Me, my shield, Justin’s energy, and that picture window exploded onto the front lawn. I remembered the enormous sound of the shattering glass and wood, and the hot sting of a dozen tiny cuts from bits of flying glass and wood. I remember being furious and terrified.

I went through the open space where the window had been, fell onto the lawn, took it in a roll, and came up sprinting.

“Boy!” Justin said, projecting his voice loudly. I looked over my shoulder at him as I ran. His eyes were more coldly furious than I had ever seen them. “You are here with me—with Elaine. Or you are nowhere. If you don’t come back right now, you are dead to me.”

I lopped the last two words off the sentence to get his real meaning and poured on more speed. If I stayed, he meant to render me helpless, and from that beginning there could be no good endings. If I went back angry, I could fight him, but I couldn’t win—not against the man who taught me everything I knew. I couldn’t call the cops and tell them Justin was a mad wizard—they’d write me off as a nutcase or prankster without thinking twice. It wasn’t like I could run to Oz and ask a more powerful wizard for help.

He’d never told me about the White Council or the rest of the supernatural world. Abusers like to isolate their victims. People who feel that they are completely alone tend not to fight back.

“Boy!” Justin’s voice roared, now openly filled with rage. “Boy!”

He didn’t need to say anything more. That rage said it all. The man who had given me a home was going to kill me.

It hurt so much, I wondered if he already had.

I put my head down and ran faster, my tears making the world a blur, with only one thought burning in my head:

This wasn’t over. I knew that Justin could find me, no matter where I ran, no matter how well I hid. I hadn’t escaped that straitjacket. I had only delayed it for a little while.

I didn’t have any choice.

I had to fight back.

“What happened next?” asked a fascinated voice.

I shook my head and snapped out of the reverie, looking up to the sunlit sky outside my grave. Winter’s hold was definitely weakening. The sky was grey clouds interspersed with streaks of summer blue sky. There was a lot of water dripping down the edges of my grave, though the snow at the bottom was still holding its chill.

The Leanansidhe sat at the edge of my grave, her bare, dirty feet swinging back and forth. Her bright red hair had been bound back in a long tail, and she was dressed in the shreds of five or six different outfits. Her head was wrapped in a scarf that had been knitted from yarn duplicating various colors of dirty snow, and the tattered ends of it hung down on either side of her head. It gave her a sort of lunatic-coquette charm, especially considering the flecks of what looked like dried blood on the pale skin of her face. She looked as happy as a kid on Christmas morning.