But a part of her can hear every scary story her parents have told her, about missing kids and mysterious disappearances and changelings left on doorsteps while the real children are whisked off to fairyland, and she wonders if their morbid prophecies are about to come true. Maybe fairies really are coming for her. Maybe she’s never going to see her parents again, ever. Maybe this is the end of her.
Her heart rate picks up again. Only now it’s not due to excitement. It’s the exact opposite of excitement.
What would that be?
Oh. That’s right.
That would be fear.
CHAPTER THREE
THE BOY
Filomena squeezes her eyes shut for a nanosecond and then blinks rapidly, staring straight ahead. This cannot be happening, she tells herself. Surely there is not a random person lurking behind her, about to kidnap her. But when she quickly turns a corner, the person does, too, and when she slows down to look at the window of an ice-cream store, she can see him lingering in front of a florist just a block behind.
Yep, some freaky rando is definitely following her.
Serial killers or wicked criminals or evil fairies do not exist in her world, at least not in safe, sleepy, sunny North Pasadena, where nothing ever happens. Or … she thought they didn’t. They’re not supposed to, anyway.
But what if they did? What if something actually happened here in North Pasadena? Something awful and dangerous?
If something did, she would fight. Yes, never surrender. That was a theme in many books. And she has read many a book. Words are part of her world.
And escaping her world is one of her favorite pastimes. (Though she’d never tell her parents that.)
Oh no. Her parents! They’ll go absolutely nuts if she isn’t home by dark!
But I’m not allowed to be kidnapped! she’ll tell her kidnapper. My parents will be very mad at me if I’m kidnapped!
The fear of her parents’ wrath and the desire to avoid another three-hour lecture on how to stay safe in an emergency (if she failed to avoid one altogether) is enough to keep her going. Plus, she has her puppy and beta goldfish to survive for. If she’s abducted by fairies or taken by a nefarious child-grabber, who will take care of those two?
As she tries to convince herself not to look back, reasoning that this person is just a figment of her imagination, she can’t help it. She turns around again in what she hopes is not an obviously frantic motion, to see if that someone is still there.
Oh! Yes, he is, and he is definitely following her.
She walks faster and looks down to watch her sneakers steadily padding the pavement. One foot after the other. Left, right, left, right. Distracting herself with this steady march, she focuses on her shoelaces. The frayed white edges. The double knots, a safety precaution.
But she can still hear his feet trailing her own. An unbroken beat, too close, that echoes her own footsteps. It sounds as if he’s mirroring her pace, her movements. The joint steps create a strangely hypnotic rhythm.
She knows she needs to stay calm; her parents lecture her about this sort of thing all the time. But she has never had to intentionally try to stay calm, except when her parents are freaking out and she gets sucked into the hysteria. Unlike several other unpleasant things, like finding a humiliating post on social media or a nasty note left in her locker, sheer terror is definitely not one of the things she’s used to. But she’s feeling it now.
She knows he’s still behind her. And he’s getting closer.
She looks back again, probably in a more obvious way now. When she turns her head, her eyes accidentally meet his. Gah!
Filomena takes mental notes of details to remember about him in case she needs to provide a description to a police sketch artist. Hair color: to be determined (covered by hood). Eye color: gray? Height: tallish. Shoe of choice:… Wait, are those clogs?
She glances behind her again to get a better look.
Weird thing number one—besides the fact that he’s following her—is that the boy is wearing a cloak, not a hoodie as she’d first assumed. Weird thing number two, she notices that the part of his arm that is exposed is covered in vines—just like Jack Stalker’s in the Never After books. Weird thing number three is that this somehow comforts her and settles her galloping pulse.
Suddenly she feels silly. She shakes her head and almost laughs aloud. He must be a fellow Nevie! She breathes a sigh of relief, and instantly the panicked internal screams stop.
She slows her steps to a normal pace. Perhaps even a leisurely one, to allow him to fully catch up to her. Maybe he saw her at the bookstore, where he, too, was waiting for the thirteenth book, only to sadly discover that no one knows when or if it is ever going to come out. (Never. It is never coming out.)
Filomena excitedly turns to him as he gets close, his footsteps almost next to hers. “Can you believe it’s not being published? I was so looking forward to the end—”
But instead of commiserating, the boy suddenly pushes her to the ground.
“Hey!” Filomena yells in annoyance, about to give him a piece of her mind, when a powerful force crashes down on the pavement inches from where she’s standing.
What the—? Where did that come from? What is happening?
Instinctively, she shields her head. She’s read enough books to know she has to protect herself.
Am I under attack?
She frantically tries to reach for her backpack to find her whistle. Oh man, her parents are going to totally freak out if this makes the news.
But there’s no time to panic as another thunderbolt hits the sidewalk with a deafening boom, the brightness crashing against the concrete path right in front of her.
Then evil, cackling laughter fills the air.
Wait! What was that? Did I imagine it, or were we just hit with an Ogre’s Wrath?!
Ogres aren’t real, though! They’re just in books! Never After books, to be clear. And they certainly can’t walk right off the page and into your hometown to try to scorch you.
“Get up! We’ve got to run!” says the boy. “She’s followed us here!”
Who’s followed whom here? Filomena wants to ask, but she’s too shocked to do anything, even stand. For a second or two, she wonders if this is some sort of joke. If perhaps it’s just an expensive, elaborate spectacle put on by the publisher or author to give superfans an interactive experience.
But when a third thunderbolt crashes right next to her, almost singeing her backpack, and the cackles screech into madness, the joke suddenly isn’t very funny. Smoke lingers in the air beside her, and there’s a black mark on the ground where the bolt just struck.
She instantly reaches for her hair to see if that’s where the scorched smell is coming from, but she’s stopped by the hand of the stranger she has almost forgotten about in all this bizarre chaos.
“Come with me if you want to live!” the hooded boy says, offering his hand.
She stares at him in disbelief and confusion. The cackling grows increasingly louder around her, the shrill laughter ricocheting off the booms of the thunder, creating a terrifying rumble and high-pitched screech.
Just like that, her panicked internal screams start again. Filomena takes his hand. She wants to live.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE SERIES