Renata

Farrah, walking home alone from the only club that still stays open until sunrise, wearing the black ring…

Augusta, haunted by the many ghosts of her childhood…

At this time of night, Macaria often visits the morgue…

Wren, wondering (or not wondering) what happened to her friend…

The few seconds between bungling her over-practiced landing and actually slipping the black ring onto her finger were the most precarious of Hodja's entire life…

Aannii, drinking coffee, in a teacup, in space…

Inka, aware of the Minders for several years now and long past cycling through self-doubt (am I dreaming? high? crazy?), had simply accepted their presence, and the fact that no one else seemed to be able to see them, as a novel fact of her life. For the most part, they just floated around, though it was clear from the get-go that they gravitated toward populated areas…

The first time Millie was suddenly cornered by several black SUVs, hooded and herded into one of them by burly men wearing suits, sunglasses and earpieces, she'd reacted as you might imagine anyone would…

Dizonia was not fooled by the assorted spirits' blatant attempt to throw her off their scent…

The night before her 18th birthday, Giuliana fell asleep on Earth for the last time. Later, she realized it was far from the first time she'd been abducted. Numerous troubling occurrences—occasionally inexplicable happenings that had punched confounding holes throughout the continuity of her childhood & adolescent memories—suddenly all pieced themselves together into a coherent, canonical whole, for which her current situation, light years removed from Earth, became the only possible, inevitable adulthood.