by Carrie Jones
I avoid her eyes and focus on the light weight of the hospital blanket that covers me. “So, was that you? Growling?”
She nods, squeezes my hand.
“Holy crap,” I whisper.
“You keep talking like that you’ll end up sounding like me.”
I gulp. “Was Daddy?”
“He kept you and your mother safe for a long, long time, Zara.” Her voice trembles. “He loved you both so much.”
She pulls the blankets up a little higher. “I’m sorry, Zara. Your mom and I, well we didn’t know there was more danger. There hadn’t been any danger for over a decade. Even when the Beardsley boy went missing, I hoped that it was a human who took him or that he did run away. It’s foolish.” She runs a hand across her eyes. “People don’t want to see the truth sometimes.”
“Not if it’s a bad truth,” I agree. “I’ve been denying everything. That there were pixies . . . that there was something supernatural going on . . . how hollow I’ve been . . . who my father is.”
She looks at me and gives the tiniest of nods. “I’ve made a fine mess of it. I’m getting too old to battle pixies.”
“That’s not what I hear,” I say. I take her hand. There are age spots across her delicate skin, but her fingers are long and powerful. “Why didn’t mom come?”
“Even your dad couldn’t have kept her safe here.”
“Why?”
She runs a hand through her hair. “It’s the king’s hometown. Her presence here would have driven him crazy no matter how hard he tried to control it. If the king knew she was right here, he’d have to come after her. He wouldn’t be able to resist.”
“So we were hiding? All that time in Charleston? My whole life? We were hiding?” My head tries to wrap itself around it, but I can’t. The world is so different than I thought, so totally, ridiculously different.
She nods. “I’m sorry that Ian got to you, Zara. I know I let you down.”
“Where were you? I thought you were hurt when you didn’t come back home.”
“The truck broke down halfway. Someone sabotaged it. I started hiking back and it was taking forever, so I turned. Then I realized that the pixie had already beat me to the house, so I hid out, waiting. I knew you were safe at home but I also knew you wouldn’t stay at home. I figured you’d leave and when you did the pixies would strike. I wasn’t quick enough, though. I should’ve gone after you first instead of getting Nick out of the net.”
“No,” I say. “That was the right thing. And then you followed us to where Ian and Megan took me.”
“It was an easy smell to trace.”
I solid the question out. “Did you kill him?”
“If I hadn’t, your boyfriend would have.”
Ian is dead. She killed him. Probably ripped him apart like tigers do. I shudder.
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Ha. That’s a good one. I saw you two tonsil surfing out there.”
I could kill her. “I don’t even have tonsils!”
“I know that and I bet Nick knows that now, too.” She slaps her leg because she’s just too funny for words. The door opens and Nick stands there, filling out the frame. He rushes over to my bed and hovers over me but doesn’t touch.
“Well, well, well, speak of the devil,” she says, snickering a little bit and standing up. “Looks like you’ve got company, so I’m going to run and get some decent coffee. We both know I just make horse swill.”
She kisses my forehead and searches my eyes with hers. I don’t know what she expects to see.
Then she turns to Nick. “You going to stay here for a bit?”
He nods.
“You take good care of her. She’s the only granddaughter I have, okay?”
He stands a little straighter, the way people do when Betty gives an order.
“I promise.”
“Good.” She marches out the door, leaving us alone.
The moment he seems sure she’s gone, Nick bends over and kisses my cheek. My lips feel abandoned. His other hand touches my cheek.
“I was so worried about you,” he says.
“You left.”
“Betty made me. I was just hiding in the other room.”
I exhale, everything inside of me relaxing. “Really?”
“I swear.”
He looks so solid and worried and sweet, very, very sweet. I don’t know how I’d manage without him there, with me. My eyes close. They are so heavy.
“I’m scared, Nick.”
He squeezes my hand and his face hardens. He fiddles with my blanket, tucks it around me, just like my grandmother had. I am very well tucked.
“I hated what he tried to do to you.” Nick chokes a little bit, all emotional. “Turning you into one of them. You could never be one of them.”
But aren’t I already? If my father is one. It means it’s in my blood, but Nick doesn’t know that. Nick can’t ever know that. I reach out my good hand and touch Nick’s cheek. It’s all rough, stubbly. “Would you hate me if I was? If I was a pixie?”
His eyes search my eyes. “No.”
I don’t think either of us know if he’s telling the truth.
“What about the other ones?”
He lifts an eyebrow. He has beautiful eyebrows. “The other ones?”
“The pixies, the other pixies?”
Sometimes when cats see a mouse, they torture it. They could kill it easily with one good bite, one swipe of the claw, but instead they play with the mice. They torture them, watch them suffer. The mouse always tries to run away, but always knows there’s no hope, that the cat can get them any time, anywhere. I am worried that pixies are like that.
“Issie and Devyn have been out looking. They haven’t seen any signs.” He pulls a hand through his hair and then uses that same hand to massage the back of his neck. Blue half circles shadow the skin beneath his eyes. He seems so tired.
“So they’re gone?” I ask, hopefully. I search his face. “Do you think they’re gone?”
