“This feels different,” I say, but as I turn to the others I realize that I’m alone. Grandpa Ghastly and Winter are gone. I still have Wrath on my back and after a moment he materializes next to me with a puff of sulphur.

  “This is odd,” he says, but sounds strangely excited by the experience. “Do you think they’ve been trapped in another dimension?”

  I look around us again, but the strange stores that were suddenly all around us are different now. Not just the names, but the shops themselves. It’s like we moved into another branch of the mall. But now instead of long tentacle-like limbs of a great sea creature, the halls of the mall twist and navigate around us like folded origami, bending back and forth up and around. Instead of two stories of shops, now directly above us the floors go seven or eight floors, but there are no stairs that I can see.

  There is a giant, cornflower blue glowing sign in the middle of the concourse near us. I walk over to it, the normal mall map that I expect replaced by an intricate lace pattern that weaves in and out and around each other, spiraling in more than three dimensions.

  YOU ARE HERE, the map says, pointing to a particularly rogue bit off to one side of the map. There are signs for WINTER and GHASTLY that point to them being far in another direction. I look at the map, then look at the hall around me. “We should go this way,” I say, thumbing my way in the direction we just came.

  “Let’s just go to CinnaSin,” Wrath whines. My eyes can’t help but find the store, which is now located in a hallway ominously titled The Void that does not connect to any other branches of the chaotic map. Actually, now that I can see the entirely layout, the map now resembles something like a whirlpool, with the different levels circling a drain. And at the bottom, in the very center, sits The Void.

  “I think that would be very bad,” I point to out to Wrath.

  “Baked goods are never bad,” he says loftily. “It’s exactly that kind of snobbish behavior that got us into this mess in the first place.”

  I roll my eyes at him and we set off back the way we came. The map said Winter was above us, so if we follow this path it should take us back to her. I’m still not sure how we got separated, but chalk it up to the mall acting out again. “It’s getting stronger,” I murmur to myself.

  “I don’t think it’s a spirit,” Wrath comes up to stand beside me as the hallway bends ninety degrees to the right when a moment ago it was long and endless.

  “And it’s affecting the entire mall now. It’s getting stronger. Do you remember reading the nightmare stories the Morecrofts had in that one book? The egregores? I think it might be one of those.”

  “Egregores? I don’t know what that is. It sounds made up.”

  “All nightmares are made up. That’s what makes them so scary.” Normal people had books with fairy tales or bedtime stories. The Morecrofts went one step further and had nightmare stories. I don’t know if the point was to document nightmares that one of them had already had, or if they were trying to bring more nightmares to life. Either way, my mother used to read them to me when I was little and I found the book years later.

  “If there is an egregore, there’s a sigil that defines it. But I don’t know why one is acting like this.”

  We head in the direction of Winter, but the hallways blur together the further we go. Even when we stand still, the blurring effect stays the same, as though everything is out of focus. In the distance, the cornflower blue light of the mall map is a North star, and we head in that direction. But when I check the map, Winter’s spot has stayed the same but now I’m even further out from where I was before.

  “We must have gone the wrong way?”

  “You’re a terrible navigator. Remind me not to let you drive.”

  “I can’t drive.” I press down on my annoyance, though, I know Wrath is just pushing my buttons, although it’s hard to say if he’s just trying to distract me from worrying about our current situation, or he’s just trying to be a troll. Probably both, knowing him.

  “How do you think Ghastly knows about me?” he asks suddenly after we turn back and start going the way we came. However, despite retreading what’s supposed to be familiar ground, the shops appear new and different, and there are no recognizable landmarks. If anything, I think the entire maul has shifted its identity entirely. Now it’s run down and worn by generations, the tiles scuffed and faded, the walls pockmarked and filled with black spots. Everything takes an aged, despondent look. Even the stores take on a similar vibe, the merchandise bleached of color and sparsely populated shelves.

  “He’s Ghastly,” I say, but that doesn’t feel right. “Maybe I mentioned you in my letter? I don’t even really remember writing it. I could have told him about you. Maybe he thinks it’s just a quirk of a lonely child.”

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  “Maybe,” Wrath posits, but he sounds as uncertain as I am.

  We make it back to the next mall sign, the one we started at, but instead of my position on the map returning to where it was, now I’m moved to a third location. Even further out than I was before. I turn back only to find the concourse closed behind us, leading to a wall. The only way through is forward, apparently.

  “They’re in the same spot but I’m different.” I look at the map again, then look at the hall in front of us. There’s only one way to go, though in the map there are two. But if we follow along the path forward it should curve, and then at the end of the curve we should run into Ghastly. The only problem is that the hall in front of us has a ninety degree turn about a hundred feet away.

  Still, it’s the only way to go.

