I jerked my head up, thinking - hoping - it was Rohan somehow returned to me.

But why would the universe give me my boyfriend when it could give me a hole that had been torn into the fabric of reality? An in-between place, one unseen by normal humans, sat like an overlay over the backyard, and it was here that the whirling, dizzying rupture was visible. An ugly gash separated the soft twilight of Los Angeles from the throbbing malevolence on the other side.

I dashed out of ...