“I think they’re regrouping. I think it will take them a while, but they’ll be back.” He sighs and then straightens his back. “We’ll be ready for them, in any case. It’s okay, Zara. It’s over for now.”
“Are you sure?”
I open my eyes for just a second to see his nodding, beautiful face hovering just inches above mine. “I’m sure. They can’t turn you now, you’re too hurt. You have too many drugs in your system. You’d die. You’re no good to them dead, not yet, not until after you’ve turned.”
He runs his hands along my shoulders and I shiver, a good shiver.
His voice comes out husky. “I swear I won’t let that happen.”
I close my eyes again. It’s so hard to stay awake, to think. I murmur, “You’re nice, aren’t you, Nick? You’re nice?”
His lips kiss my forehead. “I try.”
I call her. Of course I call her. She’s my mom.
“Zara!” Her voice is frantic. “I’m all packed. I’m still at the airport, waiting for a flight. Everything keeps getting delayed because of the damn storm. That doesn’t matter. What matters is, are you okay? Oh, God, I can’t believe you got hurt.”
“Did Gram tell you what happened?”
I can hear her suck in her breath. “Yes.”
I am silent. I wait. A nurse walks down the hall.
Finally, she says, “I thought it was all over.”
The hospital is a boring, plain white; a blank slate. “Tell me why we lived in Charleston. Was it just because we were hiding? Were you only with Daddy because he kept you safe?”
“I owe you a lot of answers, Zara, but I swear to you that I was with Daddy because I love him.”
“Yep.”
I can almost imagine her twisting at an earring, trying to figure out what to say. “We were hiding. I was hiding.”
“From the head pixie guy?”
“Yes.”
“The king?”
“Yes.”
“And why did he want to get you so badly?” I want to hear her say it. I want her to tell me.
“I double-crossed him, Zara. I did something he wanted but only under certain conditions. Those conditions made him weaker, and . . . and . . . he wanted me to stay. When Daddy died, I . . . I thought he’d come after me, not you. I thought he’d be down here and you’d be safe with Betty up there. I thought—”
“Is he my father? My biological father?”
“How do you know that?”
“Mom?” I press her.
“Yes. Yes, he is your father.”
“So I’m part pixie?”
“No. No, you aren’t. You’re all human because we never kissed, I never turned. Don’t you see? I think that’s part of the problem, part of why he’s so weak. I mean, I’m not a hundred percent positive but I think to be strong he needs to have an actual pixie queen, a soul mate—”
But I don’t want to hear any more. I hang up the phone.
“Everything will be okay,” I tell myself in the muted light of my hospital room.
Nurses pitter-patter down the hallways. Someone’s TV in another room plays an action movie. There are a lot of gunshots and explosions.
I close my eyes and try to sleep, but all my dreams are about my mother reaching out her arms and me turning away.
Gram brings me home the next day. My mother’s flight was canceled, along with 223 other flights along the eastern seaboard. She is trying again today. If nothing works she’s going to drive the fourteen hundred miles herself.
“She’s trying awful hard,” Gram says.
“Yep.”
The roads and driveway have been plowed and the trip in her truck isn’t too bumpy.
The snow covers everything, glistening, pure.
“It looks beautiful,” I say as she turns into the drive. “Did my dad like the snow?”
She nods. “He did. But he liked the warmth more, like you. You two are a lot alike. Always liking it warm. Always having your causes.”
“I wrote my first Amnesty letters with him.”
“I know.”
“You really think we’re alike, even though we aren’t related?” I reach around my body with my left hand to open the door. It jostles my broken right arm and I cringe.
“Blood isn’t always the strongest link,” she says, hopping out of the truck. “Let me help you with that door.”
She puts her arm around my waist and we hobble through the snow together.
“Did you know my biological father?” I ask her.
“I never met him,” she says. “I doubt he’d still be alive if I did.”
We make it to the porch and through the door and then she settles me on the couch, fussing the entire time. She makes me chicken noodle soup, which for Gram, the non-cooker, is a really big deal.
Nick smashes through the front door, swinging it so wide that it smashes into the wall by the stairway. He cringes. “Oops.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s just a wall.”
He has an armload of irises and daisies and tulips and he presents them to me. “I didn’t know what kind of flowers you like.”
“I like all of them.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He tries to hand them to me, but then remembers the cast. “I’ll put them in water.”
Betty swoops in the room ridiculously fast and she grabs the flowers out of Nick’s hands. “I’ll take care of them. You lovebirds just sit on the couch and think swooning things at each other.”
“Gram!” I try to scold her but she just laughs and heads to the kitchen. “I love her, but she’s embarrassing.”
Nick nods and pulls me down onto the couch with him. I nestle into his side.
“It’s good to have you home again,” he whispers.
“Yeah,” I whisper back. I can see Gram bustling around in the kitchen, humming and cutting the ends off of flower stems. “It’s funny to think of this as home.”
“But you do?” he says, and he seems to be smelling my hair.
“Yeah, I do.”
His breath touches my hair. I can feel it there, light but solid. I take in a deep breath and then say, “I’ve been thinking, and I’ve got a plan.”
