3:59

TWENTY-FOUR

6:45 P.M.

HOW COULD SHE HAVE BEEN SO STUPID? HOW could she have thought things would be any different here? Whatever she’d seen in her dreams, whatever Jo had led her to believe, was all a fantasy.

Shadows started to creep across the landscape as Josie wandered aimlessly beyond the front lawn of Bowie Prep. She glanced at her watch. A few more hours until she could cross back through the mirror to her own wreck of a life. A life that suddenly didn’t seem so bad.

Josie paused when she reached the sidewalk. Nick was right: the sun was going down and it would be dark soon, and her feet hurt in the high-heeled booties. She should walk back to the parking lot and drive Jo’s swanky car home. But she couldn’t. Nick might see her, and that . . . well, she’d had enough humiliation for a lifetime at the hands of Nick Fiorino. It was only four miles or so back to Jo’s house. She’d just suck up the pain and walk.

The streets were mostly deserted. No one sat on their porches enjoying the warm spring evening. No one was out walking their dog. No one pushing kids in strollers. A few cars whizzed past her, and several of them honked at her. Well, at least someone somewhere in some universe still found her attractive.

As dusk stole across the town, an unnatural chill descended. Josie looked up, expecting to see towering thunderheads piling up into the heavens, but the sky was clear, though perhaps darker than Josie would have thought for that time of evening.

The bright streetlamps bathed the neighborhood with light, but without warmth or cheerfulness. Unlike the ones on Josie’s block back home, these were starkly blue, sterile, and extremely intense. In house after house, blinds were being drawn, shutters latched, like every household was hunkering down for the night. As Josie tramped along, she got a creeping feeling up the back of her spine. The entire town had an air of hostility.

Maybe it was the strangeness of the neighborhood, or maybe it was her confrontation with Nick, but in addition to seeing figures in the shadows, Josie now thought she could hear someone walking behind her. Footsteps, heavy and sharp, matching her beat for beat. But every time she turned her head, there was no one behind her.

Without thinking, Josie quickened her pace.

Up ahead, a trail cut through the thin woods that surrounded the neighborhood. Just like her favorite shortcut back home, it would eliminate a half mile off her walk. The sun’s rays had completely disappeared, leaving the light purply glow of twilight as night rapidly approached. But she knew this trail like the back of her hand, and the sooner she got back to Jo’s bedroom, the better. It was a no-brainer. She rounded the corner and ducked into the trees.

As soon as she was off the street, the atmosphere changed. It was silent. A complete and total lack of sound. The wind didn’t blow; there was no backdrop of chirping birds or the occasional car zipping by on the street that was just a few yards away. It was as if she were in a vacuum, utterly devoid of life.

Something wasn’t right about this place: the woods, the night, the whole damn world. She expected her eyes to adjust to the encroaching darkness after she got out from under the intensity of the streetlamps, but the woods stretching before her looked darker than they should have. Sure, it was night, but the last beams of sunlight should still have lingered on the horizon. She wasn’t sure why, but she began to jog down the path. She could see the light at the end of the trail, signaling the street on which Jo lived, but it seemed forever away. Again, she could have sworn she heard something behind her, rustling the low foliage that lined the trail. This time she didn’t look back, but broke into a dead run. She glanced up at the sky. It was inky black and dotted with stars.

There was movement above her. A dark form blocked the stars from her view. Just as before, it was only a flash, a momentary glimpse of something that looked like wings flapping in the darkness. Deep brown, threaded with black and gray. Gone in an instant.

That’s when she heard it.

It sounded far away at first, a dim rustling noise, but in the complete absence of sound, it was jarring. The noise grew louder, rushing toward her from above. Faster and faster, like an enormous flock of birds swooping down on her. She knew that sound. She’d heard it before. A grating, shrieking flapping of wings in the darkness.

The sound outside the window.

In the darkness.

The bright lights, rooms without switches, houses shuttered up against the coming of night. Suddenly it all made sense. There was something in the dark, something that came with the onset of night. Something dangerous. Something to be feared.

