by Carrie Jones
"Shut up."
He is being annoying: smiling at me like it's fun to watch me squirm. A million questions rattle inside me. I ask the first one, "So how do you actually become a werewolf?"
"Born that way. Or bitten." He wiggles his eyebrows. "You interested?"
I shriek and jump back, knocking my hip into the side of the sofa and almost falling onto the floor. "No!"
He catches me around the waist with his too-big hands and hauls me back on the sofa, laughing a real laugh, all big and hearty. "I was kidding, Zara. I'd never let that happen to you."
"Really?"
His eyes melt me. "Really. I'd never letanything happen to you."
"Oh. Right. Hero-complex thing. You're a werewolf with a hero complex. That's so funny."
He doesn't answer. The muffled light of the room gives everything a romantic sort of glow, even though the fire kind of dries the air out and makes my throat hurt. My heart pings in my chest, hope making it beat fast, too fast. His hand reaches out and touches the back of my head. His fingers entwine with my hair. It happens again, that melting feeling, the longing feeling. I want to gesture my body against his body, to explain things like need. The blanket he wears rubs against his legs and my legs.
His voice comes out husky. "I'm going to kiss you now, okay?"
I don't think I can speak anymore so I just nod.
"Okay."
His lips warm against mine. My arms wrap around his shoulders and he presses me to him. I am warm here, safe. The backs of my knees tingle and I feel absolutely the opposite of empty. I feel like my life will burst open with good.
Finally I say, "I can't believe you're kissing me."
He leans back and tucks his big hand along the side of my face. "What? Aren't you kissing me back?"
I shrug. "I just thought…"
"Thought what?"
"That maybe you… Oh, I don't know. Didn't kiss girls. Donot get mad. That's what Issie and Devyn said."
"That I didn't kiss girls?"
"Yeah. I thought it was because you were a pixie maybe. I saw gold dust on your jacket."
"You what?" There's an edge to his voice.
"I didn't really think. I just sort of thought it." I snuggle in, try to calm him down.
"When was there dust on my jacket?"
"After you helped me with my car."
He nods. "That was after I went through the woods searching for him. I dropped my jacket before I turned. I probably picked it up then. I can't believe you thought I was a pixie."
"Only a little." We sit there for a minute. "I think we should call Issie and Devyn and tell them."
"That we made out?"
I elbow him. "No. The pixie/were stuff."
I haul myself up off the couch and grab the phone off the brick hearth. It's warm. I start pushing in numbers. "And then maybe we should all go out looking for Jay."
The phone makes a funny noise. The display reads "no signal."
"Great," I say.
Nick gets up and grabs the other phone, listens. "The lines are out."
I flip open the cell. "No signal."
I pocket the phone.
Nick points outside. Blue lights fill the windows, flash through the windows. "The police are here."
Pogonophobia fear of facial hair, mostly beards Two cops come to the door, both sheriffs deputies. Their hands are on their guns, like they're ready for action.
"You Zara?" the taller one with the beard asks. His hair is red and short.
I nod.
"Sergeant Fahey," he says, taking his hand off his gun and reaching out to shake mine. He sees Nick behind me and lets himself smile. "Hey, Nick."
Nick nods and smiles.
"So, you found your way back," Sergeant Fahey says, taking in the blanket around Nick's waist. He nods to the other officer, who is beardless and really young looking. "Safe and sound. So… Deputy Clark and I don't have to go searching."
"Nope," Nick says. "Sorry about that."
"Sorry? It's a good thing," Deputy Clark says. Then he shivers in the cold.
"Oh, do you guys want to come in?" I ask.
"Nope. Thanks," Sergeant Fahey says, all straight-backed and official, which makes Officer Clark grimace. "But your grandmother told us you heard a man in the woods saying your name?"
I nod. "And he tried to attack Nick."
Sergeant Fahey's eyes grow all big. "Really?"
