Later, after dinner and dishes were done, they sprawled in Zoë’s room. She handed her little point and click camera to Ainsel. “Enjoy the blast from the past while I go through some of my picture notes.”

Ainsel happily put aside her homework and took the camera. There were a lot of pictures of Tyler, which wasn’t really surprising, and not enough of Zoë, even considering she was usually the photographer. Tyler had redeye in a ridiculously large proportion of the photos, too. Ainsel thought she was no longer creeped out by such a common phenomenon, but today it made her uncomfortable.

She flipped back and forth between several pictures until she figured out why. In almost all the photos of Tyler, he was looking directly at Zoë, and usually there was something false about his expression. Even if his mouth curved in a laugh, his eyes didn’t smile.

Ainsel shivered and flipped forward in the camera’s memory, coming up on more recent stuff. These photos were mostly dark, despite the flash. They’d been taken at night, and that made it very hard to tell the subject matter.

“Can I just upload these to your computer?”

Zoë didn’t glance up from her little notebook. “Sure. Go ahead and delete them from the memory when you’re done.”

Ainsel seated herself at Zoë’s desk and hooked up the camera. Then she fidgeted as they slowly uploaded, the oldest first. “Why do you take notes on your photos?”

“Don’t you keep track of how your baking experiments come out?”

Ainsel thought about the cookbooks she’d annotated, sometimes vigorously. “I guess so.” The computer beeped, and she immediately stopped wondering if her notes were really the equivalent of Zoë’s and turned her attention to the photo editor.

There were all sorts of sliders to adjust the light and contrast in a picture. Ainsel didn’t have a ton of experience with them, but they weren’t exactly hard even for her. She hit the ‘remove redeye’ on each and every picture of Tyler, then spent a bit more time manually adjusting the night photos.

After a few moments it became clear that they’d been taken in a forest. They were darker than they should have been, because there was a bright spot in each picture that reflected back all the light of the flash. At first the bright spot was small, half-hidden by several trees. But in the last photo it was front and center, dominating the night forest scene and impossible to make out no matter how Ainsel moved the sliders.

“Zoë? What’s this?”

Zoe came over to stand beside her. “I don’t know,” she said, sounding strange. “When was it taken?” 

Ainsel couldn’t figure out how to tell until Zoë pointed out the properties panel. Then she sat back. “This was taken Saturday, Zoë. When I spent the night. You didn’t say you went outside.”

“I didn’t,” Zoë whispered. “At least, I don’t remember going outside.” Slowly she moved back to the bed and flipped through the notebook to later entries. Then she sank down onto the bed as if her legs couldn’t support her anymore.

“I’ve got notes here, from Thursday night. I don’t remember writing them. That was one of the nights I fell asleep before I could get outside.” She stared off into space.

After a moment of patience, Ainsel reached over and tugged the notebook out of her loose hand. She narrowed her eyes at Zoë’s jagged handwriting.

So sleepy. How did I get here? I just want to write this down before I

A kingdom on the other side of the stars.

The Night Masters banished long ago.

So beautiful.

A queen in crystal.

His eyes.

A dream.

The forest is dangerous. The wolves…

Ainsel felt dizzy. A queen in crystal. Deja vu swept over her, as if she’d dreamt of something and forgotten it until now. She couldn’t visualize the queen in crystal, but the idea was familiar and it frightened her. And the kingdom on the other side of the stars….

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“This isn’t photography notes,” Ainsel told Zoë abruptly. “You saw something out there, and you tried to get a picture of it.”

“Why can’t I remember?” Zoë demanded. “All I remember is falling asleep and waking up the next morning. Why am I losing time?”

Ainsel stretched her mouth in something that was cousin to a smile and squeezed Zoë’s hand. “As far as I know, it just… happens sometimes.”

Zoë blinked, and then looked stricken. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t think…”

Ainsel shrugged. “I can help you go through what might be happening. According to big thick books. You could be suppressing some traumatic event. You might have been injured. Shock can often trigger partial amnesia, you know.” She copied the dry voice of the doctors who had explained it to her so many times. It hadn’t really helped her. She didn’t think it wasn’t going to help Zoë, either.

Zoë stretched her arms out, looking herself up and down. “I’m not injured, not in any way I can see. I don’t want to imagine what kind of traumatic event it could be…”

Ainsel scanned the notebook page again.“You mention the wolves here.”

“No bites. The wolves definitely wanted to bite.” Zoë sounded distracted. She stood up abruptly and went over to the sliding glass door, yanking the curtains aside. “What’s out there? What’s happening to me when I go out there?”

