Nick goes into a back room and comes out with Mrs. Nix’s purse. The phone rings. She tells Dev to answer it and put whoever it is on hold while she paws through the contents of her big fabric bag.
“There!” She snatches out a compact. “Foundation. Issie, help me put this on her face.”
“It’s too dark,” Nick says.
“Well, it’ll have to do until you get to a pharmacy, won’t it? Unless you have some makeup hiding in that leather jacket of yours, Mr. Colt,” she says.
“Whoa. Snappy,” Dev whispers.
Her big brown eyes peer into mine, gentle but obviously worried. “None have kissed you, right?”
“Pixies?” I whisper. The thought overwhelms me.
She nods.
“No.” I shake my head and look to Issie for confirmation. “None.” But I was unconscious for a bit in my car . . . “I would notice if they did, right?”
“Most definitely. You’d be out of it for a good long while. If you even survived . . .” Mrs. Nix’s voice trails off and the office is suddenly far too silent. She finally breaks it and says, “Well, that’s a relief.”
Issie spreads some more concealer over my chin. Her fingers move in quick, soft strokes. “It’s looking better.”
“She looks orange,” Dev says, leaning in, taking another cookie, and peering closer.
“Devyn!” Issie glares at him.
“It’s better than blue,” he says.
“True,” Issie agrees. “Now she just looks like that picture of my mom from the eighties. She would put on all this base and not rub it in. There’d be a big white line on her chin.”
We all exchange a look because Issie totally does that too.
Mrs. Nix leans back to inspect my face. She wipes her hands against each other. “Much better.”
I force myself to look at Nick. He nods. “Beautiful,” he whispers. He is such a liar.
Mrs. Nix turns to us, eyes flashing. “You want to be dismissed?” She doesn’t even wait for an answer, just writes us all notes and files them away quick as a flash. She meets my eyes when she’s done and says, “Do. Not. Worry.”
“But—”
“I mean it, Zara. Do. Not. Worry. I’m sure this is a random fluke and it does not mean what you think it means.”
I swallow hard and lean against the counter. “You don’t think I’m—”
She holds up her hand to stop my words. “No. I do not think you are turning into a pixie.”
“You swear? Because I don’t think I could handle that. I wouldn’t be me. I’d be all evil and my teeth would look like sharks’ teeth and what if I had those needs?”
Her hand goes up straight like she’s taking an oath. Nick’s hip brushes against mine. I lean into him. Her mouth forms the words. “I promise that you are a hundred percent human, Zara. I have no doubts.”
. . .
We all ride together in Issie’s car. Nick drives. His MINI is too small for all of us plus Devyn’s gear.
Is and I sit huddled in the back together, and Nick pops open the far end to shove Dev’s braces in. He slams behind the wheel, angry and distressed. “This is crazy, Zara. I feel like we’re missing pieces of the puzzle.”
“Tell him,” Issie mouths.
I don’t want to, but I do. “Um. Nick . . .”
He pulls the car out of the parking space. Issie squeezes my hand tighter.
“Nick?” I try again.
“You’re going to be okay, baby. I swear. We’re going to take you to Betty, figure this out.”
I swallow. “That’s not it.”
Dev turns around in his seat to stare at us. “What is it, then?”
“Um . . .”
“Zara?” Nick’s voice is almost a warning.
I scrunch down a little more in my seat. “The other day Issie and I . . . we, um . . . we, um . . . we kind of took my father out of the house—”
“We put him right back in, though,” Issie interrupts.
“Yeah. And we wrapped him up really well in this blanket we sewed iron inside,” I add.
Is interrupts again. “And the car. He hated the car because of the steel and iron in it. Wait. Zara, you don’t have a headache or anything, do you?”
I manage to tear my glance away from the back of Nick’s head to look at Is. “No. Why? Oh. Because I’m in the car and I’m blue, right?”
“Zara!” Nick’s voice is a roar. Dev grabs the steering wheel. He’s nervous like that. “I’ve got it, Devyn.”
