Her phone buzzed and slipped out of her fingers, clattering to the floor. Meg woke up with a start, nearly rolling right off the couch herself. She scrambled for the phone, but suddenly a weight fell off her lap. She'd forgotten the bowl of ice cream.

  Meg twisted around in mid-dive and managed to catch it before it hit the floor, though it meant she landed awkwardly on her shoulders instead.

  Stupid… She groaned and got back to her feet, picking up her phone as she went.

  Hailey: We're here. Open your window please.

  Meg left the bowl on the floor as she hurried back upstairs to her bedroom. It was way past the original time Alden gave her. By her phone's clock, it was past two now. But if Hailey's texting me, that means they're probably okay, right? Even though they're flying back and not driving back, which Alden said shouldn't ever happen… what's going on?

  She drew back the curtains from her window and slid it open. Within seconds of her clearing the way, a shape illuminated by moonlight hurtled through the portal. The familiar burst of wind gusted the room, helping Hailey brake. They didn't usually do this in Meg's room, so her stuff wasn't held down like Alden habitually did these days.

  Homework on her desk went flying, and a few pictures on the corkboard above it fell off. She'd run out of thumbtacks and used tape for the last couple until she found more, and now they were paying the price. One of them, conveniently enough, was Kelly's. She took it as a sign.

  As soon as everything settled, Meg quickly closed the window and the curtains again. Hailey let Alden down, and to Meg's shock, he collapsed. Her brother curled up on the floor, shaking. Meg couldn't take her eyes off him. He'd never been this bad, not even the first few nights home from Rallsburg way back in May.

  She turned to Hailey. "Is it okay to talk yet?" she whispered.

  Hailey shook her head. "I can't do that spell," she whispered back. "We have to stay quiet."

  "You can't?"

  "I can't do Nature magic. Jess always does that one."

  Jess, Hailey's odd mute sidekick. Meg was never quite sure what to make of her. Hailey had explained what happened to her, but it was just too weird and awkward to think about. Whenever she came along, Meg always felt a bit uncomfortable talking to Hailey about things, like Jess were listening in and judging her. No matter how many times Hailey insisted otherwise, Meg was sure Jess understood a lot more than she let on.

  She might be more glad Jess wasn't there that night, if her brother didn't look like he'd just been through Hell and back. He clambered to his feet while they both looked on, waiting for him to say something. Anything to bring back the Alden they both knew—a little damaged, but always ready to help, always willing to listen.

  He didn't say a word. He just stumbled out of the room like a dead man walking. His bedroom door clicked once, then clicked again as it shut.

  "Something happ—" Hailey started, but Meg cut her off.

  "I saw it on the news. The stuff at that bar, right?"

  "How'd you know?"

  Meg hesitated. Alden hadn't told her not to tell Hailey, but it still kind of felt like a breach of trust. He seemed embarrassed by it a few times. "Zack told me where he was going. I think I wasn't supposed to tell you though."

  Hailey raised her eyebrows, looking confused… and maybe a little disappointed? Meg kept talking, as if she could somehow work her way back around into Hailey's approval.

  "It looked really scary. Guys with guns took over the place? How does something like that happen?"

  Hailey made a dropping gesture with her hand. Meg had gotten a little louder as she talked. "Yes," she whispered.

  She took a seat on the office chair in front of Meg's desk, and stretched out her legs like someone who'd just gone for a long run. As her head tilted back, Meg saw her eyes drift over the photos she'd pinned up, and felt a twinge of embarrassment. What if Hailey thought they looked silly or dumb? She had to keep talking.

  "Is this what you guys always do?"

  "No. Nothing like this has ever happened." For the first time, Hailey's voice actually sounded a little uncertain. The little breeze that wafted around the room whenever she was there tickled Meg's neck, reminding her again what Hailey could do. She leaned up and looked Meg in the eye, and her voice was strong and solid again. She looked suspicious. "What did he say to you?"

  "Oh, uhh…" Meg looked away, feeling a bit ashamed. No hiding it now, I guess. "Actually… Zack always tells me where you guys go." As Hailey's suspicion grew, Meg talked a bit faster. "Don't be mad at him, okay? He said it was important. Just in case… you know… something happened to him. So that I could tell Mom and Dad. He never told me what you were doing out there."

  Hailey sighed. The suspicion faded, to Meg's immense relief. "Trying to help people."

  "...Did you? You know, help people?"

  "I think so." She glanced at the wall that separated Meg and Alden's bedrooms. "He's gonna need your help for the next few days though."

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Meg followed her gaze, though the wall wasn't particularly interesting to look at. She had a poster of a boy band above her bed, which she was now regretting. Hailey probably thinks they're so lame… "Did he get hurt?"

  "Not exactly. Physically he's totally fine. But, sometimes when someone goes through something really scary, it stays with them. Like—"

  "Like PTSD, right?" Meg supplied. She wasn't a kid, she knew stuff.

  "Yeah."

  "What do I need to do?" she asked breathlessly, wanting to show she was ready to dive right in. Anything to help out her hero.

  Hailey smiled weakly. "Alden's really lucky to have a sister like you, you know?"

  "Psh. After all this is over, I get to rub it in his face. Totally worth it." She meant it too. She got along okay with Alden most of the time, but he had a tendency to play way too much into the big brother thing sometimes. Overprotective, over-restrictive. Having one up on him would do loads for her. "What do I do to help him?" she asked again.

  Hailey looked a bit wistful at her words. She shook it off. "Just be there for him. No complaints and no teasing, just help him out. You can joke around a bit, but never make it seem like he's a burden. He's gonna be in shock for a while, and maybe some pain too. Plus all that stuff from over the summer will probably come back. Maybe even worse."

