Rachel Marie Woodruff rested her chin limply on her desk, a single incandescent lamp lighting its wooden surface. On the desk lay a small yellow parcel, not yet labeled, not yet sent. She knew its contents word for word, jewel by polished jewel.

  It had been two weeks since she had returned from Lyrian. Owning a sizable property on the outskirts of Olympia had its benefits—her parents had successfully kept her a secret as she readjusted to normal life. They had tried to coax her out of the house on multiple occasions, but she had yet to leave.

  She had to remain a secret until her letter had been sent. Even then, it might only invite more trouble.

  “You know you’re going to do it,” she muttered to herself. “No sense in waiting around.”

  And yet, she remained at her desk.

  It was the middle of the night. Her parents were asleep. It wasn’t a short walk to the mailbox, but next to her travels in Lyrian, it seemed laughably unremarkable. She would just be a nondescript nineteen-year-old, walking to the corner store to send a gift to a relative. It would be a cinch.

  She picked up the parcel, then set it down and threw a brown hoodie over her head. She cinched the drawstrings, then loosened them. Would a hood be too suspicious? She would rather look like herself than some kind of thief. While her suburban neighborhood was far safer than Lyrian, strangers still tended to draw ill-meaning attention.

  Tucking the parcel under her hoodie, she eased her bedroom door open, then tiptoed down the hallway and down the shag-carpet stairs. Static snapped at her slippered feet, but she did not slow until she had slipped through the front door and out onto the veranda. She carried her shoes in her hands until she had descended the wooden front steps, then sat down on the concrete driveway and pulled them on.

  The memories hit her like a landslide as soon as she stepped out onto the night-soaked street. Involuntarily, she picked up her pace until she was jogging, then running, then sprinting under the streetlights, barely managing to keep the parcel from flying out of its hiding place. She could almost feel the icy grip of a torivor on her wrist, could almost hear the pained shouts of friends and foes as they died for their cause.

  No matter how safe she felt here, and even how comfortable she had felt in Lyrian since Maldor had been defeated, she had begun to feel an insatiable thirst for danger. It hadn’t helped at all that she had locked herself up in her house, or that she had no Edomic to keep her busy. Even if it was only in her mind, she needed to run from something.

  The corner store glowed a sickly blue, contrasting with the halogen orange of the streetlamps. Tiny bells clanged softly as she pulled the metal door open, shielding her eyes from the harsh light, then again as the door swung shut behind her. The cashier, a sullen-eyed boy who couldn’t be a day over seventeen, nodded respectfully to her as she strode past him on her way to the postbox. She pulled the parcel from under her sweater, glanced behind her, and hastily threw it into the little mail slot.

  “You mailin’ drugs or somethin’?” the cashier drawled.

  “Um, just a letter to my boyfriend,” Rachel lied, reddening.

  The cashier let out a derisive snort. “Y’ever heard of texting?”

  Rachel shrugged and turned away from the postbox, refraining from admitting that she had not held a phone in over five years. She had sent countless messages by eagle and by courier, but the immediacy of the Internet still felt utterly foreign. It also didn’t help that she was still terrified of the press attention—she couldn’t let herself open up a phone number until long after she had reintegrated, lest some unsavory attention be directed her way.

  She knew all too well how easily she could be connected to the disappearance of Jason Walker.

  A clamor of hushed voices faded into earshot as Rachel walked briskly past the cashier and pushed open the front door. She peered out into the night, then retreated back into the corner store at the sight of a group of rambunctious high schoolers between her and her house. Shooting a silent help-me glance at the cashier, she ducked into a far aisle and lowered herself until she couldn’t be seen from the front door.

  “What are you-” the cashier started, but Rachel vehemently shushed him.

  Mere seconds later, the door burst open, tiny bells crashing in protest, and eight high schoolers burst into the little shop. They had clearly been drinking to various degrees—two of them were hanging back, evidently smart enough to watch from afar while their friends stumbled into shelves, giggling uncontrollably. The cashier glanced towards Rachel, almost as desperate for her help as she had been for his, but Rachel did not stir.

  Rachel had not realized that she had been preparing for a fight. Eight total, six incapacitated to some degree. Even without Edomic, she might be able to-

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  She slapped herself. This was not Lyrian. She was in no immediate danger unless one of the kids threw up on her. If not for the two sober girls, she could walk right back home knowing none of them would remember her by the morning.

  Then, before she could react, a girl with long brown braids and a swooning grin stumbled into Rachel’s aisle. At the sight of Rachel, she screeched loudly enough to turn a lesser human to stone, then vomited on the floor, immediately drawing her friends to her side.