Nick yanks the car over to the side of the road, which is a completely disrespectful way to handle Issie’s car. She is a sensitive car and her tires or the rods or something in her squeals in protest. He slams on the brakes and turns around to look at me. His eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen.
“Simmer down, man,” Dev says.
Nick pays no attention. “What were you two thinking?”
Issie clutches my hand harder. “We were thinking that—”
This time I’m the one who interrupts. “You know what, Mr. I’m the Boss of Everybody?” Dev snorts. I ignore him and rant on. “Payback sucks. Issie and I can go rogue sometimes too.”
I let go of Issie’s hand so I can point at him. He stays turned around as cars zip by us. He grabs my finger in his giant hand. Something in his jaw twitches. I gulp but I don’t look away. Then something in his eyes shifts. His grip is a tiny bit lighter.
“You’re right,” he says finally.
Issie lets out this massive sigh and flops back against the car seat. She mumbles something that sounds like “I hate conflict.”
Nick’s eyes flick in her direction for just a second before focusing on me again. His voice is still flinty and hard, and his shoulders slump a little, like he’s disappointed in us, in me. “But it was incredibly dangerous.”
I nod. “I know, but we all do dangerous things. Our lives are dangerous.”
“And we had to find things out,” Issie blurts.
Dev’s voice is soft and tired. “Find out what, Issie?”
“What the danger is,” she says.
“And did you?” Nick asks.
“Yeah,” I say softly. “We did.”
. . .
Nick pulls back onto the road and Is and I explain as we drive to the ambulance headquarters. We tell them what my father said, about how other pixies will come because he is so weak and they will claim this territory, which actually extends throughout New England and eastern Canada. The other pixie king will attack his headquarters, here in our town, and he will not care about humans. He will claim me as a prize, supposedly, because I am half pixie and the king’s daughter.
“Which puts you in danger,” I finally say as we pull into the parking lot for the ambulances. Betty’s big truck is sitting as far away from the front door as she can park it. She likes to walk.
“How does that put me in danger?” Nick asks. It’s the first question he’s asked the entire time. Devyn, however, has been Mr. Nonstop Wondering Question Guy.
“Because . . .” I don’t know how to say it, struggle for the words. “Because you and I are a thing and you’re a threat.”
“You better believe I’m a threat,” Nick growls. The entire car seems to shake with his energy. Little hairs on my arm lift and vibrate.
“He’s going macho again,” Dev says, totally nonchalantly, while he unlocks the door.
“He’s always going macho,” Is adds. “It must be the wolf thing.”
“I am not going macho. I am always macho,” Nick says, and for a moment the tension ratchets down, but then his face muscles become rigid again. “I can’t believe he used you like that. He totally manipulated you, scaring you just to get some kind of sick joy ride. I thought my parents were bad, but crap, your freaking father, Zara.”
Nick slams open his door and gets Dev’s braces. As Is and I get out I whisper, “What did Nick mean about his parents?”
Issie’s face opens up. She whispers back, “He hasn’t told you?”
/>
“Told me what?” I am hissing almost. Pebbles crunch beneath our feet. One rolls into an icy mud puddle.
“I’ll tell you after.” She nods her head toward the guys. Dev is standing, waiting for his braces. An eighteen-wheeler carrying Poland Spring water trundles down the road. About a year ago three people from Myanmar gave some water to monks who were walking in the street protesting rights abuses. The government said that giving water was an act of supporting terrorism. For a second I wish I could magically transport that entire truck to those monks. For a second I wish I could magically explain to the government of Myanmar about pixies and show them what terror really is.
“Zara? You there?” Is pokes my arm.
“Yeah. Sorry. Am I still blue?”
She eyes me. “A little, but you can’t really tell from the makeup. I think it’s getting better.”
My fingers touch the edge of her dirty car, make marks on it, just light little lines. I lift my fingers away, examine the dirt. “Are you lying because you’re my best friend and you don’t want to scare me?”
Is makes a smiley face out of my lines. “Yeah.”
