Audrey held the blood up to the lamp on the nightstand next to her bed. The light barely penetrated it, revealing only the suggestion of red where the blood touched the glass of the vial. If she hadn't known it was blood, she would have seen only black.

For the hundredth time, Audrey contemplated drinking the blood. That's why she took it, after all: to reach Joanie, to find her in her hidden place and bring her home safe. The nurse had done that, with her anti-psychotics and her ice bath, but Joanie wasn't back. Not all the way. At the Health Center, a few drops of Joanie's blood on Audrey's tongue had sent her into a completely different world for a few moments. A whole vial of it could give her enough time to find Joanie – or her mind, or her soul, or whatever it was that was really missing – and pull her out.

Or it would give her just enough time to drown in that crystal-blue pool.

Audrey was willing to risk it. She would risk anything for Joanie. But she wasn't sure Joanie wanted to come home. Maybe she should just give the blood to Renee, see if it would prove useful for the Work. The scope of the Work kept expanding. First they followed and photographed Joanie, but when Renee saw the professor talking to her on the roof of Thorn, she decided they had to follow him. That led them to the two girls Renee somehow already knew, Lata and Caroline, and now they were part of it too. After Lata took the professor's picture at the Globe, the four of them went to the diner and gorged on feta fries and milkshakes. For the first time in a long time Audrey felt like she had an actual circle of friends. Like she had a team, to counter whatever secret club Joanie had.

Maybe she didn't need Joanie. Maybe Renee and Lata and Caroline could be her friends, her true friends. She turned the vial over and over, watching the inky blood slosh from one side to the other, looking for the answer.

Audrey was interrupted by the sound of glass breaking downstairs. She looked at the clock on the nightstand: 4:15 a.m. She had no idea where Alex and Xander were, other than that they weren't home. She put the vial back in the little wooden jewelry box she kept it in, and returned the box to the nightstand drawer. Scanning the room for a weapon, she decided on a mic stand, and unscrewed the metal pole from the base.

She opened the door and peeked out. Everything was dark upstairs. A faint light came up from the mouth of the stairwell. She crept out of her room, toward the stairs, holding the pole in front of her. Downstairs, someone was walking from the kitchen to the living room. The footsteps were heavy, erratic – not the sound of someone trying to be stealthy. Then came the unmistakable resonant atonal bong of an acoustic guitar making contact with a hard object. "Fuck," said a voice from the living room. A light came on, illuminating the stairs further.

Audrey descended the stairs and peeked around the corner into the living room. Alex was sprawled out on the couch, acoustic in hand, taking a long drink from a glass of water. "Did you break something?" said Audrey?

Alex spewed out half a mouthful of water. "Fuck, Audrey," he said. "Don't scare me."

"Is there broken glass? I don't want to step on broken glass."

"There's broken glass. I dropped a glass in the kitchen. Getting water." Alex was drunk. He'd probably been drunk all weekend. The day before she'd heard him come home at five in the morning after getting up to something Friday night. He'd still been asleep when Audrey left to meet up with Renee Saturday night. Now it was Sunday morning, and he was coming down hard.

Alex plinked out a halting tune, barely recognizable as the opening riff of "Runnin' with the Devil."

"Why are you playing that?" Audrey tasted blood and chlorine.

"I don't know," said Alex. "It's been stuck in my head all week." He played the riff again, sloppy and out of tune. "Audrey. Audrey. Do you ever think about all the people who lived here before?"

"Dave and Avery lived here. And what's-his-name, Owen Bean." Stop playing that. Don't invite the devil in.

"I mean, even before them. All the hundreds of people who've lived here. Everybody who sat right where I'm sitting. Stood right where you're standing."

"This duplex is at most ten years old, Alex. There's no hundreds of people."

"There are ghosts in the walls." He started singing, a melody borrowed from somewhere. "There are ghosts in the walls of the Dollhouse."

"There aren't any ghosts." No ghosts. Only devils.

Alex strummed an E minor and let it ring. "That's my favorite chord," he said. "Nothing beats an E minor. Name a chord better than E minor. You can't do it."

"Alex—"

"Audrey."

"It's late. Get some sleep." There was no point in talking to Alex when he was like this. She'd avoided talking to him for nearly a week now, since the suplex incident. Obviously that was the right call. She started back up the stairs.

"Audrey, wait." She wouldn't have stopped, but there was something in his voice. A hollow, plaintive sound. "Are we still—"

"In a band?" Of course that's what Alex was worried about. His precious band.

"No. Are we still friends?" Had they ever been friends, really? They'd been bandmates, roommates, even lovers, briefly (or at least a word that meant the same thing but didn't sound as gross), but she couldn't say if they'd ever been friends. Not friends the way she and Joanie had been friends, obviously. But all the time she and Alex had spent together had been motivated by something more than a simple desire to be in each other's presence.

"I don't know," she said.

"Me neither." He plucked out the "Runnin' with the Devil" riff again. "Dude, this semester has been weird so far, right? It's like I can't get my feet under me. Everything's just gone crazy."

"No kidding."