And Josie was in the middle of the woods without any light at all.

The noise grew exponentially louder with every passing second. She pressed her hands against her ears to block out the painful, deafening sound, but it did no good. The noise of the darkness swamped her, dulling her senses and slowing her down.

Josie had a sensation of wind rushing by, air beating with the onslaught of dozens of wings. She caught glimpses of movement, of flesh and talons and beaks, but nothing concrete. It was as if they were moving in and out of a spotlight, and she could only catch a fleeting glance as they passed above her, swooping through the dark woods amidst their deafening shrieks.

The speed of the flying creatures increased, and suddenly Josie felt like she was surrounded by them, an impenetrable wall of these monsters of the dark.

Panic blinded her. “Help!” Josie cried out. “Someone help me!”

She felt one of the creatures swoop around her, circling directly above. Then something swept across her head, brushing her hair. It felt like a wing, only harder. Less like feathers and more like leather. A second wing glided across her back. This time she felt the fabric of her sweater tear as something sharp ripped through it.

Suddenly, there was a shift in the air rushing around her. A pause in the movement and the sound, the eye of the storm. A single shriek tore through the silence, then another echoing ahead. Another and another, as if the creatures were communicating to the rest of the flock. She heard a rumbling in the distance, crescendoing with each passing second. They were coming back. The swarm had been called back.

A talon slashed across her arm. Josie cried out as a searing pain shot from her wrist to her elbow, and she could feel the hot trail of blood trickling from the wound.

In an instant, the air swirled above her; the beating of wings pressed against her from every side. They were swarming, circling, preparing to attack. The light at the end of the trail faded, blocked by the swarm. She waved her arms in front of her face, attempting to cut her way through whatever blocked her path. The creatures of the darkness sliced at her hands, at her arms, at whatever open flesh they could find.

Whatever lived in the night was trying to hurt her.

To kill her.

Josie forced her legs to move as she blindly stumbled forward, but they were on her now. Pecking and cutting, forcing her down. Josie sank to her knees and covered her head with her arms, trying to protect herself. This was it. This was how she would die.

Without warning, they stopped. She could still hear their screeching, but it was muffled. She felt a weight on top of her, like a body shielding her from attack.

“Hello?” Josie said.

“Quiet!” a voice barked. Harsh and raspy, barely discernible above the chaos surrounding her. “They’ll follow your sound.” She felt an arm around her, then a hand on her wrist.

Suddenly she was being pulled to her feet and practically carried down the trail. She stumbled and tripped, but the strong arm around her waist kept her moving.

Light flooded her eyes and Josie felt the hard concrete of Round Tree Lane. She half expected to be bombarded again, but the screeching and fluttering was gone. Whatever attacked her in the darkness had vanished.

She turned, looking for the person who had saved her life, but all she saw was a pair of car headlights bearing down on her.

“Jo!” a voice yelled. A voice she knew. “Jo, what the hell are you doing? Get in the goddamn car!”

Nick.

Josie shielded her eyes as another set of lights illuminated the street. Floodlights mounted on the roof of Nick’s SUV. They cut a swath through the dark expanse to where Josie stood under the streetlamp. She stumbled forward, feeling like all the strength had been drained out of her.

Blood poured down her arms and she could feel a sharp pain at the back of her neck. She reached the SUV, steadying herself against the hood as the engine idled.

“Hurry up,” Nick barked. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”

Right. Out of here. Yes, back to the mirror. She had to get back through the mirror.

Nick reached over and opened the passenger door, and Josie whipped around it, careful to keep her body in the safety of the light as she climbed into Nick’s car.

She slumped in the worn leather seat, panting. Interior lights of the car illuminated every inch of the cabin. And for the first time, Josie was thankful for them.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Nick asked. His voice was gruff but laced with concern and panic.

“Th-thank you,” Josie stuttered. Her teeth were chattering, her body wracked with shivering. “You . . . you saved my life.”

