Aisling woke to warm fingers caressing her face, the tips lighting fire across her skin. The boy lay beside her, his features calm, serene. He mouthed something to her, his tongue touching the front of his lips in a way that was utterly tantalizing. The crash of the surf drowned out the words.

They lay on a beach, the sand warm beneath her naked skin. He draped his arm across her side, their legs sandwiched together, limbs tangled in the white sand. With his fingers he traced the line of her chin, dancing along her throat, over her collarbone, darting along the edge of her naked breast.

Aisling’s body tingled with anticipation. She kept her eyes locked on the boy. His eyes were a blue so cold and vivid, she couldn’t believe they were real, that they gazed at her, at her, with such a violent craving, it felt as though they were melting away her skin.

A lock of his dark hair fell over his face, and she reached out to tuck it away. Really, it was just an excuse to get her hands on his body, to drag her nails across the hard muscles of his chest. The minuscule space between them seemed like an abyss. Aisling’s body ached to be pressed against his, to be consumed utterly in the flame of his desire.

Her hand moved through the air in front of her in slow-motion, as though she were pushing through treacle. Finally, her fingertips brushed his cheek. She sucked in her breath as she ran the tips over his coarse stubble.

He blinked, and disappeared, the whole beach sucked into a black void. Heart pounding, Aisling jerked herself upright. Her hands thrust out, searching for the warmth of his skin.

Then she remembered.

She wasn’t lying on a beach at all, but splayed out in her bed, the covers in disarray around her. The boy wasn’t beside her. He was a figment of her imagination, invented to keep her sane all these years. She’d never even been on a beach before – she’d constructed the vision of an endless expanse of pearly white sand and crystal water from descriptions she’d read in books.

For the last five years, Aisling had seen the boy in her dreams. He’d grown up alongside her: a teen when she’d hit puberty, his strong shoulders and haunting face making her pulse quicken and an ache settle between her legs. They’d held hands and danced at the prom and she’d felt like every romance book ever written had been inspired by that night.

Now he was no longer a boy at all, but a fully-fledged man, with broad shoulders and a strong jaw, barely recognizable from the gangly kid she’d once danced with. But those deep pools of intense blue that stared out at her from the veil of her subconscious, they had stayed the same all these years.

He’s not here. He’s not real.

Aisling allowed herself three deep breaths, three still moments where she could withdraw the image from her mind, to rub away the impression of the boy that still lingered on her fingers. Then it was time to begin the day.

She threw off the covers, and went into the hall, ignoring the door directly to the left of her bedroom. It hadn’t been there yesterday, and she’d opened enough strange doors in this house to find its presence unimpressive.

When she and her sister used to visit their grandmother, they would stay in a honeysuckle-yellow room on the first floor at the end of the east wing, overlooking the rose gardens. But ever since her room had been swallowed by the void, Aisling had been sleeping in the old servants’ quarters, housed along a dim, narrow hall behind the kitchens. The rooms weren’t nearly as grand, but she preferred them like that. Less opportunity for ghosts lurking in the corners or dark cracks to go unnoticed.

Widdershins skidded around the corner, purring with delight as he rubbed up against Aisling’s bare legs. A tiny speck of something stuck to his tail. Aisling pulled it off and held it up to her candle to inspect it. It was the flowering head of a maize plant.

“How did that get here, boy? Come on, tell me. Where do you go?” Aisling picked up the cat and cradled him in her arms. Widdershins had been showing up with all sorts of weird smells and objects lately.

Widdershins’ whole body vibrated with the intensity of his purr. He didn’t reply. Cats never did.

“At least you’re real.” She snuggled against Widdershins’ warm fur, wishing it was the boy’s long hair rubbing against her cheek.

* * *

In the library, Aisling drew out the map she had made, and spread it across the desk, holding the edges flat with other heavy volumes. She dipped her pen nib in the bottle of ink, and scrawled a big, black mark through the dining room.

Eight years ago, she had found the original plans for the house in a drawer in the attic, back when the attic was still a place they could freely go. She’d unrolled them with wide eyes, immediately understanding what they represented. She took them downstairs to show her mother.

