sky, screams of excitement in the background. Before I could say much of anything else, Henry reached around me and took hold of my bag, unzipping it, retrieving the hover devices buried within. He dropped them to the ground, where they snapped open.

"Come on. Now. Please."

"But--"

"Do you trust me, Nadia?"

Everything had so suddenly changed, and I almost wanted to scream in frustration that our time had been ruined, but I still had him of course, and I absolutely trusted him. Nodding, I stepped up onto my hoverboard, and I followed Henry as he zipped ahead across the grassy field, toward the black treeline beyond the carnival and all its warmth and heat and light.

We must've gone on at least a half hour or so before he at last let me catch up. I'd called to him more than once to slow or stop, but he hadn't heard me; the air rushing past my face carried my voice backward. He'd been probably thirty feet ahead the entire travel time. And what was more, the farther we'd flown, the more unsettled I began to feel. Not sick, not like nauseated, but more like--like something was stretching uncomfortably inside of me. Luckily, the trees were sparse, and we mostly followed the interstate, so I could keep track of him easily, even as I grew increasingly uncomfortable. But I was still frustrated when I slowed and jumped off my board. He'd been beyond attentive only moments earlier but now didn't seem willing even to speak with me; I couldn't imagine why he had apparently forgotten the entire day we'd just shared. And he'd been pretty insistent on immediately leaving the town without even really talking to me about it first. Why had he freaked out? I wanted answers, and now that I'd caught up with him, I was sure he'd explain.

He was facing away from me, looking at something beyond. We weren't particularly well-hidden. We were on the side of the highway, kind of down in a ditch with scraggly bushes and random weeds, but it was dark enough that nobody would see us down there. We weren't by any sort of buildings or people. Just in the middle of nowhere, with random semi-trucks speeding past every so often.

Seeing him standing like that, away from me . . . the feeling I had inside, as if some cord were wound around my ribs and lungs and was slowly, slowly tightening . . . something was very wrong. I approached him. "Henry, I don't feel well. Something's not right."

Without turning, he replied, "You'll get used to it again."

"Get used to what?"

"That feeling."

I didn't understand. "Will you look at me?"

With a sigh, Henry turned. Why was he acting this way? "I know we both sensed that something bad was back there . . . but did we have to leave the town? Didn't we want them to find us? We talked about it. Maybe we should've at least agreed to--"

"I'll explain later. I need to think for a minute."

I frowned, grew frustrated. What was going on? "No. No secrets." I drew closer to him. "We promised each other--" and I reached out to him--

--but he flinched.

I froze, hand mid-reach, completely shocked. My first notion was that something had happened to cause Henry to behave this way, maybe something from his past had returned in some form, to haunt him, maybe he'd seen something at that carnival, or the mirrors had been confusing and he'd grown anxious, or seeing me upset did something to him, or . . . I had no idea. But it was difficult to believe anything could've caused such a stark reversal in him. As I stood there, trapped in bewilderment, something about the detachment in his eyes, the way he stood, his dispassionate half-grin frightened me, not just how he looked, also the familiarity of it . . . but I couldn't believe it . . . it couldn't be . . .

Breathing heavily, utterly astounded, I lowered the hand I'd stretched toward him, began to shake slightly "No . . . It's impossible . . ."

He said nothing, but his flat expression revealed it to be true, and he knew that I knew, that there was no way to hide it.

In one quick motion, I snatched the knit hat from his head, and his dark hair fell down around his white face. It was--there was no way-- "I saw you die--I held your dead body--the blood--" The way the red had seeped into the sand, the lifeless eyes, his limp limbs . . . I didn't understand.

Lucas rolled his eyes at me, as if irritated to have to explain, but he chose to do so anyway. "It wasn't a bullet. It was an immobilizer."

"But the blood--"

"Yeah, it did some damage."

"It was everywhere--"

"We don't die easy. No," he insisted, "don't ask me anything else. I thought they'd kill me, too, but they didn't. I'm here, and we have to go."

My disbelief still potent, I realized, now, why I felt so strange, and dread mounted in me. "What did you do with Henry?" I hissed, though my voice quickly rose as I continued. "Where is he? What is this? Where's Henry?"

"I didn't do anything with him."

"You let them take him? I have to go back," I spun about to look for my hoverboard. "Oh, my God, we--we said the only thing--we couldn't separate--how could this--"

"There's no sense in going back," Lucas pushed. "He won't be there."

I wheeled on him, enraged. "What did you do to him?" I lunged at Lucas, catching him by surprise with a hard push that sent him stumbling backward. "What did you do? Tell me where he is or I swear to God I'll kill you myself!"

Regaining his balance, Lucas took a few steps away from me. "Well you're different, aren't you?"

Was he smiling? I started toward him again, not even sure what my intentions were, but he was prepared this time and grabbed one of my wrists and twisted, hard. I cried out in pain and anger, tried to grab him with my other hand, but he caught that, too, and shoved me onto the ground, pinning me down. I was furious that he was too strong for me.

"Listen to me. Listen! Henry is fine, you hear me? He's fine. They don't have him, all right?"

I wanted to tear his face off and scream and sob and all of it, and most infuriating of all was the fact that he held me firm; that mania that sets in when you want to move but can't--I felt it tearing through my body. If only I could get free of him . . . but fighting only made him tighten his grip.

"Dammit, Nadia, stop! Calm down!"

It took everything in me, but I managed to stop struggling, if only because I saw the futility of it, and my fury morphed quickly into abject misery. "We were finally together," I sobbed to the sky and the dark and the grass and everything but Lucas. "I was safe with him! I've tried so hard--and now . . . I have to go back!"

Lucas sighed and let go of my wrists, backed off of me, sat down, regaining his breath after trying to restrain me. His tone was slightly softer when he said, "I know how you feel. I--I'm sorry." He watched the trucks fly by on the highway, while I rolled onto my side, curled up in a fetal position, stupidly cried.

"I hate you so much," was all I could pathetically muster.

"You'll see him again. I promise. And I promise, too, that Henry's safe. She'll take care of him."

A cloud of confused anger and despair had settled over me, but one word sliced through the fog: "She? Who's she?"

He looked at me as I sat up, his face as matter-of-fact as if I'd just asked what time it was. And then he said, "Amirah."