He sucks in air. His entire chest moves. “A plan?”
I turn to face Nick so I can study his reaction. His face is calm and still. I say, “To find Jay and the Beardsley boy. To capture the pixie king.”
“Well,” Betty bustles in. Two tulips dangle from her hands. “Let’s hear it.”
Nick’s out patrolling the edge of the woods and after a half hour or so, Issie and Devyn come over.
“We thought you were a goner,” Issie blurts, bouncing up and down. “I am so happy you aren’t dead.”
“Yeah, I’m still here.” I nod. “I called my mom from the hospital yesterday. She didn’t answer all my questions, but she promised she would when she got here.”
“She’s coming?” Devyn asks. He settles his chair by the couch. Issie plops next to him on the floor, looking up at us while we talk.
“She tried to get a flight, but they were all delayed and canceled. So she’s driving,” I say.
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Devyn asks.
“At first I did . . . now I don’t.”
“Because . . . ,” Issie prompts.
“Because I think she’s really the one in danger, not me, at least when it comes to the pixie king guy. I think I’m just the bait.”
“The bait,” Devyn says, deadpan serious like it’s all suddenly making sense.
“Think about it. For almost seventeen years my mom hasn’t come back here. Why?”
“It’s cold,” Devyn says.
“It’s creepy,” Issie adds.
“That’s not good enough. Not with my grandmother here,” I explain.
Issie looks around “Where is the ol’ grandma?”
“Patrolling around outside,” I say. “Okay. Wait. What was my point? Okay. My point is that my mom hasn’t come back because she’s been afraid to come back. She’s been hiding from the pixies. But why?”
“Good question,” Nick says, coming in the front door.
“Dude.” Issie raises her eyebrows. “You don’t even knock anymore, do you? How rude is that?”
“It’s not rude. Is it rude?” Nick looks at me as Issie starts giggling and chanting rude dude, rude dude.
“Kind of, but I’ll forgive you. You’re interrupting, though.” I pat the couch. He sits next to me. “So, my mom lived with my dad, this were guy, and weres are some of the only things that can fight pixies. But then my dad dies. He dies right when he sees the pixie king outside our window. He dies right when we need him the most.”
“That sucks,” Issie says.
“Issie . . . ,” Devyn warns.
“What? It does.” She looks at me. “So, your mom sends you here so Betty can protect you.”
“Right,” I say, plucking at the string around my finger, “or to get me out of the way because she’s afraid the pixie king will use me to get to her. Which he has. She didn’t think ahead far enough. She sent me here, right where the pixie guy lives, and then she comes after me here, to this place where he’s the most powerful.”
Devyn scratches his ear. “What I can’t figure out is why the pixies are here in the first place. Why here? Why Bedford?”
Gram opens the door and comes into the living room, a big wet stain on the front of her flannel shirt. We all stop talking.
“Why don’t you tell us, Gram,” I say.
She pulls off her wool hat. “Tell you what?”
“Why there’s so many pixies here.”
“They’ve been up here a while. It’s remote.”
“Because of the iron?” I ask. “Is it because in cities the buildings are made of steel?”
“There’s that. The rest of the world didn’t care much when cows disappeared, didn’t notice when boys disappeared,” she says. “Especi
ally before the Internet and satellite news. The rest of the world is not interested in what happens in a tiny Maine town east of nowhere. But times changed. Even the last time, the pixies had to be more careful. The state newspapers got wind of the boys disappearing.”
“Why did the pixies care?” Nick asks.
She leans against the banister of the staircase, not really entering the room. “I don’t think the pixie king likes taking the boys. But he has to. It’s a need. He can’t resist.”
“So why don’t people just kill him?” I want to know.
“First, not everyone knows about him. Not even all the weres around here know. But there’d just be another one to replace him, and that one might not be quite so troubled by his needs.” She gives each of us a focused look. “Do you know what I mean?”
Issie shudders and grabs on to Devyn’s arm.
She continues, yanking her fingers through her hair, trying to straighten things out. “The pixie king only maintains control through power. When he’s weak he loses control. Some pixies like that Ian or Megan try to take over. To do that, they have to find their own queen.”
“So why Zara? Why did Ian want her?” Devyn asks. He leans forward, fingers twitching like he wants to take notes.
“I think it’s because she has some pixie genes already. We already know that her mother attracts them and maybe—”
“What do you mean some genes?” Nick interrupts.
“Because of who her father is.”
I try to get off the couch, but Nick’s hand holds me in place. “Her father is the . . .”
Betty’s eyes flash. “You didn’t tell them?”
My stomach falls into a broken place, acting just like my arm.
“Her biological father is the pixie king,” Betty finishes.
Nick is the first one to react. He jumps up, his mouth wide open. He basically shouts in Betty’s face. “You always knew this?”
She nods.
His hands clench into fists. He turns on me. “So Zara’s part pixie?”
“I don’t know how the genes work, Nick,” Betty explains. “It’s not like we’ve done a full genetic rundown on her. She seems normal.”
“I seem normal?” I mutter.
“But she’s prettier than normal,” Issie says.