“Oh, Aisling, thank you. These are useful.” Her mother spread out the maps across the library: The first floor on the desk, with the old red telephone weighing down one end. The second and third floors on the wide leather sofas that sat opposite each other in front of the fire, and the fourth sheet containing the plans for the attic and basement on the colorful Persian rug. She took up a pen and inkwell and started to make notations.

First, her mother marked off the far end of the east wing, drawing crosses through the neat boxes on either side of the hallway. The bedrooms on the end of the hall had been completely enveloped by the void. Aisling had stood on the landing at the top of the staircase, watching the doorways buckling as they were crushed by the overwhelming power that pulled them between the two worlds. Cracks crisscrossed the wallpaper like spiderwebs, creeping like vines overtaking an abandoned building.

Only, the Hollow wasn’t abandoned. It still housed a family that loved and hated it in equal measure.

Next, Aisling’s mother created a key of notations to mark the strange things they witnessed around the house. Red Xs marked walls where long cracks appeared. Blue circles were places where they heard knocking sounds coming from within the walls. Little musical notes were where they’d heard the voices; the little girl singing nursery rhymes in the guest bathroom, the high-pitched shrieks from the back of the pantry. Blue droplets showed the cascade of water that fell from the ceiling in one of the servant’s rooms. An arrow pointing in a circle showed spaces where time seemed to slow down or speed up.

Over the years, Aisling continued to mark parts of the house that became lost. Some crumbled from decay and neglect, others were dragged into the void. Some rooms morphed into strange caricatures of themselves. As well as the room itself expanding in size, the floor in the middle of the ballroom bounced and buckled when she stepped on it, throwing her about like a giddy dancer. The hall hung with mirrors in the east wing stretched on into infinity; the conservatory grew vines that twisted and burrowed their way through the surrounding rooms, and seemed always to be creeping closer.

The Hollow had been built by her namesake, Lady Aisling Greymouth, in the early seventeenth century. In the library, there were books showing drawings of the Greymouth family at dinners, hosting balls and elaborate costume parties, or taking tea on the lawn. This was back when the Hollow was part of the human realm, an ordinary manor house with rooms that were the same size on the outside as they were on the inside.

The house had seen every event history could imagine. It had withstood wars, rebellions, electrification, the installation of internet cabling. But then, the war had come. The great, deadly war that humans fought with nuclear weapons, the war that scorched Earth and left only a barren, desolate wasteland.

Aisling had been too young to remember much of life before the war, but in the few images she had found in her grandmother’s desk, life looked idyllic. Life after the war, not so much. She couldn’t understand what humans had hated so much about each other that it was worth destroying everything. And being that she was quite possibly the last human left alive, she couldn’t very well ask.

The humans died inhaling the poisoned air, their bodies wasted by radiation. Witches, like the women of Aisling’s family, used their magic to help them breathe, to shield their bodies from immediate harm. Aisling’s grandmother had gone one step further. Thinking quickly, she had led her coven in a ritual to bind their power to the house. If they could just protect the house, she reasoned, they could all survive inside it until the world was safe to inhabit again.

But Aisling’s grandmother hadn’t counted on the fae. They opened the void right over the Hollow. They came down from the sky in chariots made from the stars, and they drew every last surviving life form into their realm.

Grandmother June fought back. Her coven raised a circle of power inside the house. They grounded it. They tried to pull it back from the grasp of the fae. And, when it looked as though all hope was lost, she threw every ounce of power she had left into the house.

That power wasn’t enough to send back the fae or spare June’s life. But it was enough to prevent the fae from being able to enter the house. The Hollow became stuck on the edge of the two worlds, perched precariously on the edge of the void – where the vastness and emptiness of space divided the fae realm from the human world. Both worlds pulled and tugged at the house, trying to draw it completely from the void, but Aisling’s grandmother’s power held the house in place. Her protective spells kept the fae from entering the grounds.

Aisling stared at the X she’d made on the map, and counted the safe rooms she had left. There were only ten in all, including her beloved library. The house had once had thirty-two rooms. Eventually, the void would win, and the Hollow – Aisling’s whole world and everything in it – would be consumed by the vastness of the void.