The Lost Boys by Lilian Carmine

useless. I reached out and took hold of his hand, like he had held mine. Or had that just been a dream? Either way, this time my hand met solid flesh rather than going straight through.
    When my hand touched his, sharp, hot pinpricks jolted through my fingertips once again. Tristan moaned but he appeared to relax, his convulsions easing. I looked at Miss Violet in surprise but she just nodded, looking relieved. What had just happened here?
    “Can you take him to your house?” Miss Violet asked my mom. “Until we sort this whole mess out.”
    My mom nodded. “O-okay. Joey, dear, do you think you can manage to get him to walk?”
    “I don’t know. I can try,” I muttered.
    “Just keep him close to you, and you two should be fine!” Miss Violet advised as she turned away to help the eldest of the ladies, old Meg. She and Margaret were now supporting her, one on each side.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked as they started to walk away.
    “Come on, honey. Let’s get him home,” my mom said, kneeling by my side.
    I put the palm of my hand flat on Tristan’s chest. My palm tingled at the contact with his skin.
    “Tris, can you hear me? Do you think you can stand up? For me?” I pleaded.
    He nodded, managing to half-open his heavy eyelids. My mom and I helped him up and wrapped the coat tightly around his body. I hoped no one would notice we had a naked boy inside it while we walked out of there. We managed to stumble through the cemetery lanes, Tristan leaning on both my Mom and me. As we reached the gates, people were still coming and going, but no one paid any attention to us. They were all too drunk or too distracted to notice anything anyway.
    We left the cemetery as anonymously as we had entered.
    A few minutes after everyone had left, a dark figure appeared on the grass circle.
    He wore a heavy, dull, faded gray cloak, and it covered almost all of his pale face. He was tall, very thin and moved swiftly, his cloak billowing in the slashing wind. But he did not care about the cold. He did not feel cold. Or heat, or anything for that matter.
    Those were mundane sensations, and he was far from being human and far from belonging to this world.
    He looked around. He would have been intrigued, and slightly upset, if he were to have any emotion. But emotions, like sensations, were for humans. He only felt duty as his purpose. He sniffed the air. It smelled of magic.
    And he was late. By only a few seconds, but late nevertheless.
    He would fix it, though. He always fixed things. That was his job, the purpose of his existence: to fix things that were wrong and out of the natural order. He organized and corrected the many, many mistakes that happened all around. And there was always so much to do, so much chaos happening all the time …
    He walked silently around the circle of grass. A group of young people appeared, shouting excitedly, carrying bottles in their hands. He did not worry about them; he knew they couldn’t see him.
    His kind was never witnessed. Never seen. Those were the rules.
    The young, drunken party passed by, completely unaware of the cloaked figure standing only a few inches away from them, observing, analyzing. Something caught his attention, something almost invisible, but not to him: a tiny, minuscule, dark speck on the grass.
    He kneeled down right next to it and touched it. Dark, wet, human blood.
    No wonder the air smelled of ancient, powerful magic. All magic of that kind required an offering of blood.
    He sniffed the tiny smear of blood on his fingertip. This was his trail, his lead. He could follow the blood to its source. Trace it to the mistake that he needed to fix. He always found them: the “mistakes”. Found them and fixed them. It was only a matter of time.
    He disappeared as silently and quickly as he had appeared, without a trace.
    We finally got home. It had taken us about fifteen minutes to get there, but it felt much longer.
    We half-walked, half-dragged Tristan to