Sarah poked at her dinner with her fork. It had been a long time since she'd had a home-cooked meal, but she was too jittery to enjoy it. The moment she'd stepped in the house, she'd felt that something was wrong. She'd tried to ignore it, but it had been a powerful tingling in the back of her mind, and had gotten steadily worse as the evening progressed. She had no idea how she was going to be able to sleep that night.

Across the table, her stepmother gave her a saccharine-sweet smile. "Would you like more peas, dear?" Sarah gritted her teeth against the endearment. She'd done her best to get along with Karen, seeing as her father loved her and all, but she hated it when that woman took liberties like that. Calling her 'dear' and 'sweetheart' and 'darling'. Only mothers were supposed to do that, and it rubbed her wrong when Karen did it.

She smiled back and accepted the bowl of peas. She scooped more onto her plate and watched as her father stabbed his steak with especially vicious movements. He was staring at Karen like he was trying to bore a hole through her with just his eyes. She seemed oblivious, but it was almost as if she was forcefully and purposefully ignoring him. Toby watched all from a quiet, intelligent viewpoint at the end of the table.

Sarah shifted uncomfortably. Something weird was definitely going on here. And she didn't like it. Oh, everyone had been perfectly friendly, all right. And that's what was so creepy about it. It was almost as if they were afraid to fight, or disagree at all. And they seemed especially anxious. Worried, maybe. And not only that, they seemed desperate to hide it from her. Like they were scared of what would happen if she found out what was really going on.

Sighing, she pushed back from the table and excused herself. Her father looked disapprovingly at her uneaten food, but he didn't say anything. It was dead silent as she left the room.

Upstairs, she flopped down on her childhood bed and wondered what was wrong here. Toby might be a good source of information, she thought. Her brother was likely to be the only unbiased one in the whole family. She decided she talk to him privately tomorrow, after they went to the zoo. Her father and Karen had planned a trip to the zoo to celebrate her homecoming, but after dinner, she was worried that tomorrow would just be more of the same. She hoped that whatever was going on wouldn't hurt Toby.

The moon was full outside, and a light breeze ruffled her curtains. The window was open, but she didn't make a move to close it. Vividly she remembered Jareth appearing to her as an owl. It was foolish and childish, she knew, but she didn't want to accidentally lock him out. Not now, not when she missed him every day, every morning that she rolled over and realized what was missing.

Now she clutched Sir Lancelot to her chest. His fur smelled musty and old, but she didn't mind. He was a relic from her childhood, a time, it seemed, when things were simpler. She snuggled close to him and held him tight. The little teddy bear was a silent testament of support. "What do you think, Lancelot? Am I being stupid again? Imagining things that aren't even there?"

Lancelot's glass eyes stared sympathetically. Sarah felt a little foolish, but not that much. Hell, she was sitting here, leaving the window open just in case her Goblin King fancied a visit. She laughed. She must be insane! She thought, and got up to close the window. He wasn't coming back. She just had to face it. He'd come because she'd summoned him, and he'd stayed for a breakfast and then he'd gone. End of story. He was gone for good.

She slid the window down on its hinges, leaving a crack. For fresh air, she told herself. Yet the crack was big enough for an owl to slip through, and she knew it. She leaned her head against the cold glass and watched the moon revolve. The stars twinkled coldly.

She sighed. The sounds of her family moving about outside roused her from her torpor, and she began to change into her nightgown. Toby's bedroom was the one across from hers, and she could hear his door slam shut. She frowned. That wasn't quite right, but then again, it was in keeping with the rest of her visit so far. Down the hall, she heard the slam of her parents'—her dad and Karen's—door. Soon after, there was the dull thrum of the television going on in their room. Seems like the night's social activities were over.

She tried to sleep, but she was far too restless to settle in. She crept out of her bedroom, padding silently down the hall, Lancelot still clutched tightly in one hand. The carpet felt thick and secret beneath her feet, and she hazarded a glance at the bedroom door at the end of the hall. There was a bluish cast of light beneath the door, signaling the continued use of the television. She relaxed one fraction of an inch.

