by Carrie Jones
“I’m saying that your dad leans that way, but he is not committed. So many of us aren’t committed. The weres especially lack any organization whatsoever. I doubt your wolf even knows of the federation.” He’s almost scoffing.
It hits me the wrong way. I pull my arm in close to my chest and hold it there with my other hand. “Well, it’s not like anyone’s gone out and told him.”
“Listen, Zara. For me to stay here with you for too long?” He straightens himself up. “It would be dangerous. He’d track right to you.”
He turns to leave via the window but I grab his sleeve. “Should my friends and I . . . should we leave?”
“He would find you eventually.” He moves his face enough so I can see his profile: hard, determined, not human at all. “You could come with me. I could protect you.”
All my breath sucks inside of me. I know he’s suggesting only I go with him. “I couldn’t.”
“I thought that would be your answer. I have to go.” His face saddens and then he bounds up the wall to the window, parkour-style, just a foot halfway up the wall and he shoots through the window and is gone.
I stand there.
My breath returns.
I pivot toward the mirrors.
I am still blue.
If I were capable of pulling a glamour I could hide it, but I’m not. The blue isn’t my magic. It’s his—the king’s—one of them, anyway. I press my forehead against the cold, smudged glass of the mirror and try to calm down.
“Big breaths,” I mumble. “Take big breaths.”
It’s not really working. The walls of the bathroom close in on me. The window hovers there, a big, dark square of danger. He got through. That means anything can. Anything. I shudder and look for weapons. I could attack with what? Paper towels? A toilet paper roll? It is pretty hard paper, but seriously? And I can’t go out into the alley because I am blue!
A moan escapes my lips. I text Issie: Come in Bathroom. ASAP. I hit Send. Then I realize that’s kind of bossy so I send her another text that says: Please?
She bounds into the restroom five seconds later. The door flies open into the concrete wall. Issie’s mouth is all wide-open worried. “What is it? Do you need help? Did you get your—”
Her sentence breaks off as she slips on some water that’s on the floor, arms windmilling as she tries to catch her balance. I lurch forward to try to keep her from falling into the sink. I grab her with my good arm.
“Oh!” she gasps. “You’re blue again.”
“Uh-huh.” My voice is little-girl frightened tinged with a lot of big-girl frustrated.
“You can’t go out there blue.”
“I know.”
Her eyes get a wicked light and she untangles herself from me. “Well, I have a great plan.”
“You do?”
“Mm-hmm.” She’s smiling super big. “I know that I am the sidekick and I never get to actually have great plans or anything because that is not my role—”
“You are not a sidekick,” I interrupt.
“Zara? Duh?” She pokes herself in the chest. “I’m the klutzy human in our gang of four. That’s a lifetime sentence of sidekick, okay?”
“But—”
“No buts. I’m cool with that.” She pulls out a package from her oversized purse, which is pink, polka-dotted, and totally cute. “The sidekicks normally get to survive, and don’t have all those big moral dilemmas that the heroes always go through. I am so totally fine with that. Voilà!”
She whisks out a package with a Wal-Mart sticker.
“Crayons?” I ask.
“No, silly. These are too fat to be crayons. They’re face paint.”
She waits. I stare.
“Get it?” She waves the package in front of me. She points to her own cheeks. “We’ll make it like it’s intentional. I’ll paint my face too and then we’ll paint everyone else’s. It’ll be part of the night’s theme. I planned it ahead just in case this happened again!”
I jump up and down and then hug her. She is so tiny to hug. Not like Nick at all. Or like Astley.
“You’re squeeing,” she says as I let go. “I take it that means you like?”
“It’s brilliant!”
She smiles even bigger and rips open the package. “See? Sidekicks? Brilliant.” She examines the colors. “I think I would like to be green.”
I grab the green. “Done.”
Pixie Tip
Pixies can be annoyingly cryptic. Don’t talk to them. They’ll confuse you and laugh about it later like movie villains and physics teachers.
