This one is my actual ID. Synergy is all ages, which means my sixteen-year-old self is perfectly legal. On occasions when I have to track into an alcohol-serving, twenty-one-and-up club, I’ve got a collection of fakes to get me in the door, with my hypno powers as a convenient backup.

Bug boy takes his job a little too seriously. If I were in search of underage drinking opportunities, I wouldn’t be here. They don’t even serve alcohol.

“That’s me, Jocko,” I say, giving him my best I’m-not-trying-to-do-anything-even-remotely-illegal smile. He probably wouldn’t appreciate my I’m-just-trying-to-get-rid-of-the-deadly-monster-you-let-inside smirk.

After cross-checking my license and my face a few more times, he hands back my ID and says, “Ten dollars. Pay inside.”

I breeze past him and push open the door. The nauseating rotten-garbage scent of the griffin is worse than the overused fog machine. It’s so strong, I can’t immediately pinpoint the source. Guess I’ll have to rely on other senses this time.

After handing my cover charge over to the cashier, I step into the giant black box that is Synergy. The space is wall-to-wall people, most of them under twenty-one. It’s a sea of bumping and grinding, penned in on one side by the virgin-beverage-serving bar and on the other by a raised stage that is a favorite of PVC-pants-and-eyeliner-wearing boys who like boys. And the occasional girl who likes boys who like boys, despite their obvious lack of interest in what she has to offer.

Tonight there’s a DJ set up at one end of the stage, shouting out dance instructions and tweaking the bass on the unidentifiable music pounding through the speakers. Permanent eardrum damage in the making.

With the added filter of my sunglasses I mostly make out shapes and outlines. The lights hanging from the ceiling grid turn the throbbing masses into a sea of yellow, teal, and hot pink. A normal girl would be nauseous. I’ve never claimed to be normal. Putrid eau de griffin and the revolting color combination are everyday hazards of the job.

“If I were a bloodthirsty half-lion, half-eagle, where would I be?” I muse.

Being a few inches taller would definitely be a benefit at this point. I need line of sight, which means I need a better vantage point. Higher ground.

Shoving through the labyrinth of bodies, I make my way to the elevated stage. I place one hand on the front edge and vault myself up onto the platform. From my new perch I can see the entire room. I lift my shades to get a better look.

Plenty of gyrating hips, glitter-enhanced cleavage, and titanium body piercings, but no griffin.

After winding across the stage to the back wall, I leap down, landing Doc Martens–first in the doorway that looks onto the techno room. It’s almost as full as the main room, but with a tenth the lighting.

“Why do they always go for the back rooms?”

Easier to lure some lonely, heartbroken, or otherwise desperate human into a dark corner, I suppose. Synergy’s back room is darker than the deepest corner of Hades. Even if the monsters had no veil, no one would notice them standing two feet away in this black hole.

I sniff test the room and discover that the smell is coming from outside, from the open door leading onto the small courtyard to the right. As soon as I step out under the stars, I see it. Prowling around a pair of girls at a picnic table who look like they’ve been drinking something that didn’t come from the alcohol-free bar.

They’re sitting ducks.

I’m about to step through the doorway and introduce the griffin to a shiny pair of fangs when I catch a new scent.

I stopped my scan of the courtyard when I spotted the griffin and the party girls, but as I complete my survey, I see the second beastie. A great big serpent thing covered in dark green and brown feathers.

“What?”

Before they spot me—or notice that I’ve spotted them—I duck back into the techno room to regroup. Two monsters? That’s impossible. They can only get out of their realm one at a time. It’s one of the first things Ursula taught me when I followed her out of that warehouse four years ago.

She’d led the way to a nearby diner, not uttering another word to me until the waitress set a steaming bowl of stew at my place. Ursula waited until I had a spoonful in my mouth before saying, “I know you see monsters.”

My only response was a brief hesitation before swallowing and taking another bite. If this lady was going to tell me I was nuts, just like Phil and Barb always did, I’d just take the hot meal and then take off.

“I also know you are not insane.”

At that point I didn’t think anything could shock me more. I set down the spoon and asked, “How do you know that?”

“Because,” she said with a warm smile, “I see them too.”

