Heavy, unsteady footsteps echoed down the hall, each footfall moving closer to her room. The door was cracked open, letting in a thin beam of light. She pulled the covers up over her mouth and bit down on them to stop herself from screaming. She couldn’t make any noise, couldn’t remind him that she existed. She could already smell the alcohol and stale sweat.

  A radio played somewhere in the house, the muffled, tinny sound of an old Allman Brothers song filtered through the walls. It almost covered the sound of sobbing from the living room. Thump. His hand hit the wall as he steadied himself. The footsteps paused, but only for a moment. He was muttering to himself, his voice deep, words unintelligible, laced with anger and slurred with drink. Coming closer. Step by step, work boots against scuffed linoleum tile.

  The moments stretched. Her thoughts were fuzzy, like a pressure on her mind, slowing things down, stretching them out like a carnival fun-house mirror. She wanted to scramble out of bed and hide, but she couldn’t move.

  The stripe of illumination from the door darkened as his silhouette blocked the light.

  Fear thudded in her chest, curdled in her stomach, and soured on her tongue. ‘No, no, no… I got away from this. This is over. This isn’t real.’ She reached over and pinched her arm hard enough to bruise.

  Lanie’s eyes snapped open, the nightmare broke apart like cobwebs, but the pressure against her mind stayed. Her heightened Dexterity paid for itself as her hand snapped out faster than she could pull her thoughts together, and she grabbed the neck of the little goblin-like man sitting on her chest. The nightmare’s fear turned instantly to an old, old rage. She was never going to be that helpless little girl ever again. With the rage, the pressure against her mind popped like a soap bubble.

  “NoooooOooo… Don’t hurt Basty! Basty is soooOooorry! Don’t hurt… don’t hurt…” the little goblin-man wailed, his drawn-out o’s rising and falling in an odd sing-song way.

  “Snagh… I wasn’t sleeping, I swear! Just resting my eyes… oh!” Nips jerked his head up from where it had been resting against Lanie’s bag. “Oh, bloody hell.”

  “Nips? What manner of creature is this?” Lanie asked, her voice the sort of smooth calm that hints of wickedly sharp shards of ice just under the surface. At least, she hoped that was how it sounded. Her heart was beating so loud it was hard to tell.

  “Basty is Basty. Basty meant no harm. Basty was only… oooOooonly looking, yes, yes, only looking at pretty lady. Don’t hurt Basty.” Basty mewled and twisted, his feet scrabbling against Lanie’s belly, but with no strength to do any damage or pull himself free. His long, twig-like fingers pulled at Lanie’s hand and wrist to no avail.

  Nips peered through the darkness, shook his head, and dove into the messenger bag. He came back out a few seconds later with the little flashlight. Turning it on, he played the beam over the creature.

  It was a scrawny thing, its arms and legs were stick thin, but its stomach was incongruously distended like a starving child. Its head was much too large for its body. Its face was wrinkled like an old man, and its nose was huge and hooked like the beak of a raptor. Its eyes looked like an owl’s eyes: large and round and orange. It was short; Lanie guessed it might have been between two and three feet tall if it was standing upright. Its teeth were as sharp as knives, and there were way too many of them.

  “I think it’s some sort of phobophage, a fear eater, like a night hag. They sneak into people’s rooms at night and ride their chests, giving them nightmares and feeding on the fear. Look at his fingertips.” Nips stepped closer with the light and shined it on the goblin-man’s hands. Lanie grabbed one of the flailing hands in her free hand and held it still so she could see. At the tip of each finger was a tiny sucking mouth.

  “Ugh! Oh, that’s disturbing.” Lanie nearly flung the little creature away in disgust. She suppressed a shudder and held on, though, wanting answers more than distance.

  “Hmm, yes, definitely a phobophage.”

  Lanie stared into the creature’s eyes and nearly growled, “So, you gave me that nightmare. You got into my head and brought back a horror that I worked very hard to put behind me. You took my peaceful night’s sleep from me. I’d say that means things are out of balance. Wouldn’t you say so, Nips?”

  Nips nodded, catching on quickly, “Why, yes. I’d say they are. I’d say there is a debt owed.”

  The struggling creature went still, its flailing limbs dropped limply to its sides in defeat. “What does the lady want of Basty? It will not hurt Basty?”

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  “Only information. True information. I need to know where the Ways are. Both the ones back to the mortal world, and any that lead to other realms. Help me with this, and I’ll let you go.” Lanie was having to work to keep the anger on her face now. The little man looked so pitiful, hanging limp as she held him by his neck. She was starting to feel like a bully.

  “Yes, yes, Basty will help… but…” The momentary spark of hope in the creature's eyes dimmed as quickly as it had appeared, “Basty does not know. Basty is sooooOooorrry. Please, don’t hurt Basty.”

  “Do you know how we can get this information?” Nips asked.

  The little guy perked up again, “Oh… yes, yes! Basty has heard things. Basty knows. The Merchant is who they is wanting. It is said. It is said. It knows the Ways.” Basty tried to nod with enthusiasm, but all he did was bang his chin against Lanie’s thumb.

