She wondered how much worse she was about to make it.

“Jack,” Hazel called, before she could lose her nerve.

He turned, and his smile was real enough that she felt somewhat better. At least until she saw how red and watery his eyes were, as though irritated by all the charms and oils, because any protection from faeries must work against him. Then she saw how raw Carter’s knuckles looked. Blood was drying across them. There must have been a fight.

“Can I talk to you for a second?” she asked, weaving her way to Jack through the tide of the hallway.

Carter gave him a playful shove in Hazel’s direction. “Go on, then. Don’t keep the girl waiting.” Hazel wondered what she’d done to get on Carter’s good side.

Jack looked a little embarrassed. “Yeah, sure, whatever.”

They matched their steps to each other’s. He had on a striped cardigan over a worn Afropunk festival T-shirt. Heavy silver hoops shone in his ears. He tried to hold on to the smile for her, but it sat in odd contrast to the rest of his expression.

“You okay?” she asked, clutching her books to her chest.

He sighed. “I just wish Carter didn’t have to deal with this. You probably heard it all already, but just in case, he didn’t do anything to her.”

Hazel started to protest that she already knew that.

He shook his head. “And I didn’t, either. I swear it, Hazel—”

“Listen,” she interrupted. “I really do know it wasn’t him. Or you. I saw Amanda last night with the horned boy.”

“What?” His brows went up, and he stopped looking eager to convince her of Carter’s innocence. “How?”

“I told the police, but I don’t know if it matters,” she said. “And I’m sorry to have to ask you this on top of everything else, but I need to know where the Folk hold their full-moon revel. Can you help me?”

“That’s what you wanted to talk to me about?” Jack asked her, his expression becoming remote. “That’s why you stopped me in the hall?”

“I really need to know.”

“Yes,” he said softly. “I know where it’s held.”

She soldiered on. “Have you been there?”

“Hazel,” he said, cautioning her.

“Please,” she said. “One way or another, I’m going to go.”

Jack tilted his head in a way that made her newly aware of how the planes of his face weren’t quite like Carter’s, of how his cheekbones were higher, his face longer. And she was aware, too, of the subtle points at the tips of his ears. For a moment, as when he delivered the warning to her and Ben, his familiar face was made strange.

She thought of Leonie’s story about him whispering in Matt’s ear, about Matt slamming his own fist into his own face, over and over again.

“I’ve got to get to class.” He started to walk away, then seemed to feel bad about it and turned back to her. “I’m sorry.”

She grabbed hold of his arm. “Jack,” she said. “Please.”

He shook his head without looking at her. “Did you know there are different names for different moons? This month it’s going to be the Hunter’s Moon, but March has the Worm Moon and the Crow Moon. May has the Milk Moon, July the Mead Moon. February has the Hunger Moon and late October the Blood Moon. Aren’t they lovely names? Aren’t they something, Hazel? Aren’t they warning enough?”

“How many times have you been there?” she asked in a whisper. If Jack’s mother even suspected, it would break her heart.

“Lots,” he said, finally, in a strangled voice.

“I’m going with you,” she said. “We’re going together tonight to the Blood Moon or the Hunter’s Moon or whatever name you want to call it—the Head-Chopping Moon, for all I care.”

Jack shook his head. “It’s not safe for you.”

“Did you not just hear me say I don’t care?” Hazel said. “Someone is using me and I need to know who and why. And you need to clear Carter’s name—and yours, too. We need to know what’s really going on.”

“Do not ask me for this,” Jack said, with odd formality. Hazel wondered if he was worried about betraying his other family. She wondered if his Fairfold was a Fairfold that Hazel couldn’t even imagine.

“I’m not asking,” she told him, as firmly as she could. “I’m going, even if I’m going alone.”

He nodded once, inhaling shakily. “After school. I’ll meet you on the kids’ playground.” Then he turned and sped off down the hall. A few stray students, late to class or sporting hall passes, slid away from him as though he were contagious.

CHAPTER 11

Changelings are fish you’re supposed to throw back. A cuckoo raised by sparrows. They don’t quite fit anywhere.

Jack grew up knowing he was strange, without, at first, knowing why. He wasn’t adopted—he could see that. He looked just like his brother, Carter. He had the same dark skin as his mother and the same tight brown curls and the same slightly-too-long first toes. But something was wrong. He might have his father’s amber eyes and his father’s chin, but that didn’t seem to stop Dad from glancing at him with a worried, nervous expression, an expression that said, You’re not what you seem.

His mother rubbed him with coconut oil after his bath and sang him songs. His grandmother held him and told him stories.

There was a village near the Ibo River, one story began, a story passed down to his grandmother from her Yoruban ancestors. In it, a woman named Bola had a son who grew too large to carry on her back to the market, so Bola waited until he was sleeping and went without him, latching the door behind her. When she returned, he was still asleep, but all the food in the house was gone.

She wondered whether someone could have snuck into the house. But the door had not been forced and nothing but the food was missing.

Soon after, a neighbor came to Bola and asked her to repay a string of cowrie shells. Bola hadn’t borrowed money from her neighbor and told her as much. But the woman insisted, explaining that Bola’s son had come to her house, saying that he was on an errand for his mother, who needed the cowries to buy more food.

Bola shook her head and brought the neighbor into her house. The child was napping on a woven mat.

“See,” she said. “My baby is very little, far too small to walk and talk. How could he have come to your door? How could he have asked to borrow cowries?”

The neighbor stared in confusion. She explained that the boy who’d come to her door looked much like the sleeping child, but was far older. When Bola heard this, she became greatly distressed. She didn’t doubt her neighbor and believed that her child must have been possessed by an evil spirit. When Bola’s husband came home that night, she told him everything, and he became troubled as well.

Together, they made a plan. Her husband hid himself in the house while Bola went to the market, leaving the baby sleeping behind a latched door, just as before. Her husband watched as the child stood, his body stretching as he grew to the size of a ten-year-old. Then he began eating. He ate yams, locust beans, ripe mangos, pawpaw, and savory plantains, washing it all down with water from a calabash. He ate and ate and ate.