Sarah wasn't really looking for much when she went downstairs. Just a glass of water, maybe. Some hot chocolate. Tea. A grown-up book she hadn't read a million times to put her to sleep. Maybe she was looking for Jareth, in an odd, roundabout way.

What she found was broken glass. On the living room floor, between the couch and the television, there were the remnants of what appeared to be a water glass. It had shattered, and she could clearly see the light reflecting off large, jagged pieces. She frowned. Someone should have cleaned this up. Someone should've cared about the dangers of leaving such a mess in the middle of the floor, where anyone could step on it.

She went to the kitchen to retrieve the dustpan and a broom. And some gloves, to protect her hands. The broken glass looked wickedly sharp, and she would rather not take chances.

On the white linoleum tile, she noticed something else. There were bloody footprints leading to the back door. She put her hand to her mouth. Had Toby stepped in the glass and then gone outside...for what reason? And how had the glass broken on the carpet, anyway? It was too soft for anything to shatter from the impact of a fall.

Confusion mounted as she wiped up the bloody footprints. She threw the paper towel in the trash, but there was more blood than she'd thought. It took her two to get it all clean. She went into the living room and picked up the shards of glass, noting carefully the bloodstains on each. When she looked close, she could see the new blood in the carpet, as well as, oddly enough, some old blood. She wouldn't clean that up. She had to draw the line somewhere. She had to be sure there was evidence left for her mind to pick over once she'd gone to sleep. Bloodstains on the carpet. She put a hand to her forehead. Jesus, what a night it'd been!

She put the dustpan back in its rightful place, replaced the broom, and tossed out the glass. She moved by rote to pour herself a glass of water, and then she dragged herself back up to bed. She was too tired to investigate further, though part of her also cried out that she didn't want to ruin her perfect family with the answers to this riddle. Did she? She still wasn't sleepy; she was too tired and shell-shocked to sleep. She felt like she was on autopilot, and little aliens in her brain were controlling her every thought. The house felt surreal, like so much acid.

She closed the door to her room. She thought twice, and then turned to lock it. The lock had been removed. She smiled at herself, forgetting. This door had never had a lock. Her father had always insisted on it, especially in her teen years. She spent enough time in her room as it was, he said. No need for yet another way to keep your parents out.

She tried to lie down and relax, but the unlocked door felt like an invitation to harm. So, she got up and tugged a bookcase across the floor, shedding books as she went to make it lighter. She dragged it in front of the door, and then replaced the fallen books to add weight.

She wiped her hands on her PJs and laid back down. The exertion had tired her physical body out, but her mind was still churning, going a thousand miles a minute. Had Toby hurt himself on purpose? Was he self-mutilating? He couldn't be. Especially not with his parents only a few rooms away, with only open doors in between. He could have been picking up broken glass outside, stepped on it, and then come inside and accidentally dropped the glass. But even for her fanciful mind, that was far too convoluted a story for her to believe. Maybe Karen had...

She'd heard stories. Terrible stories, about kids who were forced to stand on one foot and read from an encyclopedia for hours as a punishment. Or who had to sleep outside in a doghouse if they didn't do their homework. Did Karen do this as a punishment? Forcing Toby to stand on broken glass and then go outside to take out the trash seemed so brutal.

It couldn't be. She calmed her raging thoughts somewhat frantically. It was just that someone had dropped a glass on the floor, and Toby had accidentally stepped on the pieces and not noticed it. There was no proof they were even Toby's footprints. They looked too small to be her dad's, but that didn't mean they couldn't be. And Karen's feet were almost as big as Toby's. Though she did have that feminine shape to her feet, that didn't mean that the blood hadn't smeared when she walked.

Sarah rolled over, frustrated. There was no way she was going to solve this tonight, just thinking about it. And in the meantime, she was going to drive herself insane with puzzling over it. It was like a splinter in her brain, working its way deeper and deeper, teasing her.

