For the first time since he’d said the words, Hazel allowed herself to luxuriate in them. I just want to say that I like you. I like you, he’d told her just before she’d informed him she’d been in the Alderking’s service. I like you, just before she admitted she had not told him a ton of stuff about herself. It had all happened so fast and it had been so hard to believe.

Which meant that she’d never told him she liked him back.

She could tell him now—wake him up and say something. Or maybe he was half awake, the way she felt half asleep. Maybe she could whisper in his ear. While she was puzzling that over, she heard footsteps on the stairs.

Her brother came into her bedroom without knocking, carrying three mugs of coffee. Behind him, lounging in the doorway, holding a mug of his own, was the horned boy. Severin, in Ben’s clothes, looking as comfortable there as he ever had in the woods. Severin, whom she was supposed to hunt. Severin, whom she’d freed. Severin, who gave her a wicked smile.

Hazel pushed down blankets, yawning. Sliding out of bed, she grabbed a hair chopstick off her dresser and pointed it at him, as though it were a blade, then used it to bind up her hair.

Severin saluted her with his cup of coffee. “I see you still haven’t found my sword.” He raised his brows, a small smile on his face, and took a sip from his cup. Despite everything, she blushed.

Ben walked across the room and held out a cup of coffee to his sister like a peace offering.

She took a deep sip, but her exhaustion was beyond the reach of caffeine. Still, the liquid was warm, clouded with soy milk, and it washed the taste of crying out of her mouth. She sat down hard on the chair beside her mirror. “What’s going on?”

“There’s some kind of town meeting at your house,” Ben told Jack. “About how Amanda and the stuff at school have something to do with not returning you to Faerieland. About how they want to give you back. We’ve got to get you out of here—we’ve got to get you someplace where they’re not going to find you.”

“What?” Jack’s eyes went wide. He ran a hand over his face, over his hair. “My mom thinks that?”

“He’s not a pet that you can just rehome,” Hazel said.

“I don’t think your parents have anything to do with this,” Ben said. “I think it’s a bunch of scared people being stupid.”

“That’s why she sent me away.” Jack said the words softly, as if he wanted them to be true but was afraid of being wrong. “It wasn’t because she didn’t want me in the house. It was because she knew everyone was coming. But she’s—but they’re going to blame my family if I’m not there.” He started shoving his feet into his shoes.

“Jack, everyone in town is going to be there,” Hazel said. “You know this isn’t your fault. This has nothing to do with you. Nothing.”

“That’s what I’m going to tell them,” he said, and started out of the room and down the stairs.

“I’m going, too.” Hazel grabbed her boots, not bothering to put them on. She turned to Ben. “You keep him here. You have to keep him here until we get back.”

She ran down the stairs, Severin’s voice following her. “I think I’d rather come. I tire of people talking about me as though I am still asleep.”

But by the time she got out to the lawn, she saw Jack starting her brother’s car. He must have known where Ben kept the spare key. She barely had time to get in on the passenger side before he pulled out onto the road.

The Gordon house—cream with white trim and no peeling paint anywhere—was a shingle-style colonial in perfect condition. It sat on a slight hill, overlooking smaller and shabbier houses. It was big, old, and lovingly restored—big enough to entertain half the town, which was good because, from the look of it, half the town was inside.

Cars parked along the side of the driveway had dug tire trenches in Mr. Gordon’s grass. She’d seen Jack’s dad out there all through the summer, mowing and watering and seeding, the skin of his brow shining with sweat. No one crossed his front lawn, not the mailman, not Carter’s or Jack’s friends, not even the dog, who knew to stay in the backyard if he wanted to run. Muddy grooves slashing up all of Mr. Gordon’s work unsettled Hazel. It was as though the rules had suddenly changed.

Jack’s hands curled into loose fists as he walked—faster and faster.

Yanking open the front door, he stepped into the hallway. Inside, all the woodwork was painted a crisp, shiny white. It gleamed in the sun-filled rooms where people stood around or sat on folding chairs, balancing Styrofoam cups of tea on their laps. Ottomans and chairs had clearly been brought from all over the house to accommodate the sheer number of people. No one seemed to have noticed their entrance.

Mrs. Pitts, who worked at the post office, was shaking her head at Jack’s mother. “Nia, it’s not as though anyone prefers things to be this way. We can’t help thinking that—well, what you did, it strained our relationship with the forest people. It’s not a coincidence that they got worse around the time you stole Jack from them.”

Was that true? Hazel had been a child herself then, barely born. When people said things used to be better, that the Folk had once been less bloodthirsty, she thought they’d been referring to decades back, not the short length of her life span.

When had things started to go bad?

“We need to put things right,” said the sheriff. “In the last month, something has been going on in the woods. Some of you might have heard about a few incidents that didn’t make it into the paper, and probably everyone heard about what happened at the school. Amanda Watkins wasn’t the first person we found in a coma. There was a drifter kid near the edge of town a month back. The place was overgrown, vines so big they practically covered his car. And Brian Kenning two weeks later, while he was playing in the woods behind his family’s place, found curled up in a pile of leaves. They’re moving against us, the faeries, and if anyone hoped that the horned boy waking up meant he was going to save us, I think it’s clear by now that he’s not.”

Hazel thought of the Alderking’s promise—if she brought him Severin, things in town would go back to normal, would be the way they once were. As if that were a generous offer. She’d believed she knew how bad things were in Fairfold; she’d believed that she knew all its secrets. But it turned out she’d been far from right.

What would I do if you gave me leave? the little faerie had said. What would I do if you gave me leave? What wouldn’t I do?

“We can’t trust the changeling,” said Mr. Schröder. “Even if they don’t want him back, I don’t want him here. It’s too dangerous.”

All through the summer she worked at Lucky’s, Hazel had liked Mr. Schröder. Now she hated him.

“Jack is friends with both of my kids,” Mom said. “I’ve known him all my life. Blaming him, just because he’s the only one of the Folk most of us have ever met, is wrong. He’s been raised here. He’s a citizen of Fairfold, just like the rest of us.”

Hazel felt a profound sense of relief that her mother had spoken, but she could tell the others weren’t convinced. They’d already decided.