Yes.

Shelly tore out of the station. The rain hit her like the long clayish fingers of the Goblin Police, trying to keep her back.

In her car again, she peeled out of the lot and headed northeast.

The Hedges. That corny fucking place with no real finish line. That lame-ass tourist attraction.

“Fuck Goblin,” she said again. “Fuck it!”

And then, “Well, I don’t have to worry about getting pulled over now. They’re all too busy with my little girl!”

14

The officer that followed Margot through The Hedges looked very angry when they got to the finish line and found nothing but broken glass. Margot, for her part, felt something like relief. The whole experience was turning on her. The Goblin Police were more than simply creepy to her now. They were scaring her. None of the officers said a word the whole drive over, and every now and then one would breathe real heavy like he was working to do it. Staring straight ahead (his fat white hands gripping the wheel), the driver didn’t turn his head once. Not even when a car almost clipped them on the right. Not when a woman darted out of their way on a street corner. Not when a dog ran across the road.

So he’d been hiding the key to the city. Margot didn’t know much about that other than some kooky parents said the key to the city belonged in city hall, and that Goblin was in danger of being “unbalanced” without it there. It was the kind of thing people blamed things on.

You got fired? Well, if the key to the city was still in city hall…

A murder on Farraline Street? Has Mayor Blackwater found the key to the city yet?

So Wayne Sherman had it. But did this make him…bad? Margot couldn’t make up her mind. As she led the officers along the triumphant route, she was alternately proud of being the one person the police could count on to guide them to the finish line, and anxious that she shouldn’t be alone with Goblin Police at all, let alone in a maze. Their lumbering, heavy steps trailed close behind the whole way, and some of them made noises she’d never really heard before. And the deeper she took them, the more she felt the size of The Hedges. The truth was, she felt less and less safe by the turn. And by the time they hit the once dark passage where the bushes met overhead she was shaking. She recalled her mother’s words:

Promise Mom, okay? You won’t go in a room alone with them?

Yes, Mom, but is a pitch-black corner of a maze okay?

She wanted to cry. She did, a little bit, her back to the officers. She heard cracking sounds behind her, but she didn’t think it was boots on sticks. Sounded more like bones resetting, skin stretching, a living transformation.