“If you go out, you’ll just end up back in bed without knowing how it happened,” Ainsel predicted.

“What if you came with me?” Zoë asked. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright. “What if we both took cameras?”

Ainsel shook her head slowly. “Not with the wolves. Not with Remy. We’d get eaten alive.” Then she bit her tongue, wishing she’d stopped with the wolves.

Zoë didn’t notice, though. She went back to the computer and started adjusting the same sliders that Ainsel had already played with. “This doesn’t look like a wolf. The camera flash does this when you take a picture of something white in a dark space. None of the wolves were white.”

“It looks like the moon,” said Ainsel.

“The moon isn’t in the forest behind my house.”

“Well, something is.”

“Maybe it’s some kids playing a prank.”

“And stealing your memory while they do it?”

Zoë twitched, then hugged herself. “I don’t know.”

Ainsel glanced at the clock. Andrea would be coming for her in an hour, come hell or high water. “Come spend the night at my house tonight.”

Zoë looked away, at the door connecting her room to the rest of the house. “I don’t want to do that.”

Ainsel twisted her hands together. “You can’t go outside again, Zoë. Anything could happen and none of it would be good.”

“I won’t go outside again,” Zoë said shortly. “Don’t worry about that. I’m not stupid.”

“But how can you know? You went outside the other nights. Just come back with me tonight and we can come up with another plan—”

“I had a reason to go outside the other nights,” Zoë interrupted. “Now that I know something’s happening out there, do you think I’d do it again?”

Ainsel hesitated and did not say yes. She liked to think that she too wasn’t stupid. “But why won’t you just come back with me?” she asked plaintively instead. “Andrea won’t mind, not if we explain that your parents aren’t home and you don’t want to be alone. She’s always—” She caught herself before detailing exactly what Andrea thought of Zoë’s parents.

Zoë stood up jerkily and left her room, going to the bathroom and splashing water on her face. Ainsel followed her and met her eyes in the mirror.

“I don’t mind being alone.” The bitterness in Zoë’s voice twisted Ainsel’s heart. “And I should be here when they get home. They might notice.”

“You can call them, leave them messages, text them. Come on, Zoë!”

Zoë just shook her head and went past Ainsel out to the kitchen where she began to blindly scrub at clean counters. More frustrated than she could ever remember being, Ainsel trailed her again and continued trying to convince her not to risk being alone near the forest again.

But it was no use. Ainsel didn’t really understand it, but Zoë didn’t want to leave her house. It was something to do with her parents and the way they weren’t there, and it made no sense. Zoë should want to be where there were people who actually cared about her, not alone in a big house. But the more Ainsel argued, the angrier Zoë became in response.

At last, as ten o’clock loomed, Ainsel said, “What if they come in here after you?” She sat on the far corner of Zoë’s bed while Zoë sat at her computer, clicking through websites.

Zoë gave her a dark look. “And thank you for that nightmare.”

“Well, if I’m going to have it, it only seemed right to share with the class.”

“Nothing came in last night, Ainsel. And I didn’t lose any time, either.”

“That you remember!” said Ainsel, then gasped as an unexpected sob rose up. She pressed her hands against burning eyes. “I’m sorry. This isn’t what I wanted to do tonight. I just…” She thought about Remy again. “There’s stuff out there we don’t understand. Monsters and moons in forests and you won’t let me help you stay safe.”

Zoë’s expression softened. She leaned way over and tapped Ainsel’s toe, the closest bit she could reach. “And I’m just as much of a mystery as wolf monsters, huh? Trust me, Ainsel. I’m not going outside tonight. As soon as you go home, I’m going to bed. See if I can remember a little of what happened when I wrote in that notebook. I’ve been looking up ways of recovering memories, little tricks, so I’m going to try those.”

“Good luck in getting them to work,” said Ainsel gloomily. Her phone chimed with a message from Andrea, right on schedule. She scooted off the bed. “I have to go. Please don’t get eaten.”

“I haven’t been eaten yet, have I?”

Ainsel gathered up her stuff. Zoë was right. Whatever happened to her out in the forest, she always ended up back in bed again. But the moon glow in the forest and Remy and his wolves had all gotten tangled up together in Ainsel’s head. It was all mysterious, all scary. Maybe if she could explain about what she’d sensed about Remy—

Her phone chimed again. She sighed and said, “Call me tomorrow morning.” Then, hoping she wasn’t making a terrible mistake, she went home.