Emma May didn't cry when grandmother died. She wasn't the kind of girl to cry when she was sad. She would only cry during movies, usually when it seemed like the character should cry, but they weren't because they were trying to be strong for someone else.

Emma didn't smile when other people were around either. She hasn't smiled since grandmother Orwell died last night. Her mother can’t tell whether that's unusual or not. Emma found it embarrassing to wear her heart on her sleeve like that. Her heart was a precious thing, a fragile thing, which feels too deep to risk it being seen feeling anything at all.

Emma turned the daemon egg over in her lap. The brush of their spines sent a warm shiver; electricity through her spine. She felt a guilty pleasure at the idea of finding any happiness in grandmother's death, but truthfully she didn't know the woman well enough to love her. Her mother had always been distant with her own mother, and there was no denying the woman had a frightful presence. When she scowled at you, it felt like an avalanche was coming down on your head.

Emma would like to do that. Emma would like to be terrifying. And she always fancied grandmother's black lace gowns with their bone buttons. They would be too large for her, but she she could hem them using grandmother’s sewing machine.

So no, Emma decided, she was not sad. She felt sorry for her mother, and even a little embarrassed for her emotional waterfall, if she was being honest. And yes, Emma decided, she would be happy if she had a black lace gown, which would fit her as perfectly as a porcelain doll. She would wear her hair back this year, and the pale skin of her neck will contrast wonderfully with the black lace. Her hair won’t cover her face like it used to, because now she had something to hide for real. Everyone knows you don't try to look like you have something to hide when you really do. Emma tied her hair back in a ponytail, watching her silhouette in the dark mirror on the little wooden desk in her bedroom.

The lights were off. The shades were drawn. The door was locked.

"Does the light still bother you before you're hatched?" Emma asked the strange scaled egg. "I won't tell mother. Can you imagine? She'd have such a nervous fit," Emma cooed. "She'd smash you up with a hammer and pretend you never existed at all. I thought about doing that too, but I think it's very important that you hatch and that I get my wish. I haven't decided what it will be yet, but I think grandmother knew she was going to die, and she needed me to have you first."

The egg said nothing and listened. Ideal traits in a friend, Emma thought.

"I hate asking this question, but I haven’t found a better way of doing it yet. Would you like to be my friend? ... you would ... oh that's wonderful! We’re going to have such a nice time together," Emma said to her egg, pausing throughout to give it chances not to reply.

"Of course, there is still the matter of the daemons locked up in grandmother's chicken coop." Emma sighed and sprawled back onto her narrow bed. She looked up at the glow in the dark stickers pasted on the ceiling.

The lights would probably be off already, even if she didn't have a daemon egg to take care of. How much of a burden could it be to take care of an egg? What does one even do? She wasn't going to sit on it. There wasn't a wish in the world worth the risk of being seen sitting on an egg. She’d rather be eaten by daemons than give the world that much ammunition to shoot her with.

"I could go back and free the other daemons." It sounded like a bad idea, even as she said it. "But then of course, I would sort of be responsible for the trouble they get into, wouldn't I? That's not really fair, since I would only be doing the right thing. Daemons are known for getting into trouble though, so letting them go would be a sort of malicious negligence like letting your dog drive, wouldn't it?"

The egg seemed to bristle for a moment, but perhaps that was only her imagination. She rolled it back and forth on the bed, her hands never straying far from the warm sensation of its needles.

"Of course, I couldn't just leave them there locked up in the chicken coop to starve either. Knowing they're hungry in there and not telling anyone, well that would be my fault too? How is everything my fault? I haven't even done anything yet!"

Emma sighed dramatically. She lay her thin arm across her face to watch the lace curtain close over her eyes.

"I will have to go and feed them. But it's two hours away, mother will never take me often enough. That means I'll really have to stay there and take care of them, won't I? Mother would never allow it."

The egg silently disagreed with her.

"What are you not saying to me?" Emma interrogated her mute victim. "It's true, mother was happy to have me out of the house for the weekend. She tried to drop me off at grandmother's, after all. And it's true, that no one else will be staying there, now that grandmother’s gone. And still the truth, dear egg, that I could volunteer to feed her “chickens”, and stay there on my own until school begins again. A house full of daemons, and secrets, all alone to explore. How do you speak so much truth without a word?”

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Emma put the egg carefully beneath her pillow before leaping to the door. She was about to rush and tell her mother about her idea, before pausing to reflect: Was it really the wisest decision to stay alone in a house full of daemons? Was the postman perhaps so afraid of grandmother because he fell into one of her traps? Emma wouldn’t put it past the old woman to put trip wires in the bushes for intruders, and who knows what other curse may conceal her darker secrets? But of course, the darker secrets were the only ones that were interesting. What in Emma was drawn to the darkness? The same pull that draws one to any secrets: so that she may be the light to reveal them.

