Into the Beyond Books 1-3

“I’m outside your front door!” read the text from Steph.

Channie sat up in bed and glanced out the window. It was already after midnight. She hadn’t spoken to Steph for the better part of a year, and now suddenly here she was, out of the blue, on the doorstep of Channie’s mom’s house. The skinny blonde looked uncomfortable as she shifted her gaze between her phone, waiting for Channie’s response, and the dark street behind her. Steph’s arms were full of plastic grocery bags, handles stretched thin under the weight of their contents against her fuzzy white hoodie.

“Just stay quiet, my mom’s asleep. Be there in a bit,” Channie texted back. She crept to the stairs and down them in silence. She had a bad feeling in her gut as she carefully opened the front door and joined Steph on the porch.

“I need your help contacting Mr. Gray,” Steph said quietly, skipping over greetings and pleasantries and all the months of radio silence between them.

Channie stared back at Steph incredulously. The creature she spoke of—Mr. Gray—was a mischievous, doll-sized, time-traveling fortune teller that they’d had run-ins with in the past. He was a Parca—plural, Parcae—or Fate: A member of a tiny, ageless species; manipulators of destiny; denizens of a place outside of time itself, known as the Beyond. Channie’s mom would have called Mr. Gray a demon. She would have been horrified to learn that Channie knew how to contact him.

Steph took in Channie’s reluctant expression. “Please! This is important,” she said. “I need to use Mr. Gray’s portals to go back in time and save Jerry.”

Channie choked slightly on her spit. “The goat?” she asked.

Steph nodded enthusiastically, a gleam of wild energy in her eyes.

Channie crossed her arms. “You want to go back in time six years to our most terrible experience in life—one from which we both barely escaped with our lives—just to try to save a goat.” It was a statement, not a question, and it was jam-packed full of judgmental undertone.

“My ‘most terrible experience’?” Steph chuckled softly. “Speak for yourself—I dated Landon.”

Channie cringed. She too had dated Landon, more recently than Steph. That was over now. They both were well aware of their shared history, although Steph had no idea of the true extent of Channie’s relationship with Landon. It had gone on for over a year, completely in secret, before they revealed the relationship to anyone in their friends group. Channie had consoled Landon when he was freshly out of Steph’s arms… mostly out of Steph’s arms, anyway….

Channie glanced down again at the armful of grocery bags looped across Steph’s wrists and fingers—they were so heavy that her fingertips were starting to turn red. The subtle stink of butchered meat was quickly leaching through the plastic and out into the night air. “Please don’t tell me that’s a bunch of goat meat….”

Steph grinned through gritted teeth. “I need to switch it with Jerry to keep the timeline consistent. I remember seeing a torn up body.”

Six years ago, when they were young teens, they’d briefly seen Jerry’s remains after he was devoured by blood-sucking ghasts that attacked their summer camp—it had been their first supernatural experience, intertwining their fates.

“This has been weighing on me,” Steph pouted. She lowered her bags, placing them in a pile beside the door.

Channie wasn’t sure if she meant that the meat was literally heavy or that Jerry’s death had been weighing on her for all these years. “Do you not find it kinda messed up trading one goat’s life for another? And aren’t you a vegetarian?”

“Vegan.” Steph rolled her eyes. “Whatever, this goat was already dead.”

Channie wasn’t about to back down. “But you’re contributing to the demand for goat butchery. The industrial meat market will slaughter more goats in the future because of the increased demand. You’re trading a life for a life.”

Steph scoffed. “A goat life. A future goat life. That’s the moral ground you’re trying to stand on?” She shook her head in disappointment. “One—I knew Jerry. I didn’t know this other goat. And two—my tiny contribution to the industrial meat market isn’t going to make a blip in actually changing any decision made about anything to do with how many goats are raised for slaughter in the future. I don’t have that power. And I already bought the meat, so let’s get past this already and not let it go to waste! And besides, you know Jerry would have done it for either one of us!”

Channie had a strange tingle in her stomach—a nervous twinge. She stared back at Steph with her jaw hanging open. “Okay, fine,” she said despite her better judgment, “but let’s make this quick.”