After bowling, the four of us (plus Gramma Betty) talk for-freaking-ever about whether Astley’s warning is just a massive manipulation. Betty, Dev, and Nick vote yes. Is and I are undecided. Devyn does Internet research on Valkyries like that Thruth woman while simultaneously IM’ing Cassidy. Issie spends a lot of time acting fake happy. They go home and eventually Betty gives Nick the okay to sleep over since it’s three a.m.
“Your grandmother,” he mumbles into my hair as we cuddle on the couch, “is made of awesome.”
We fall asleep there, curled up together, fully clothed obviously because we haven’t actually had actual sex yet and, well, my grandmother is in the house. In the morning she’s up and gone either out to breakfast at Sylvia’s, this diner she likes, or to the ambulance, before we even move or yawn or stretch.
It’s my shoulder that wakes me up. I’ve slept on it in some crumpling way and now my whole right hand and fingers are pinpricking and the shoulder itself is stiff and doesn’t want to move. I groan and inch away from Nick. His body is so warm, were-warm, and I stretch my shoulder up.
He wakes immediately. His arm extends around me, nuzzles me closer. “It can’t be time to get up already.”
“Mm-hmm,” I say, folding my legs up toward my chest.
He reaches out and his fingers graze the line of my ankle bracelet. I snuggle into his gray T-shirt. I rub the side of my face against his chest and for one second I feel safe, so utterly safe, like when I was a little girl and my stepdad would tuck me into bed. He’d put up a pillow barrier all around me because I was so afraid of monsters coming at night. Although I knew they wouldn’t come, not if he was there. That’s how I feel with Nick. Except really, it’s a false sense of security. Because ultimately, we can only make ourselves safe. And Nick’s attempts to keep me safe are only making him more vulnerable. Life is not all damsel-in-distress romance novels—my life is more of an everyone-in-distress horror movie.
“Amnesty, what you thinking?” he mumbles into my hair. His fingers flick the dolphin on my anklet back and forth.
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
“I was thinking you’re cute and all scruffy in the morning.”
He smiles. “Even with my dog breath.”
“Woof.”
He covers his mouth with his hand and pulls himself up into sitting position. “What were you really thinking about?”
“I was thinking about when my father—”
“Which one?”
“The pixie one. When he broke in here. Remember? And he flipped over the couch because he was so mad that I didn’t let him in my room.” I shudder. “That was awful.”
“It was evil,” he says. He stretches. “But you still feel guilty for locking him and the rest of the freaks up in that house, don’t you?”
I don’t answer.
“We didn’t have any other choice, Zara. It was either that or try to kill them all.”
“I don’t believe in killing.”
“Not even to keep someone else safe?”
“No. Not ever, and I’m not going to back down on this, Nick. I hate that you almost killed that pixie. I hate it.”
“He would have killed me.”
“You don’t know that. You just assumed that because he was a pixie. Did you attack him first?”
He doesn’t answer and his face shuts down, which means I’m right. Satisfied, I stand up
and softly pad my way into the kitchen. “You want some breakfast?”
“Home fries?”
There are potatoes in a bag on the counter, the Yukon gold kind. “Check.”
He smiles again. “Poached eggs?”
I open the fridge, stare inside it. A carton of eggs wait happily on the shelf, ready to be cracked. “Double check.”
“Orange juice?”
I pull out the plastic container. “Apple cranberry.”
He mock frowns, pulls himself off the couch, strides over. “Oh, I don’t know. Apple cranberry is so . . .”
“So what?”
“It’s not really manly.”
“What? There are manly juices? Orange is more manly than apple cranberry?”
He grabs the edge of the counter and leans back, stretching out his calves. I plop the juice container on the counter. He looks at me. His eyes are confused.
“Really, Nick. That is silly. You’re already having poached eggs.”
“So?”
“So how are poached eggs manly?”
