Andrew ignored him. “Hey, you know how tomorrow is Saturday? And there’s that senior trip to the art gallery in the city?”
“It’s not compulsory.”
“I put our names down.”
Thomas groaned. “I wanted tosleep.”
Andrew shook the sketchbook. “We can buy new art supplies. If you draw on a brand-new canvas, maybe it’ll be different.” Another bug dive-bombed his neck and he yelped, using the sketchbook to thwack at it.
“I don’t think that’s—Andrew.Andrew.What the hell—” Thomas ran back toward him. “Holy shit… turn around.”
Andrew’s stomach dropped. Slowly, he turned. He couldfeel it then, as Thomas let out a hiss, the way somethingskitteredacross the back of his hoodie. The weight of a thousand tiny bodies pinned to his back, wings beating in a growing hum.
“Stay really still.” But Thomas sounded faint.
Andrew closed his eyes. Something pricked him behind the ear, but this time he didn’t slap it. “Please don’t say they’re wasps.”
“I think they’re… um, thistle fairies.”
“Thomas,” Andrew said, trying to keep his voice even. “What the hell did you draw?”
“You wrote about them first! I just sketched those stupid little fairies from your story one time. They’re the size of thistles, but their teeth are long and sharp, and they drink blood. They’re… they’re all over your back.”
Andrew stayed very still. “How many?”
The humming grew louder and his shoulder dipped as more thistle fairies landed. They crawled across his back, his neck, their tiny sharp feet nicking skin as they found his collar and peeled it back. He tried to repress the shudder. Every impulse inside him begged to shake, to scream,run. If they burrowed down his shirt—
“Thomas…” His voice started to crack.
“There’s a lot, okay? I’ll get them off you. Just don’t… move. If all of them bite you at once you’ll—just don’t move.”
Andrew held his breath. His flashlight froze on the pines in front of him while his back grew heavier and heavier. He’d been a fool. He thought monsters came in shapes huge and terrifying, not tiny and insidious with wasp stings and spider teeth. This was somehow worse.
He could feel them at his ears, wings brushing sensitive skin, the first prick of teeth testing flesh. Could they crawl down his ears? Could they stinginside him?
Behind him, a spike clunked to the ground.
Andrew tilted his head slightly to see Thomas slip off his shirt and throw it aside. He clawed off some of his bandages from last night and, with a shaky breath, dug his fingers into his own barely healed wounds.
Andrew started to cry out for him to stop, but he was cut off by Thomas’s choked sob as he punctured his scabbed cuts and dug his fingers in until blood oozed out, violent and fresh. He smeared the blood across his chest, then took a step back. And another.
“Destroy the sketchbook,” he said.
Suddenly the weight on Andrew’s back ripped free. The air filled with the humming roar of a thousand wings.
And they all slammed into Thomas.
“GO.” Thomas was already running the opposite way, taking them away from Andrew.
Andrew burst forward, his flashlight swinging as he bolted. He shot a glance over his shoulder to see Thomas’s bare back covered in thistle fairies. The smell of his blood left no need for further invitation. They shrieked, shrill and victorious andstarving.
A cry ripped from Thomas.
Andrew ran.
He didn’t know where to go, so he flung himself down the path, the woods echoing with Thomas’s muffled screams. Their white oak lay ahead. Thickets thinned and the underbrush turned to ground scattered with leaves.
Andrew fell to his knees and skidded in the dirt, flipping pages fast until he found it. Thistle fairies. Thomas had done a study of them, dozens of little green creatures with features honed into sharp points like the tines of forks. One stretched its maw wide to show too-long needle teeth. They could slip right into a throat, veins, reach all the way to a spine—
