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cultural conditioning before deciding I wasn’t going to take a shower and put on makeup just to go walking around a field with Trey. Boots and jeans and a flannel shirt would do.
    That settled, I contemplated what to do while waiting for Trey. I realized there were still rooms in the house I hadn’t seen—there was apparently a tower , too—and I decided that was pretty messed up, and I should know if there was a room full of human hearts in bird cages or a meth lab or a room painted black except for all the red pentagrams. I decided to circle the house and look for external doors, or, failing that, windows I could crawl through. At the front door, I plucked the sword cane on a whim—I’d probably need a walking stick, and why not take one I could brandish at Trey later if he turned out to be a secret creep? (I didn’t get that impression, but nobody’s evil-bastard detector is foolproof, and I believe in playing it safe.) I went outside into the sunshine and breathed deep, grudgingly willing to admit there was something to this whole fresh-country-air thing. While I was basking in the glow of nature’s embrace and all that, my phone rang. Charlie.
    “I’m confused,” I said. “It’s not dark yet, and you’re conscious. Unless you rolled over on your phone and dialed me in your sleep—”
    “Maybe I haven’t even been to bed from last night. Did you ever think of that?” There was a lot of laughter and clinking glass in the background, and I felt a sudden stab of homesickness. He was probably out on the patio of a restaurant, probably with various people I knew and maybe even a few I liked, and they were all very far away. “So how’s Hicksville?”
    “It’s got its charms. You really have to see this house. It’s unreal. I can’t decide if it’s amazing or terrifying.” I was strolling as I talked, walking past the Studebaker, around the ancient washing machine, through a pair of notched and splintery sawhorses, stepping over an upside-down steel washtub with a hole in the bottom, approaching a rickety tin-roofed shed that stood in apparent defiance of gravity. I peeked inside the shed and saw various implements of yard care and home repair: hoes, rakes, pipe wrenches, sacks of fertilizer, a toolbox…and a pair of long-handled bolt cutters. Ah-ha. I’d just solved my locked-room problem.
    Charlie said, “Tempting as it is to visit you, I’m not sure I want to throw rocks at a hole in the ground or whittle a bar of soap or whatever people do for fun down there. I’ve never been to the Deep South, and I’m not sure I’m missing much.”
    “Oh, I don’t know. It’s awfully pretty. Plus only one person has been super-racist to me so far, and I’ve been here almost a whole day.” I closed the shed door and walked toward the woods, whacking at long grasses with the sword cane, appreciating its heft. I considered drawing the blade and slashing back some of the scraggly bushes, but I’d probably end up lopping off my own foot or something. “Besides, we could just light things on fire in this giant field I’ve got for a backyard, and avoid all other human contact. I’ll even buy you a plane ticket for fall break. I’m halfway rich, for a little while. And I met this cute boy—”
    “Cute boy, you say? Sign me up.”
    “Seriously, I could use some company—”
    I heard a noise then, from the woods, and it shocked me into silence. Even now I’m not sure entirely how to describe it: like a screaming woman, but with this deep, growly level of vibrato underneath it, and something piping like flutes, and maybe even the blat of a trumpet. Except that makes it sound like it was a bunch of sounds, and it wasn’t , it was singular and unified and absolutely otherworldly. Also loud as hell. But it rang out only for a moment, and then a whole cloud of birds—bright-blue wings, so I’m guessing blue jays, but I’m no ornithologist—burst from the trees, squawking angrily, before turning like