Nick glares at me and then I realize that there's no proof. His wound's already healing. "It was nothing. I ran away."
His mouth twitches. Running away is so the opposite of who he is. That lie is costing him.
Deputy Clark whips out a pad. "Can you describe him?"
Nick does. They come inside, sit on the couch, and ask questions. Deputy Clark asks a lot of questions, mostly I think because he doesn't want to go back outside into the cold. Then they get up and head into the woods with these supercharged flashlights looking for the man.
We stand at the windows and watch the light flash through the darkness, searching.
"They'll never find him," Nick says.
"You don't know that."
"He doesn't leave a trail." Nick turns away and sits back on the couch.
I don't join him. I just keep staring out at the night and the officers. My voice hitches inside my throat. "I thought you were gone."
"I'm tougher than that."
"Because you're a were?" I close the curtain again.
"Yeah."
"You got hurt even though you're a were." I turn around and look at him, so solid and healthy on the couch, so normal looking, in a ridiculously good-looking human kind of way.
"But you read what it said on that Web site. We're the natural enemy of pixies."
"Did you even know pixies existed until this week?"
He cringes, touches his shoulder. "No. But for the last month or so Devyn and I knew there was something out there, something bad. Issie too. We told Issie."
"Your parents are weres too, right? But they're out on some photo shoot somewhere."
"Making a documentary."
"And they just left you here alone. I thought wolves were pack animals, that they hang together."
"They do, but my parents… We've got some interesting family dynamics going on."
"How do you mean?"
"When the son of an alpha wolf, the leader, grows, he matures into alpha himself, and then there's some tension because there's just this genetic need to be alpha."
"To be the one in charge. The hero."
"Basically. But there can only be one alpha, so my parents have been taking an extended trip this year, and next year too, until I go to college. That way my dad and I don't rip each other apart."
"Because you're both alpha?"
He nods.
"Wow. That's weird."
A truck rumbles into the driveway. I watch the police walk out of the woods and talk to Betty by her truck. Then they leave and she comes inside, all business.
She points at Nick. "Take off your shirt."
He does.
"Why are you making him take off-," I start to ask.
"She knows," Nick interrupts. "She knows I'm a were."
Betty nods, peers at the almost invisible wound. "Did you tell her?"
"That you're a were too?" I flop down in the green leather chair by the door. "Yeah, he told me."
"How is she taking it?" Betty asks Nick.
"Not well."
She laughs. "Your wound looks fine. You did a good job, Zara."
I manage to nod.
"The police haven't found anything," Betty says, putting some wood into the stove. It crackles. "But I didn't expect them to. You can always hope, though."
"We think he's a pixie, Gram," I sputter it out.
She nods. "You think right. Where's the poker?"
I find it by the front door. "I took it, um, as a weapon."
"Good idea," she says, taking it from me and using it to shift the logs. A co
uple of embers fly into the room and wisp out. "I've called your mother. She wants you to come back home. She thinks it was a mistake to send you here."
My throat tightens up and I flip my feet up under me, studying her face in the shadowy light of the fire.
"What do you think?"
Nick answers for her. "It might be safer for you to go away."
"I'm not going to run," I say. "He'd find me anyway, right? He found me in Charleston. And he hasn't attacked me or anything, not even when I was out there in the woods. It's not like I'm in danger."
"You don't know that, Zara," Betty says.
"But she sent me here because she thought I'd be safer, safer with you," I say to Betty. "Because you're a were. And if Nick's a were too I must be doubly safe, right?"
"Hopefully," she says.
"I'm not going." I stand up and walk next to her, look up at her. "You won't make me go back."
"No," she says. "I won't. But it's dangerous here. We don't know how to stop him."
Nick stands up, puts his arm around me. "We'll figure something out."
Nick stays the night. There's no school the next morning, and when I wake up it's already day and white snow light fills up the room. Everything seems so much safer, less scary.
Nick walks down the hall, peeks in, and realizes I'm awake. He smiles. "You sleep forever."
