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little ones is like eating worms.”
    â€œLike you could ever get near a coatl egg-room. Back when my people ruled the Aztec empire, we hunted your kind for sport until every last one was dead and burned!”
    â€œEmma, what is going on out here?” her mom said, walking down the metal steps. “What’ve you been saying to Mr. Simbi to get him so —” She stopped abruptly when she saw the hag. “Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there. Do you live in the other trailer? I thought there weren’t any other humans living here.”
    â€œShe’s not a human. She’s a hag,” Emma said. “But her teeth are gone, so I don’t think . . .”
    Her mom gripped the handrail so tight that her knuckles turned white. “I see. Emma, get inside, now.”
    â€œBut —” Emma started to protest, even though she wanted nothing more than to run away from the hag.
    â€œNow!” Her mom turned back toward the trailer. “Chien! Get out here!”
    Emma could hear her dad’s footsteps thudding through the kitchen, then clanging as he ran out onto the steps. “What? What happened?”
    â€œ
That
,” Emma’s mom said, pointing toward the hag. “That happened. Would you mind explaining what that . . . that
thing
is doing living next to our daughter?”
    The hag nodded and hobbled toward Emma’s parents. “Not safe, not safe for human child. You will have to move away, yes, must keep child safe from horrible monsters.”
    â€œHanh, calm down,” her dad said, holding up his hands. “The police said she’s completely harmless, and she mostly stays inside during the day anyway. I was going to tell you, but I only found out two days ago, with the house practically sold already, and —”
    â€œDon’t you dare tell me to calm down!” her mom shouted, and then she switched to Vietnamese to continue yelling. It was almost always bad when they switched to Vietnamese.
    This was supposed to be her life now, Emma realized. She wanted to get away — from Mr. Simbi, from the hag, from her parents yelling most of all — but where could she go? Down the road? Into the forest?
    For once, she did what her mom said and went back inside. Not that it was much better inside the trailer, with her smelly room and the thing inside her vent, laughing at her. Her mom was busy worrying about the toothless old hag, when something else was living right under the trailer. They’d be lucky to survive the night.
    There was nowhere to sit in the living room, so she sat down on one of the boxes. What would Helena have done? She always seemed to have an answer for everything. Emma thought about what things used to be like, what
normal
used to be like. Her old house, her old room. Her sister.
    Helena probably would have said something sarcastic, like she didn’t care that their parents were fighting or that they’d lost the house. Then she’d have lounged around, reading her glitter-covered faerie magazines and gushing over the descriptions and illustrations of their fancy clothes and expensive parties.
    Emma always thought Helena was just pretending that she didn’t care when she acted like that, but maybe she really hadn’t cared at all. Otherwise, why would she run away, and not tell Emma anything? Why didn’t she call or leave a message on Emma’s HangOut wall or something?
    She wished Helena would come back. Then everything would be right again. Then she wouldn’t feel so alone.

CRAG FACT OF THE DAY:
    â€œThe average child between two and fourteen years old is one thousand times more likely to be hit by a car than to be eaten by a hag.”
    CragWiki.org

    â€œY ou know, it wasn’t very polite to block up the vent like that.”
    Emma sprang up from the box she was sitting on and looked around, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from. Then she saw the thin,