“You’re lucky I followed you.” Nick pulled his sweatshirt over his head and draped it over her shoulders. “What you were thinking walking home at dusk? And the path through the woods? You were practically asking for the Nox to attack.”

Nox. Is that what they were? It seemed like such an innocuous word for what lurked in the dark.

Nick ran a hand through his thick, dark hair. “You’re lucky you made it through the woods to the street. Most people don’t make it five feet once the Nox catch them.”

“Someone,” Josie panted. “Someone carried me out.”

“Carried you out of the dark woods?” Nick shook his head. “No one’s alive in there, Jo. Not once the sun goes down.”

No one was alive in the woods. That was impossible. She’d felt an arm. She’d heard a voice.

“What is with you today?” Nick continued. “It’s like you’re a totally different person.”

“You have no idea.”

“Huh?”

Josie kept quiet. It was no good trying to explain anything to Nick, since she’d be gone in a few hours and then the old Jo would bring things back to normal. Nick would just write it off as “lady problems” or temporary insanity, and Josie would pretend this sojourn into Jo’s world never happened.

After a moment, Nick sighed. “Fine. Don’t talk to me. I’ll take you back to my house and get you cleaned up.”

“No,” Josie said. Her teeth were still chattering. “Take me home.”

“Jo, you’re covered in blood.”

“Take me home,” she repeated. She couldn’t risk not being there for the next window. She had to get home.

“Suit yourself. But if your dad gets pissed off, it’s your problem.”

3:55 A.M.

Despite a half dozen Advil in the last few hours, Josie’s head still pounded. Her body felt like it had been poisoned—sluggish, heavy, and aching all over.

Her ripped-up forearms didn’t help matters. While the Nox, as Nick had called them, had only inflicted a few wounds on the back of her neck before she made it out of the woods, her arms looked as if she’d gone three rounds with a Weedwacker. Most of the cuts were shallow, with a few exceptions, and after a painful hour in the bathroom cleansing the deeper gashes and taping them up with gauze and butterfly bandages, she figured they’d heal okay.

But what the hell were those things? She knew now what Jo had been trying to tell her when they switched places: Don’t go out after dark.

Yeah, thanks for the heads-up.

At five minutes to the appointed time, Josie was ready to go. She’d changed back into her own clothes, shoving the blood-covered yellow dress and Nick’s sweatshirt deep into the bottom of the hamper, and left Jo’s room exactly as she’d found it. Everything would look better now: her parents’ divorce, her mom’s weirdness, even Nick and her social standing at school. All of it seemed bearable when weighed against the homicidal monsters that lived in the darkness just outside the bright lights of Jo’s room.

She thought she’d be sad to have to go back to her own life, but as the surface of the mirror rippled, Josie smiled. She was ready to go home.

She wanted to feel her own bedsheets; smell the musty air of her dilapidated, water-damaged house. Before the image on the other side was even fully in view Josie reached her hand into the undulating surface of the mirror.

Josie felt the thick, spongy interior of the portal as she pushed her arm through. She was about to duck into the portal and go through to her own bedroom, when her fingertips grazed something solid and rough.

Huh?

She leaned into the gooey substance of the portal until her shoulders rested against a hard surface. It was solid and heavy, and it wouldn’t budge. She pulled away, and slowly, the image on the other side of the mirror came into focus. A gray concrete wall.

The wall of the basement in Josie’s house.

In an instant, Josie realized what had happened. Jo had conned her. She’d conveniently left out several details about her life—a life that kind of sucked, apparently—and now that she was in Josie’s life, she had no intention of coming back.

Panic. Josie reached up as far as she could, trying to find an edge, something she could wedge her fingers between and maybe force the mirror off the wall. She submerged herself in the portal, and tried to push the back side of the frame away. But it wouldn’t budge. Jo must have secured the mirror with something, sandwiching it tight against the concrete.

The mirror began to ripple again and Josie pulled her body out of the portal. As her own reflection rematerialized, cold reality slapped her in the face.

Josie was trapped.