  I start off with Wrath at my side, though he lets me lead. The strangest thing, though, is that the closer we should be getting to the sharp right turn, the further away it seems to get. And then just as it seems like we’re going to move forever, the hall angles to the right. Curving to the right. Just like the sign. But not like the hall itself appeared a few moments before.

  “This is like the Manor basement all over again.” Off Wrath’s quizzical look, I say, “Oh right, you weren’t there for that. The basement kept playing with the spatial geometry and everything.”

  “Yeah, it does that,” he says, with an air of distraction.

  “What’s up?”

  “Nothing. Just thinking about what you were saying about an egregore. What made you think about that?”

  I consider. Where had that idea first come from? “I’m not entirely sure. But I discounted it right away. It seemed more like a poltergeist or some other kind of possession at first. Not a rogue hyper fixation with legs.”

  “An egregore can be more than that,” Professor Wrath says seriously. “A mall isn’t the right kind of place for one to grow up, but with the right kind of power source, it could totally happen.”

  And the business guy said that the flagship stores had to be open to make people shop at the mall. Was it that simple? Was there something in Maulie’s that was channeling the mall’s energy, and without a proper host in the form of Maulie’s open for business, it was latching onto whatever strong feelings it could find. First Ghastly’s grief, then our desire to know what was going on. And now what?

  “We don’t know where to look so now we really don’t know where to look.” I look grimly at Wrath. “You’re right.”

  “I know!” He puffs out his chest, but then just as quickly deflates. “But you had the idea first.”

  I didn’t have the original idea though. Someone else came up with it, it just stuck in the back of my head like a nugget, waiting to be unearthed.

  “Okay, but first we need to meet back up with Winter and Grandpa Ghastly.” We approach another mall map, and this time our position moves closer to Ghastly. I exhale slightly and then continue following the path that the mall wants us to take. It doesn’t take more than a few hundred steps before we catch sight of the older man sitting at a bench watching us approach.

  “I thought it was me for the longest time,” Ghastly says as we walk up, “then I realized everything was acting crazy. Also… no other customers!” he gestures around, and he’s right. The dozens of people we saw earlier are nowhere to be seen. It’s just us. “I knew you would find me, Theo.”

  I almost open my mouth to correct him, that we found him when I realize Wrath has vanished again, returning to his stuffed animal form. Ghastly doesn’t seem to notice either way, which I think is a good thing. Wrath has been struggling with Winter, and if Ghastly revealed he could see him too, I don’t know if the demon would take that very well.

  After a lifetime of being his only companion, I don’t think he likes the idea of sharing. Or maybe being shared. I guess I’m not the one that’s sharing him with Winter. Winter can see him without his permission. That’s the real crux of the problem. If Wrath wanted to, he could make it so Winter could see him. But he doesn’t get a choice in the matter and that makes all the difference.

  “We’re going to get through this,” I promise Grandpa Ghastly as I lead us towards Winter on the map. We end up going down several flights of stairs, which is odd, seeing as how we’re on the ground floor, but we do it anyway. We turn right when the map tells us to, even going across a land bridge when it directs us to do so.

  Winter is browsing at something called a Hot Topic when we finally catch up to her, a less interesting version of Maulie’s. Unlike Ghastly or me, she seems perfectly at ease with the rampant shifts throughout the maul, and keeps holding up small earrings to her ears and looking in the mirror, barely noticing when we arrive.

  “Are these cute or criminal?” she asks sweetly, holding up a pair of bejeweled skull studs that shine in multiple colors.

  “Those look like calaveras, though in Mexico they’re normally made in sugar.” Ghastly offers.

  Winter makes an uncomfortable face. “Yeah, we’re going with criminal. They’re not even made in Mexico. Although I don’t know if manufacturing counts when it comes to appropriation.” She gets a thoughtful expression as she says this, pondering it for a minute or two.

  With the rest of my crew gathered, I stop and look at the nearest mall sign. This time it’s halfway down the aisle. So we walk in that direction, no one saying too much. Even Wrath on my back is practically silent. I can’t tell if he’s brooding or thinking. Probably sleeping. He never takes these things seriously.

  There’s a new sign on the map that’s different from the You Are Here and the names of my companions. This time it’s not a name, or even a word I recognize. It’s a symbol. Grandpa Ghastly squints at the screen. “That looks vaguely familiar.”

  “You’ve seen something like that before?” I ask immediately, pressing him for more details.

  He considers it for a long time. Enough that he might be napping himself. “I think it looks like something that Maulie used to sketch in one of her notebooks when we first got the space for the store. I don’t know where she saw it.”

  The map has returned to its regularly scheduled programming, showing the main hub with the food court and the limbs starfishing out from there. The symbol lands in a spot right in the flagship space, larger than the surrounding stores. Maulie’s.

  Winter sighs dramatically. “I hope this doesn’t end with blood and egre-gore.”