Captivate

by Carrie Jones

  Devyn’s hand tightens around mine. A tiny whimpering noise escapes Issie’s mouth and then it’s like the wind that’s been centered on Cassidy moves out and hits us, only it’s not just wind. It’s more like an electrical current, charged and seeking power. All my atoms seem to buzz and drain and shimmer somehow.

  “It’s draining us,” I gasp.

  “It will be okay,” Devyn reassures me.

  Cassidy no longer seems aware of anything. Her body trembles like she’s overwhelmed with electricity. The lights in the room snap off without anyone touching them and there’s a ghostly glow right where Cassidy is. I start off the bed. “I can’t see her.”

  Devyn holds me back. “It’s part of the process.”

  And then suddenly the glow changes. Gray lines shift within, turning into shapes. There’s an image of a bed, and something is in the bed. For a second, I think it must be me in the hotel room again, but the bed is all wrong. This one looks like it’s made out of tree trunks. The bedspread isn’t standard hotel issue. It’s made of fur. I squint at the image. My heart stops. There’s a familiar guy in that bed. His eyebrows are a little too big on his perfect face. His cheeks are sunken in like he’s lost weight but his mouth is moving. His mouth is moving.

  “He’s alive.” I sob out the words and every single organ inside of me seems to slam into one another in some sort of crazy happy dance. The hole that dread made just fills up with hope. “Issie. Look! He’s alive.”

  She’s crying too. Devyn’s hand releases mine and he pulls in a huge, heartrending breath.

  Nick’s mouth keeps moving.

  “What’s he saying?” I ask and lean closer. The image isn’t perfect. It’s foggy and not even in color, but I don’t care because it’s Nick, my Nick, and he’s alive. I stare at his lips. Those lips I’ve kissed and lost myself in a hundred million times. They move and shape a word: Zara.

  “I’m coming, baby. I’ll come find you, I swear.” I step toward him.

  He doesn’t hear me. He moans in pain and the image shivers. I grab for him, but I’m zapped back, shocked away by whatever magic Cassidy is making, and then the whole thing is gone. In just a second it blinks away and the lights turn back on. The computer hums to life. Our cell phones beep. In that same instant, Cassidy starts to fall forward but I get there and grab her before she can hit the floor. I bundle her into my arms, stand up, and carry her to the bed, trying to lay her on it as gently as I can.

  Issie gasps. “You’re so strong.”

  “I know! There are pixie advantages. I smell everything too and I can jump.” I put a pillow under Cassidy’s head and smooth out her hair. She looks like she’s suddenly lost ten pounds. Nick looked like that too. I turn around and wipe at the tears that are still trucking down my cheeks. “He’s alive, guys. Nick’s alive. Do you know what this means?”

  Devyn’s eyes are watering too and he starts to answer but he seems too choked up to be able to speak for once and Issie just motions for me to go on, for me to say it, probably because she knows I want to say it so badly. I want to scream it from the mountaintops and every other single miserable cliché in the universe.

  “It means that I’m a pixie for a reason. It means that I’m going to find Nick and bring him home,” I say.

  Devyn and Issie grab hands. Their fingers twine together. I notice it. I think Cassidy notices it too, because she murmurs from the bed, “So cute.”

  “You forgot a part,” Issie says to me.

  I don’t know what she’s talking about. My fingers flex, long for Nick’s fingers, and I say, “Which is?”

  Devyn finishes for her. “That we’re going to help.”

  “All of us,” Cassidy insists.

  “All of us.” I repeat her words and let myself smile for the first time in days. I touch the anklet Nick gave me. It’s still there. It hasn’t broken. We haven’t broken. “Cool.”

  Issie checks her watch. “We are totally late for the dance.”

  Cassidy gasps. “True.”

  Devyn kind of rolls his eyes.

  “I better get going,” I say, but Issie’s grabbed me by the arm. Anger floods through me, irrational and hard. I could totally rip free from her. I could strangle her. I could kill her. I shudder. That’s what I can do—this new me. I can kill easily. But I won’t. Breathing out, the anger dissipates.

  “You are coming with us,” Issie insists.

  “I don’t think so.” I flash Devyn panic eyes but he just lifts his hands into the air. “Dude, I am looking for help here.”

  “Nick would want you to go,” Cassidy says, standing up. “You need a dress. Do you have a dress? Or is it all old band T-shirts all the time?”

  “Not nice,” Issie says, wiping at her eyes, “but true. And we have no time for Zara to go home to get a dress. There’d be a big scene with Betty. You aren’t up for that right now, are you?” Before I can answer she says, “No, I didn’t think so.”

  I flop down on the bed. Devyn says, “I don’t think Nick would want her to go without him.”

  “Thank you.” I smile at him.

  “No problem,” he answers.

  “Well, Nick isn’t the boss of her and he isn’t here and I want her to go.” Issie has gone over to her closet. “Now, what you may not know about me, Zara, is that when I was a freshman I had a thing for dresses.”

  “She only wore dresses,” Cassidy agrees. She goes to the closet with Issie. They start murmuring about colors and sizes.

  “There’s no fighting this, is there?” I ask Devyn.

  He plops onto the bed next to me, leans back, and puts his hands under his head. “Nope. It’d be harder than killing a pixie. No offense.”

