One of the humans began to beg, but Hazel looked up at the stars above her and began to count them, instead of listening.

Hazel woke, covered by a thin sheen of sweat.

Her alarm played tinny music beside her ear. Turning, she shut off her phone and pushed herself out of bed. She should have been disturbed by her dream, but instead it kindled in her a long-forgotten desire for a blade in her hand and sureness of purpose. She’d barely gotten any sleep; she should have been far more exhausted than she felt. Maybe adrenaline was an even better drug than caffeine.

After her shower, Hazel got dressed in a loose gray T-shirt and black leggings. She felt stiff and sore. Even the knuckles of her fingers were scraped. As she pulled her hair into a rusty ponytail, memories scattered her thoughts. Flashes of the horned boy—of Severin—kept distracting her. His expressions, the feel of his fingers on her skin, the heat of his mouth. In the bright light of day, it seemed impossible, unreal, but she’d felt the realness of it, all the way down to her traitorous gut. And then her brother, ax held high in shaking hands, face flushed, red hair blowing over his eyes. She hadn’t seen Ben like that in years, brave and mad and anguished. She’d been terrified for him—more scared than she’d been during her own stumbling walk through the forest with the horned boy pulling her along.

She wondered if that was how Ben had felt all those years ago, when it had been Hazel out in front, blade clutched tight, facing down faeries.

Mom was making smoothies in the kitchen when Hazel came downstairs. Kale and ginger, kefir and honey were all lined up on the counter. Mom had on one of Dad’s ratty, checkered bathrobes, her short brownish hair sticking up at odd angles, paint still under her fingernails. On the radio, an old song about shiny boots of leather was playing.

Ben was sitting on the counter, dressed in rumpled green corduroy pants and a baggy sweater, rubbing his eyes, yawning, and drinking his smoothie out of a quart jar. A tiny square of kale was stuck to his upper lip.

“Morning,” he said, sounding as though he was still half asleep. He raised his mason jar in salutation.

Hazel grinned. Her mother handed over a mug of coffee. “Ben and I were just talking about the Watkins girl. She got hurt last night, a couple of blocks from here. Something about it was just on the radio—along with a warning to stay inside after dark.”

Hazel imagined what the emergency services people had seen—Amanda’s body, arms folded over her chest, eyes closed, dirt in her mouth, hair spread out like a cape.

“What were they saying about her?” Hazel asked dully.

“She’s in a coma. There’s something wrong with her blood. With tonight being a full moon, you both better get home early. Call if you have to be somewhere, okay? I’m going to let your father know, too, in case he decides to drive home sooner than he planned.”

Ben pushed off the counter. With his long legs, it was barely any drop at all to the floor. “We’ll be careful,” he said, answering what Mom hadn’t asked.

Mom poured a glass of greenish liquid from the blender and handed it to Hazel. “Don’t forget to wear your socks inside out, too. Just in case. And put some iron in your pockets. There’s a bucket of old nails in the shed. You can grab one from there.”

Hazel gulped down her breakfast. It was a little gritty, as though the kale hadn’t been quite pulverized enough.

“Okay, Mom.” Ben rolled his eyes. “We know.”

Hazel hadn’t done any of that stuff, but she appreciated Ben acting as if she had. They went out to the car together. On the drive to school, he looked over at her sleepily. “Later today you’re going to tell me all the parts of last night that I don’t know, right?”

Hazel sighed. She should have been grateful he was at least giving her some time to figure out how to answer him, but all she felt was dread.

“Okay,” she said.

Reaching into his pocket, he fished out a necklace with a chip of rowan wood drilled through so that it hung from a chain. “Wear this for me, okay? Mom’s not wrong.”

Rowan wood. Protection from faeries. All the kids in their school had made pendants like this in kindergarten, along with four-leaf-clover pins, and most had hung on to them—or made new ones—to wear every May Eve. Hazel stroked her thumb over it, touched that he’d give her a necklace she was sure he’d made more than a decade before. She lifted her hair and hung it around her throat. “Thanks.”

He didn’t say anything else, but he glanced over at her several times, as though he was trying to learn something from her expression, as though he hoped to discover something he hadn’t ever thought to look for before.

School was strange. Hushed and a little deserted, as though more than a few kids had been kept home by parents. People whispering in the halls instead of shouting, standing around in knots of close friends. Hazel noticed that lots of them had charms tied around their wrists or hanging around their throats. Red berries, dried and strung on silver cord. A gold coin. Herbal oils wafted up off their skin, making the hallway smell not unpleasantly like a head shop. When Hazel began to unpack her bag into her locker, a walnut rolled out, bouncing twice on the linoleum floor.

Leaning down to pick it up, she saw that it was tied with rough string.

With shaking fingers, she opened it. Another rolled-up piece of paper was inside. She unfurled that to read a new message in the same scratchy hand: Full moon overhead; better go straight to bed.

No way. She wasn’t taking orders from some mysterious faerie. Not anymore. Not if she could help it. Crumpling up the note, she tossed it back into her bag.

Leonie sauntered up to Hazel’s locker, smelling of cigarette smoke. She had on a long, ratty flannel shirt over her white T-shirt, with a gold chain around her neck. She’d strung it with a key ring, and—in addition to her house keys—it had half a dozen charms hanging from it. Her dark curly hair was pulled up into two buns on top of her head. They were wet, like she’d put them up right after a shower. “So,” she said. “I guess you heard, right?”

“About Amanda? Yeah.” Hazel nodded.

“Last person to see her was Carter. Everybody’s saying one of the Gordon boys had something to do with what happened.” Leonie shrugged, to show she wasn’t necessarily agreeing, but since she was spreading the rumor, she probably didn’t consider them entirely innocent.

“I thought whatever happened to her was magical.” A shudder went through Hazel, remembering the dirt in Amanda’s mouth and the vines.

“Well, that’s only one of the Gordon boys, then. And that’s the one most people are blaming.”

“Jack had nothing to do with this!” Thinking of the night before made her recall the shock of Severin’s mouth against hers. Just two days after she’d kissed Jack, as though the universe was conspiring to give her everything she’d ever wanted and punishing her at the same time.

When her thoughts returned to Amanda, lying in the ditch, she felt even worse about the kisses.

“Well, it’s all just a rumor,” Leonie said airily. “It’s not like I believe it or anything.”

“Well, it’s crazy. And you shouldn’t be repeating it.”