Steeling herself, she stepped out into the glade. She walked once all around it, then stopped to study the standing stone. If there was a door or a gate back into her own world, she couldn’t see it.

She kept her gaze away from the dead bogan.

Okay. So there was no way home, nothing to help her here. But maybe she could summon help.

She tried Grey first, calling his name. Her voice seemed feeble, as though something about the air was swallowing its volume.

And there was no response.

So much for his help, she thought. But then, he hadn’t promised to help her. Not like Walker had.

She called his name next, over and over, until her throat felt rough.

When she stopped, the silence was oppressive. Nervousness went skittering up her spine and she began to shiver again.

She was too much in the open. At any moment, the bogan could return, a pack of his friends in tow.

She retreated to the tree line, then went deeper in amongst the trees until once again she was stopped by the wall of underbrush and thorn. Dressed only in panties and a T-shirt, there was no way she could get through it unscathed. She wasn’t sure it was passable even if she had been properly dressed for it.

But she couldn’t just stay here, waiting for the bogans. So she began to follow the wall of tightly-knit branches and thorns, hoping to find a place where she could get through. Get through to where, she had no idea, but she didn’t want to still be here, where the bogans would have no trouble finding her upon their return. There was no real place to hide. The lowest tree boughs were well out of her reach, and she wasn’t much of a climber—not enough so that she could shimmy up a trunk in bare legs.

She wasn’t sure how far she’d gone when she was suddenly struck by something odd on one of the trees ahead of her. She couldn’t make out what it was, just that it was a white blotch against the dark of the tree’s trunk. Knife held out before her, she walked slowly toward it. The moonlight was faint by the time it got through the boughs above and her gaze had long-since adjusted to the dimness, but she had to get right up to the tree before she was actually able to see what it was.

And then she felt like throwing up all over again.