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Last week, a group of kids snuck past the fences of the abandoned theme park and came out screaming about voices in the glass. One’s still in a psych ward.
Rotting popcorn bags drift across my boots, and ticket stubs stick to greasy puddles. Wet leaves clog the gaps between planks, slick with decay, adding the scent of pond scum to the stale, sugar-laden air.
I move through the heart of the park, metal bat gripped tight in my ungloved hand, on alert for a telltale shimmer.
My breath frosts as magic spikes around me. It splinters across my skin, pinpricks of pain peppering my body. Even after three days of no sleep and caffeine pills, it cuts through the haze.
A rusted speaker above the cotton-candy shack crackles, spits static, then falls silent.
The effect is deliberate. This demon doesn’t stalk its prey. It lures them into a trap staged to create the most fear by manipulating lights, sound, and vision, everything timed for maximum effect.
The moonstone at my throat pulses in warning.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I murmur, twirling the bat.
A shadow scuttles across the metal paneling of a game booth, warping the reflections as it moves.
I smile and loosen the knife from my hip sheath. Standard steel won’t cut it, but the runes chiseled into the blade will.
Or it should.
I paid a fortune for the thing, so it had better work.
A whistle rises from the carousel ahead, derelict horses rocking on rusty rods. Moonlight catches on patches of varnish still clinging to the wooden forms, and I catch a flash of serrated motion weaving between their legs.
I break into a run.
Splintered fences blur past as I hop the line of plastic queue dividers, footsteps soaking up every sound but the thudding in my chest.
I crouch beside the carousel. The horses glisten with mold, their flanks pitted from weather and neglect. Ducking, I circle the ride, using the cover of the leaping horses and their toothy grins. The demon’s residue buzzes along my jaw, scraping at my eardrums, and the stone at my throat pulses.
It’s taunting me, trying to slip through my defenses, but I’ve hunted worse monsters than this over the past few months.
I crouch under the carousel’s base, boots sinking in a slick of spilled soda and decomposed popcorn. The demon’s whisper chitters in the metal supports, then darts out across the midway.
“Is this really the best you can do?” I aim the words up into the night. “I’ve seen scarier things in subway bathrooms.”
The demon hisses from the reflection in the carousel’s glass ticket booth.
It lingers there, contorting my likeness into a cruel imitation. Black hair braided back, bronze skin sallow with sleeplessness. Except in the demon’s version, the smile is full of needle teeth, and my fae-touched eye is missing.
I bare my own teeth and toss a rock at the glass. The crack zigzags through the demon’s reflection, but it doesn’t retreat. It wants me to come closer.
It gets its wish.
I edge toward the booth, sliding through the shadow of the fence meant to stop line hoppers. With every step, the itch at my nape intensifies.
When I’m close enough to see the reflection without distortion, the demon shape-shifts. The hair pales to silver braids, and my angles fill out, replaced by patrician cheekbones, sculpted lips, and ears with small points.
Caelan.
The effect isn’t perfect, not in this world. The demon can’t quite capture the beauty of the silver fae, the fine bones of his jaw or the moonlight caught in his features. But for a breath, he stands in that booth, facing me, the corners of his mouth lifting as if happy to see me.
A fist tightens around my heart, and I drive the bat through the glass with a snarl. “Not fucking tonight.”
Shards rain across the ticket counter, slicing open my bare arm. The sting registers for a heartbeat before my magic rises, knitting the cut closed, the shine of a recent scar fading fast.
The reflection pops, replaced by the twisted, grinning demon. It shrieks and clambers up the wall in a spidery scramble to vanish into the plexiglass dome over the carousel.
