You run for a few hundred feet. No one seems to be coming behind you. Everything seems normal. Just another chaotic airport.


You keep running. Maybe--maybe--this is all a sick joke. Well, probably not. But it could be an idle threat. After all, you're in public. It shouldn't be too hard to stay around plenty of witnesses--you're in a friggin' airport at Christmastime. This is fine. You can handle this.


You dart into a gift shop. You browse behind a high shelf, waiting to see if anyone (or anything) is following you. Nothing looks suspicious, and no one seems to be paying you any attention.


Just to be safe, you buy a dark blue Atlanta Braves sweatshirt and pull it over the cashmere J Crew sweater you got from the thrift shop in order to impress your boyfriend's parents.


What else will make you stand out? You're carrying a bright red purse.


After checking your surroundings, you walk over and find a tote bag that says Hotlanta! And buy it (the clerk is, by now, looking at you like you're a freak). You step behind the shelf and transfer everything in your large purse into the tote bag.


Suddenly you see them. Two. They're about half your height, with green scales and large yellow teeth. They walk on two feet like a person, but they move like lizards. They look like the bad buys in a fairy tale. Goblins, or something. 


And no one notices.


People move around them automatically, like they do for plants or luggage, but their eyes never focus on them.  


The goblins' eyes are small, soulless, but peering everywhere. Their little nostrils--their snouts are shaped like an alligator's, but shorter--are twitching. Sniffing for you.


You step back, trying to move gradually in case fast movement kicks your scent into the air. Sweat pricks your underarms--a result, no doubt, of both your nervousness and the extra layer you've put on.


But when you peek again, they've passed by.


You pull off the sweater under your sweatshirt and manage to yank it off through the neck.


Maybe the smartest thing would be to keep them in front of you. After all, your gate is all the way on the other side of the airport, and you only have four hours to get there. The only way out of this nightmare is to get on that plane to New York.


You wait for them to get about fifty feet ahead, peek out of the store, and, seeing nothing amiss, begin following them. You begin walking toward the center of the airport. Along the way, you throw away the purse and sweater, and stop in the bathroom and cover yourself with sickly-sweet strawberry soap--anything to hide your natural scent.After a few minutes, you reach an escalator, which will take you down to the tram area, where you will get a ride to your terminal.


As you near the bottom, suddenly there is a slap-slapping on the marble floor, like someone in thin wet socks.


You turn. Creatures are behind you, weaving around the people at the top of the escalator.


You hurry down the escalator. The tram to Gate C has arrived. Should you try to catch it, hoping the doors will close before they can follow you (or if they do, that you can hop out before they can do the same) or turn and fight?

You run for the tram.

You hurry onto the tram just as the doors close.  


 

You aren't stupid--no way is this hell over with. But at least you're safe for now.


 

The tram slows at B Gate. Will any of them get on? You edge toward the doors, ready to leap out, but it's just a group of middle schoolers in matching sweatshirts and their chaperone. The tram ambles forward.


 

At the next stop, a guy about your age, tall and skinny with a t-shirt advertising a Dropkick Murphys show from eight years ago, gets on. He notices you.


 

Huh. Come to think of it, not many people have done that since you found the first postcard. You're no Megan Fox, but you are a reasonably attractive twenty-year-old girl, and you're accustomed to a moderate amount of male perusal while in public. And yet people's eyes have been sliding past you all day. Only airport employees have acknowledged your existence. Weird.


 

This guy, however, sees you.


 

Probably not good.


 

You edge a little closer to the doors. What if he's one of them? A normal college-age boy outside, a goblin inside? Maybe that's the next level--at first the monsters are easy to spot, and then they're in the form of fairly cute guys.


 

He walks up to you. "Hi."


 

This close he looks familiar. Familiar like a human I've seen before, or familiar like a goblin?


 

"I think we went to camp together."


 

His eyes are a yellow-striped green--what color were theirs? Damn. You were too panicked to notice.


 

"Guess not," he says. You must look pretty freaked out, because he starts backing away slowly.


 

And then his face clicks into place. Triple R Ranch. Summer before fourth grade. His name is Dmitri, and the reason you still know that is that he was almost your first kiss. (Instead it was this loser named Jason in sixth grade. He told everyone you tasted like bubble gum--which doesn't seem that bad, but somehow he made it sound absolutely disgusting. What a prick.)


 

"Wait," you say. "Dmitri, right?"


 

"Yeah. You're Claire."


 

"Clara, actually. That's my real name." You like Claire better, but it was too hard to keep telling everyone to call you Claire. They kept forgetting, and finally you just gave up and went with it.


 

He asks where you're going, and you tell him. He says he's going to Philadelphia to spend Christmas with his dad--he's headed to the same terminal you are.


 

His eyes move over you, but not in a flirtatious way. "Are you okay?"


 

You look down. In addition to the sloppy-looking sweatshirt, you are sweating profusely. "It's been...a stressful trip," you finish lamely.


 

"How so?"


 

He seems to know there's a deeper meaning to that--which isn't itself strange, Dmitri has always been able to read people pretty well--but you can't shake the feeling that running into him is a little too coincidental. Should you trust him enough to tell him you're being stalked, or just politely brush him off?