“Don’t you see? Your sister left you, Ryker. And we found you.”

          “She just came to this . . . this alternate dimension, alone? And then what? Sent those little servants of yours after me?”

          “No. She didn’t come alone. And the goblins were there on my order, to find you. The council wanted you destroyed. You weren’t supposed to live, Ryker.”

          He wanted to call her a liar, to deny everything she’d said, but nothing else seemed to fit the current situation. Down the rabbit hole. The phrase rolled through his head like Alice had rolled into Wonderland, down a hole of the unexplainable. He stared at Zio, wordless. If it weren’t for the splinter working its way into his clenched fist, the undeniable foul smell wafting through his nose, and the painfully fading cloud of beer, he might’ve convinced himself it was a dream.

          He looked into Zio’s hypnotic purple gaze. “But . . . who did she come here with?”

          “I believe they call him Grey.”

          For a moment he wondered if he’d heard correctly. But then, of course he had. He’d always known Grey for what he was since that night, the one he’d tried to forget but couldn’t. A blue man had saved Ryker and told him to look out for Grey—that they would need to lean on each other. When Grey had showed up at school the next week in a trench coat nearly identical to his rescuer, Ryker had known that Grey had seen the blue man too. And for a reason he couldn’t understand, it had instantly birthed a firestorm of hatred for Grey.

          But then it had gotten worse—the way Grey looked at his sister, the way he openly waved his flag of strangeness. The little freak was practically a walking announcement to the world of what had happened that night. Deep down, Ryker lived in constant fear that one day Grey would approach him about it, his secret would get out, and he would never be able to bottle it up again.

          Ryker clenched his fists harder, imagining a new use for the chair legs. “Take me to them.”

          “Oh, I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”