Emery went to school the next day. She didn't want to go, but what else could she do? The world had gone back to normal. In fact, when Tess and Emery left the school building, they'd realized pretty quickly that nothing seemed to have happened to anyone else at all. The pounding rain of moments ago had lightened to a fine mist, and people were out and about, cars were meandering down the residential streets, friends waved to one another--nobody had been affected by the dark, or Dark, or whatever it had been. The girls couldn't figure out what exactly had happened, and Cathbad had stayed behind, saying he would meet them at Emery's house. Emery had wanted to stay (she'd said to help, but in reality, she was curious to know whether Cullen was there, maybe even to see him), but the druid had insisted in a surprisingly authoritative manner, and so Tess and Emery had reluctantly left the building.

But why nobody else had appeared to have been affected by the dark, they didn't know. They'd pondered several ideas as they walked back through the humidity and heat toward Emery's house. Maybe Dark had been only around them, like, in a bubble of some kind. Or maybe all the other people had frozen in time until the light returned. They could've just forgotten, too. It was very weird, but neither girl had much understanding of what had occurred, so they'd turned their conversation to other things.

They'd waited for a while at Emery's house, but Cathbad hadn't turned up, and as they'd no way to contact him, Tess had eventually just gone home.

So now, there Emery was, sitting in her fourth hour AP English class, apparently supposed to behave as if nothing at all had happened over the weekend. Most of her peers had resumed their normal routines, their normal lives, even though Adam was still gone. While Emery felt some small relief at having seen him, even if only in a strange druidic television, she missed him and had come to the realization that it might be a long time before she saw him again (if she ever did). And last night, she'd had the most intense meadow dream of all, where she'd been so certain of its realness that, even after waking, she'd needed literal minutes to understand what had happened and why she was actually in her bedroom and not in the windswept, sun-drenched field. If the dreams kept coming, would they continue to intensify? Would she begin to grow unsure which world was real and which wasn't? She had to admit that the meadow in all its peace and beauty was a far more welcome prospect than her reality in its current state.

Sitting in her desk, notebook open to an empty page in front of her, Emery attempted to pay attention to the man waltzing through the room as he went on about some strange form of poetry she'd been asked to read over the weekend. But one of her feet tapped nervously on the floor, and her fingers began to scribble images of dark bird-men in place of notes, until suddenly she realized the teacher was standing over her and asking whether she was all right, whether she needed to see a counselor to talk about "your missing friend." Embarrassed, Emery sat up a little straighter and replied that she was fine; she couldn't use Adam as an excuse like that, not when his disappearance wasn't what she'd been thinking about.

When the bell rang, Emery felt immense relief. Watching the minutes of each class period tick by was like sitting in a torture chamber. This wasn't where she wanted to be. She wanted to be with Cathbad, talking to him, trying to understand more of what was going on, but she had no idea where he was. At the very least, though, she'd have lunch and be able to talk to Tess, now.

Just as Emery was about to exit the classroom, though, someone called her name. She turned to find Charlie, Tess's brother, rounding a few desks to get to her. Charlie was Tess's twin, and though they resembled one another in their blondish hair and pronounced cheekbones, they otherwise were quite different. Charlie was athletic and rather popular, involved in at least three or four sports. He had his own peer group separate from his sister's, though the two of them got along well and never seemed at odds. Emery had known Charlie for a long time, but she was still surprised to hear him call her name, as their friendship had been surface-level, based only on their respective relationships with Tess.

"My sister told me some guy's been stalking you."

Emery looked sideways at Charlie as he stood back to let her through the door first. "She told you that?" Emery was rather annoyed. She hadn't even mentioned Cullen to anyone in her own family--of course, Tess was closer to her brother than Emery was to her sisters, but still, Cullen felt like her secret to share, not Tess's.

"Well, she didn't actually tell me. I sort of got it out of her. I'd heard some rumors about some guy being around, being weird toward you, and she just kind of confirmed it."