He tilts his head. “They aren’t manly? Quiche isn’t manly, I know. But that’s egg in pie form. Poached eggs should be fine. Although fried eggs are probably the manliest. Maybe we should fry them.”
I put water in the egg poaching pan, pretending like I don’t notice his still hands. I turn off the tap. I crack an egg into one of the poacher cups. It’s dark plastic. It contains the egg, keeps it from running off everywhere. I do another one. “I’m thinking maybe we should run away.”
“Seriously?” His tone is flat, awkward.
“I just have a bad feeling.”
“Zara, you always have a feeling. We call it worry.” He moves behind me. He puts his hands on my shoulders. His words whisper in my ear. “I can’t run away, but you could go. I think it might be a good—”
“Not without you.” A massive rock seems to form in my stomach. I pull him around, bring him toward me, hug him as tightly as I can, and say, “We’ll fight them. We took down my dad. We’ve taken down so many since then. We’ll take down these jokesters too.”
“I will never let anything happen to you,” Nick growls into my hair. “I will die before you get hurt again. So help me God, Zara. I will die.”
“Me too.”
“What?”
“I will die before I let anyone hurt you or Issie or Dev or Gram or . . .” I stop and pull my head away from his chest so I can look up at him. “This list is getting kind of long and melodramatic, isn’t it?”
He laughs. His hand moves slowly up my spine. He starts leaning down for a kiss. “Yeah. It is.”
We go feed them after breakfast, trying to make sure we aren’t followed. I hate feeding them because I already know what I’ll see, what I’ve seen a hundred million times: snarling teeth at the windows, eyes more feral than any weres watching us, movements that are sensuous and twisted, pupils that don’t flash with kindness but with need—pure need, only need.
That is not what I want to become.
The entire way over I keep my seat belt on but lean so my head rests on Nick’s shoulder. He keeps his arm around me, driving with one hand.
“The Astley pixie guy has me messed up,” I say, touching the massive circular speedometer in the middle of the console with my pointer finger. I like how the line tells you exactly how fast you’re going, all you have to do is look.
“How?” Nick says.
“He’s just . . . he’s made me question everything we’re doing all over again, and he’s—I don’t know—I’m pretty sure he’s the one turning me blue.”
“Because he said he was.”
“Yeah.”
“And you just believe everything he says?”
I let my finger fall. “I know . . .”
“You trust too easily, Zara.”
“And you patronize too easily, mister.”
His shoulders relax. “Touché. I’m working on it, though.”
We pass tree after tree. We pass a paint-peeling white house with lobster traps out in the front. We go deeper and deeper into the woods. Nick’s fingers move along my arm. The fabric of my coat makes a soft brushing noise.
My cell rings. It’s Devyn.
“I have news for you,” he says.
The reception is pretty bad out here and the phone crackles. I cross my fingers. “What?”
“You have no pixie attributes in your blood.”
“None?” I reach over and squeeze Nick’s knee. The denim is rough and hard beneath my hand.
Devyn doesn’t even pause. “No. None at all.”
I squeal. Devyn laughs and complains that I’ve hurt his ears. I hang up and tell Nick the news.
His smile is larger than I’ve ever seen it before and he pumps his fist in the air. He kisses me even though he’s driving. “That is so fantastic!”
“I know!” I’m bouncier than Issie. “I can’t believe it.”
“Well, I can.” He looks at me proudly. His hand reaches up to the side of my face. His finger brushes against my cheek. “I am so happy for you, baby.”
Happiness relaxes my muscles. I didn’t know how stressed I was; how tense my shoulders were. It’s like I’ve had a massively good massage. I grab Nick’s hand in mine and squeeze his thick fingers. “I am so happy too.”
We pull onto the side road and park. There is a snowmobile hidden behind a bunch of trees. Nick and I get on, yanking our helmets over our heads. The engine roars to life. We zip across the woods.
I grab Nick’s waist.
“Holding on?” he says.
I don’t answer.
