Rebecca Barto

Not so long ago, ghost stories were born over campfires or whispered to life on school playgrounds. Now they can travel from a computer in a dark room to a phone screen an ocean away with one keystroke. Juna Poe is a typical high school senior, counting the days until graduation, fighting with her mom, and drawing--until an incident at school unlocks something monstrous in the pages of her sketchbook. Juna goes about her regular life—fixing the Wifi for the witch next door and not having a crush on her best friend, Callie--unaware of the ancient magic stirring in the Appalachian mountains around her. Because the Silverfish has been born. And it is watching. The story should have stopped there, dying in a small town with an angry girl--but then her brother posts about her creation online, and people start to disappear. Now, Juna and her friends must delve into old folk magic to fight a monster spawned in misty mountains and solidified on the dark web.

Willa Celadon is fine surviving the apocalypse alone. New York isn’t the same without the F train and iPhones, but she’s got an old camera, a battered pickup truck, and her dog Donut to keep her company. It’s been seven years since the Pulse plunged the world into perpetual darkness. Life has settled into a new normal—as long as she ignores her strange visions and the rumors of something monstrous lurking in the subway. All that changes when Asher—amateur car mechanic and disgustingly good guy—saves her life. Suddenly she finds herself with a circle of friends, a steady job, and a mysterious boyfriend. For the first time in years, everything is slightly better than fine. Until the night she finds herself kneeling in Asher’s blood. Wrenched into the Umbra—a magic dimension filled with supernatural beings and even more darkness than her own—Willa races to find the connection between her old secret and new power to save everyone she has reluctantly grown to love.