We head into the building and once inside the square front office, Josie the dispatcher stands up from her old, monstrous metal desk and smiles. The blue and yellow beads at the end of her cornrows sway. “Well, look who’s here. Are we all legally skipping school or should I call in one of those deputies to bring you all up on truancy charges?”
“Legal. We have a note,” Nick says. He bounces on his toes; too much energy inside him has nowhere to go.
“I should have known. Working the system, right?” Josie nods her head toward the coffeemaker. “You all want something to drink? Or just Betty?”
“I’ll have some water,” Devyn says, hitching across the ugly linoleum floor that looks like it came out of some 1970s discount department store. He grabs a cup and puts it under the big blue jug of water.
Josie presses a button and says, “Betty, you’ve got visitors, a whole troupe of them.”
My grandmother’s voice crackles on the intercom. “Who is it?”
“Zara, her handsome boy toy”—Josie wiggles her eyebrows and Nick starts blushing beside me while Is cracks up—“and friends.”
“Tell them to come on back,” she orders.
“Thanks, Josie,” I say. I give her a kiss on her cheek. “You smell like coconut.”
“My moisturizer,” she says. “How about your boy toy gives me a kiss?”
Nick does.
“Boy toy,” Dev mocks as we walk the narrow corridor to the back room.
“You’re just jealous,” Nick grunts.
Dev sort of laughs through his nose in an absolutely geeky boy way. “Right, boy toy. Are you a Mr. Potato Head or a Wolverine action figure? No! Wait! A Transformer.”
“Shut up.” Nick and I make eye contact. He smiles. I break free from Is so she and Dev can be a little closer, and also so I can open the door to the break room where the EMTs hang out when they aren’t on a call. Nick beats me to it. He hauls open the door and holds it there for all of us to go through.
“Thanks,” I say, inhaling his scent as I walk by.
“Anytime.” His free hand touches the small of my back really lightly. It makes me shiver. It’s the good kind of shiver.
He notices. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I tilt my head up at him.
Is and Dev are already in the room. Nick takes my arm and gently pulls me back into the hallway with him. We’re alone. He whispers down, “You don’t need to be brave with me, Zare. That’s the point of a relationship, right? You tell each other things. You let each other see things that you don’t let the rest of the world see.”
I swallow hard. “I just don’t want . . . I don’t want you to worry. I’m sorry I went off with my father.”
His hand cups my cheek. His thumb grazes my skin, slow and light and strong all at once. “I know. And I’m sorry I get so macho.”
I press my lips together.
He nods fast and hard like he’s trying to hold back some big emotion. “Come on, let’s go in and have Betty check you out.”
The ugly yellowy lights in the room make Betty and Mike, the EMT with her, look a little jaundiced, like they have some sort of liver disease. Mike is sitting on the dilapidated brown sofa watching CNN, absentmindedly picking at the edges of some duct tape that is wrapped around the sofa arm holding it together. The TV drones on about sex scandals and politicians. There is a box of Dunkin’ Donuts on the middle of the table at the left of the room. Betty is doing what she does best. She is walking on the treadmill with a copy of The Economist splayed out in front of her. She used to be an insurance company president. She retired before they started making eight hundred million dollars a year. This is unfortunate. I’m sure if she was still a CEO I’d already have a new car and a new laptop.
“Well, Devyn! Look at you walking again. That’s a blessing for sore eyes.” Her gray hair bounces with every forceful stride and she smiles at us. “I have thirty seconds left before I hit five hundred calories. You should see my pulse rate.”
“Steady?” Nick asks.
“As a rock.” She smiles and presses a button. The incline of the treadmill lowers. She adjusts her uniform shirt, tucking the white ends more neatly into the awful blue polyester-blend pants she has to wear. “Cutting school?”
I try to smile but I can’t quite make it work.
Nick stands next to me. His arm wraps around my waist. “Zara is feeling a little blue.”
He puts some extra stress on the words “feeling” and “blue.”
Betty takes a swig from her water bottle. She squints at us.