“I won’t be alone,” Emma reassured herself. “I’ll have you with me, little egg. I’ll have the daemons to keep me company. They did seem to like me. Anyway, I don’t know how I’m supposed to make you hatch without their help, so that’s the end of it. I’ve got two weeks for the other daemons to hatch you before school, and if something goes wrong, mother is only a two hour drive away.”

Emma found her mother sitting in the kitchen with an open magazine in front of her. She wasn’t reading it though, preferring to stare out the window at the rain streaking down the glass.

“How are you doing?” Emma asked. She hurriedly built an emotional wall within herself, ready to withstand whatever flood might pour forth.

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” Her mother smiled at her, a rare peace upon her face. Perhaps this sea has already drained itself dry.

“Will you miss her?” Emma asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

Mother threw up her hands in exasperation. “Of course I should. I mean, I will, once I get over the shock. You know we didn’t agree on everything all the time.”

“You don’t say?” Emma said mildly. She sat down at the kitchen counter. Plain white tile, so much less interesting than the bricks and gnarled wood at grandmother’s.

“Who is going to live at her house now?” Emma began cautiously.

“Live there? No one is going to live there. We’re going to fix the place up and it’s going to be sold.”

“Who is going to feed her chickens until then?”

“What chickens? She doesn’t have any chickens.”

“Yes she does,” Emma insisted earnestly. “She had six chickens in a coop in the back yard.”

Emma then brightened, a sly smile spreading across her face. “We’re going to have to take care of the chickens here at home.”

No dark secret or portal to hell could elicit such a face from mother as the ghastly horror which possessed her. “We don’t have a yard. There is no space for chickens here,” she said, her tone hushed and urgent as though afraid the chickens would hear and grow furious.

“We can’t just let them starve,” Emma said patiently, a hawk circling her prey. “We’ll have to keep them inside. But don’t worry, after staying there I know all about chickens. They can stay in the living room, and I’ll build a house for them out of the sofa cushions. You’ll hardly notice them, except for when they start crowing at the break of dawn. Of course there’s nothing you can do about the smell, and we can only hope they don’t attract some other animal, like a coyote, which might try to break a window and —”

“No! Please stop!” Emma’s mother begged. “No chickens in the house! I don’t care if I have to break their necks myself!”

“Mother!” Emma reprimanded sternly.

“I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

“I won’t have it,” Emma insisted. “Too much about death already. I have another idea.”

And so Emma told mother her plan, swooping in to save her from the problem she didn’t know existed a moment before.

“Two weeks is too long to spend on your own. You’re only twelve years old, Emma.”

“I’m much older than my age, you know that.”

Her mother laughed, wiping her tired eyes with the back of her hand. “You’ll starve and have to eat the chickens yourself then. You can take care of them for one week, but after that I’m going to come visit you. I’ll bring you fresh food, and then I’ll be ready to do something about the chickens.”

One week would be enough to explore the mysteries of the house. Emma congratulated herself on the compromise, as though she was acting older and wiser simply by reducing the duration of her stay. If worse came to worse, and that worse was only limited by the bottomless pit of Emma’s imagination, then three seconds would be too long to bear the anguish, let alone a week. If the daemons got out and all went wrong, what was one week less in hell? Nevertheless, Emma had made up her mind, and her mother knew she could only surrender before such indomitable stubbornness.

Emma raced upstairs to pack her suitcase, two steps at a time, a dark energy already giving spring to her step. A backpack — not big enough — there the rolling suitcase. Socks, jeans, sneakers, she didn’t really care. She would be wearing grandmother’s things anyway. And who was going to see her out there in the middle of nowhere?

It was a long drive to make again so soon, but Emma was eager, and mother seemed just as ready to have some time alone. They listened to music on the way, each lost in their own thoughts until mother’s cellphone rang. Emma fished it out of mother’s purse, and put it on speaker phone while she drove.

“Hello? Mrs. May?”

“Speaking.”

“My name is Doctor Almer, we spoke earlier. I just wanted to let you know we did get that last lab test back regarding your mother.”

“You mean the strange substance in her blood?”

“Yes — and you’ll never guess. Oh, I’m sorry, not that you should have to. But it was ink. Black ink, like you’d write with a quill. And not a trace of any kind of puncture or wound to let the damn stuff in. Anyway, we’re all having quite a puzzle about it here, so do let us know if you can think of anything which might have caused this.”

“The crazy bat must have been drinking it. Probably thought it was a potion of some sort, the poor old thing,” Emma’s mother said.

“Well no, that wouldn’t be sufficient for it to enter the bloodstream —”

Just then a car honked from behind. Mother jumped and nearly squealed before making her turn.

“I’m sorry, I’m driving. I can’t talk now. I will call again next week when I have more time.”

Ink? Emma puzzled. What could grandmother have gotten herself into? What was she getting herself into now?