"I don't want to talk about it." Emery had picked up her pace moving down the hall, weaving around other people, looking straight ahead and not at Charlie, but he got right in front of her when they turned a corner in front of the nurse's office.

Emery couldn't help but stop and look at him, and for as many times as she'd seen Charlie, her stomach tingled a little with nerves. He was rather attractive; she wasn't alone in thinking it. In fact, he'd dated a whole string of girls, but he'd never expressed any interest in Emery, so she had no idea why he was trying to talk to her now.

"You--you're almost like a sister to me," he said, somewhat awkwardly. "I just want to make sure you're all right."

Emery stared at him for a moment. Something was off. "Really?" She raised an eyebrow. "Since when?"

Charlie faltered in his response. "Well, yeah. I mean, I've known you forever."

"No, I've known Tess forever."

"Don't you remember how we used to build LEGOs in the basement, though? And for a while, back around fourth grade, you'd come over every day and we'd play soccer in the backyard."

"I was really into soccer, and Tess hated it." Emery nodded. "That was pretty nice of you to play with me."

Liking the way the conversation had turned, Charlie grinned. "Well, you really needed the help."

Emery wasn't quite sure what to make of his attention, so she made her excuses about having to meet his sister for lunch, and then she slipped away and headed to the cafeteria, where she found Tess waiting for her at one of the picnic tables in the outdoor courtyard. Tess was eager to see Emery; she, too, had been antsy all morning. After what they'd experienced only a day earlier, neither could sit still and pay attention to lectures and labs.

"Your brother was weird," Emery said first thing, plopping across from Tess. Their other friends were around, but none seemed particularly interested in the two of them at the moment.

"What do you mean?"

"Like, chivalrous or something."

"Oh," Tess sighed. "I'm sorry Emery. He asked me if someone was following you around. He'd heard it somewhere. And you know how bad I am at lying. I just can't--"

"It's fine, Tess. Really. I just thought it was weird he cared."

Tess smiled almost benevolently. Her earrings were dollhouse-sized doughnuts, Emery noticed. "Well, Charlie has this weird thing about feeling like the knight in shining armor. It's why he always dates underclassmen."

Emery was a little unsure what to say without sounding a little too interested in her brother.

"Are you doing all right?" Tess unzipped her corgi-covered lunch bag and took out a sandwich.

"No, not really," Emery replied, not feeling hungry enough to go stand in any lunch lines. "I—I can't stop thinking about Cullen." She steeled herself, took advantage of Tess having a full mouth, and added quietly, "I didn't tell you that he kissed me."

Tess practically choked. The others looked over at her, asked if everything were all right. Emery assured them it was and then leaned closer to make sure the girl was ok. The minute Tess could talk, though, she punched her friend on the shoulder (not a serious punch—she could never manage such a thing). "What are you—when?" she sputtered. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"It was a while back, when I talked to him outside the school. I told you that part."

"Did you—did you like it?"

"I was mad at him. I pushed him away."

"But I mean, did you feel any sort of connection?"

"What do you mean?"

Tess tucked some hair behind one ear, but it was too short and fell back into her face. "I mean, maybe you had some sort of relationship with him, and that's what you forgot."

"Don't you think I would remember someone I'd had a relationship with?" Emery snapped, though she was more embarrassed than annoyed.

"Maybe not."

"Tess, I've told you about everyone I've ever dated or even had a crush on since kindergarten." Except your brother, she didn't add. "Don't you think I would've told you about him?"

Frowning, Tess agreed. "You're right. You would. And I don't think I've forgotten anything. It's not about me."

Natalya and Liam joined them, sitting one next to each girl. Emery was irritated to have been interrupted, but she didn't want to appear rude. So she let them take the conversation elsewhere, tacitly agreeing with Tess to save what they'd been discussing for another time.

