I guess I didn’t do such a bad job because, after awhile, I almost started to believe it myself.

Lizzie

As soon as she was in among the trees, Lizzie dropped to the ground and threw up.

Oh, she’d talked brave back there, facing the two bogans. Acted brave, too. But she hadn’t been. What she’d been was furious. And when the bigger of the bogans started threatening her, she hadn’t even stopped to think. She’d simply put all those lessons with Johnny back at the gym to good use. Except . . .

She threw up again, dry heaving now because there was nothing left in her stomach. Dizzy and weak, she sat up slowly, pressing her face against the rough bark of the nearest tree trunk.

Except she hadn’t simply defended herself the way Johnny had taught her.

She’d killed him. The bogan. Miserable excuse for a creature though he was, he’d still been a living, breathing, thinking being.

And she’d killed him.

The memory of the wet sound as her heel struck his windpipe made her feel sick all over again.

She leaned against the tree for a long time until she became aware of something else. Or rather a lack of something. The forest around her was utterly silent. Not an animal sound, not a breath of wind.

Shivering, she got to her feet and looked around.

Where was she?

All she remembered was waking in her bed, the two bogans grabbing her and dragging her . . . elsewhere. One moment they were in the hotel room, the next here, in this strange and silent forest.

It was fairyland, she realized. The otherworld. And she had no way of getting back home. Unless there was something in that glade.

Her gaze went to the knife she’d taken from the dead bogan. Reluctantly, she picked it up. This was a whole new world. Who knew what she’d need the knife to defend herself against? She might still feel sick from killing the bogan, but her sense of self-preservation was too strong for her to turn her back on a weapon.

Knife in hand, she started back toward the glade, but had to stop when she came up on an impenetrable wall of undergrowth and thorns. A machete the knife wasn’t. It would be no help here. Turning, she tried going in the opposite direction and found herself on the edge of the glade. She stayed hidden at the tree line, studying the moonlit view. The dead bogan was there. So was the tall grey stone in the center of the glade. The other bogan didn’t seem to have returned yet, either to take the body or to come after her.

No, she thought. He wouldn’t do that on his own after she’d killed his companion. He’d probably gone back to wherever to get the rest of them before coming after her.