Students flooded around her, on their way to line up outside. On their way to wait for the fire department to declare this a false alarm, maybe a prank. Hazel leaned against the windows, taking several shaky breaths.

That was when she saw Molly coming down the hallway, moving against the stream of bodies. She was walking strangely, as if she was half dragging herself along, as if her limbs had become unfamiliar to her. Her expression was blank, her gaze seeming to slide over everything until it fell on Hazel.

Molly’s lips looked blue at first, but the more Hazel stared at them, the more she realized they were stained green, stained from the inside, as though she had been eating sour apple Laffy Taffy.

Hazel stayed still, a hideous chill starting at the base of her spine. She’d been scared when she saw the other kids crying, but the revulsion she felt at the way Molly moved was entirely new. Hazel knew that she might be looking at Molly’s body, but Molly was no longer looking out through her eyes.

“Stay back,” Hazel said as whatever it was got close, throwing up a hand automatically, stopping just short of knocking the girl to the floor.

A syrup-sweet voice came from Molly’s mouth, speaking in singsong. Her head tilted to one side. “I loved him and he’s dead and gone and bones. I loved him and they took him away from me. Where is he? Where is he? Dead and gone and bones. Dead and gone and bones. Where is he?”

With every word, clumps of dirt fell from her tongue.

“What are you doing to Molly?” Hazel asked shakily. The hall was nearly empty. The alarm was still ringing, but somehow the voice coming from Molly’s mouth carried easily over the sound.

“I loved him and I loved him and he’s dead and gone and bones. I loved him and they took him away from me. Where is he? Where is he? Dead and gone and bones. Dead and gone and bones. My father took him. My brother killed him. Dead and gone and bones. Dead and gone and bones. Where is he?”

Molly had been Hazel’s best friend for two years, the one she’d stayed up late instant-messaging about boys, the one she’d trusted to trim her bangs. When she and Molly walked through the halls, Hazel had felt like there was nothing wrong with normal, as if maybe she could just focus on having fun and not worrying too much about what came after. Molly didn’t care about faeries in the woods; they were just stories to her. She thought that all the tourist stuff was a scam and that the tourists themselves were boring, desperate for someone to tell them they were special. Seeing Fairfold through Molly’s eyes was like seeing an entirely new place. After Molly dumped her, Hazel sometimes thought she missed seeing the world that way even more than she missed Molly.

Now Molly would have no choice but to believe in the Folk. The thought made Hazel furious.

“You can’t have her,” Hazel said, fumbling for her necklace, the one Ben had made her wear. She pulled the chain strung with rowan wood from around her throat. When the creature didn’t react, Hazel thrust it over Molly’s head, letting the amulet settle at Molly’s throat. “See? So go! Go! You’re not welcome here!”

Abruptly, Molly’s eyes rolled upward, until Hazel saw only the white of her sclera.

Hazel’s heart thundered. Then Molly collapsed to the floor, her whole body going limp at once. Her head hit the linoleum, making a horrible, hollow sound.

“Help!” Hazel called. She knelt down, fumbling for Molly’s wrist, meaning to take her pulse, before she realized she had no idea how to do that. Over and over she screamed the word, and over and over nobody came.

Then Molly opened her eyes, blinking wildly, coughing so hard it was half choking. When she looked at Hazel, the expression that washed over her face was some commingling of embarrassment and terror. It was an entirely human expression.

“Hazel,” Molly croaked, spitting out dirt and what appeared to be leaves.

Sweet, incredulous relief made Hazel lean against the wall. “You’re okay?”

Molly nodded slowly, pushing herself into a half-sitting position, wiping at her chin. Her black hair, usually gelled into spiky precision, was a mess. Blood dribbled from a shallow cut where her head had struck the floor, turning the collar of her white shirt red. “I saw it. The monster. It’s made of old, knotted branches grown over with moss, and it has these horrible black eyes.”

Hazel scooted closer and reached out to take Molly’s hand. Molly squeezed hard.

The alarm was still going, a siren wailing into the emptiness of the halls.

“You always knew this was all real, didn’t you?” she asked, anguished. “How can you stand it?”

Hazel was trying to formulate a reply when Molly’s eyes closed. She shuddered once and collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut. Hazel shouted and shook her by her shoulders, but Molly’s body was as limp as Amanda’s had been.

The monster was no longer content to wait in the heart of the forest. It had come to the center of Fairfold in the middle of the day, and Hazel wasn’t sure if it could even be slain.

Whether it had come for Severin, because someone had summoned it, or for a reason beyond Hazel’s comprehension, she had to focus.

She needed to get out of that hallway and she needed to get Molly out, too. Carrying Molly over her shoulders would be possible, but not ideal. Hazel wouldn’t be able to fight and she wouldn’t be able to move fast, either.

“Stay right there,” Hazel said to Molly softly as she got up. She passed the widening crack in the wall, from which tendrils of ivy spilled into the room like snakes, and she went down the hall toward the art room just as two people came barreling around the corner. It was Carter, with a phone in one hand and a hockey stick in the other. Robbie Delmonico was beside him, brandishing a baseball bat. He yelped at the sight of her, stumbling back into a bank of lockers, making them rattle like chains.

Hazel found her hands balled into loose fists. “What the hell?”

“Relax. We were looking for you,” Carter said. He was wearing the rib pad from his football uniform and knee plates. Hazel had never before noticed how much football gear was like armor. With his broad shoulders and excellent jawline, he looked like Sir Morien from the Round Table. “Emergency services people won’t let anyone back into the school. Ben and Jack got stuck out in the parking lot, so they’ve been lecturing me over texts on where you might go.” He gestured vaguely toward the front of the school.

“There’s some kind of thing,” Robbie put in. “We found three freshmen under one of the tables in the cafeteria. They were out cold—or at least I thought they were, but one of them opened her eyes and told me something super creepy—something about bones. Then she passed out again. We carried them to some EMTs through an open window, but figured we’d stay inside until we were sure everyone else got out.”

Hazel nodded. She was forcibly reminded what a good guy Robbie was and why she’d kissed him in the first place, before things had gotten weird. The hardest thing about being wanted was the hardest thing about wanting—wanting badly enough that it gave you a stomachache, wanting in the way that was partly about kissing and partly about swallowing whole, the way a snake gulps down a mouse or the Big Bad Wolf gulps down Red Riding Hood—wanting turned someone you felt like you knew into a stranger. Whether that person was your brother’s best friend or a sleeping prince in a glass prison or a girl who kissed you at a party, the moment you wanted more than just touching your mouth to theirs, they became terrifying and you became terrified. “Dead and gone and bones,” she said.