The next two class periods passed predictably enough, but then Emery reached her seventh hour: gym. She'd not thought of it much because since school had begun, they'd had class outside. But a soft, misty rain had started to fall again after lunch, and Emery suddenly understood that she'd be back in the very place she and Tess had been a day earlier, in the pitch darkness, where that huge black bird thing had come at them, and where supposedly Cullen had used a sword of light to end it. She hadn't really seen it happen, but she and Tess had talked enough about it yesterday to figure out what had probably gone on. Emery just wished more of it made sense, that Cathbad had returned as he'd promised. Had something happened to him? She knew she wasn't crazy because Tess had seen it all, too.

Emery changed out in the locker room, anxious and uncertain, even though she laughed with her friends when they joked around her. She tried to look as normal as possible, but inside, her heart beat wildly. And when they reached the actual gymnasium, her bare arms and legs prickled with goosebumps, which she knew were from more than the air conditioning. The gym was brightly lit, though, and when she first entered it through the double doors, she thought everything seemed normal, as if nothing at all had occurred. But then she jogged out toward the center of the court, and she noticed a large group of students huddled at the far end, near the doors that exited out onto the hallway. She and Tess had escaped through those doors . . .

Emery slowed her pace and walked toward the other students, growing more nervous as she approached. What could they all be looking at? As she neared, she saw through between them some yellow tape, like police tape, set up beyond them. Squeezing through the others, she noticed the yellow tape was attached to four orange traffic cones, which had been placed to form a square around a huge black splotch on the court. The area must've been at least twenty feet across in each direction. The mark looked something like someone had dropped a bucket of paint from high above and it had splattered. But this wasn't paint--there was some strange quality to it. It was dull and powdery-looking, and it also appeared to be sunk an inch or so into the floor, as if whatever the stuff was, it was eating a hole into the court.

"What is that?" asked Emery, though she was fairly certain she knew what it was.

Her friend Xavier waved a hand in the air. "Who knows? They said it was just here this morning when they came in."

"Could be toxic!" someone cried. "Why are we even in here?"

"It could be poisoning us right now!" said someone else.

"It's not," returned Emery matter-of-factly. But no one really listened to her except for Xavier, who pulled her aside and asked how she knew. Emery managed to avoid answering him. The students were a hive of twittering voices and flustered whispers until the gym teacher blew a whistle and called them over to the other side of the court, where she told them not to worry and had everyone team up and start a game of basketball.

Emery was so absent-minded during the game that she missed several passes and eventually just claimed she wasn't feeling well and sat on the bleachers. She was normally an involved and enthusiastic team player, so the teacher didn't argue with her. In a way, Emery was annoyed by that. All the teachers were babying her. She knew they did it to be kind, or helpful, or because they felt sorry for her due to Adam's disappearance. Everyone knew they'd been close. But Emery didn't want anyone's sympathy. She wasn't nearly as anxious about Adam as she now was about all the other weird things going on. More than anything, a sense of overall restlessness consumed her, making her feel like a caged animal. She didn't know what she was supposed to be doing, but she felt sure she was supposed to be doing something . . . and sitting here in school wasn't it.

Someone was at the door of the gym, giving a pass to the teacher, who suddenly called her over and handed her the slip of paper, which read only "Emery to main office" and then was followed by some indecipherable signature. She was being called to the office again? For what? She hadn't even made it there last week when she'd been called . . . maybe that was why they were calling her again. But then she turned toward the double doors and saw who'd delivered the pass--

It was Charlie, and he was standing there with a grin that confused Emery, though she had some idea he was up to something.

The moment they exited the gym, Charlie turned to Emery. "I thought you might want to cut out of here early with me."

"So . . ." Emery held up the piece of paper in her hand.

"Oh, yeah. That's not real."

The girl was at a loss. "I've never cut class in my life. Why would I do it now? There's only twenty minutes of school left, anyway."

Charlie leaned in a little close. "Because I have information you might want."

"And what's that?"

He looked a little playful, his blue eyes glinting a bit. "I'm not going to tell you unless you come with me. But I found out some stuff . . . about your stalker."