I was wrong. That shocked the life out of me.

“You—” I couldn’t even speak. Someone like me. I never knew how much I wanted that—needed that—until right then. I balled my fists in my lap and asked, “What are we?”

“You belong to an elite lineage of guardians,” she explained. “Destined to hunt down the monsters that escape into our realm and send them back to theirs.”

I can’t remember how long we sat in that diner, me asking questions and her answering. It felt like years. Sometimes her answers were cryptic; some questions she refused to answer at all, promising all would be revealed in time.

As she explained about my heritage, about my destiny to keep the human world safe from the kind of monsters most people think exist only in ancient myths, I was scared. Fine, terrified. How could I, a lone twelve-year-old girl, stop all these awful things from prowling the streets?

She smiled at me, her gray eyes full of caring and compassion—two emotions that had been in short supply when she found me living on the street—and said, “You are stronger than you think.”

“But what if they surround me?” I asked. “What if a bunch of them gang up on me? I could never win.”

She reached out with her elegantly wrinkled hand and gently patted mine. “Millennia ago, when your ancient ancestor Medusa was slain, the doorway to the abyss was left inadequately guarded and the world faced the great danger of being overrun by monsters. The gods convened a council to decide how to proceed.”

The gods. Like the ones in action movies and old myths. She said it like they were real, like they were sitting around somewhere deciding people’s fates. And, as crazy as it sounded, I somehow knew she was telling me the truth.

“Some wished to see that realm sealed completely,” she continued, “though doing so would have caused the death of every creature inside.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Didn’t seem like such a bad plan to me, considering the kind of nasty beasts I’d seen prowling the streets. “The monsters are bad. Why shouldn’t they die?”

Slowly shaking her head, she said, “Things are not that simple.” She let out a small sigh. “Others thought the gateway should be thrown open, allowing monsters of all varieties to walk free among humans.”

What morons thought that was a good idea?

“To appease all sides, the gods left a gap.” Ursula smiled at me. “A tiny and ever-moving window that allows but a single monster at a time to leave their realm. The gods knew there would always be one of our kind on hand to defend the opening.”

I sighed with relief. That was somewhat reassuring. One at a time seemed a lot more manageable than all at once. For the first time, I believed that I could actually do this, I could actually be the huntress. For the last four years, Ursula has been right. The rules have remained in effect, and I’ve never seen more than one creature per night. Ever.

Until tonight.

“Something’s out of whack.” First Ursula takes off out of cell phone range without leaving a note. Now two monsters are prowling the same club at the same time. “Something is definitely—”

“Gretchen!”

For the love of Medusa. I’d forgotten number three on my list of out-of-the-ordinary. Nick. The boy who won’t leave me alone.

At least this one doesn’t have anything to do with myth.

My first instinct is to ignore him. Any normal male would read that as a neon sign saying Go away!, but Nick has proven himself incapable of common male normalcy. If I ignore him and get on with my fight, he’ll probably follow me out into the courtyard and wind up getting himself killed.

I need to throw him off the scent once and for all so I can go about my business in peace. Direct orders don’t seem to work. Instead, I try for disdain.

“What do you want?”

“Nice to see you too,” he teases, unfazed by my verbal venom. “Funny running into you here. I didn’t know you—”

“Yeah, it’s a riot.” I jab my fists to my hips. “Look, I was just—”

“Can I get you a drink?”

My brain screams. Nothing works with this boy.

“Are you deficient?” I ask, throwing off all pretense of any kind and being as straightforward as I can without telling him my secret. “What about me has ever said, ‘Yes, please keep hitting on me’?”

A slow, suggestive smile spreads across his frustrating lips.

“Your mouth may not say that,” he says, stepping close. “But your eyes . . . well, they’re saying something else altogether.”

I roll those eyes behind my sunglasses, resisting the urge to knock him out with a solid punch to the left temple and be done with him. “You can’t even see my eyes.”

“Can’t I?”

“No, you—” Then it hits me like a thunderbolt. My eyes.

I am such an idiot. I can’t believe I haven’t thought to use my hypno powers on him. That only proves the boy messes with my brain. He needs to be gone, now, before something terrible happens.