  Instantly, the drunken commotion ceased. Rachel stood up and raised her hands above her head in surrender as the group coalesced into a staring mass of unfocused eyes and gaping jaws. As the gut-churning scent of stomach acid filled the little shop, Rachel assessed the situation with new eyes.

  Horror rose like bile in her throat.

  “Rachel?” the girl who had thrown up slurred. “Is that…”

  Rachel’s eyes flicked across the faces of the girls before her, clearly recognizing a few, dimly recognizing some others. They had all grown since she had last seen them—not as much as she had, but enough that they looked markedly different. Somehow, of all the horrible luck, her childhood track team had found her on her first excursion out of the house in five years.

  The cat was officially out of the bag.

  “You’re seeing this, right?” The girl—Eva—turned to her friends and pointed at Rachel. They all nodded, too awestruck to speak in return.

  Alto, one of the sober girls who had frequently competed with Rachel, broke away from the group and cautiously approached Rachel. She had cut most of her hair off since Rachel had last seen her, but her ever-careful eyes were unmistakable. She stopped a mere five paces from Rachel and narrowed her eyes, looking her up and down as if scanning her for weapons. They stood there for what felt like forever, both clearly recognizing each other but unwilling to show it. Rachel drew in less air with every breath, panic flooding her senses as she tried in vain to find a way out.

  “You’re a ghost,” Alto finally whispered.

  Rachel shook her head, not trusting herself to reply.

  Alto took a step back, clouds flashing across her eyes. “Three and a half years. No note, no news, no trace, and we find you here?”

  “Yeah,” Eva slurred. “We thought you were, like, dead. Where were you?”

  Alto shifted her gaze, silently repeating Eva’s question. Rachel stiffened, knowing any answer she gave would only bring more unanswerable questions. More murmurings stole through the group until Rachel could hardly think through the pressure, through the betrayed stares of the girls she used to call her friends.

  So, instead of replying, Rachel whipped around and sprinted out of the little shop like her life depended on it.

  And, she thought morbidly, it very well might.

  ? ? ?

  The tabloids ran her story first, but within a few days, it was everywhere. Rachel’s thirteen-year-old face jumped out at her everywhere she looked. Some intrusive reporters had even taken photos of her through her living room window, and though her parents had insisted they be taken down, they were spreading much more quickly than they could be erased. The landline had been ringing so often that Rachel had begged for her parents to cancel their phone plan, but the best they could do was to unplug the phone outside of Dad’s business hours.

  She couldn’t exactly blame Alto and the rest of the track team, but resentment still burned within her all the same. Alto and Eva had tried to push through the gaggle of reporters at her front door on the day the story broke, but Rachel had not even come downstairs to shoo them away in person.

  A week after the news broke, though, everyone seemed to forget. The news that Rachel was back became common knowledge, enough that it wasn’t even worth the local student newspaper’s time to knock on her door. Rachel finally left home with her parents to go buy herself a phone and a laptop, drawing plenty of stares, but knowing that it was no longer worth hiding. For better or for worse, she was back on Earth, and it was time she faced that fact.

  Another week went by. Rachel returned to the track at which she used to train, finding that she had lost all ability to pole vault. She had gained some real speed in her long-distance runs and hurdles, enough that her old coach had begged for her to return to the team, but she just felt lost. She no longer felt as if she was running away from danger every time she picked up speed, but she wasn’t running for anything either.

  It felt like all she could do these days was run. Whether physically, mentally or emotionally, she ran constantly. From what, she wasn’t sure. Her past. Her old friends-turned- wary-acquaintances. Herself, maybe.

  Until one day, as reddish-brown leaves tumbled from the birch trees on her front lawn, her phone buzzed with a call from an unknown number. She dismissed it at first—prank calls had been commonplace ever since she had activated her new SIM card—but the area code gave her pause.

  Nine-seven-zero. Colorado.

  Rachel swept her phone up from the couch beside her and sprinted out the front door, swiping her finger across the screen to answer the call before it rang out. The cold air nipped at her skin, and her breath plumed in front of her face, but something told her this was not a call she would want her parents to overhear.

  “Hello?” Rachel shivered, both from the cold and from the nervous anticipation.

  “Rachel?” a deep, young voice crackled through the tinny speaker.

  Rachel nodded, though she knew the caller could not see it. “Yes. What’s up?”

  A short pause hung in the airwaves, as if the caller were pausing to choose his words carefully. Rachel’s throat ached. She knew what was coming, but a persistent tic in the back of her head forced her to remain on the line.

  Finally, the caller spoke, his tone awkward and forced. “Hi. My name’s Matt. Matt Davidson. I called because… I was wondering if you knew anything about the death of my friend.”

  Rachel’s blood ran cold. “Your friend?”

  Matt let out a mm-hmm sound. “Jason. His name is Jason Walker.”