"I was tired," I say, stretching and worrying about my hair and my breath and if there's crud in my eyes.
Then I notice something. "You have pants on."
"I keep an extra pair in the MINI." He comes in and sits on the edge of my bed. "Disappointed?"
"A little."
I sit up against the headboard and rub my eyes. "What've you been doing?"
"I called Devyn and Issie. They're trying to figure out if they can come over. Devyn's parents have a snowmobile but they don't want him on it because of the whole injury thing. Betty went in to work in that kick-ass truck of hers."
"Kick ass?"
"It is. Have you looked at her tires?"
"You have a MINI Cooper."
"That doesn't mean I can't appreciate a good truck." He smiles and scruffs my hair like he's my big brother or something, which is not cool. "Anyway, I made pancakes. There's some in the oven, and I've been reading old Stephen King books."
"Oh, that's a good idea, scaring yourself more?"
"I'm hard to scare."
"So tough."
He laughs. I laugh too and then I smile. "Did you really make pancakes?"
He grabs my hand and yanks me out of bed. "Come on."
"Wow, you can really wolf it down," I say.
His fork pauses in midair. "That's original."
I start giggling. "I thought so."
His dimples show. "You're sure putting it away."
"You make good pancakes."
"Thank you."
"I think you should move in with us and just make pancakes all the time."
"Is Betty that bad a cook?"
"Yeah, and I'm not that much better."
"Maybe I should stay here until, you know, things settle down or-" My stomach pierces me and I cut the pancake without looking up at him. "I'm not going back to Charleston."
"It would be safer."
"Only for me. He'd be picking off guys until he got a queen. I can't let that happen."
"It's not your battle."
"Right." I bring my fork to my mouth, let it hover there, and really look at him. He is so charged up, so strong, but he's still made of skin and muscle. He can still get hurt. "Then whose battle is it? Just yours?
Because that is not going to happen. You are not Mr. Save the World Solo Style, okay?"
He dumps some more syrup on his pancakes and then cringes, like talking is painful. "Okay. Fine. It's our battle. All of us."
"The syrup's dripping on the book." I reach out and move the syrup. That's when I see the cover.
"Skeleton Crew?"
"Stephen King."
My heart stops beating and my brain makes a connection that a good brain should have made ages ago.
"I know it's Stephen King. It's just… There's a story in here."
l flip to it and stop, just staring at the title.
"What?"
" 'Here There Be Tygers.' " He pulls his chair closer to the table, closer to me, and leans forward, waiting.
"My dad wrote that in the library book: 'Don't fear. Here there be tygers, I57.' " "I remember. I thought Devyn or Betty or someone said it was some science fiction guy's short story. He didn't say Stephen King, did he?" Nick's words fly against my neck skin with his breath. It's so hard to concentrate.
"It was Ray Bradbury, I think. And no. But two people could have used the title." I get to page I57.
"Zara?"
I twist the book around so we are both reading it at ninety degrees. "Look."
"He wrote in it," Nick says squinting. Maple syrup smell hits my cheek. "Can you read it?"
"It's faded."
"Why did he use pencil?"
"He always used pencil. He was quirky," I say. I lift the book closer to my face. "It says: Defenses: Weres, Iron. Prob-lem: If the need becomes too great, they feed in daytime. Christine. Great. Nice and cryptic, Dad. And he underlined this line in the story all about tigers looking hungry and vicious."
"Who is Christine?"
"Another Stephen King book. The one about the car, I think."
Nick slams his chair back. "Read it again. I saw that book upstairs."
I read it again, yelling it so he can hear me. He's fast, werewolf fast, and he's up and down the stairs in a couple of blinks, holding another Stephen King book in his hand.
"He says they can come in the daytime when the need gets too great," he says. "We should call Betty."
"Let me see that book first." I reach out. He gives it to me. I flip it open and a piece of paper falls to the floor.
