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The old brick house still had electricity, presumably to fuel the alarm system It was spooky inside anyway, furniture draped hite sheets, clocks stopped on the walls Jenny kept having the sa: familiarity-unfamiliarity Back and forth, or sometimes both at once

By far the worst was the bases didn’t want to take her down the stairs She’d seen this place last month in a sort of dream, a hallucination created by Julian-but she hadn’t really been here in over ten years Not since the day neighbors had heard terrible screa next door and the police had clattered down the stairs to find five-year-old Jenny on the floor, arle And screa at an open closet door with a strange sygest policeman run back upstairs to call the pararandfather had done it to her The scratches, the torn clothes The blood They paid no attention at all to the five-year-old’s story about ice and shadows in the closet, about hungry eyes that had seen her and tried to take her About how her grandfather had been taken in her place

Instead, the police had thought her grandfather had been a lunatic-and just now, looking at the basement, sixteen-year-old Jenny could see why Every wall, every bookcase, every available surface was jammed with charms of protection

Not such a bad idea for so to summon up and trap demons But, undeniably, it looked weird

"Will you look at this stuff?" Audrey breathed, enthralled "Some of it’s junk, but I’ll bet some of it’s priceless Like this" She stepped forward and lightly touched a silver bell on a shelf "This is Chinese-I saw these when Daddy was stationed in Hong Kong You ring theenuine Tibetan prayer wheel And this-" She lifted a bracelet of agate and gold beads

"That’s Egyptian," Dee interrupted "Seven strands, see? Aba says the nurandmother traveled a lot

"And those are Russian icons," Audrey said, nodding at soold-plated pictures "Very rare, very expensive"

"And that’s fro the conversation triu to a chart on the wall labeled Nuical Hebrew divination systes in ato breathe The room was heavy somehow-overloaded, oppressive Stale air uess, she thought, trying to feel as if she dealt with ical rooms every day Well, that’s e came for It’s tio to her grandfather’s desk In her drearandfather’s journal had been lying open on the desk In real life it wasn’t so convenient There was nothing on the desk but a faded green desk pad

"Maybe on the shelves," she said

She went to one of the bookcases and tilted her head sideways to read It had been a brown leather-bound book, and she was sure she would recognize it when she-

"Found it!" she said, darting forward She opened it to see her grandfather’s heavy black handwriting, then looked back at the shelf "Oh, God, but there isn’t just one journal There’re three We’ll have to read through them all"

"We’ll take turns, like you said" Dee nodded toward the stairway "You and Michael go up and get some sleep-you’re the "

Jenny slept for three hours on the living roo into one of the bedrooms-and then went downstairs to take her place beside Michael She chewed one of Dee’s ry and she hated the texture of the protein bar, but she knew she needed the energy

The journals were strange Her grandfather had written everything up with the precision of a scientist, but what he riting about was bizarre-and so Almost all of it dealt ays to call up the Shadow Men

The Shadow Men, Jenny thought Known by different naes: the aliens, the faery folk, the Visitors, the Others The ones atched

from the shadows and who sometimes took people to-their own place Jenny looked up involuntarily at the closet door which stood open, and sout That here they’d taken hih that portal into-the other place, the place that existed alongside the hu The Shadow World

Her grandfather had called them up because he wanted their power But in the end they’d been too powerful for hiht Jenny’s eye Walker between the worlds Her heart began to pound as she deciphered the dense black writing around it So a Walker between the Worlds reat There are several ible-but the one I consider most likely to succeed would be the circle of runes

"Runes," Jenny whispered The randfather had used to pierce the veil between the worlds She looked at the drawing below the writing "Michael, I’ve got it"

"Really?"

Jenny read a little further and her fingers tightened on the leather cover of the book "Really Get Dee and Audrey And get a knife"

They’d brought To river knife with a five-inch blade It waskayakers who needed their ropes cut-quick

"We have to carve these runes on a door "

said "Then we stain thee them with power, and then we open the door"

"Stain them hat?" Michael said suspiciously

"Blood What else? Don’t worry, Michael, I’ll take care of it Let’s use the door to the basement-not froood for drawing"

It was funny how sirandfather had said he wouldn’t try because it was too dangerous Nobody said, "Are we really going through with this?" Nobody kibitzed-not even Michael They went about it the same way they’d built the pressed-wood stereo cabinet in Tom’s bedroom Michael read the instructions from the journal aloud; the others followed them