  Meg sighed, a little more dramatically than she'd intended. She got up and walked over to her closet, pulling out her sleeping bag. She hadn't needed it since July, but she'd never bothered to put it back up in the attic. "I was hoping I'd never have to use this stupid thing again."

  "You sleep in his room?"

  She shrugged. "I had to if I was gonna be there fast enough to keep him from waking up Mom and Dad, right? It sucks, but someone's gotta do it." She picked up a few of her favorite pillows from her bed, as well as a blanket. The sleeping bag wasn't really warm enough on its own. "Hey, Hailey?"

  "Yes?"

  "I know I'm probably never gonna be able to myself, but… will you take me flying someday?" Even if it were just for a few minutes, as long as she could experience that same emotion she saw on Hailey's face as she blew into the room every time, Meg felt like she could die happy.

  Hailey smiled. "Yeah, I will. Someday."

  Meg grinned. "Okay. So all this is totally worth it." She slung the sleeping bag over her shoulder like a soldier, even giving a half-hearted salute before gathering up the pillows and blanket. Hailey got up to help, but Meg quickly opened the door handle with one of her feet before Hailey could get close. "Night," she whispered, ducking out into the hall and closing the door behind her.

  As the door closed, Meg paused, listening out for the sound of Hailey whooshing away from the room. It didn't happen. Instead, Hailey seemed to be pacing back and forth. Probably trying to think of what to go do next. Always trying to help people.

  She still didn't leave though, and after a minute Meg was starting to lose her grip on her blankets. Finally, just as she was about to step away, she heard Hailey's voice, just barely above a whisper.

  "I'm sorry."

  Who is she talking to? Meg strained her ears, trying to listen, but she didn't hear anyone else. Hailey didn't say another word, either. Less than a minute later, Meg heard the window slide open. A breeze flowed over her toes from the crack at the bottom of the door.

  Hailey was gone.

  Meg reluctantly walked away and into Alden's room, opening and closing the door as quietly as she could. Alden didn't react at all, tucked into his bed and looking away from the door. He hadn't bothered to change, just kicked off his shoes. She didn't say a word either. She laid out the sleeping bag across the floor, propping the pillows up against the bags he usually kept against the corner. It was the best spot she'd found after so many nights spent in his room over the summer.

  The first few times, she'd been in her own room when the screaming started. She'd woken up sharp, heart racing, not knowing if she'd imagined or dreamed the sound, until he screamed again and she practically felt it through their adjoining wall. Without a second thought, she'd rushed into his room and shaken him awake, terrified.

  After he'd managed to calm down, he'd told her bits and pieces of what happened in Rallsburg. She insisted, if he was going to wake her up like that in the middle of the night without warning, that she deserved an explanation. She knew something went down there, even if their parents didn't. She should be able to know, shouldn't she? So he'd told her, describing the monsters, the riots, the crazed mobs killing people in the streets.

  Just from his explanations, Meg was already horrified. Suddenly, screaming out in the middle of the night didn't just seem okay, it was tame.

  It was an unspoken agreement, Meg sleeping in his room every night. After the third night in a row of waking up to a blood-curdling shout, Meg simply dragged a sleeping bag into his room without a word and dropped right back to sleep. Their parents slept on the opposite side of the house from them, and they were teachers. They both left the house before Meg and Alden woke up most mornings. Meg was pretty sure neither of them ever found out. Neither had ever mentioned it, at the very least.

  But then, no one ever mentioned Alden's sudden disappearance back in May for a whole week, which only Meg knew the real story behind. No one ever mentioned the empty room and the mysterious objects in the house he'd set out to explain. No one brought up that Alden had dropped out of the college he was supposed to attend without going to a single class, or that he was living at home without a job or any real prospects.

  No one at the Bensen house ever really brought up anything at all, except what was for dinner that night.

  As Meg stared up at the dark ceiling, only barely lit by the cracks of moonlight that streamed in through Alden's blackout curtains, she could barely make out his uneven breathing. He wasn't asleep yet, and he probably wouldn't be for a while. She could fall asleep any time she wanted to, tired as she was, but she was keeping herself awake for some reason.

  She wanted to know what happened this time. It wasn't just a robbery or something, right? Hailey could totally handle a robbery. It had to be more than that.

  "Zack?" she whispered, the first time she'd ever spoken to him on a night like this, besides a couple times where she'd almost yelled at him to stop screaming. Usually, their arrangement just consisted of her shaking him awake, holding his hand until he calmed down, then dropping back into her sleeping bag again for the rest of the night. Talking just seemed weird—and besides, she needed sleep herself, if she didn't want to feel super dead at school the next day.

  But today was Friday, and more importantly, Alden hadn't been like this in months. The pattern was broken.

  "Yeah," he murmured, and it shattered completely.

  "You okay?"

  He took a long, long time to answer, so long that Meg actually did start to fall asleep. "...No," he said.

  Meg didn't know what to say back. After a few minutes though, his breathing got shallower and steadier. He soon fell asleep, and Meg was alone to wonder what happened, and how everything had suddenly slid back to being so much worse than summer ever had been.

  Why had Alden been the one to find magic? Just because he'd gone to Rallsburg? It could have been her. It wasn't like she hadn't noticed the weirdness around their house. Seeing how Alden was handling it so far, Meg felt like she would have been way better at being awakened than her big brother. It felt like when she'd turned eleven and waited all night in vain for an owl to tap at her window. She deserved it, and someone had obviously made a mistake.

  But then again, if she'd been the one to go there instead of Alden, would she have made it out alive? Even Hailey, so strong and powerful, sounded like she'd barely made it.

  Meg listened to the light, steady breathing from the bed and wondered.