On the other end of the room, Jack was putting a Nick Drake album on the turntable. His sonorous voice filled the shop, whispering about golden crowns and silence. Hazel tried to study Jack without his noticing, gauging his mood. He was his usual slightly rumpled self, wearing jeans, two-tone oxfords, and a wrinkled green shirt that seemed to bring out the silver shine of his eyes. When he saw Hazel and Ben, he smiled—but was Hazel imagining that his smile looked a little forced and didn’t quite reach his eyes? Either way, it didn’t matter, because his gaze slid over her and went to her brother. “So what’s all this about ditching your date like Bruce Wayne after spotting the bat signal?”
Ben laughed. “That’s not what happened!”
What had she been thinking, kissing him? Just because she’d had a crush on him when they were kids? Just because she’d wanted to?
“Yeah,” she forced herself to say. “Batman would never ditch.”
Ben was happy to tell the story of his disastrous date again. They scrounged up change for honor-system coffee as Ben’s new version became more exaggerated and dramatic. The roommate was even more wildly in love with Ben’s date and even more furious at Ben. Ben was even more comically incompetent at sneaking out. By the end, Hazel had no idea how much of it was true anymore, and she didn’t care. It reminded her of how compellingly Ben could tell a story and how many of her most beloved tales about the horned boy had been ones he’d made up.
“So what about you guys?” Ben asked finally. “Hazel says nothing even remotely interesting happened last night.”
Jack’s laugh stopped. “Oh,” he said after a pause that was just a couple of seconds too long. There was an odd light in his amber eyes. “She didn’t tell you?”
Hazel froze.
Her brother was watching them curiously, brow furrowed. “Well? What?”
“Tom Mullins got wasted, climbed up on the glass coffin, and tried to smash it. He’s cursed for sure, poor bastard.” Jack’s smile was tilted, rueful. He ran his fingers over his tight brown curls, rumpling them.
Hazel let out her breath a little dizzily.
Ben shook his head. “What makes people do that? Bad stuff happens whenever somebody messes around with the coffin. Tommy doesn’t care about the prince, so what’s the temptation?” He looked honestly frustrated, but then Ben and Tom Mullins used to be friends, before Ben moved away and Tom became a drunk.
“Maybe he was tired of the same old parties and the same old people,” Jack said, perching on a table arranged with stacks of books, belts, and scarves and looking at Hazel. “Maybe he wanted something to happen.”
She winced.
“Okay, enough with the weirdness,” Ben said, leaning forward in his chair, cradling his cup. His red curls looked gold in the light filtering through the dirty windowpanes. “What’s wrong with you guys? You keep staring at each other like creepers.”
“What? No,” said Jack softly. “Nothing’s wrong.”
Hazel shook her head, going to refill her coffee cup. “Huh,” she said, eager for a subject change. “Is that a sequined tube top I spy with my little eye?”
It was, and nearby was a big, gauzy prom dress in bright mermaid aqua that she danced around the room in. And beside that was a herringbone suit that looked as if it could have been worn on one of the early seasons of Mad Men. Jack put on a Bad Brains vinyl, Ben tried on the suit, some tourists came in to buy postcards, and everything started to feel like a regular Sunday afternoon.
But then Ben put his hands into the pockets of the jacket he was peacocking around the store in, daring them to say it was a little tight on him, and Hazel picked up his red blazer, folding it over her arm. Something fell out of one of the pockets. It bounced once on the ground and then rolled against Jack’s shoe. A walnut with a thin bow of grass tied around it.
“Look at that,” said Jack, frowning down at her discovery. “What do you think it is?”
“Was it in my coat?” Ben asked.
Hazel nodded.
“Well, let’s open it.” Jack slid off the table, a bowler hat sitting cockeyed on his head. He had a relaxed, loose-limbed way of moving that made Hazel think the exact sort of thoughts that had got her into trouble in the first place.
The grass unfurled easily, and the two halves of the walnut came apart. Inside was a small scrap of paper, rolled up like a scroll.
“Let me see,” Hazel said, reaching for it. Unfurling the thin piece of parchment, a shiver went up her spine as she read the spidery lettering, Seven years to pay your debts. Much too late for regrets.
They were all silent for a long moment, and Hazel concentrated on not dropping the paper.
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Jack.
“It’s probably some old thing a tourist bought in town.” Ben’s voice was a little unsteady. “Bullshit fake magic fortune walnut.”
There was a shop near the end of Main Street called the Cunning Woman that sold souvenirs to faerie seekers. Incense, bags of salt mixed with red berries for protection, maps to “sacred” faerie sites around town, crystals, hand-painted tarot cards, and iridescent window dazzlers. Cryptic faerie notes in nuts was the sort of thing they might carry.
“What kind of fortune is that?” Jack asked.
“Yeah,” Hazel added, trying to sound as if her heart weren’t thundering, trying to behave as though she didn’t know for whom the note had been meant, pretending everything was still normal.
“Yeah.” Ben put the shell and the note back in his pocket with a little laugh. “Creepy, though.”
After that, Hazel could only pretend to be having fun. She watched Ben and Jack, memorizing them. Memorizing the people and the place, the smell of old books and the sounds of normal stuff.
Ben bought a polka-dot bow tie, and then they walked over to the general store, where Hazel picked up the carton of milk and loaf of bread. Jack was heading back to his parents’ for dinner because they had a tradition of playing family board games on Sundays, and no matter how dorky Jack or Carter felt that was, neither was allowed to skip out on it. Hazel and Ben went home, too. Outside their front door, Hazel squatted to pour a little milk into the ceramic bowl Mom kept next to the stone walk. Everyone in Fairfold left food out for the faeries, to show them respect, to gain their favor.
But the milk glubbed out in thick chunks. It had already gone sour.
CHAPTER 4
That night, Hazel tossed and turned, kicking the sheets, willing herself not to worry about promises made and debts coming due. She imagined them away, bound up in a hundred barnacle-encrusted safes, a thousand buried chests, chains tight around every one.
In the morning, her limbs felt heavy. When she rolled over to hit the snooze on her phone alarm, her fingertips stung. Her palms looked red and abraded. There was a splinter of glass the length of a pin nestled under the swell of her thumb, and a few smaller shining splinters scattered across her fingers. Her heart began to race.
She kicked off the covers, frowning, only to find that her feet were caked in mud. Chunks of it dropped off her toes as she got up. Dirt spatter clung to her leg all the way to her knee. The hem of her nightgown was stiff and filthy. When she pulled back the sheet, her bedclothes looked like a nest, with grass and sticks everywhere. She tried to think back to the night before, but there were only vague dreams. The more she concentrated on them, the more they receded.