3:59

FORTY-SIX

10:15 P.M.

THE ONE GOOD THING ABOUT HAVING A POPULATION terrified to go out at night was that there was no traffic after the sun went down. Not that there would have been an abundance of joyriders out for a late-night drive in Josie’s version of Bowie, Maryland, but in this world, there weren’t even cops on the street. No all-night gas stations, no twenty-four-seven convenience stores with their bright red-and-green neon signs warming the night sky. Nothing. Even the streetlights were dimmed in areas with a low density of houses, or perhaps just areas that weren’t as affluent. Money was power. Literally.

Nick raced through the suburban landscape, blasting through stop signs and blackened traffic lights. He hit a drainage ditch and the SUV jumped with such violence Josie’s head smacked the roof. But she didn’t say a word. She wished he could make the car go faster.

If anything happened to Penelope, it would be all Josie’s fault.

Nick screeched to a halt in front of a large, well-lit tract home just a few miles south of town.

“Lights are on,” Josie said. “Good sign.” She started to open the door.

Nick laid a hand on her knee. “Maybe you should stay here.”

“Why?”

Nick didn’t even blink. “Just in case.”

Josie jerked her leg away from his hand. “If something happened to her, it’s my fault. I got her into this mess.”

“This isn’t all on you,” Nick said firmly.

Josie looked away. She couldn’t help thinking of her own friend Penelope back home. How, in the end, Penelope had been the only one there for her. This Penelope had done almost the same thing, and how did Josie repay her? By making her a target in a very dangerous game.

“Come on.” Nick reached across Josie and unlatched the passenger door. He practically lay on her lap as he pushed the heavy door open just an inch, and held it there. The wound on the back of his neck—the price of his own role in helping Josie—was still red and swollen from the makeshift stitches. “Hurry up,” he grunted. “Can’t hold it all night.”

Josie kicked the door open with her foot. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Nick sat up straight, wincing as he tossed his hair out of his face. “Let’s go find her.”

Everything seemed normal at Penelope’s house. All the lights were on, including the one over the front porch. Nick rang the doorbell and waited. After a few seconds he tried again. They could hear the soft melody of the bell echoing through the house, but no one answered the door.

He tried the handle in case it was unlocked. No luck. “Come on,” he said, grabbing Josie’s hand. “Let’s check the back.”

Light streamed out of the kitchen and dining-room windows that faced the back of the house, and Nick and Josie had no difficulty staying in the bright swath of safety they provided. Josie could see dirty dishes in the sink—cleared from dinner, no doubt. But no one was home.

“Try her cell,” Josie suggested.

Nick had called her a dozen times on the way over, but no one had picked up. “You think it’ll be any different now?”

“If she’s inside, we might hear it.”

“Good point.” Nick pulled his phone out of his jeans pocket and hit redial.

They stood still, ears straining against the deafening silence.

“Listen!” Nick heard it first. The harsh electronic ring of Penelope’s phone. He turned to his right. “Over here.”

He followed the ringtone around the corner of the house to the garage. The light from the windows ended there, and Nick and Josie had to backtrack around to the front of the house. He dialed again, and this time they could clearly hear the phone ringing from inside the garage.

“Maybe she left her phone in the car?” Josie said hopefully.

“Maybe.”

Nick tried lifting the roll-up garage door, but it wouldn’t budge. Without a word, he opened the rear door of his SUV and rummaged around in the back, emerging with a wire coat hanger. He unwound the hanger, and then stood on his tiptoes in front of the garage door. Gazing through one of the windows, he threaded the hanger up through the top of the door and used the hook to pull the emergency release lever.

“Voila!” he said, pulling the door free. It rolled up easily. “There’s no door I can’t—”

Nick froze midsentence, staring straight ahead into the garage.