Nick scoops it up and hands it to me before I can react. My hands shake as I unfold it. "It could be nothing, a report card or a note to my mom…"
"Read it, Zara," Nick's voice gentles out in the kitchen. It feels like even the air waits.
I read.
"If you have found this it means that the need is back. He says he doesn't want the need. He says he fights against it and I'd like to believe it, but does it even matter? When he loses control over his need he loses control over his court, and they demand blood and soul to satisfy their cravings, cravings they have when the king comes of age and needs a queen. Mom, you know why we ran. I could only let her sacrifice so much and his anger at our deal was so great. We were afraid to trust. I am so sorry it was not enough." I look up at Nick. "Do you know what this means?"
"Not really. Is that all?"
"No, there are a couple more lines," I say and keep reading. "You've got to be warned that when the desire becomes too great, nighttime does not contain him. He will prowl in the sun like the others.
Iron makes them weak. They are fast, but we are faster, and we too can kill. That's our only hope.
Other Shining Ones are our only hope."
I fold the paper back up and place it next to my fork. Then I think better of it and tuck it into my sweatshirt. "My father wrote that."
Nick nods. "They can come in the day."
"If the need is great."
"I'm not taking chances about that," he says. "I'm calling Betty."
I grab his arm, stop him. "Nick?"
He brings his face down to my level. His eyes are all concerned and sweet. "What?"
"I feel funny."
"It's okay to be scared, Zara. But I'll call Betty and we'll keep you safe. It's okay."
"No. It feels like spiders." I try to explain. Heat rushes to my face. "It's stupid. It's just this feeling I keep getting, like spiders are running over my skin. I don't know how to explain it."
His broad hands wrap around my arms and stroke them lightly. "When does this happen?"
"I don't know. Ever since I left Cha
rleston. Every time I see that man that I saw at the airport or when I hear that voice."
'"The voice in the woods?"
I nod.
Nick lets go of my arms and rushes over to the fireplace. He grabs the poker that Betty uses to turn over the logs. He wraps my hands around it. "Take this."
"What? Why?"
He half growls. "It means he's coming. He will try to trick you into opening the door. Don't let him."
I start to argue but Nick holds up his finger. His eyes are so focused, so intent, so like a wolfs. How had I not noticed that before?
"I mean it, Zara. You cannot let anyone in. Promise me."
"Can't they just break in?" I demand. I stomp down on the floor like I'm two, but I don't care, I am so ridiculously frustrated. I want him to stop scaring me.
He doesn't answer, just starts rushing around, pulling drapes closed.
"You should grab that knife you left in the kitchen," he says, glancing up the stairs. "All the windows are locked up there, right?"
"I don't know!" I yell, waving the poker around. Fear tingles on my skin. Or is it that spider feeling? I have no idea. Mick is already racing up the stairs, taking them three at a time.
"What if they break down the door?"
"They can't!"
"How do you know they can't? That guy looked pretty strong."
He shouts down to me, "Pixies have to be invited in, like vampires, l read it on the Internet."
"Well, there you go," I mutter. "Then it must be true."
Pixiophobia a fear of pixies I made this up, but believe me it should be a word because it sure is a legitimate fear I thunder up the stairs after him.
He ignores me, rushing from one room to the oilier, checking on the windows, pulling the shades down in each one before whisking off to the next. He moves so fast he is almost a blur. No wonder he's such a good runner. He isn't human.
I shudder, but I mean, he's still Nick.
My room is the last one he goes to. I block the door so he can't race off again, but he looks a little calmer now. His hair isn't standing on end or anything.
"The windows are all locked," he says, sitting down on my bed.
I dial Betty's cell.
Her voice snaps to attention. "Zara?"
"I think the pixie guy is coming."
"What? It's daylight."
"I know! But I found a note dad left for you. He says if the need gets too great then they can come in the daytime."
"Jesus." She waits, pausing, like she's struggling with big stuff. "He left a note?"