"Two circles, one inside the other It doesn’t say how big they’re supposed to be," Michael said "But leave rooo in between them"

Jenny sketched the circles freehand on the smooth oak door with a felt pen

"Okay, now the runes First, Dagaz It goes right at the top and it’s shaped like this, like an hourglass on its side," he said Jenny sketched the angular shape at the top of the inner circle "It says here that Dagaz is like a catalyst It represents ti It ’operates between light and darkness’"

Dawn Jenny thought about the brilliant blue of the Pennsylvania dawn-and about eyes that were just that color Julian was like Dagaz, she thought A catalyst, operating between light and darkness One foot in either world

"The next one is Thurisaz, the thorn It goes to the right-no, a little farther down It’s shaped like-look at this A straight line with a triangle attached to the side Like a thorn sticking out of a stem"

"There are a lot of fairy tales about thorns," Audrey said griet pricked with a thorn or a spindle or a needle and then you die, or go blind, or you sleep forever"

Silently Jenny drew the rune

"The next one’s Gebo It stands for a lot of things: a gift, sacrifice, death The yielding up of the spirit It’s shaped like an X, see?"

Sacrifice Death A queer shudder went up Jenny’s backbone She stared at the book It was a straight X, not like the slanted X of the rune Nauthiz, the one that her grandfather had carved on the closet to restrain the Shadow Men

"See, Jenny?"

She nodded and drew But the strange feeling didn’t go away A bad feeling-and it was connected with Gebo, so to happen

Not now Not right now In the future

Michael’s voice startled her "Next is Isa It’s a rune for the power of priht line, up and down"

Jenny tore her ht of sacrifice and made herself draw

"Kenaz, the torch It’s for the power of prile, see "

"Raidho, fora horse For protection walking between the worlds It’s shaped like an R "

"Uruz, the oxit’s shaped like an upside-down U- "

"I know, Michael" Uruz was the rune on the game box that Julian had sold her "It’s supposed to look like ox horns pointing doard, ready to pierce the veil between the worlds," Jenny said "Is that the last one?"

"Yeah Noe carve it"

Carving the runes wasn’t as hard as Jenny had expected The door was good thick wood, but the runes were all straight lines and angles, which was much easier to carve than any rounded shape Still, there were times when Tom’s Swiss Arhtened of how sharp it was

And she orried about the blood Hoas she going to do it? She was scared of razor blades, and a pin was out of the question If they were going to stain all these runes, they’d need a lot more blood than you could squeeze out of a pinprick

Don’t think about it now When the time conies, you’ll just have to use the knife-and hope you don’t cut your finger off

Just then the problem solved itself The knife slipped

"God!"

Jenny felt a flash of soone almost too quickly to identify as pain She dropped the knife, and she could feel her eyes widen as she stared at her hand-wondering in that first second how bad it was

Not bad A half-inch gash across the meat of her thuht red welled up to obscure thean to slide down her thu inside your skin-even a little way insidewas disconcerting

"Quick, use it," Michael said "Don’t waste it-that stuff’s precious"

The cut was beginning to sting Jenny looked around for so to use as a pen, then collected the blood on top of one fingernail and began to trace the runes that were already carved It stained the pale grooves in the wood a clear light red, the color of a teacher’s red ballpoint pen

Audrey and Dee did the rest of the carving, and Jenny stuck to her gory task She had to squeeze the cut in the end, but there was enough blood to go around

The final product of their labors was slightly wobbly but i between the, Jenny wondered for the first tiht the kids doing this Destroying property Vandalisraffiti

Jenny didn’t care She was still operating in crisis mode, in which all normal rules were suspended She and the others had stepped out of thecould happen and the only rules were their own It was scary-and tre toward Tos of fire

Take hiht to Julian I don’t think so By the time I’m done with you, you’ll wish you’d never started this Ga the circle critically "So what no does it work?"

"Apparently the idea is that writing runes makes whatever you’ve written happen," Michael said "It’s like e drew our nightmares for the first Game, remember? We drew a picture of ere afraid of, and then our pictures came true Runes are the sa, and it beco the representation"

"That’s what Julian toldand said the words, I made my own fate The words came true when I said them"

"And that’s e have to do with this," Michael said "We already did the first two steps, carving the runes and staining thee the runes with power by saying their names out loud That activates them, and then-"