I spun around and hightailed it up the four flights of stairs. The sound of his footsteps followed, slow and plodding. He was in no hurry. Everyone minded their own business here. No one would stop him, which made the chase about as challenging as a fly already stuck in a spider’s web.

Tears blurred my vision as I made it to our door. A piece of Scotch tape dangled the missing puzzle piece from Mrs. Bunsby’s note where she’d stuck it next to the peephole. Wally had taken the letter she left for me.

Gulping back bile, I struggled to fit my key in the lock. Adrenaline used my heart like a punching bag, slamming it until it quivered uncontrollably in my chest. I’d just managed to get inside, shut the door, and lock it when Wally cleared the final step onto our floor.

Straining every muscle, I wedged Mrs. Bunsby’s favorite wing-backed chair into place under the knob and raced for my bedroom, dropping my bag just inside the threshold after I shut myself in. The overcast afternoon hazed the light to a gray fog, and with my heavy curtains covering the window, shadows cloaked the room and painted eerie shapes along the bare walls.

Keys jangled outside our apartment, loud enough I could hear them through my closed door. Sobbing, I stumbled over to the window, shoved the curtains apart, and opened the pane. A rain-drenched gust caught my hair and slapped it around my face. Tears burned trails down my cheeks as I flung one leg over the sill, about to throw myself out.

“Tsk, tsk. Now, that would be a tragic waste.” A deep cockney accent froze me in place there, straddling life and death. “Surely your existence is worth more than that oily rat’s.”

I snapped my head toward the voice. In the left corner of my room, the shadows moved and took on the indistinct silhouette of a man.

A gasp broke through my lips. “Wh-who’s there?”

“Introductions aren’t necessary amongst friends.” My intruder leaned into the dim light, revealing a face both beautiful and terrifying. He wasn’t human. No, he was far too perfect and mystical for that. Markings, resembling tattoos, flashed with jeweled colors beneath his dark, fathomless eyes. His blue hair swayed, out of sync with the wind gushing through my window. “I believe I’ve merited the title of friend, don’t you? Considering the last time you almost cracked your skull clambering around on that fire escape.” Giant wings splayed out from behind his shoulders, glistening like black satin in the grayish light.

Adrift somewhere between terror, disbelief, and hope, I eased my leg back into my room and leaned against the juncture of the window frame and the wall. “You . . . you were the one. You saved me.”

He smoothed the wrinkles from some red gloves on his hands. “Not quite, Alison. You saved yourself by daring to defy the natural laws in the first place. The fact that you even tried to make that climb merited a second chance at life, yes? Courage paired with folly becomes abandon, which is an honorable trait where I’m from, and should always be rewarded.”

I squinted at him. “You were rewarding me for my folly?”

He held a top hat in front of him and stroked it as if it were a cat. “Your abandon.” A deep chuckle rumbled in his chest. “You’re an odd duck, aren’t you? You haven’t balked at me yet, nor have you questioned if I’m real. Or even how I know your name. It doesn’t matter to you one way or the other, does it?”

I clenched my hands into fists at my sides. “It doesn’t matter if I’m crazy, as long the madness helps me survive.”

He raised an eyebrow, obviously pleased and surprised by my answer. “Ah, spoken like a true netherling. Madness, like any other facet of irrationality, can be used as a tool and a weapon, in the right hands.”

I didn’t have the chance to ask what a netherling was because in the other room, the wing-backed chair’s wooden feet scraped across the tile floor and clawed through my nerves like talons. Wally was in the apartment.

My throat dried. I glanced outside at the slippery rails, then back toward the man with wings, now standing in full view next to my door. He was tall and graceful, around the age of nineteen or twenty, and dressed in lace and velvet, like a gentleman from another time and place.

“Are you . . . are you my guardian angel?” I’d heard of such creatures but had never believed they might be real. Yet in that moment, I was willing to believe anything if it would save me from my landlord or a broken neck.

My visitor flashed his teeth in a stunning smile that transformed his face to the devil’s playground—malice concealed within a veneer of lovely persuasion. “I’m the furthest thing from an angel, little ducky. But I am here to watch you dole out some righteous retribution upon a sinner most foul.” He placed the top hat on his head. A string of dead moths trembled at the brim in morbid tribute to the gusts fluttering my curtains. “Now, let’s have us a bit of fun with old Wally, aye?”

THE LONG LEG OF THE LAW

Wally the Walrus’s footsteps scuffled toward my door.

“You won’t let him in, right?” I asked the demon . . . angel . . . savior . . . whatever. He stood still as a statue, the gems on his face blinking through different shades of gold. You’re going to help me like last time?” My pulse pounded hard in my neck, and my vocal cords shuddered like a snare drum.

The creature’s wings spanned wide. “Oh, no, little ducky. You’re going to help yourself. After all, you’re the one with a direct line to the most ancient and heavily populated inhabitants on earth. They’re adept at more than conversation, Alison. They have skills. All you need do is ask for a hand.” He gestured toward a daddy longlegs creeping across the wall behind him, casting a spindly shadow on the white plaster. “Or eight feet. Whatever fits the bill.”

Before I could make sense of his riddle, my mystical guest vanished in a poof of sparkling blue dust, only to be replaced by a bird-size moth that dove back into the shadows.

The moth from my picture . . . from Mom’s sketch.

My gaze fell to the Polaroids that had spewed out from the opening of my tote bag. Before I could focus on them, the door crashed open, sweeping a pathway through the stolen memories.

My stomach turned as Wally stepped in. Glistening apricot pulp was tangled in his mustache. He used the back of his pudgy hand to swipe it off and almost tripped over my Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland book.

He picked it up and snorted. “Alison’s adventures in Wonderland? What’s wrong with you, girl? Are you crazy, or just stupid?” The moth picture slipped out of the book as he shook it. He watched it drift to the floor. “Wait, I’ve seen that bug. I was tryin’ to get it out of the building earlier. It’s what led me to your door—” Wally stopped himself, as if he’d said too much. “Come away from that window. That ain’t no rabbit hole. You’re gonna trip and I’ll have to scrape your scrawny ass up off the pavement.”

I clenched my jaw, unmoving.

He tossed the book down. “Look, I can make you sigh, or I can make you cry. But either way this is gonna happen.”

My attention flickered from his leering gaze to the tiny space of wall over the door. Behind him and the parade of spiders skittering free from a hole in the doorframe covering the wall and ceiling. There had to be thirty daddy longlegs now, and still more were pushing through. Had the storm driven them out?