AFTERDARK

"Missed me already?"

"I don't think we are close enough for that."

The town of Hollowmere had always believed in a tradition silly enough for June Beckett to almost ignore it, The Fog Tag. A ridiculous game, invented generations ago by bored teenagers desperate to escape the miserable little town and finally start their real lives.

June never believed there was anything magical about it.

She knew there wasn't.

But when her cousin, the same one she'd been pitted against her entire childhood, calls her unexpectedly, begging for help, June finds herself pulled into Hollowmere's suffocating ritual.

It's only one night, she tells herself.
A night of harmless fog and harmless laughter... or so she assumes.

Because while June scoffs at the tradition, Hollowmere doesn't.

The town believes the fog tests the soul.

And if it doesn't like what it feels, then the fog changes the story of a person, thread by trembling thread, until it decides the tale is finished.