Something warm pressed against her face, and at first Wendy thought it was Peter. But then a rough, wet tongue lapped at her cheek.

She opened her eyes to a Saint Bernard eagerly sniffing her face.

Wendy grunted. “Nana?” Confused, Wendy sat up, her sleeping bag slipping off of her shoulders.

“Oh, Wendy child. What are you doing here so early? Don’t tell me you slept here on the steps.”

Wendy looked up at the ever-chipper Mr. Bernard. He was carrying his umbrella and holding Nana’s leash.

Everything was wrong. She wasn’t on the stoop of the Catholic church; she was sitting in front of Bernard Books. She looked to her right and Peter was gone. How did she get here? Where was Peter? Then the horrible realization came to her, and she felt like she was going to throw up. Had it been part of her imagination? She wasn’t going to work at the bookstore, but then she showed up here. It must be a sign.

Wendy stood and quickly began rolling up her sleeping bag. “Um, I had to take the early bus this morning and ended up getting here…a few hours earlier than I’d thought.”

“Oh, I see,” Mr. Bernard said, opening the front door and setting his umbrella in a stand. “Well, come on in, come on in. I’ll fix that by giving you a key.” He headed back to his office and she followed. “That way, if you ever get here early again, or miss the bus home at night, you can just let yourself in and take a nap on the couch.” He flung his jacket over his chair and rummaged through his desk.

“Key, key, key. Where’s my spare key?” He pulled out multiple keys of various shapes and sizes until he found the small brass one. “Now for a key ring.” He dug in a small tin cup until he found an old keychain with a charm. He attached the key and handed her both. “There’s a shower and bathroom upstairs. Use it whenever you like.”

Wendy stared at the key dangling from the keychain in her hand. “I’m not sure what to say other than thank you.”

“Nothing, Wendy.”

She fingered the small keychain charm and held it up to Mr. Bernard. “What is it?”

“Oh, that. That’s a pan flute. I got it at a gift shop when I visited a small island in the Pacific for research on the book I’m writing.”

“A pan flute? How interesting.”

“Glad you like it. Don’t lose your key,” he warned. He opened up the safe and handed her the till and then immediately got started on his book. Nana curled up in the corner of his office on an overstuffed dog bed and went to sleep.

Wendy went out to start her morning routine. When the drawer was counted, front steps swept off, daily papers brought in, and the morning coffee brewed, she found herself at a loss. She decided to straighten the shelves, lining the books up with the edge.

With nothing left to do until the first customers came in, she poured herself a cup of coffee—one sugar, one cream—and sat by the front window to people watch. She absently picked up a pad of paper and a pencil and began to sketch. It had been a while since she’d drawn, but before long she had a decent image of Peter’s face.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. Was he coming in today?

She wanted to ask him about last night. About whether or not he’d been at the church with her. But the front door never opened, and Peter never stepped through. By lunch time she was starving, and she hadn’t thought to bring a lunch.

Mr. Bernard came out of the back office with Nana and pulled out his wallet. “Hey, Wendy. How about I make you a deal?”

“What’s that, Mr. Bernard?”

“You take Nana for her walk, and while you’re out, pick us both up some lunch at one of the vendors. She needs to go out, but I’m on a roll with writing. My main character is just about to encounter the pirates.” He handed her a twenty.

“What do you want to eat? There’s pizza, hotdogs, tamales…” she asked, glad for something to do.

“Oh, whatever you get, just get me the same.” He handed her Nana’s leash and waved her off. She watched as he quickly shuffled back to his office.

Wendy looked at the twenty-dollar bill in her hand and then down at Nana, whose front paws were shuffling a doggie two-step. She really was antsy to do her business. Wendy put out the small sign that said “Ring for Help” and opened the door for Nana, who bolted out onto the sidewalk.

“Whoa, Nana! Slow down.” But the dog didn’t listen. She just made a beeline for the crosswalk, and then stopped to wait for it to turn white. How the dog knew when to walk and when to wait was a mystery, but as soon as the walk symbol appeared, Nana dragged her across the road and down the path to the middle of Kinderly Park.

Nana’s nose glided over the ground on the hunt for the perfect spot. She pulled Wendy off the stone path and into the trees. “Oh, come on, Nana. That looked just as good a place as any. Oh, thank goodness,” Wendy exclaimed when Nana found a place to pee.

Unfortunately, it lasted for all of two seconds, and the dog was off again chasing after a squirrel.

“Down, Nana. No, Nana,” Wendy commanded. But the dog only continued to yank her arm. She tried to readjust her grip on Nana’s leash, so her hand wouldn’t get ripped off at the wrist, but Nana bolted again.

The leash slipped out of Wendy’s hands.

“Noo!” Wendy darted into a thicket after the Saint Bernard, but she couldn’t make it very far.

Frustrated, she kneeled to see if she could crawl in. The Saint Bernard was the size of a small bear, so of course she should be able to follow her same path. The problem was the thicket itself. It was full of thorns—Nana had a nice, thick coat to protect her skin. Cautious, Wendy held up the branches and passed through the thicket and into a small clearing.

Nana was jumping up and barking at something in the tree.

“What is it, Nana?” Wendy asked softly as she picked up the leash from the ground. She tucked her wrist through the strap and wrapped it around her arm. If Nana wanted to run away again, she would have to take Wendy’s arm with her.

