The green expanse of the park beckoned, and she stood, surprised and amused to find the drink had gone to her head. She crossed the street and wandered along a graveled path, crossing a wooden bridge over a rocky spot where a trickle of water flowed. The sounds of the city faded, replaced by birdsong.
Inattentive, she was only steps away when she saw it: people drifting off the path up ahead, flowing around a roundish, empty space like water around a rock in the middle of a river. Amelia stepped closer, the air pressing in on her, every sound magnified until there was nothing but a roar in her ears. She focused on the empty spot and froze.
The space wasn’t empty at all. Something gray and translucent swirled in the air. It began to take shape even as Amelia blinked in disbelief. Within a moment, a young woman, no older than Amelia herself, stood in the spot. Her features were sharp, although she remained oddly faint and colorless. She wore a shapeless dress and a round cap in a style fifty years out of date and shabby even for a servant. Around her neck was a knotted rope, its ragged end trailing on the ground.
Amelia gasped. The woman’s head turned with a jerk. Her eyes widened as they locked on to Amelia’s. Startled recognition swept over her face, followed an instant later by an expression of eager anticipation. An itch began somewhere behind Amelia’s breastbone, and the girl began to move toward her. Or rather, she must have moved, though it seemed more as if the space between them simply contracted.
The itch grew. Intensified. Within moments it felt hideously like something was boring through Amelia’s chest, tugging at her sternum from behind. She knew, with an awful certainty, that something terrible would happen when the apparition touched her.
Amelia ordered herself to move, to turn and run, but her legs refused to obey. It was as if she were rooted to the spot. Amelia tried to ward the thing away, but her arms remained locked at her sides. The girl reached out a hand, and an alien, suffocating presence enveloped her. Something clenched around Amelia’s neck, and her breathing became a desperate wheeze.
The world tilted. The cold ground pressed against her back. The shade drifted toward her, the gray hand still reaching. Amelia felt a frozen touch on her cheek, and then she was gone.
3
Amelia thrashed in the space between dream and waking, drowning in the void, unable to fight her way to the surface. Awareness faded and sharpened in ragged beats. Snatches of conversation stitched themselves together, the pattern incomprehensible.
—found her in the park—
—drunk? Smells like she—
—fought like a wildcat. Screaming about how she never meant to burn them up—
—scratched the hell out of Hanlon when—
—Put her in a cell. Maybe someone—
—the hell is she still here?! We can’t keep every stray—
—here today? Have him take a look. Maybe he can—
—raving when she came in. Still hasn’t spoken any sense—
A thumb lifting her eyelid.
—Miss Casey, can you hear me? Carolina?—
—my count, gentlemen. One, two—
A jolting motion, a sickening weightlessness, a swaying. She fell away again.