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No one believes Sarah about the Labyrinth, of course.
She knew they wouldn’t from the start but still – she had a child’s faith that someone might understand her feelings and her sense of primal elation and all of the things she’d managed to find in her wondrous exploration of the world beyond their world.
When she finally hits college and sees a young girl with a hesitant smile and a sense of the magical about her, she realizes she isn’t entirely alone in the world – and that though she might be the person who had come up from the Labyrinth with her own power intact, there were many kinds of power in the world, and many kinds of girls who had experienced the sort of thing that she had, in another form.
***
Star tells Sarah the truth during the sophomore barbecue at Georgia State. At first, Sarah just thinks her roommate’s had too many peach slings, but when she shows her the healed-over marks on her throat she realizes she’s telling the truth. Sarah’s jaw is on the floor over it. “Do you feel it, too?” asks Sarah. She looked at Star, who nods her head. “The magic, all around us?”
“All the time,” she says quickly. “All the time.”
And they keep on feeling it as the seasons change – when they separate for the holidays, and Star goes back to her boyfriend in Santa Carla and Sarah goes home to her parents and to visit her friends from below. They come back with stories about vampire attacks and goblin princes, shared in gossip in the school mess hall.
Then Star stars having nightmares about her ex, David. Dreams about the walls bleeding. He keeps trying to convince her to come to Santa Carla again – or else.
Sarah tells Star they’re just dreams. But for spring break, they get as far from Santa Carla as they possibly can and go to New Orleans for Spring Break.
That’s where all hell breaks loose.
***
Sarah doesn’t really have visions of Jareth – more like dreams of a version of him, ugly and sneering, as he judges her during their nighttime stay in the French quarter. She and Star head out to a bar on their little rented scooter and that’s where they realize half the patrons there aren’t human – and the other half aren’t even corporal.
It’s as if someone threw down a gauntlet when the action gets going. Ghosts possessing vampires – vampires dusting ghosts. And in the middle of it all is a guy in a leather jacket, with a smile and a gun and blood dripping.
He cocks his head in Sarah’s direction. “Would you ladies mind joining in?”
Sarah doesn’t even hesitate. She knows her best friend as a ghost problem and this might be the best, and only, way to get rid of the jerk who won’t leave her alone. She doesn’t hesitate when she sees a spiked blond mullet and red flashing eyes at the far edge of the crowd.
She jumps into the fray, with Star at her side.
***
They leave the bar together, a little shaky butSarah wasn’t about to give her neck up to Severen, even if he had saved their lives with that incantation and Star had lived that life already – she wasn’t going back. He pouted about that. Maybe he thought he’d have a thrall or two, but not the two of them.
He sighs and scratches his head. “Okay. So you two have some freaky ass power over the ghosts in this place. You could rule the whole world from right here. And you STILL want to go back to college?”
Sarah looks at Star. “I don’t think ghostbusting is going to pay off my tuition,” said Star.
“Yeah,” Sarah agreed, climbing on the motorcycle. Star mounted the back and smirked at Severen over her shoulder. “And I’m not going to become the world’s most famous fantasy actress just sitting here scaring vampire ghosts.”
“But what about…” he shakes his head as Sarah guns the engine. Star laughs, leans into her, and they leave the vampire in the dusk as dawn threatens the edge of the world. If he really wants them, he can come find them.