Something dark was caught in Nana’s teeth. Wendy reached down to remove it, thinking it was a bit of black cloth, but it wasn’t corporeal.

A black, misty smoke clung to her canines.

Was it burning? In a hurry, Wendy swiped her hand through the dog’s mouth, but the misty shadow swirled around her hand and disappeared, leaving a dark wet smear across her fingertips.

“What is this?” She looked closer. It looked like blood, except the color was off, wrong. It was almost black.

Nana’s barking turned into a deep threatening growl. Alarmed, Wendy looked up and noticed a dark form sitting on a branch among the leaves. It was large, much larger than a squirrel or even a raccoon.

It moved suddenly, floating to the next branch. Wendy would’ve dropped the leash again if her arm hadn’t been wrapped in it.

A shadow. The way it floated and quivered told Wendy that something was wrong. Had Nana injured the shadow?

Well, there was no way they were going to stay and find out. Wendy turned and dragged Nana out of the clearing and back through the thicket. The dog wouldn’t come easily, but Wendy was desperate. The shadow reached out toward her, its hand elongating, stretching as if to touch her.

“Go! Run, we have to run.” She tried to run but she was only being pulled toward the tree by Nana’s insistence to chase the thing down.

“Please, Nana,” Wendy begged.

Finally the dog looked at her, sensing her distress. Her ears perked up and her head tilted to the side.

She tried a new tactic. “Treat?”

Nana barked and eagerly ran for Wendy. Wendy’s fear made parting the thicket much easier, and they ran out onto the sidewalk and across the park. They hurried into the bookstore, and she shut the door and closed the shutter on the window. Nana was exhausted and wanted her water bowl, so Wendy reached down and unclasped the leash.

She went to the bathroom sink and tried to wash off the dried blood.

But it wouldn’t come off. It looked like permanent marker stuck to her skin, and then it slowly faded into her skin.

Cages.

Kids screaming.

Memories that weren’t hers plagued her.

“Nooooo!” She squealed and turned the hot water on and scrubbed till her hands burned. Finally she could take the pain no more, and she turned the water off.

“It’s not real, Wendy,” she told her reflection. “Stop imagining things. You’re normal. You didn’t see black blood, and it definitely did not absorb into your skin.” She pressed her wet hands to her face and took a few deep breaths. She had to be losing her mind.

After twenty minutes she gathered her courage and stepped out of the bathroom. The bookstore was still empty.

She went and checked his office door. She had forgotten his lunch, but there was no way she was going back into the park. Digging in the desk drawer, she found a few takeout menus and ordered Chinese for two. Fifteen minutes later, she was dropping off the still hot sesame chicken and egg rolls in his office, but he wasn’t there. She didn’t know where he’d gone, so she left his food on his desk with napkins, a plastic fork, and a can of coke.

Wendy decided to head up to the loft with her food and sit on the small couch. The coffee table was covered with various magazines and stacks of books that needed to be put away.

Is this what Peter was coming for when he met her at the bookstore? There didn’t seem to be any evidence of him working up here—or anywhere. Unless his work required reading. Wendy took a sip of her cola and reached for a book on rare diseases. Another one was on genetic research. Another book was an anthology of medical journals on children with special gifts.

Did this have something to do with the lost boys? She was still confused by half of the things that Slightly and Peter talked about, but then she didn’t want to know. She had enough to deal with inside her own dark mind.

Wendy ate half her food and put the rest in the mini-fridge in the loft, straightened the books and her mess, and headed down stairs. Mr. B still had not returned, and his food was cold. She really hoped he hadn’t gotten tired of waiting for her and gone out to get his own food. Guilt assailed her as she realized that was probably exactly what he did.

The afternoon came and went. It was closing time, and she wasn’t sure what to do. Nana had to go outside again and Wendy was nervous to venture back into the park. What if she saw something else? What if her next hallucination sent her to the psych ward? Why did she find that thought funny?

Wendy left a sign on the door that said Back in fifteen, locked the door behind her, and headed with trepidation toward the park.

Thankfully, Nana was quick with her business and was as eager to get back to the bookstore as Wendy.

By the time she’d waited an hour past closing and Mr. Bernard never returned, she did the only thing she could. She closed the bookshop. Wendy flipped the sign to closed and locked herself inside.

What was she to do? She couldn’t take the dog with her. For one, she had nowhere to go, and two, she felt much safer with Nana beside her. She would just have to stay here in the bookstore until Mr. B came back.

By ten o’clock, she was terrified something had happened to him. She wandered back down to his office and looked inside. Nothing looked disturbed. Well, it was hard to tell what mess was purposeful and what mess could’ve been from a struggle, it was so piled and stacked with stuff. His jacket was still where he had left it, across the back of the chair. But nothing seemed amiss.

Wendy took Nana’s dog bed out of the corner and carried it upstairs to the loft. She placed it near the couch and coaxed Nana to lay down. Wendy curled up on the soft leather couch and let her hand burrow into the thick fur of Nana’s neck.

“Don’t worry, girl. He’ll come back,” she whispered. “He’ll come back. He won’t forget about us.”

She just wasn’t sure if she was referring to Peter or the bookstore owner.