Jenny and her husband, Ben, were not exactly aware that for the past several days a woman out of a fairy tale had been staying in their house. Not just any woman: the girl with backward hands, heroine of a number of the stories in Thirteen Tales of the Gray. Her name was Wander, which was all she’d managed to tell Eleanor and her friends before she declared herself “weary” and fell asleep.

For four solid days.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Eleanor said quickly. Luckily, Aunt Jenny and Uncle Ben were sitting with their backs to the kitchen window, but Naomi, Eleanor’s seven-month-old cousin, giggled madly, pudgy hands stretched toward the window.

At least this meant Wander was awake.

“You can talk to us, you know,” Ben said. “I realize we’re totally uncool adults, but we’re pretty smart.”

Jenny and Ben had been trying to turn Hot Cocoa Night into Tell Us Your Problems Night for months, but Eleanor couldn’t exactly break it to them that her problems were less “homework is hard” and more “immortal bad guys are trying to capture me and my friends so they can get home to their freaky evil world.”

“Everything is fine,” Eleanor assured them, just as Jack, her father, strode across the lawn. He gestured frantically at Wander.

Wander dropped her hands, and the moonlight trailed to the ground with a sound like a violin bow sighing across the strings. Jenny started to turn to see what had made the noise.

In a second Jenny was going to see Wander. And while most people couldn’t see magical things properly, or remember them once they had, that forgetfulness came at a price. Just this past spring, mud monsters had attacked the house and kidnapped Ben. Afterward, Jenny had migraines for over a month, and Ben still woke up with nightmares—even though they didn’t remember any of it.

Eleanor thought frantically. She needed to distract them. “How do you know if you like someone?” she blurted out.

Jenny’s head whipped back around. “Do you have a crush, Ellie-Belly?” she asked.

“You haven’t called me that since I was four,” Eleanor complained, cheeks turning red-hot. “And no. Or maybe? I don’t know.” It had just been the first thing she could think of. She didn’t have time for crushes. For feelings of any kind, really, other than dread and anticipation over what the People Who Look Away would try next to snatch up her and her friends.

“Who is he? Or she? They?” Ben asked. His eyes narrowed. “What are their future prospects, career-wise? Can they pass a background check? Can they change a tire?”

“Uncle Ben, I’m thirteen. No one my age can change a tire,” Eleanor said, rolling her eyes. “And there aren’t any criminal masterminds at my school.”