Disclaimer: Characters and Forbidden Game concept belong to L.J. Smith.

Note – I'm sorry for reposting this! I realized later that for some reason only half of what I'd written actually appeared on the site and in my frustration removed the story, thinking that meant it would actually be removed (not just from my account) and I could repost the entire piece. This will function as the prologue to a longer story if people are interested in reading more.

She was shaking, her body moving of its own accord, and all she could feel was the cold emptiness before the charred door to her grandfather's basement. Where once the runes had smoldered like hot embers remained only the stain of blood. Arms reached for her, trying to pull her up the steps, but she shrugged them off, ignoring them like she did the insistent voices in the background. Nothing. Nothing remained in her trembling arms. The only proof was the gold ring she had clenched within her left fist.

"Jenny"

"Jenny, you have to get up"

"Jenny, please! He's gone"

"Jenny!"

The voices pounded against her like hail. She flinched.

"Jenny, look at me!"

And she did. Tom extended his hand towards her, his expression shifting involuntarily at the uncanny contrast of her honey gold hair against her unnaturally pale face. The sheen of unshed tears caused her cypress green eyes to appear larger, an effect intensified by her shivering frame. Tom pulled her into his arms, clasping her limp body against his.

"It's over. Jenny, it's going to be okay, don't worry." Tom's hands gently caressed her hair as he closed his eyes and kissed her forehead. "Thorny, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, baby, but it's going to be alright. It will get better."

Another hand grasped her shoulder as Dee whispered, "He's right. But now you have to come with us, we have to leave now. Please, Jenny," she pleaded, "just think how happy Summer's family will be once we get home." Jenny brought her head away from Tom's warm chest, slightly nodding at Dee and the others.

"Yes, let's figure out a way to get home" said Audrey. Michael stood behind her with his arms wrapped around her waist, his chin nuzzled against her shoulder. Jenny looked at Tom once more and straightened up out of his embrace. "I love you Tommy," she whispered, her hand grazing his cheek. "I love you too, Thorny," he said reaching for her hand. Jenny felt the warmth flowing from Tom's fingers, but she couldn't forget the gold band biting against the palm of her left hand, clutched so tightly that her knuckles showed white under the strain.

She hadn't lied. She did love Tom. Those moments when Jenny saw his profile outlined by the mid-afternoon sun, when she looked into his soft hazel eyes and was confronted by something immeasurably fragile – then Jenny felt her love for him like an ache in her chest. She clung to the old memories of the hibiscus bushes and elementary school puppy love with an intensity that scared her sometimes, replaying them over and over again in her mind.

She often felt that she hadn't really changed, despite what her friends told her. She wore the ring that proclaimed she was "her only master," but Jenny had realized that saying the words, binding them to your skin, didn't always make it so. Oh, she still volunteered, she had even decided to look into what type of college she might be interested in. That didn't mean she had made much progress.

People didn't stop to stare at Jenny anymore, their eyes attempting to grasp at the quiet intensity she had emanated. Tom didn't seem to mind – no, he seemed quite satisfied with this ordinary Jenny, pretty, but in the unformed, girlish way of a thousand other sixteen-year-old girls.

She tried to remember what she had learned during the games, but those insights had gradually faded away against the insistent pull of the everyday. It was so much easier, routine so seductive. Immediacy demanded the type of emotional investment that Jenny didn't know if she could make. The first week after they had returned from Pennsylvania, she had made the effort to really "feel" things, experience them – and it had left her broken amid a confusion of emotions. She wore the gold band on her finger now, but it seemed as if its luster had dimmed with the passing of time.

That first week, she had seen his eyes everywhere. She would start when she woke up to that pulsating, living blue in the early morning sky. Jenny had felt the softness of his hands, his hair in the winds - she breathed it in like she was starving for air. Oh, it was much easier to let that all go. To wake up like a normal person and not notice the stabbing beauty of the world. That's what she told herself at least. But sometimes it became difficult to forget. Jenny had gone out with Tom and his friends one night. She was at his side, nodding and smiling as the conversation demanded, when suddenly something inside her was riven. She was shocked by the intensity of what she felt, the wild thing inside her screaming for acknowledgement. The faces of the other boys at the table blurred before her eyes as she realized that to them, she was nothing but "Tom's girlfriend." Part of her lashed out against Tom, hating him for trapping her like this. She felt extinguished, quenched. Jenny remembered the way she had felt in the shadow world as she lead her friends forward in the last game. In that world she had felt like a woman, not some silly little girl. Jenny had felt her strength and it had radiated from her like a beacon, cutting through the darkness. She hadn't seen the shadows in his eyes, Julian's, until the third game. In that disfigured, warped amusement park, she had finally begun to understand him. Jenny had seen that haunted look, and she had known, had recognized some fractured part of herself reflected back through his eyes.

Maybe she had changed. But she didn't think Tom had, not really. He hadn't been there when she whispered "Gebo," the word humming with deadly power. No, he hadn't seen her smear her blood into the rude carvings in the door, the wood greedily soaking up every drop. Yes, he had been brave, all her friends had been, ready to sacrifice themselves for her life, she hadn't forgotten that. Yet she now felt a kinship with the others that ran deeper than what she felt for Tom. Before the games she hadn't thought that was possible. But it was no good. She didn't want to deal with any of this now, but instead give herself up to the lulling oblivion in Tom's arms.

And so her thoughts wavered, leaving her reeling between the possibilities. Often Jenny found herself in Tom's embrace, a small voice inside pleading, "don't remember, don't remember," because she knew it was wrong those nights when she woke up sighing his name, tasting its intoxicating sound with her tongue, caressing the syllables like a lover.