Maybe this was Jareth's fault. His crystal ball. Maybe that was the glass on the floor, the reason that everything was so odd. Except that she half expected Jareth to be a dream as well. The details of his visit were still crystal clear in her mind, not blurred, like a dream. But that didn't mean it hadn't been. After all, she'd only seen him that once. Only had breakfast with him once, and then he was gone, like a puff of smoke. She wished he would visit her, at least to show her that he wasn't a dream.

She felt tears of frustration and exhaustion clouding her eyes. Sleep taunted her, just out of reach. And the thing with the broken glass was more maddening than a Rubix cube. She would never solve it, and she would never give up.

Suddenly, she sat bolt upright in bed. Lancelot! She'd forgotten Lancelot downstairs! Fear knifed through her. She tried to force her muscles to relax, telling herself that Lancelot was only a stuffed bear, and that she'd be fine on her own for one night. But she couldn't convince herself. She needed that little bear, and she needed him now.

She pushed the bookcase out of the way, realizing that it would have just been so much easier for her father to have installed a lock for her. She crept her way downstairs, not worrying so much now that she'd noticed that her parents' TV was off. They were probably asleep.

She searched with focus and drive for Lancelot. In the kitchen, she could hear the clock ticking. Suddenly, she was terrified to be alone down there. Anyone could have broken in, and they could creep up to her from behind and twist a rope around her neck, strangling her to death. Or they could just shoot her. There could be goblins down here, monsters that even fantasy writers had no name for. Paranoia had her deep in its clutches.

She found Lancelot quickly, and had to restrain her speed so that she didn't break into a run. Jareth, she thought. There was a fierce ache in her heart and she longed for the dubious safety of his protection.

She looked around the darkened hallway as she walked down to her room. There were pictures of herself and her family on the wall, but in the dark it was hard to make out more than gray shapes and forms.

Her steps sped up against her will as she felt fear clutch at her heart again. She schooled herself into slow movements, because she knew that the fear wouldn't truly get a grip on her until she started running. Then she would panic.

She realized that she was being childish and stupid. Who was afraid of the dark? Not the returning college student, home for a vacation with her family. No, not at all.

She slipped into her room and closed the door. Again, her hand went to the lock that wasn't there, and had never been.

Well, actually, that wasn't true. There had been a lock, she remembered. As occasionally happens, her two sets of memories seemed to contradict each other. One the one hand, she remembered vaguely as a child, locking herself in and her dad having to take the hinges off to get the door open. On the other hand, she had a slightly clearer memory of arguing with her father because she felt that it was ridiculous that she didn't have a lock on her door. She remembered, fondly now, how irritating it had been when Toby went through his phase of stealing stuff, and she'd had no way to stop him.

She cleared her head with a soft shake. The paradox was inconsequential. She'd probably misplaced a fact somewhere, like the human mind often does. It didn't mean anything strange. Her dad had probably taken the lock off when she'd started dating. Simple as that.

She sat down in front of her vanity and combed out her hair. The familiar motions gave her an almost religious comfort. This was something meaningful, that she could understand and relate to. She stared in the mirror, at the thin layer of dust that covered it. There were pictures stuck into the frame all around the edges. Pictures of Sarah and her family and friends. There was even one of her holding baby Toby in her arms as a young teenager.

Thinking back on those times led her to think of the Labyrinth, and then of Jareth. On impulse, she wrote Jareth's name three times on the dusty mirror. She looked at her dirty finger, and brushed the dust off on her nightshirt.

She felt almost angry that he didn't come. She didn't know why, but for some reason it had seemed like that gesture would have meaning to it. Magick, or something. But no. Perhaps she'd been reading too many books on the occult and the mystical, because really, it wasn't as if a name had any true power...

Outside her window, a white owl ruffled its feathers. It hooted softly, and watched her with its big eyes.