They were quiet on the way back, Hazel making a mental list of what they could pack: three cheddar-and-mustard sandwiches with relish, wrapped in tinfoil; a can of Coke; a big mason jar of coffee, with lots of milk and sugar in it; and two kale-granola-raisin bars. She thought there might be an old sleeping bag in the back of the attic; if it wasn’t too musty and moth-eaten, he could use that, too. Ben could give up some clothes, and Dad had a pair of old army boots he wouldn’t miss.
It all seemed like a poor offering for a lost prince of Faerie, but what else could they do?
Ben pulled the Volkswagen into their driveway. It was just after three thirty and Jack sat on the front stoop. He raised a hand in salute. The rain had stopped, but the lawn was still covered in shimmering beads of water.
Ben rolled down the window. “What are you doing here?” he called. “What happened to being forbidden from helping?”
“Not helping, just warning,” Jack said, eyes flashing silver, bright against his dark skin and darker hair. “I might come over on a normal day, so I’ve decided to pretend this day is normal.”
Hazel got out of the car.
“So did you find anything?” Jack asked, clearly expecting them to say they hadn’t.
Ben shrugged. “Maybe.”
“I just wanted you to understand,” Jack said, glancing in her direction to make it clear he was speaking to both of them. “His waking was no accident. And whatever happens next will be no accident, either.”
“Whatever,” Ben said, walking toward the house. “We get it, okay? Gloom and also doom.” The screen door banged behind him.
“What’s with him?” Jack asked.
“He’s in love,” Hazel said, forcing a smile, because she was surprised at Ben’s indifference to the warnings, too.
“You all are,” said Jack softly, as though speaking to himself. “The whole town’s in love.”
Hazel sighed. “Come on in. Help me make sandwiches. I’ll make you one, too.”
He did. He sliced cheddar and she spread mustard, while Ben went through his clothes to find some stuff he thought might fit the horned boy. He brought down a gray hoodie, a pair of jeans, and two pairs of black boxers. He held up each for inspection. Hazel found the sleeping bag and boots in the attic and shook out any spiders on the lawn. They brewed fresh coffee and packed some in a large mason jar mixed with cream and sugar for the horned boy and in smaller jars for themselves. Ben found a basket to put all that in, along with the kale-granola-raisin breakfast bars, the soda, a pack of matches that Jack helpfully wrapped in plastic, and a bag of pretzels.
When the three of them got to the stone cabin, the golden knife was no longer lying on the table. The horned boy had come and gone again.
And he’d taken their note with him.
CHAPTER 7
Gifted, they’d called Ben, since the elf woman touched his brow and a port-wine stain bloomed on his temple and he’d come home able to hear their music and make it, too. Gifted, they said, when he composed songs on a child-size ukulele that no adult could replicate. Gifted, when he played a tune on a xylophone that made their babysitter weep. Gifted, his sister called him, when he charmed faeries in the woods and saved her life. (And doomed it, too, maybe.)
But what he could do scared him. He couldn’t control it.
Parents like theirs were kind of lazy and forgetful about things like paying bills on time or buying groceries or license renewals, but not about art. They might not make a dinner that was more than corn flakes and hard-boiled eggs or remember to sign field trip consent forms or bother about bedtimes, but they knew what to do with a musical prodigy. They called friends, and by the time Ben was twelve and Hazel was eleven, they had a referral to some crazy school where Ben could “fulfill his potential.” At the audition, his playing of the piano made the entire admissions committee sit rapt and completely ensorcelled for a half hour. It was terrifying, he’d told Hazel later, like playing to a room full of the dead. Once he was done, they began to move again and told him how amazing his playing had been. He’d felt sick inside.
And he felt even sicker when Mom and Dad told him they couldn’t afford to send him there. He wanted to go more than he’d ever wanted anything, because as strange as his audition had been, he knew learning about music was the only chance he had at controlling his power.
When the scholarship came in months later, long after he was sure they’d forgotten about him, he felt as though he’d won the lottery. They all went out for ice cream to celebrate, and he ate half of Hazel’s along with his own.
He wasn’t just glad he was going to a fantastic school to learn music. He was glad they were moving away. He was scared that Hazel was going to get hurt—really hurt, the kind of hurt people didn’t come back from—and it would be because of him. He still remembered how invulnerable he’d felt when he realized that his music had immobilized the water hag, how amazed he’d been by the sight of his sister with the sword. He’d felt like they were born to be heroes. But actually hunting faeries was terrifying. And while he could make excuses to stop for a while, it was just a matter of time before she got fed up with him and went out on her own.
Dad rented out the house in Fairfold, and they got a cheap apartment in Philadelphia, where only a fraction of their stuff fit. Hazel didn’t like it—didn’t like anything about it. She didn’t like that you could hear the neighbors through the walls. She didn’t like the way she felt tired all the time there, even though her mother told her that was just adolescence and it happened to everyone. She didn’t like the noises of the city or the smell of exhaust and rotting garbage outside the windows. She didn’t like her public school, where her new friends made fun of her when she talked about faeries. She didn’t like that she wasn’t allowed to roam around by herself. And, most of all, she didn’t like not being a knight anymore.
When she’d made the bargain, she’d thought only Ben would go away, not that she’d have to go with him. Not that the whole family would go.
“Think about all the takeout we can get,” their mother had said, clearly remembering her favorite restaurants from when she was in art school. “We can have bowls of pho one night and tacos the next and injera with doro wat after that.”
Hazel had made a face. “I don’t want to eat any of those things. I don’t even know what they are.”
“Then think about your brother,” their father had told her, not particularly sternly, ruffling Hazel’s hair fondly as if he thought she was being adorably childish. “Wouldn’t you want him to support you if you were following your dream?”
“My dream is to go back home,” Hazel had said, crossing her arms over her chest.
“You just haven’t found the thing that you’re good at yet,” her mother said, smiling. And that was that.
Hazel knew what she was good at; she just didn’t know how to explain it. That’s not true, she wanted to say. I’m good at killing monsters. But her mother didn’t need to know that, and it would be foolish to say it. Mom might be horrified or scared. Mom might start paying attention to where she went and what she did. Besides, it was a delicious secret. She liked thinking of it almost as much as she’d liked the weight of her blade in her hand.
And if there was another part of her that wished her parents were the kind who might protect her from needing to kill monsters all on her own, at eleven she already knew that was unrealistic. It wasn’t as if her parents didn’t love her; it was just that they forgot things a lot and sometimes those things were important.
Which meant for two years, Ben learned to play different instruments (including wineglasses and a tuba) at the fancy school, while Hazel learned a new skill—how to be an unrepentant flirt.
Hazel wasn’t the best in her classes, nor was she the worst. She might have been good at a sport, but she never bothered to try out for one. Instead, after school, she signed up for self-defense classes at the Y and practiced techniques she learned from YouTube videos of sword fighting. But, at twelve, Hazel discovered something she was weirdly better at than other people—making boys squirm.
She’d look at boys and smile if they caught her looking.
She’d twirl her red curls around her finger and bite her lip.
She’d prop up her boobs with her arm, the desk, or one of the new underwire bras she persuaded Mom to buy for her—all of them silky and brightly colored.
She’d tell people she was doing badly in all her classes—once or twice because it was true and then chronically when it wasn’t.
Flirting didn’t mean anything to her. There was no plan, no goal. It was just a little rush, just a way to be seen in a place where it would be easy to drown in invisibility. She never meant to hurt anyone. She had no idea that was even possible. She was twelve and bored and really didn’t know what she was doing.