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TWO YEARS AGO
The car was so cold that Hallie could see her breath. Kat’s heat was broken again. Kat stared straight ahead over the wheel, not speaking, and Hallie could feel the weight of her friend’s anger. Outside, street lights flashed by like warping stars, and the houses were barely visible in the darkness of night.
Kat flicked the blinker on, and the pulsing green light on the dash bathed her face in a sickly glow. The red of the traffic light blended with and then overwhelmed the green as the car came to a stop.
Hallie risked a glance back at Wyn in the back seat as the light changed and Kat pulled forward. Wyn was sprawled across her seat, antlers angled away from the window but eyes closed as she rested. She’d had at least three beers and maybe a wine or two before they’d left the bar, and Wyn never could handle much alcohol. Odd for a Fae.
Kat was nearly through her turn when headlights shone from the left, growing brighter, larger.
There was the crack of two cars hitting. Metal shearing. Glass shattering. A piece of Wyn’s antler flying through the air, its sharp point slicing through the skin across Hallie’s collarbone.
But Kat.
Kat never had a chance, the other car barreling into her door and crumpling it like an egg shell.
***
PRESENT
Hallie blinked against the bright, warm sun falling across her face and rolled over. The bedroom smelled like cedar and pine and fresh laundry, and she settled deeper into the soft mattress.
Her eyes snapped open. She was late for class. For research. A meeting. For...something.
She was halfway out of bed when she remembered: this was the lake house, and she got to pick her schedule. Guiltily, she glanced at the stack of books next to the bed, then climbed back in, determined to get in another hour or so before rising. Besides, the cabin was quiet, which meant Wyn was also still sleeping in the other room.
She had just started drifting off again when a floorboard creaked.
“Are you forgetting something?”
The voice snatched her out of sleep’s tender embrace. She knew that voice. But it had been...years.
Hallie rolled over, holding the blanket up close to her chin. Sure enough, there was the boy from her dorm room all those years ago. The Fae.
It all rushed back to her, and she bolted upright. The rejection letter. The boy. The bargain.
“I believe we made an agreement,” he said. He didn’t step any closer, but the air suddenly felt colder, the boy more threatening than last time they had met.
She swallowed past the lump in her throat, pretending she couldn’t remember even though she knew it would do no good. “Yes, um...what was it again?”
He rolled his eyes. “I give you entry into Sabine? You give me your firstborn? Ring any bells?”
Butterflies fluttered around her stomach. Her academic firstborn. Her chance to bring Kat back.
Crap. How could she not have realized that her one chance was the knowledge she would lose? But she couldn’t have known her first discovery would be this when she’d made the bargain; she wasn’t clairvoyant.
Her eyes darted back to him, suddenly fierce. She couldn’t give it up. Give up her chance to get the three of them—her, Wyn, and Kat—back together again.
To bring Kat back to them. To make up for the part she’d played in her friend’s death.
“I hope you’re not thinking of going back on your word,” the boy said, his eyes growing cold, sparkling with hunter-green light. “The Fae do not forget.”
She simply stared, frozen in the moment.
He laughed. “Did you really not know? You did call for a Fae, after all.” He leaned forward, teeth glinting. “Or were you simply lying to yourself?”
She stood quickly and pulled her sweatshirt on over her head. “Of—of course I knew. But my discovery...you don’t understand!”
Her mind whirled around thoughts of what she had discovered, of what it could mean to humanity. Of what it could do for her and Wyn.
“It doesn’t matter what I understand. It doesn’t even matter what you understand. The deal was your firstborn, and I aim to collect. You will not keep it. You cannot.”
Hallie stood straighter, taller, hoping to make herself more threatening. “And if I refuse?”
His face shifted so fast, she wasn’t even sure it was the same person before her. Every line grew sharp, his eyes dark, his fingers like claws.
And then those fingers were around her throat, his mouth next to her ear, his breath hot on her cheek. “Unacceptable.”
Her heart began to race, her breathing coming in short gasps. Mistake, that had been a mistake.
Stupid, stupid Hallie! Hadn’t she been learning about the Fae for the last two years? Hadn’t she been best friends with a Fae for six years? And didn’t every resource say the same thing?
Don’t cross the Fae.
Wyn, she needed Wyn. She was Fae. Maybe she could help, maybe she could stop this. Convince the boy to leave.
Hallie opened her mouth, straining to scream for her friend, but the Fae had her throat too tightly. She could barely catch enough oxygen to stay conscious. She could barely even squeak.
She needn’t have worried. Wyn was suddenly at the door, looking more inhuman than ever. Her eyes had turned entirely black, every point of her antlers looked sharper than normal, and her face seemed elongated, like a deer’s.
She’d never seen this much of the Fae in her friend.
In two strides, Wyn had reached the boy, wrapping her long fingers around the back of his neck. He snapped his gaze back to Hallie, accusing, and then the world shifted around her, and the lakeside cabin disappeared.
