"I WORRY ABOUT YOU, VEX," ALLY said as they walked home that afternoon. After the morning's excitement, the day had been slow and uneventful. The teachers frowned at Vex's face but never said anything. The sky crackled and thundered but never rained. Deacon and his friends glared at Vex every time he walked by, but they never came near him. Corey never showed.

Now Vex was walking the cracked sidewalk that took him home, his hand warm in Ally's. The day had gotten considerably colder, and they were battered by icy air with every passing car.

"You shouldn't," he replied.

She looked up at him. Physically, it was true. The cut on his forehead was a dark thin scab, and the bruise under his eye was pale and green. His eye should have been swollen shut – Ally saw the force with which Deacon threw that punch – but there wasn't even a hint of redness. He looked as though he'd been in a fight last week, not that morning. But it wasn't his physical wellbeing that worried her.

"That's exactly why I have to. Because you aren't worried. Ever. You get yourself into fights. You attract trouble like a magnet. Whenever something strange happens, you're always at the centre of it. But, it's like – you don't give a shit. About anything that happens to you."

Vex shrugged. "What happens, happens."

"No," Ally said forcefully, shaking her head. "You have to care about things, Vex. Otherwise one of these days you'll get yourself into something you can't get out of."

Vex sensed that she wasn't going to let this go unless he gave her some sort of reassurance. He stopped and turned to her, drawing his hands up her arms. "I do care about things. I care about you."

She deliberately avoided his eyes, those two intoxicating gemstones which trapped anyone who so much as glanced at them in a trance. They had an allure so strong you'd be forgiven for thinking it magic.

"That's not enough. You have to care about yourself, too."

"But that's why I have you. To look after me when I forget to." And then with a smirk, he added, "What else do you think I keep you around for?"

A laugh escaped Ally's throat. She gently shoved him away. "Dickhead," she said, smiling.

A quarter of an hour later, they reached Ally's house. It was a white three-story colonial with black exterior shutters and a grey slate roof, a red door framed in the centre of a short colonnade porch. The front lawn was billowy and green, and a series of spherical bushes lined the tiled path up to the porch.

It was picture-perfect; a dream house. And the Michaels' were its picture-perfect residents.

Now Ally Michaels, the dream girl who lived in the dream house, took both of Vex's hands in hers. "Come over for dinner this week," she said.

Vex stared at her. They'd had this conversation before. "Ally," he sighed.

"We've been going out for a year, Vex. They want to meet you, and it's about time that they did."

"It's a bad idea," he said plainly.

"Why? Because you're afraid they won't like you?"

"You know why."

"Right," she said with a laugh, nodding. "Different worlds, irreconcilable differences, blah blah blah. You don't even know them. How do you know you won't get along?"

"We won't get along."

"Vex–"

"Ally, do you remember ninth grade?" She drew back slightly, a frown crinkling the smooth olive skin of her forehead. Cautiously, she nodded. "Do you remember me in ninth grade?"

Now the frown deepened. Softly, she said, "I remember you."

"Then you understand."

"But you're – you're different now."

Vex was already shaking his head. "I look different. That's all."

"No," she replied, her stubbornness kicking in. It was something he loved about her, even though it infuriated him to no end. "You are different. I see it in you. You've changed."

Maybe so, he thought. But not in a way she would ever know.

In the corner of his eye, Vex saw a cream curtain move in one of the windows. They were no longer alone. "I have to go," he said, touching a hand to Ally's face. He leant in to kiss her forehead and turned away.

He'd only gone a couple steps when she asked, "Can I come over later?"

Vex paused and looked back. "Not tonight." He watched her eyes dim. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

She nodded. "Tomorrow."

It was another twenty minutes before Vex finally arrived at his house, a slender grey Victorian on the edge of town. It was small and shabby, the paint chipping off the clapboard to reveal pale, splintered wood. The front lawn was little more than a pit of dirt with sporadic tufts of yellowed grass. But the gothic spire stood tall and proud, the intricate arch trimming just as beautiful. And it was his.

All his.

Inside, Vex dumped his backpack by the door. He tugged his school books out and left them on the dining table, resolving to do homework later. Then he headed for the kitchen where he raided the fridge, pulling out a plate of leftover pizza and reheating it in the microwave. He took the pizza over to the couch and caught the last ten minutes of a sitcom. He watched the gameshow that started up after. Then at last the gameshow became the nightly news, and he lost interest.

It was dark outside now. Vex cooked up some spaghetti and ate it at the table, simultaneously speeding through his homework. He'd turned the television off, and the house was quiet enough to hear the whistling of the wind outside. Somewhere, a pipe groaned. Vex moaned, full. He took his empty dish to the kitchen, placed it in the sink, and had just started rinsing it when he heard the back door creak.

Vex turned off the tap and listened. When the sound didn't come again, he dried his hands and reached down to lift the hem of his pants. There, strapped to his calf, he kept a long double-edged knife. Quietly, he slid it from its sheath.

Vex's Victorian had old, creaky wooden floorboards but he'd spent enough time with them to know how to move in silence. He left the kitchen and crept slowly down the dark, slender hall. There were light fixtures in the walls and ceilings of the house, but Vex rarely turned them on. He didn't want to be caught unawares by darkness, or waste precious seconds waiting for his eyes to adjust. This way, he was always ready.

He slunk by the staircase, passed the closet under the stairs, and snuck into the back room, a functionless place that had once served as the scullery, but was now just a glorified storage closet. According to the real estate agent who sold the place, there'd been a fire in the scullery back in 1902. The then owners had taken advantage of the disaster, which had claimed the life of an old woman – a kitchen maid, it was thought – and redesigned the place, moving the scullery into the kitchen, and turning the burnt room into a second parlour. "With an escape route," the agent had said when Vex and his mother first came to view the house. "They held seances in this room – it was all the rage back in the early 20th century – and the idea was for the back door to serve as a quick out in case a demon or ghost really did decide to join the party."

Now, though, it just held all of Vex's junk, lined up in boxes on both walls.

Vex moved silently across it. On the far side of the room, the back door stood slightly ajar. A cold breeze skated through the gap, mixing up the dark, carrying with it the scent of leaves. Vex's skin tingled. All of his muscles pulled taut as guitar strings. He reached the door, wrapping a hand around the edge of it, old splintered wood digging into his palm. Slowly he drew it open, the hinges emitting a soft, drawn-out screech.

And outside – nothing. The tiled courtyard was weedy and desolate. The back garden, a ragged concrete path surrounded by a forest of overgrown grass, shivered in the evening air. Beyond it the tree line loomed, the pines dark but quiet. There was no sign of movement or life.

Vex went back inside and closed the door, locking it shut. He jiggled it to make sure it wouldn't budge. Then he turned around.

And saw the figure standing in his hallway.