"I know you've been hanging out with Renee. That's cool. Did she tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"The other night, when Xander thought you sked him to suplex you. She actually asked me to suplex her. That's crazy." Another run through the Van Halen riff. It was almost there. A little more practice, and he'd have it down cold. Audrey could just about see the shape of what was happening. It was just out of reach, but it was starting to resolve. Alex, Xander, Renee, her – they were connected. There was a conduit between them, and the devil was running wild. He was going places he wasn't supposed to be going. A memory clicked into place.

"Last week," she said, "when Joanie came into the Purple Room. She told you that you weren't supposed to be in there. Do you remember that?"

"Yeah."

"What did she mean?"

"Dude, I have no idea." Alex closed his eyes. Audrey watched him for a minute, waiting to see if he was really asleep.

She went to the kitchen and swept the broken glass into a pile. As she bent down to sweep the broken shards into a dustpan, she saw a face in them, just for a second, but whether it was a devil or an angel she couldn't say.

******

Kenya was waiting for her outside Weston. "You need to get an answering machine," she said, half-running up to Audrey as she got off the bus. She looked like she hadn't slept in two days.

"Good morning to you too."

"Whenever I call, nobody answers."

"I've been trying to spend as little time as possible at home. Things are a little tense." Audrey moved toward the door of the dining hall, but Kenya caught her arm.

"Have you seen Joanie?"

"Today?"

"Since Friday."

"I haven't seen her since she told me to fuck off. That was Thursday, I think."

"She told you to fuck off?"

"More or less." What she'd said was "I'm tired of you," which was exponentially worse. Someone tells you to fuck off, you fuck off for a little bit, wait for them to cool down. Joanie saying "I'm tired of you" was confirmation of all of Audrey's worst fears.

"She more or less told me to fuck off too. More more than less." Kenya absentmindedly chewed on the drawstring of her thin purple hoodie. The end of it was frayed and wet already. "She hasn't been back to the room since Friday night. I don't have any idea where she is." Kenya looked down at Audrey, her eyes red and wet. "I did something stupid, Audrey. I don't know where she is."

Audrey had never seen Kenya like this. She always seemed so invulnerable, so intimidating. Audrey reached for her hand, and Kenya grabbed it fiercely. Her hand swallowed Audrey's.

"We'll find her," said Audrey. "What happened?"

Audrey guided Kenya inside and helped her get three bowls of Cheerios. She seemed to feel better after the first one. "The place Joanie went last week," said Kenya. "In her mind. She had to go back. So she could remember what happened. I helped her."

"How?"

Kenya chewed a mouthful of cereal for a full twenty seconds. "That doesn't matter. She saw you while she was in there."

"Me?"

"She said she needed to apologize to you. For telling you to fuck off, I guess."

"I'm not holding my breath." But it meant something, at least. Somewhere inside, Joanie knew that she had hurt her. She knew the damage she was capable of inflicting.

"She saw... someone in there. Someone bad. She told him 'You aren't supposed to be in here.' Then there was something about Monster Plantation. You know that racist ride at Six Flags?" Audrey and Joanie had been to Six Flags a half-dozen times together. She'd had to drag Joanie onto the Mind Bender and the Looping Starship under protest. The first few times, Joanie white-knuckled them, eyes closed tight. The Dahlonega Mine Train was more her speed, though by their second visit she'd had to duck all the way down to keep from being decapitated in the tunnel. But her favorite was Monster Plantation, which she'd insisted on riding at least three times every visit. Audrey never really saw the appeal. It was kind of racist, or at least ill-advised, when you thought about it.

"'Stay out of the marsh.'"

"Exactly."

Audrey could picture that fat purple marshal, Billy Bob something, waggling his stubby fingers as he implored the visitors in vain not to veer left into the marsh, where the bad monsters lurked. He looked right at Audrey as her boat followed the track on its predetermined path into the darkness. "You aren't supposed to be in here," he said.

"Wait," said Audrey. "She told someone 'You aren't supposed to be in here?'"

"Yeah. I don't know who, though."

"She said the exact same thing that night. When she came into the Purple Room. It was crazy. Alex and I like jumped off the stage and ran to her. She looked Alex right in the eye and said 'You aren't supposed to be in here.' Then she ran off."

Kenya put down her spoon and leaned back, staring into the middle distance beyond Audrey. "It's Alex," she said. "It's fucking Alex." She stood up and grabbed her tray, with its bowl and a half of uneaten Cheerios.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to get to the bottom of this."

Audrey stood up. "Cool. Me too."

"No you're not."

"The fuck I'm not. Alex is my... my friend. If he's done something to Joanie, I want to know."

"Audrey." Kenya's eyes were hard and dry. She was invulnerable again. Impenetrable. "This really doesn't concern you."

Audrey would have punched her, if she wasn't positive her fists would just bounce off the rock-hard muscle under Kenya's smooth skin. "Because it's part of your secret club bullshit."

Kenya didn't answer. She handed her tray to Audrey, who reflexively took it, and walked away. Audrey's blood burned beneath her skin, pounding out a message in her ears, begging for an infusion.

Thanks for reading! The Boy in the Tunnel will be taking an extended holiday break, starting right now. We'll be back with regular updates starting Monday, January 7 (2019, in case you are reading this in the distant future). Happy holidays! - Gardner