When he turned, there was the old man from the corner of the first house he’d gone into on Margrave. The man approached swiftly and his hands came up in front of him. Owen detected the blank affect in the old creep’s eyes. He realized this was a cord-cutter. The pale hand came toward him, aiming for his chest. Owen, surprised, spun to flee, forgetting to jump, and put one leg in front of the other. He tumbled to the ground. The cutter hovered above him and descended. Owen was on his feet in a flash, but before he could take two steps, there was another cutter directly in front of him and one coming in from the side. As the pack closed in, they made a noise like the hissing of snakes. He heard Melody’s voice in the back of his mind yell, “Jump.”

As his three attackers converged, he flew up and away, and at the height of his ascent, he was yanked back to his earthbound body with a whooshing sound he’d never noticed before. He woke to the birdsong and the red sunrise coming through the blinds of his bedroom. A chill ran through him when the thought sank in that he almost didn’t make it back. What Melody told him was true. Once you noticed the cord-cutters weren’t sleepers, and you registered that frozen look in their eyes, all their actions, dictated by the screwy natural selection of the night world, elicited a sense of nausea.

Monday morning, in the children’s section, he was looking for a book a mother requested. The woman followed him up and down the stacks, and her little girl, maybe three years old, followed behind her. Eventually, the book in question was found out of place in the low bookshelf that ran beneath the painting of Sleeping Beauty.

“One of the kids must have reshelved it,” said Owen, and gave the book to the blond young woman who, while waiting, had lifted her daughter into her arms.

“Here’s the ABCs, Jenny,” the woman said to the child.

“ABCs,” repeated Jenny, but paid no attention to the book. Instead, she was pointing at the mural.

“Sleeping Beauty,” said Owen.