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the length of his body with just enough restless indecision to keep him watching the digital display of a clock until the numbers justified getting out of bed.
    He lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He held the ring so tightly in his hand that he could feel the prongs of the setting cutting into his skin. He would have to get something—string, a leather cord—so that he could wear it again. Wide awake, he focused his attention on the clock. He watched the numbers bleed into each other: 12:04; 12:05; 12:06. He counted the roses on the comforter cover. He tried to remember the words to “Waltzing Matilda.”
    When he startled awake at 5:58, Ross could not believe it. He blinked, feeling better than he had in months. He swung his feet over the side of the bed and stood up, wondering if Shelby might have a spare toothbrush.
    It was the absence of the slight weight against his chest that reminded him of the ring. Ross opened his fist and panicked. The diamond he’d fallen asleep clutching was nowhere in sight—not under the covers, not on the carpet, not even behind the bed, which Ross moved with frantic haste. I’ve lost her , Ross thought, staring blankly at what he’d awakened holding instead: a 1932 penny—smooth as a secret; still warm from the heat of his hand.

TWO
    F or an eight-year-old, Lucy Oliver knew quite a lot. She could list all the state capitals; she could explain how a thundercloud formed; she could spell RHYTHM forward and backward. She knew other things too, more important, non-school things. For example, she knew that her great-grandma had come home from the doctor a month ago with little white pills that she hid in the toe of an orthopedic sneaker in her closet. She knew that when grown-ups lowered their voices it meant you had to listen harder. She knew that even the smartest person in the world could be scared by what he or she didn’t understand.
    Lucy also knew, with staunch conviction, that it was only a matter of time before one of them got her.
    They changed form, from night to night. Sometimes they were the shifting shape of the patterns on her curtains. Sometimes they were the cold spot on the floor as Lucy raced across the wide wooden boards into bed. Sometimes they were a smell that made Lucy dream of leaves and dark and carcasses.
    Tonight she was pretending that she was a turtle. Nothing could get into that hard shell; nothing at all. Not even the thing she was certain was breathing at this very second inside her closet. But even with her eyes wide open, Lucy could see the night changing. In some spots it got more pointed; in others it drew back . . . until she was staring into the see-through face of a woman so sad it made Lucy’s stomach hurt.
    I will find you , the lady said, right inside Lucy’s own head.
    She stifled a scream, because that would wake up her great-grandmother, and whipped the covers over her head. Her thin chest pumped like a piston; her breathing went damp. If this woman could find her, anywhere, then where would Lucy hide? Would her mother know she’d been snatched, just by the dent Lucy’s body left behind on the mattress?
    She snaked one hand out far enough to grab the phone she’d placed on her nightstand and stamped the button that automatically dialed her mother’s lab. Lucy imagined an invisible line connecting her from this phone to the one her mother was holding, a wireless umbilicus, and was so grateful for the picture in her head that she couldn’t squeeze any words around it.
    “Oh, Lucy,” her mother sighed into the silence. “What’s the matter now?”
    “It’s the air,” Lucy whispered, hating her voice. It came out tiny and frantic, like the scramble of mice. “It’s too heavy.”
    “Did you take your inhaler?”
    Lucy had. She was old enough to know what to do when her asthma flared. But it wasn’t that kind of heavy. “It’s going to crush me.” There, it had gotten even worse. Lucy lay down beneath the weight of