The jagged lines of her writing, like piles of sticks, appeared quickly.

They know where you are.

Dea went cold. “Who?” she said. But her mom had suddenly gone very still, alert. She was no longer looking at Dea; her head was turned slightly, like an animal listening for the approach of a predator. Dea leaned in and breathed on the glass. Who? she wrote, reversing the letters, as her mother had done for her.

But Miriam had turned away completely. For a second, Dea saw only the wild tangle of her mother’s hair. Dea pounded once on the glass with a fist. “Mom,” she whispered. And then, a little louder, “Mom.”

Miriam turned around again, and Dea stumbled backward. Her mother’s face was contorted now, drawn tight and white with terror. Her eyes were like two black pits. She was screaming soundlessly, her mouth working around words Dea couldn’t hear. Dea was sweating, crying, reaching for her mother’s hand beyond the glass.

Miriam shifted. For a quick second, Dea saw the faceless men behind her, ragged mouths open in a silent roar.

Then Miriam’s face was back, pressed almost directly to the mirror. This time, Dea understood what she was saying.

Duck.

Dea’s mother drew back a fist. The monsters leapt and Miriam swung toward the glass. Dea just had time to launch herself to the ground. The IV stand clattered on top of her. When the mirror shattered it made a sound like a vast thunderbolt. Then a tinkling, fine as rain, as all the glass came down.

FOURTEEN

She was moved into a room with no TV, no mirrors, no hard edges of any kind. The room was gray and smooth and featureless, like a pebble worn down over time. Her door was locked by a nurse from the outside, and she had a single window, barred with steel, that looked out onto a short stretch of pavement and a brick wall: the windowless back of another portion of the hospital. Her food came with plastic forks and plastic spoons, and it was always inedible. All of her possessions were removed, carefully bagged, and secured in a locker. Only the nurses had the key.

Dr. Chaudhary came to check in on her more often, sometimes as much as three times in a single afternoon. She no longer looked so pretty. She looked old, and very worried.

The one nice thing about being in the Crazy Ward, as Dea started thinking about it, was that she could avoid the police. No one was allowed to visit unless Dea gave her permission. When one of the nurses announced that a woman named Kate Patinsky had tried to gain access to Dea’s room, Dea specified that the only people allowed to see her were Gollum, Connor, and her mother. Putting the last two on the list made her feel better, though she knew they wouldn’t show up.

Dea was bored and exhausted all the time—whatever meds they were giving her were strong, and, because she hadn’t walked a dream in days, she was weak. For two days she passed in and out of sleep. There was nothing else to do, and she didn’t want to think about her mom or the monsters behind the mirror, and what it all meant.

On the third day, she woke up to an unfamiliar sound. A shadow flickered past her window, disrupting the thin daylight. She thought of her mother’s hand, passing over a lightshade. She blinked. It was a bird: a bird hovering just beyond the bars that crisscrossed the heavy-duty glass. It was a lurid red, vivid against the weak gray light, and Dea felt a sharp ache as she watched it flutter, flutter, and then swoop away. The bird had brought with it some recollection, a memory of a memory of a word. She struggled to hold onto it even as her brain began to blur again, loosen at the edges . . . as she began to slip.

Harbinger. The word was harbinger.

Harbingers led the way out of dreams.

Her mother was trapped in a dream of monsters.

Dea struggled to sit up. Her body didn’t feel like her own. It took a long time to get to the bathroom. Her arm was bandaged, spotted with old blood. She didn’t feel it. She didn’t feel anything.

She ran the water, bent over the toilet, stuck her fingers down her throat, and threw up.

It helped, but only a little.

Later, when the nurse came in with her afternoon dose of medication, Dea kept the pills folded neatly in her palm as she clapped a hand to her mouth and made an exaggerated point of swallowing.

“Good girl,” the nurse said. This one was older, Latina, and wore a cross around her neck. Dea thought if you spent enough time in the Crazy Ward, you’d need to pray for something.

When the dinner tray came, she pushed the pills she hadn’t swallowed to the very bottom of the applesauce. After only a few hours, she already felt better, more alert. She was careful to yawn and look dazed, though, when the night nurse came—this one young, skinny, and frightened-looking, with a rabbit’s protruding front teeth—so she wouldn’t get pumped full of sleeping pills.

She couldn’t if she had any prayer of getting out of there.

On the fourth day, she answered Dr. Chaudhary’s questions humbly, eyes down. Yes, she had been trying to kill herself that day in the car. Yes, she had deliberately shattered the mirror, thinking she could use the shards of glass to hurt herself. But she wanted to live now. She was ready to heal.

Later that afternoon, Gollum came to visit again, and Dea was allowed to leave her room and go greet her. The hallway was full of identical rooms, some of them continuously locked, others closed only at lights-out. Through the narrow windows she could see other patients moving around or curled up in the fetal position on their beds. A guy with feather-white lashes and bleached hair suctioned his face to the window as she moved past, rapped four times against the window, as if he wanted to be let out. She touched two fingers to his fist and moved on.

The hallway dead-ended in a reception area. Gollum was waiting for her there, not even bothering this time to try to seem casual.

“Hey,” she said, making no move to hug Dea. “I can’t stay long.”

I don’t blame you, Dea nearly said. But she knew that was mean-spirited.

They sat side by side on plastic chairs bolted to the floor. Beyond the reception desk, mechanical swinging doors led off into other, less secure, portions of the hospital. They could only be opened with a code.

“Are you all right?” Gollum asked in a low voice.

“Been better,” Dea said, trying to make it a joke. Gollum didn’t smile. She looked younger than usual today in an old Harry Potter sweatshirt.

She reached out as though to touch the bandages on Dea’s arm. Then she withdrew her hand. “What’d you do to yourself, Dea?”

“I didn’t—” Dea shook her head. She knew there was no point in trying to explain. “I’m not crazy, Gollum. Okay? But it’s too complicated to get into.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy.”

“Good. Because I’m not.”

They sat in silence for a minute. In the corner, a TV was playing some grocery store game show, and one of the other patients was sitting in front of it, chin down, asleep.

“I talked to Connor,” Gollum said in a rush, as if she had to force the words out. Dea’s stomach flipped completely inside out. “He told me to tell you he’s thinking of you. He . . . he misses you, Dea.”

“Oh, yeah? Then why hasn’t he come to see me?” Dea didn’t mean to sound so bitter.

Gollum’s expression turned guarded. “He’s having a tough time,” she said carefully. “Besides, he thought you wouldn’t want to see him.” She nudged Dea with an elbow. “What happened between you guys, anyway?”

Dea just shook her head.

Gollum sighed and stood up. “I got to go. My dad—”

“That’s okay,” Dea said quickly. “I get it.” But when one of the nurses buzzed Gollum back into the hall, she was filled with an ache of loneliness so strong, it felt like her insides had been hollowed out.