CHAPTER 1
LEO
HAZEL USUALLY LEFT after midnight.
She snuck out the back door or through her bedroom window, even though she hadn’t figured out how to free her wings from the glamour on purpose yet. She just climbed down the side of the house like a frizzy-haired, pajama-clad Catwoman. In her backpack she carried a thermos of chai, because the wind sprites liked the smell, and empty mason jars to catch the lesser fairies. She always let them go before she came back home; she just wanted to talk to them. Not very many of the borderland fae were willing to talk back. Most of them were afraid of Hazel and her kind.
His flashlight excavated a path through the forest. The thought of Hazel alone out here chilled him all the way to the core.
“You still there?” Leo whispered, knowing the answer but needing to hear it anyway.
“Right behind you,” Tristan said. When he wasn’t speaking, he was a ghost. He made no sound. Not his breathing, not his footsteps. It could’ve just been Leo and the moths staggering in and out of his light.
In June, the woods smelled of berries, smoke, and impending rain. The bangs and pops of not-too-distant fireworks resounded through the night; someone was setting them off in St. Sithney’s Park, so they went off almost right above their heads, bathing the forest in flashes of blue and red. Typical Blackthorn; Christmas fairs lasted weeks, Halloween was two months long, and Fourth of July fireworks began on the first day of summer.
“You could’ve sent the hound with me and gone back to bed,” Leo said guiltily. “You have an early shift.”
It was Tristan’s blækhounds that alerted them whenever Hazel slipped away. They were supernatural wolflike creatures, and about as similar to actual dogs as a grizzly was to a Care Bear. The hound scouted ahead of them now, tracking her by scent and relaying what it learned to Tristan through their magical link.
“Are you saying you prefer the hound’s company to mine?” Tristan said. “I’m insulted.”
Leo laughed under his breath. “I’m saying it would be nice if one of us got to sleep through the night every now and then. Might as well be you.”
“We’ll take turns and exchange notes later. Between the two of us we’ll have one whole functional human being.” A sharp intake of breath punctuated the words. “I think we’re close.”
Leo glanced at him. He looked desaturated and blurry outside the reach of Leo’s flashlight, like a smudged charcoal drawing, and his eyes had gone dreamy as he lost himself briefly in the hound’s consciousness.
“You found her?” Leo asked.
“No, but her scent got stronger. Do you hear that?”
It took another minute before he picked up what Tristan had: music, voices, the crackle of a fire. They’d reached the campgrounds. A small crowd had gathered there—most likely students from the community college nearby. And he’d bet their friends were the ones responsible for the fireworks. They had tents set up and a bonfire that had grown higher than was probably safe, its flames leaping up seven or eight feet tall. Top 40 music blared out of someone’s speakers, and a couple of coolers were open, raided of their contents so that only soupy, half-melted ice remained.
“She’s here?” Leo said, dismayed.
“Here, or close,” Tristan said.
Jesus. Was this the next phase of Hazel’s identity crisis? Crashing college parties at the advanced age of thirteen? A few months ago, he’d have laughed at the idea. Hazel still had a bedtime. Her friends were Girl Scouts and honor roll kids. She wouldn’t so much as sneak into an R-rated movie, let alone crash a party. But everything was different for her now. Normally, she would be spending the summer away at camp or having sleepovers. But ever since the hag had torn the glamour off her, it was … glitching. It kept slipping, showing glimpses of her fairy features. So there wouldn’t be any overnight trips for her this summer. And based on what little she said when he managed to get her to talk about it, her friends didn’t get why she didn’t want to hang out with them anymore, so they’d just. Stopped texting her.
They split up to search, since Tristan still didn’t trust the hounds near a crowd. Tristan would make a loop around the perimeter of the campgrounds, where, if she’d struck out in a different direction, the hound might pick up her scent again. Meanwhile, Leo wove past drunkenly dancing couples and a group of frat guys playing beer pong using a fallen, half-rotted tree in place of a table. The bonfire was so bright that the sky was black, except for when the fireworks went off. The air was thick with about ten different types of smoke: the spicy-sweetness of the bonfire, the acrid tang coming off the sparklers someone had lit, the bitter haze of cigarettes and weed. Hazel wasn’t by the speakers; she wasn’t by the fire; she wasn’t among the small huddles of people trying to talk over the music, arms slung over each other’s shoulders and elbows bumping together.
He’d almost reached the edge of the crowd and was steadily losing hope when a girl wandered past him, and his hand caught her shoulder instinctively.
“Shit, sorry,” he said, letting go. “I thought you were someone else.”
In the play of firelight, something in the girl’s features had reminded him of Hazel. But it wasn’t her. She was old enough to drink, for one thing. Her skin was dusted with specks of brown and white, like vitiligo spots mixed in with freckles, under curls that might have been blond—it was hard to tell in this light. She wore an oversized denim jacket and a beanie pulled low over her ears, which struck him as a little odd; he could feel the warmth of the fire all the way from here.
“I don’t know you,” she observed, tilting her head. Another round of fireworks went off with a bang; her eyes reflected their colors, shining liquid-like until the sparks fizzled away.
“Yeah, no, I don’t know anyone here. I’m just looking for my sister.” He’d shoved his hands in his pockets so that he’d take a second to think next time before he went around grabbing innocent strangers. “You haven’t seen a little kid running around, have you?”
Copyright © 2024 by Rochelle Hassan
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