We zigzag through some trees, keeping to the trail. The woods are still and quiet, calm, filled with white light. When we break into a clearing Nick finally slows down and jerks the snowmobile to a halt and all my happiness about being totally human just flies away.
Nick’s voice breaks through the silence. “Holy—”
I leap off the snowmobile. “It’s torn down.”
The metal barricade that we’ve built around the house looks like a very focused tornado came through. Sudden flashes of metal gleam through the snow. Broken railroad ties and rails scar the ground. Barbed wire twists around like the tails of snakes; they move in the wind like they are keeping time to some horrible silent song.
The house still stands there, tall and desperate. The silverware and wire we put over the windows has all been ripped apart, busted, tossed to the side. They are all just twisted metal skeletons, evidence that we were successful at keeping them here for a little while. Not anymore. I shiver. The wind whispers warnings into my ear. Is my father still here? Is he dead? Are there any pixies still inside?
Before I even know what I’m doing, I’m running across the snow toward our broken barricade. Nick catches up to me in two seconds, grabs me by the shoulder. “Zara, do not go in there.”
“What? The battle is obviously over. It probably happened last night.”
“It could be a trap.”
“Nick, my father could be in there.”
“You’re the one always saying he’s not your father.” He glares at me.
“We can’t just let him die in there.”
“Of course we can.” He stops and sniffs the air.
It feels like there are whispers in the big house, whispers that are just beyond our hearing. A shutter falls to the ground with a boom. I jump. Nick doesn’t move.
“What?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer.
“What is it?” I demand.
“I smell blood.” He says the word slowly, quietly, like a curse.
“What kind of blood?”
“Pixie.”
I don’t know how I do it but I manage to pull myself away from him. I pivot and lunge for the front door of the big white Victorian house. The door hangs open, off its hinges. I lurch inside and stop. Nick is right behind me.
“Oh no . . . ,” I whisper.
He pulls me into his chest, but I’ve already se
en it. I’ve already seen and it’s stuck inside my brain like panic and terror, like a bad horror movie image that won’t let go: bodies twisted on the marble floor, blood splashed across walls like arteries have been cut, severed hands in the middle of the floor not connected to anything, eyes open, mouths stuck in screams. I yank away from Nick and stare. Then I start moving. I hold my breath as I go from one corpse to another.
“Zara, what are you doing?”
“Looking for my father.”
I don’t stop. I move past a woman in a torn pink dress. I move toward a man with dark hair, but it’s not him. Blood leaks from his mouth. I close his eyes and start up the stairs. Nick catches my arm. “Zara . . .”
His eyes are pained but alive, hollow but still moving. I wonder if my eyes look that way too, or if they are like the eyes of the dead pixies, crumpled on the floor.
“I have to see if he’s here, Nick.”
His mouth tightens and releases. “I’ll look with you.”
“You don’t have to.” I walk up the big curving staircase, step past a blond pixie, male, young—not Astley. His throat has been slashed. Something in my stomach meets my tongue. I go to steady myself on the railing but there’s blood there, too. There’s blood everywhere. My hand presses against my lips.
Nick moves past me. “I’ll go first. Take out your knife.”
With the same hand that holds my knife, I grab on to the back of his jacket, follow him up the stairs. We get to the top. There aren’t any lights on in the hallway that runs both directions.
“Can you smell anything?” I whisper.
“Death. I smell death.” He takes my hand.
“Is anyone alive?” I whisper. “My skin feels spidery.”
He breathes in. The heaters are on in here, but I still shudder. “Nick?”
He nods slowly, motions for me to move behind him a little more. I don’t. I clutch on to his jacket, but I stay next to him as we make our way down the hall. My boots squish in something. I expect more blood, but it’s water—spilled from a Poland Spring bottle that someone dropped by a bedroom door. It reminds me of when my stepdad died, right after we’d been running. He’d dropped a bottle just like it on our kitchen floor. Nick motions for me to be quiet, bringing a finger to his lips. He steps inside the bedroom.