It was easier this time, just like she’d promised. Or rather, like she’d warned. I could see the Netherworld haze blooming before me, a gray filter laid over my room, covering my bed, my dresser, and my desk in various shades of gloom. Now I only had to add intent to my wail.

Whatever that meant…

I intend to cross over, I thought, closing my eyes. When I opened them, my room was still gray, and still just as there as it had been a moment before.

It would be so much easier if there were a secret password, or handshake. Netherworld, open sesame!

Yeah, that didn’t work, either.

I closed my eyes again, careful to keep the wail deep in my throat—all but one slim curl of sound that wound its way up and into the room, like a thin ribbon of Netherworld energy being pulled through me and into the human plane. If I could just follow it, like a bread-crumb trail, I was sure it would lead me where I needed to go.

Where I was already going…

The background hum of the refrigerator faded and cool air brushed my face. I opened my eyes and gasped so suddenly I choked on my own keening. I coughed, and the thin stream of sound ended in a wet gurgle.

My room was gone. As was the whole house. The walls, the doors, the furniture. All gone. My father, too.

I stood in the middle of a large field of some kind of grass I didn’t recognize. It grew tall enough that the thin seed clusters on top brushed my elbows, and I knew without taking a single step that it would be a pain to walk through.

I ran my fingers over the grains, surprised by the rough, whispering sound they made against my skin. The stalks were stiff and brittle, and oddly cold to the touch, as if they were nourished by a chill wind rather than by the sun. And they weren’t green or even fall-brown like the November-hued grass was in my world. The entire field was an earthy olive color, with shades of deep umber near the base of the stalks.

Curious, I bent one seed cluster and nearly jumped out of my own skin when it broke with an audible snap and shattered between my fingers. It didn’t crumble. It splintered into hundreds of tiny, cold plant shards. The slivers tinkled like tiny bells as they fell, brushing the other stalks on the way down.

One sharp grass shard got caught with its point through the weave of my jeans. When I tried to brush it off, I accidently pushed the splinter deeper, flinching when the tiny point jabbed my skin. I used my fingernails like tweezers to pull it out carefully, and was surprised to see a little dot of blood staining my jeans.

Stupid sharp grass had cut me! This gives all new meaning to the phrase “blades of grass….”

I looked up slowly, then turned to see as much as I could of the grass surrounding me without breaking any more stalks. I was in the middle of the field, at least a hundred feet from the nearest edge, which was in front of me. I couldn’t walk through the grass without getting shredded in the process.

Crap! When Harmony said the Netherworld was dangerous, I’d thought she’d meant the residents!

I glanced around at my foreign surroundings, hoping for inspiration from the scenery. What I could see of the Netherworld was beautiful, in a dark, eerie way. The night sky was a deep, bruised purple streaked with ailing shades of blue and green, as if the earth had beaten its canopy into submission.

The slim crescent of a moon was dark red, like the harvest moon after a slaughter, and its sharp points seemed to pierce the sky, rather than to grace it. It was beautiful-scary, but absolutely no help in getting me out of the field. I could not make it across one hundred feet of fragile glass spires without getting all sliced up.

But maybe I wouldn’t need to….

I only had to stay in the Netherworld long enough to get out of my house, to keep from waking my dad.

Would it have killed Harmony to mention that the plant life in the Netherworld was painful?

Okay, Kaylee, focus…. How far was it from my room to the side yard outside my window?

Before I’d crossed over, I was standing in front of my mirror. I closed my eyes and visualized turning, then crossing my narrow room toward the far wall.

Ten steps, give or take. If I could make it eight feet to my right, I’d wind up just outside my bedroom window. Assuming I didn’t misjudge and cross over inside the brick wall…

Better go nine feet, to be safe.

I took a deep breath and lifted my arms to keep them from brushing the grass stalks and getting chewed up. Then I slid my right foot to the side, one step.

Four glasslike stalks shattered as my foot went through them. They collapsed to rain sharp chunks of Netherworld vegetation on my leg, and those chunks shattered even further. But the damage to my body was minimal, because I didn’t try to brush the shards off.

On my left, something growled softly, and a slithering sound approached from near the ground. Ten feet away, several stalks shook without breaking.

My pulse raced, and I began to sweat in spite of the cold. A stray strand from my ponytail fell over my eyes, and I brushed it back, on alert for more movement or noise from the ground around me. But there was none, at least for the moment.

I moved quickly after that, shuffling sideways through the grass, pausing after each step to let the vegetation settle and to make sure I hadn’t been cut very badly. More dry rustling met my ears, and was followed by a quick, nausea-inducing burst of panic. But I saw no more movement.

Plants crunched beneath my shoes, and I soon learned to angle my right foot so that the stalks fell away from me, rather than on me. The slithering noises continued, like a dark echo from some panicked part of my brain, and I moved in the opposite direction, praying that whatever was making those sounds wouldn’t pounce. Or bite. Or whatever.