“Really blue,” Issie emphasizes before looking over at Mike, slightly panicked.
Betty hops off the treadmill. She puts her big hands on my shoulders and leans down a little to stare into my eyes. “Blue, huh? Depressed?”
I sniff. Her deodorant is working overtime. It is nice and everything, but a little too baby fresh for me.
“Mike,” she says in a louder voice.
“Yeah.” He turns his head to sort of half look at us. He gives a wave.
Dev and Is wave back.
“You okay with keeping Josie company for a minute while I talk to my granddaughter here?” Betty asks. But when Betty asks things like this, it’s more of a telling. Believe me, I know. She’s uses the same tone about bringing my laundry downstairs. There’s no choice when she talks like this. It’s a command.
“Absolutely. I need more coffee anyway.” Mike stands up and stretches. He is pretty tall like Nick, only super skinny, all scarecrow limbs. Mike points a finger at me in a pretend gun sort of shape and leaves. The door swings behind him.
The moment he is gone, Betty leaps into action.
“Devyn, get me the equipment by the coats,” she orders.
Dev grabs the alarm red box that looks like something you lug fishing lures in, only it has medical symbols on it. It’s kind of cool how he can do this with his braces.
“Take your coat off, Zara.” Betty unlocks the kit and slams it open.
Nick helps me shrug off my coat.
“Roll up your sleeves,” Betty insists.
I pull them up.
“You’re blue,” she says. She stops for a second. Her eyes meet my eyes.
“I know.”
“It was worse before,” Nick says.
Betty pulls out a needle and a vial that you store blood in. Her voice is stunned. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Issie grabs my hand. “Do you want to squeeze?”
“Sure,” I say, grabbing her tiny hand back. “Why are you taking my blood?”
Betty plunges the needle into the underside of my elbow. “To see if you’ve turned.”
I shudder.
“Stay still,” she says as the vial fills up.
“You can tell by my blood?” I ask, watching. “Wouldn’t I feel different? Evil or something?” r />
“Tell me when it’s over,” Issie says. She’s the one changing colors now. She’s all pale and looking like she’s going to faint. “I can’t stand it. I hate blood and needles. Even the word ‘need-le.’ Urck.”
I let go of her hand. “It’s okay. It doesn’t hurt. Much.”
“You’re always trying to be so brave, Zara. You don’t have to be.” Betty eases out the needle. “Nick, put some gauze on that. Light pressure.”
She caps the vial and turns back to us. “I’m going to send this out for some tests.”
“Send it where?” I ask.
“My parents,” Dev answers. “They’re kind of experts.”
I don’t get it. “I thought your parents were psychiatrists.”
“They are. But, um, they have some side fields that they work on.”
“Like what?”
“Cryptozoology. Medical research on blood differences in weres, pixies, others.”
I swallow. “Others?”
He nods. “Since I was attacked, my parents have become a little . . . um . . . zealous.”
“They’re brilliant people,” Issie interrupts.
“Yeah, but they’ve gone a little crazy about this. They’ve converted the entire basement into a lab. They’re online 24-7 researching and they didn’t even know pixies existed until this fall.”
I pull my sleeves down. “And why has nobody told me this before?”
Everyone looks at Devyn, who is sitting in a metal folding chair with this amazingly introspective look on his face. “Because they’re protecting me.”
I resist the urge to ask why and wait for him to tell me instead. He sits up taller and says, “My parents aren’t exactly the most normal people and my home is a sty.”
“Beyond a sty, really,” Issie says. “You know the opposite of anal retentive? That’s them. No offense, Dev.”
He slowly stretches his legs out in front of them. “I don’t bring anyone back to the house except Is and Nick. I never have.”
“And it took him years to let me come over,” Nick says.
“He beat me up first.” Devyn smiles. “It was seventh grade. We’d been friends since kindergarten.”
I swallow hard. I understand but I still feel left out of the loop. It makes me feel all new kid and not trusted, like I’m not one of the pack. Part of me wants to pout about it but I buck up and say, “How’s my skin, Gram?”