  “What merchant? Where?” Lanie asked.

  “Zoren Dalgo. At the Crossing it is. A compass it has, a wondrous thing. PooooOoooints the way… points to the Ways. Basty has heard this, yes, yes. It sells many things, many wondrous things from many places. It will know. It will know. Basty says true.”

  “And where is this crossing?”

  “It is Crossing…” Basty’s face scrunched up in thought. “Ah! The wet! Follow the wet to Crossing.” One of Basty’s arms flailed again, this time trying to point to the river. “Down the wet. You will see. You will see.”

  “You aren’t lying to me, are you?”

  “No, NooooOoooo… Basty tells you true, says it true, says it true thrice and done.”

  “The information is good, Lanie. At least to the best of his knowledge. Saying a thing thrice, to the Fae, is as good as an oath,” Nips said.

  Lanie nodded, “Alright, then. I’m going to let you go, but hear this, Basty: if you try to feed from me again, if you send me another nightmare or so much as disturb my sleep, you will not get off nearly so easily. Understood?”

  Basty nodded again, his chin bouncing off Lanie’s hand. “Yes, yes, Basty hears. Kind lady, pretty lady. Basty will trouble you no more. No more.”

  “That’s only twice. Say it one more time,” Lanie demanded. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nips nod in approval.

  Reluctantly, Basty added, “No more. Thrice and done,” he said, with the air of a toddler told he can’t have more cookies. “Basty can go now?”

  Lanie sat up and put the little creature down on the ground. As soon as she released her grip, he was gone. She didn’t see him go. She’d felt a brief surge of… something, but it was faint and was gone as quickly as Basty.

  She hadn’t forgotten what her interface had said about her becoming more sensitive to the flows of power, but she hadn’t had the chance or energy to explore that. She wondered if that was what she’d just felt, or if it was something else. Shaking her head, she resolved to remember the feeling and stay alert for it in the future.

  “So… that happened.” Lanie rubbed her hand against her skirt, trying to get rid of the rubbery feeling of Basty’s skin.

  “I’m sorry,” Nips said.

  “Huh? Sorry for what?” Lanie peered at the Brownie in confusion.

  “I was supposed to be keeping watch.” Nips scratched the back of his head. His hat was missing, and his fur was flattened on one side and sticking straight up on the top of his head. Lanie had to fight to keep from grinning at his bedhead.

  She waved a hand to dismiss the issue. “No big deal. We were both tired, and nothing too awful happened.” A flash of remembered fear from the nightmare gave lie to her words, but she squashed it. That was the past. It wasn’t going to rule her.

  “But, it could have. Fairy is not a safe place. We can’t afford to let our guard down here. I knew that, but I still…”

  “Past is past, done is done. We’re both doing the best we can in a bad situation. A friend of mine always says that if the screw-up doesn’t kill you, you own it, you learn from it, and you move on.” Lanie shrugged. “We’re not dead.”

  She rubbed her face. “I doubt I’ll be getting back to sleep. Any idea how long it is ‘til sunrise?” Now that she was awake and the adrenaline was fading, the cold was starting to seep in. It wasn’t as awful as the mountainside, but she wanted to get moving to warm up. She took a quick peek at her interface and saw that her health was only a few points down from full, so she must have slept for at least four hours. It wasn’t a full night in a feather bed, but it was better than nothing.

  In fact, now that she was paying attention to her body, she realized that she felt better than she had any right to feel after sleeping outside on the ground, in the cold. Especially after the day she’d had. She pushed back her left sleeve to look at her arm. The bites from the gremlin and the spider were gone. They had completely healed, leaving behind only a web of silvery scars that looked a decade old. The frostbite from the trek down the mountain was gone. Other than her dry throat and rumbling stomach, she felt fine. ‘I could get used to this,’ she thought.

  Nips was squinting up at the sky. He gave up and scooped up his hat from where it had fallen. Dusting it off, he said, “A couple of hours at least, maybe longer. It’s hard to keep track when I can’t see the sky.”

  The moon was out. Very little of its dim silver light made it through the canopy of branches and pine needles above them, but with her Shadow Sight, it was enough for her to see by. Better than in the cave, at least. She marveled at how well she could make out details in the gloom.

  “OK, then. Let’s see if we can find that river without falling into it. If we’re lucky, we might find Crossing in time for breakfast.”

  It didn’t take long to find the river. Lanie just had to follow the sound of running water. She stepped out of the cover of the trees onto a stone outcropping and whistled.

  The river was wide, and it sparkled under the light of a half-moon as it rushed away to some unknown destination. The forest continued, tall and dark, on the far bank, and the mountains rose taller still behind it. The moonlight made the snow-capped peaks seem to glow in lines and daggers of luminous white. That sight was beautiful enough, but the sky…

  Lanie had never seen so many stars. She’d seen pictures of the Milky Way, but she’d lived and worked in cities her whole life. She’d never seen it for herself before, never realized how amazing it was. It was like a blanket of diamonds across the sky, and she couldn’t help but stop and stare in wonder.