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PROLOGUE

THE FRIENDS
IN THE DUST
    T HE MOON WAS THE COLOR OF BLOOD, AND THE clouds moving past were pale like bone. Blake sat atop the slide in the starlit playground and noticed this, waiting.
    Two of his friends ran and yelled below him, chasing one another around the wooden castle, jumping and doing flips off the swing set until one fell on his face and cried, “New game!” while his nose streamed moon-hued rivulets and the other said, “I’ve won, I’ve won, I’ve won.” Farther off, a girl and boy sat on the ends of a teeter-totter, balanced, motionless, suspended, and ready.
    It was fast approaching midnight, but not one of these teenagers worried about curfew or bedtime or accountability. Not one of them thought of families calling them home or of parents grounding them for bad behavior. They were alone. And the Dust played by its own rules.
    In his way, Blake looked forward to these playground nights, grim as they inevitably became. This one had been a long time coming, and the flustered butterflies of anticipation taunted and amused him.
    He squinted to see. At the edge of the park, a small girl had appeared, groggy and in pajamas, walking as if still in her own nightmare.
    It was her.
    She had come.
    All at once, the five kids on the playground went still and silent. All five watched as the girl ambled through the grass and shadows, still holding a tattered half of their invitation in her hand.
    Blake slid down the slide and balanced on the wooden lip at the edge of the cedar chips.
    “Meg,” he said.
    She nodded. Under her left eye was a green and brown bruise stretching from ear to nose, and it shone painfully in the twilight. But the rest of her was sturdy and thick, and coarse blond bangs framed a square face that was brave and defiant and anything but fragile.
    The Dust encircled her slowly while Meg stood and stared them down one by one. But she trembled slightly, and it was too warm a night for that. Blake saw this and frowned.
    “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said.
    But when Meg turned to run, the kids behind her proved Blake very wrong.
    Her struggle was brief. But there was nothing gentle about the way the Dust blindfolded Meg, and tied her hands, and dragged her clumsily into the shadowed woods beneath the quiet cover of night.

ONE

LOGAN LANGLY, BOY
WHO CRIED WOLF
    1
    T HE LAST THING LOGAN WOULD WANT YOU TO know about him was that he was afraid of the dark.
    But Logan was afraid of the dark, and if you ever asked him about it, ever brought it up to his face and maybe teased him a little even, he’d stop you right where you stood and tell you it was for a very good reason.
    It was because Logan Paul Langly was being watched.
    He didn’t know who, and he didn’t know how. But every night, when Dad pulled up the covers, turned out the light, and shut the door behind him after demanding sweet dreams and tight sleep, Logan Paul Langly found himself on the wrong end of a spyglass.
    So when Logan awoke with a start—even in the comfort of his own bed, even in the warmth of the late-summer evening that was anything but dark and stormy, the weekend before his first day of eighth grade—it was with well-worn urgency that he sat up, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and scanned the room for signs of intrusion.
    Tonight, there was only one. His window rested an inch above its seal, and a breeze dried the nightmare sweat from his forehead.
    Logan couldn’t remember if he’d left it open, but if you’d asked him in that moment, he would have told you he had not.
    Had his father? Had his father walked to the window during their conversation that night? Maybe for some cool air in the midst of their heated discussion? Logan replayed the scene in his head.

    He had been focused on his breathing, controlled and steady to keep himself calm. He had pulled the covers back but was standing a few feet away from the bed, just in case someone was under it, waiting for an ankle.
    I’m too old for this , he thought, and he shook his head with just a little bit of shame.
    “Whatcha doin’, bud?” Mr. Langly said in the doorway behind him, and Logan jumped as if the words were a spider falling down his back. “Imagination got hold again?”
    Logan nodded but didn’t turn around. Instead he crawled into bed and pulled the covers high up over himself, curling up and facing the wall. He could feel his father sit beside him, hunched over and looking at his hands, folded and resting on his