“Is it wrong that I like that you tremble? That you flinch?” Severin asked.

Ben swallowed. “I’m pretty sure it’s not ideal.”

The horned boy raised both brows. “So what do you suppose I noticed when I kissed you?”

Ben sighed, looking down at the patchy lawn below. He wanted Severin to tell him. Wanted to know what he’d thought when his fingers had tightened on the skin above Ben’s hip, wanted to know what he’d felt when he’d gasped into Ben’s mouth. But he was being childish. “I get it, being jealous is ridiculous when you’ve got actual problems like a monster sister and a killer father.”

Severin shifted, making the trees rustle. His eyes were green as deep groves and forgotten glens, his hair falling around his face. “My problems are yours as well. All of Fairfold is blessed with my problems, and they do not lessen your own. You and your sister are very dear to each other. To show your regard, you give each other lovely bouquets of lies.”

“It’s not like that.”

“I know you, Benjamin Evans,” Severin said. “Remember?”

Ben slipped a little, nearly losing his balance. He’d been thinking of Severin as cold, as a story, as a faerie prince—beautiful and distant. He kept forgetting that Severin knew him, knew more about him than any person in the world.

“You said you loved me so many times,” Severin told him softly, and hearing him say that made Ben flush hotly. “But maybe what you loved best was your own face reflected in the glass.”

It wasn’t fair that he knew Ben like that. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Severin could play on all of Ben’s petty insecurities, petty insecurities dating back years to deliver a series of swift surgical cuts so sharp and sure that Ben felt as though he might bleed out before he realized the depth of the wounds.

“I don’t—it’s not like that,” Ben said. “But yeah, I wanted to be in love like in the storybooks and songs and ballads. Love that hits you like a lightning bolt. And I’m sorry, because yeah, I get that you think I’m ridiculous. I get that you think I’m hilarious. I know, I get that you’re mocking me. I get how stupid I am, but at least I know.”

In a fluid motion, Severin stepped off the tree and onto the roof. He held out his hand in a courtly gesture, offering to help Ben out of a tree as you might hand a lady in skirts down from a horse. “I know, too, Benjamin Evans. And you’re not nearly as stupid as you think.”

Ben reached out his hand and let himself be helped onto the roof. They were crossing to the window when a truck pulled into the driveway. It belonged to one of Mom’s artist friends, Suzie, a heavily tattooed sculptor who made little green man faces for over the lintels of houses. She was wearing a skirt, and her hair was pulled up into a ponytail, as if she was going to church or something.

“That’s weird,” Ben said, waiting until Suzie was in the house before he moved. “I’m going to find out what’s going on.”

“And you wonder if I will remain,” said Severin.

Ben nodded.

“I shall be just as you left me,” the faerie prince said, sitting on the wheeled chair in front of Ben’s computer desk and looking up at him with unfathomable moss-green eyes. Ben mentally cataloged all the embarrassing things Severin might see if he looked around and then realized there was nothing half as embarrassing as what Severin already knew.

Severin grinned up at him, as though reading his thoughts.

Ben went downstairs.

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” Mom said. She was dressed up more than usual—jeans without paint stains, her oversize flower-print top, and three turquoise-and-silver necklaces. Without the streaks of silver in her hair, from a distance, she could have been mistaken for Hazel. “I heard your sister come in this morning. Tell her to start packing. As soon as I get back, we can get on the road.”

“Where are you going now?”

“There’s a town meeting over at the Gordons’. About Jack.”

“Jack?” Ben echoed.

“You know I like him. But some people are saying that he’s been in league with the Folk. And others are saying that if he just went back to Faerie, then all these bad things that are happening would stop.”

“But you don’t believe that, right?” Ben thought of Jack, curled up beside Hazel in her bedroom, and felt a flash of pure fury at every single person in Fairfold who’d thought anything like what Mom said.

She sighed, reaching for a travel coffee mug and her old brown leather purse, the one with birds stitched on it in blue thread. “I don’t know. I don’t think he’s in league with anyone, but he was stolen from them. Maybe they do want him back. Maybe they want revenge, too. At least I might, if I were his mother.”

“What’s happening isn’t Jack’s fault.”

“Look, nothing’s decided. We’re just sitting down with the Gordons to talk things over. And when I get back, hopefully we can all leave town for a while.”

“Mom,” Ben said. “If you let them do something to Jack, I will never forgive you. He’s just like us. He’s as human as any human.”

“I just want you and Hazel to be safe,” Mom said. “That’s all any of us ever want for our children.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have raised us here in Fairfold,” Ben told her.

Mom gave him a dark look. “We came back here for you, Benjamin. We could have stayed in Philadelphia, and you’d be well on your way to doing something most people can only dream of. You’re the one who couldn’t stand leaving Fairfold. You’re the one who gave the chance at a different life up, who couldn’t be bothered to practice after your injury.”

Ben was too stunned to say anything in return. They never talked about Philadelphia, at least not that way—not in a way that acknowledged bad things had happened. They never talked about any of the big, looming, awful stuff from Ben’s childhood. They never talked about the dead body Hazel found in the woods or the way Mom and Dad had let them roam around alone out there in the first place. He had always assumed that was the family compact, that they each got their own well of bitterness and they were supposed to tend to it without bothering anyone else.

Apparently, not anymore.

Walking to the door, Mom looked back at him, as if she was taking his measure. “And tell your sister to pack, okay?”

The screen slammed closed, but instead of immediately following her out, Suzie crossed the foyer to put her hand on Ben’s arm. “You say he’s as human as the rest of us. How can you be so sure? How can anyone really know what’s in their hearts?” Before he could answer, she headed off after his mother. A few moments later he heard the truck tires roll over the driveway gravel.

Ben put his head down on the counter, his thoughts a tangled mess. Then, not knowing what else to do, he got down four mugs and started pouring coffee into them.

Everybody had to wake the hell up.

CHAPTER 18

Hazel had never slept in the same bed with a boy who wasn’t her brother. She figured it would highlight all the things about relationships that she wasn’t good at. She imagined she’d toss and turn, steal blankets, kick in her sleep, and then feel guilty about it. What she didn’t count on was how it would feel to pillow her head against Jack’s arm. Or how warm his skin would be or that it gave her a chance to drink in the smell of him—forests and glens and deep drowning pools—without his noticing. She hadn’t known how solid he’d feel. She couldn’t have guessed how he’d run his hand over her back, lazily, as if he didn’t know how to stop touching her, or how she’d shiver when he did.