  “None taken.” I poke him in the side. Then all the air rushes out of me. I’m a pixie. Everyone is acting like that’s okay and maybe it is, but things—things are different. I am different.

  Cassidy turns around holding up a deep green dress with a plunging sweetheart neckline that has all these ornate circles around the empire waist. “How about this one?”

  “It’s fine.” I try to smile.

  I must fail, because Issie goes, “What’s wrong? Do you not like the dress? It’s beautiful.”

  “No. That’s not it . . . It is super nice, Issie . . .” I struggle to find the words. I sit up. So does Devyn. “I—I just don’t know how this is all going to work. I’m different now . . .”

  Cassidy drapes the dress over the chair at Issie’s desk. She comes over and squats in front of me. Her hands grab mine. “You said it before: you are a pixie for a reason.”

  “How do you know?”

  She tilts her head. “The elf in me.”

  “That’s her excuse for everything now that she’s out,” Issie explains, “but she’s almost always right.”

  “You must feel different, Zara,” Cassidy says, ignoring her. “I know you think this is all about Nick, but it isn’t. It’s about you too. You changed for him, but you’re the one who changed. You were brave and crazy and proactive, and Betty and Devyn have been monumentally ticked off at you this entire time, but Zara, you did it and it was meant to be.”

  Her words echo around in my head. I always think of Nick as the brave one, but I am too.

  “I want you to be right,” I finally say.

  “Well, good.” She lets go of my hands. “Because I am. Devyn, please move your guy self out of the room so we can get Zara dressed.”

  “Done.” He skedaddles through the door, closing it behind him.

  Issie claps her hands. “Good. Let’s make you presentable, pixie princess.”

  My heart hiccups as I hear her say that word—princess—and it’s like all the truth in the universe is falling down, like the descent of snowflakes taking one last trip from sky to earth before settling on the reality of what they really are.

  I whisper my question, stare at myself in the mirror on her wall. “You think you can?”

  “Anything is possible. Right?” Issie pauses and answ
ers her own question, grabbing a hairbrush. “Right.”

  And the thing is? She is right. Anything is possible. I am a pixie for a reason. I am Zara—a different Zara, but still Zara. What happens to us all is partially up to me and it is my job, my duty, to protect my friends. So that’s what I will do. That’s what the pixie in me makes me capable of.

  “Make me presentable, guys,” I say, standing up. “Make me look like a queen.”

  Also by Carrie Jones

  Need

  Acknowledgments

  Every once in a while a woman is lucky enough to meet her own John Wayne, a cowboy who knows how to love and be loved, who knows how to treat her and be treated, who knows what it is to be a hero kind of man and who occasionally rides off with a writer into the sunset after he’s carried her over far too many swamps and rivers and fended off the rattlesnakes and bears. I am so lucky to have you. I love you. Thank you. This one is for you.

  Thanks to Emily Ciciotte for being made of awesome even though the phrase makes her cringe. Every day you teach me what brave is, Em.

  Thanks to Betty Morse, Bruce Barnard, Lew Barnard, Debbie Gelinas, and Rena Morse for being such a great family.

  Thanks to Bruce especially for teaching me what it’s like to face your own pixie.

  Thanks to the Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Police Departments (with a special thanks to Sgt. Shaun Farrar, Marie Overlock, and Chief Jim Willis) for giving me the tools to help me understand their world and for being SO patient with me—especially you, Marie. You are all heroes every day.

  Thanks to Michelle Nagler, Caroline Abbey, Deb Shapiro, and the crew at Bloomsbury. You all are so patient and work so hard. This would not be a story without you, especially you, Michelle. Seriously, you make me wonder how a human being can be so smart and talented and amazing and have such a great gift for story (and um . . . gift of patience too).

  Thanks to Edward Necarsulmer IV. You are way more than a fantastic agent; you are the best kind of human and philosopher and friend. I do not know how I would survive without you. You say I give you faith? You give me strength and wisdom and kindness every single day. And that goes for the beautiful and brilliant Erica too! Thank you for keeping me sane and strong and for showing Em the best of New York and the best of people.

  Thanks to Jennifer Osborn, William Rice, Steve Wedel, Devyn Burton, Chris Maselli, Laura Hamor, Tamra Wight, Renee Sweet, Emily Wing Smith, Evelyn Foster, Melodye Shore, Jacob Day, Dorothy Vachon, Kelly Fineman, and my friends on Facebook, LJ, MySpace, and who have emailed me. You make the world and my life so much better! Thank you so much for helping me through a tough kind of year. Strudel for everyone!

  Copyright © 2010 by Carrie Jones

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  First published in the United States of America in January 2010 by Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers

  E-book edition published in June 2010

  www.bloomsburyteens.com

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Bloomsbury BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Jones, Carrie.

  Captivate / by Carrie Jones.—1st U.S. ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: High school junior Zara and her friends continue to try to contain the pixies that threaten their small Maine town, but when a Valkyrie takes Zara’s boyfriend, Nick, to Valhalla, the only way to save him is to trust a pixie king, Astley.

  ISBN 978-1-59990-342-2 (hardcover)

  [1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Pixies—Fiction. 3. Metamorphosis—Fiction. 4. Valkyries (Norse mythology)—Fiction. 5. Kings, queens, rulers, etc.—Fiction. 6. Maine—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.J6817Cap 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2009031363

  ISBN 978-1-59990-556-3 (e-book)