There, huddled beside the car were two corpses, arms linked around each other. They were little more than skeletons, splattered with bits of gore. Their faces were unrecognizable; the flesh had been ripped off, exposing their skulls and empty eye sockets. Clumps of hair still clung to their scalps, and Josie could easily recognize Penelope’s long, thick black mane. The body beside her, skeletal arms wrapped around her in an act of futile protection, was larger and heavier. Her father.

Josie tried to look away, but her eyes were locked in place.

The Nox had left very little. A hole in Mr. Wang’s skull where they’d ripped into his brain matter. The clothing had been shredded in the mad frenzy to pick every last ounce of flesh from their bones. Blood splattered the side of the white minivan and pooled around the bodies, streaming down toward the driveway by the sickening force of gravity. It threaded its way toward Josie, who stood rooted in place. Her eyes followed the stream of blood as it seemed to have an intelligent route in mind: right to her. Like Poe’s tell-tale heart, it pointed out their killer.

“Don’t look.” Nick slipped a strong arm around her waist and pulled her away from the garage.

She turned on him fiercely. “Don’t look? How can I not look? How can I not picture their last moments, clinging to each other as the Nox overwhelmed them?” She pounded on his chest with both of her fists. “How can I not think of that? How can I not hear their screams?”

She was sobbing, hysterical, and uncontrollable. Her breaths came spastically, like her body was fighting against itself to continue to function properly. She wanted to run into the darkness and scream for the Nox to come at her, to take her. She didn’t care what they were. She didn’t care where they came from. She’d rip them limb from limb if she had to, just as they had done to Penelope and her dad.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Nick said. He held her firmly to his chest, as if he was afraid he was going to lose her.

“It’s my fault,” Josie sobbed. “It’s all my fault.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Josie pushed away from him. “How would you know?” Why wouldn’t he let her have this moment of suffering and blame?

“Okay, enough.” It wasn’t an angry statement, but the totality of it made Josie instantly pay attention. “Who is she?” Nick said softly. “Back in your world?”

She calmed herself almost by sheer force of will, and met Nick’s steady gaze. “She was my friend. She was the only true friend I had. When my world fell apart, she was the only one there.”

“Sounds like our Penelopes have a lot in common.”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?” he asked. “How did your world fall apart?”

Josie swallowed. Her mouth was oddly parched. She’d been avoiding this since the first moment she met Nick. It was this selfish, ugly secret she’d hidden from him, either out of shame for her own motivations in coming through the mirror in the first place, or because her feelings for the old Nick seemed somehow shallow in comparison to what she had grown to feel for this one. Which was utterly and totally ridiculous. Not only did she barely know him, but the majority of their time together had been spent actively trying to return Josie to her own world. Not exactly the foundations of a long, healthy relationship.

But now, with her world crumbling around her once again, Josie felt like she had nothing left to lose. She might as well tell him the entire truth. Maybe he’d be disgusted by what he learned, and any affection, any feelings he’d developed for her over the last few days would evaporate entirely. At least then it would be easier for her to leave.

“Madison,” she said, staring at her shoes. Then the words flowed so quickly she couldn’t have stopped them with a concrete wall. “Madison was my best friend.” She looked up at Nick, his face deeply shadowed by the harsh high beams from his car. “Until I caught her sleeping with my boyfriend.” Josie’s stomach backflipped as she opened her mouth to drop the ultimate bomb. “She slept with you.”

“The other me.” Neither his face nor his voice reflected any emotion. “He cheated on you with your best friend.”

“Yes.”

“I see.”

I see. Josie tried to guess what he was thinking, but his expression was vacant. The slack muscles around his face looked more like the complete and total absence of emotion, the stereotypical blank slate. Either he was totally unable to process the weight of what Josie had just told him, or he was so horrified by the realization that Josie had come through the mirror with the intention of reliving her broken relationship with her boyfriend’s doppelgänger, that his mind had curled up into some sort of protective fetal position. Neither possibility was a good thing, and suddenly Josie felt like crawling inside her own skin, just to escape the empty, dark stare from Nick.

BRRRRRRRRING!

Josie screamed as a cell-phone ring ripped through the silence.