The Poison Eaters and Other Stories by Holly Black

gathered around a young boy with black hair in need of cutting. Beside the boy will be a corpse. The dead woman's hand will be missing and her throat will be cut. Dimly, the king will remember that he promised the kingdom to whosoever killed the wolf. And the boy will smile up at him as the trap closes.
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    Virgin
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    Let me tell you something about unicorns—they're faeries and faeries aren't to be trusted. Read your storybooks. But maybe you can't get past the rainbows and pastel crap. That's your problem.
    Zachary told me once why the old stories say that mortals who eat faerie food can't leave Faerie. That's a bunch of rot, too, but at least there's some truth in it. You see, they can leave; they just won't ever be able to find another food they'll want to eat. Normal food tastes like ashes. So they starve. Zachary should have listened to his own stories.
    I met him the summer I was squatting in an old building with my friend Tanya and her boyfriend. I'd run away from my last foster family, mostly because there didn't seem to be any point in staying. I was humoring myself into thinking I could live indefinitely like this.
    Tanya had one prosthetic leg made from this shiny pink plastic stuff; so she looked like she was part Barbie doll, part girl. She loved to wear short, tight skirts and platform shoes to show off her leg. She knew the name of every boy who hung out in LOVE park. Tanya introduced us.
    My first impression of Zachary was that he was a beautiful junkie. He wasn't handsome; he was pretty, the kind of boy that girls draw obsessively in the corners of their notebooks. Tall, great cheekbones, and red-black hair rolling down the sides of his face in fat curls. He was juggling a tennis ball, a fork, and three spoons. A cardboard sign next to his feet had will juggle anything for food written on it in an unsteady hand. Anything had been underlined shakily, twice. Junkie, I thought. I wondered if Tanya had ever slept with him. I wanted to ask her what it was like.
    After he was done and had collected a little cash in a paper cup, he walked around with us for a while, mostly listening to Tanya tell him about her band. He had a bag over his shoulder and walked solemnly, hands in the pockets of his black jeans. He didn't look at her, although sometimes he nodded along with what she was saying, and he didn't look at me. He bought us ginger beer with the coins people had thrown at him and that's when I knew he wasn't a junkie, because no junkie who looked as hard up as he did would spend his last quarters on anything but getting what he needed.
    The next time I saw Zachary, it was at the public library. We would all go there when we got cold. Sometimes I would go alone to read sections of The Two Towers, jotting down the page where I stopped on the inside hem of my jeans. I found him sitting on the floor between the mythology and psychiatry shelves. He looked up when I started walking down the aisle and we just stared at one another for a moment, like we'd been found doing something illicit. Then he grinned and I grinned. I sat down on the floor next to him.
    "Just looking,” I said, “What are you reading?” I had just run half the way to the library and could feel the sweat on my scalp. I knew I looked really awful. He looked dry, even cold. His skin was as pale as if he never spent a day in the park.
    He lifted up the book spread open across his lap: Faerie Folktales of Europe .
    I was used to people who wouldn't shut up. I wasn't used to making conversation.
    "You're Zachary, right?” I asked, like an asshole.
    He looked up again. “Mmhmm. You're Jen, Tanya's friend."
    "I didn't think you'd remember,” I said, then felt stupid. He just smiled at me.
    ” What are you reading?” I stumbled over the words, realizing halfway through the sentence I'd already asked that. “I mean, what part are you reading?"
    "I'm reading about unicorns,” he said, “but