I reach out to the tiger. “Gram …”
But Betty is already gone.
The woods become silent, quiet and waiting, as if disappointed that the action has moved on to a different part of the world. My heart clenches. My grandmother is chasing after that thing, and I’m in no position to follow. She could die. She could get hurt.
Flipping open my cell phone, I text Astley and then I promptly collapse back into the snow, letting the air chill me as my eyes close and I wait for rescue or death. I’m a target for any of Frank’s or Isla’s gang of pixies. I’m not quite sure which I would prefer—rescue or death—which sounds awful and suicidal. I’m normally not like that, but life right now seems overwhelming with no possibilities, no hope. What did she mean that I could stop it? Why was she testing me? What doesn’t she want to end? The world?
The air smells cold and almost metallic. The freezing snow seeps through my clothes.
And what did she mean I’d end up in Valhalla or with her? Snow falls onto my face and evaporates just like my questions.
Two minutes later Astley appears, falling out of the sky and into the snow beside me. His foot flails out and hits me in the shin. That will be another bruise to add to my endless bruise collection of awesomeness.
“Sorry! I am tremendously sorry!” he apologizes, flustered as he scoots closer to me. He grabs my head in his hands, which makes me cringe and he apologizes again. “What happened?”
“A woman creature …” I shake my head. “She hit me from behind first. The blow must have made my vision blur.”
“How are you now? How many fingers?” he asks, gathering me in closer to him with one arm while he raises the fingers in another.
I focus. “Two.”
“How is your emotional state?” Astley asks.
His choice of words makes me laugh sometimes. “My emotional state is fine.” I think for a second about what to say. “Betty’s back and I think I may have some closure with the whole Nick thing.”
He doesn’t say anything. Astley is like that. Sometimes he’ll wait to see if you’ll add more. He gets the best information that way. He learned it, he says, from being a king, watching his dad rule. But since he’s told me this before, I’m actually onto his little trick and I wait too.
He touches my cheek. “That is wonderful news about Betty—and Nick. I apologize for this morning. I was too quick to judge your actions. It was wrong of me.”
I smile a little bit. “It was wrong of me to not tell you ahead of time, to get your input too.”
“I want you to be happy, Zara, always happy.”
“I know,” I say. “That’s what I want for you, for everyone.”
“We shall fix this—all of this ghastliness. We shall make this right.”
His teeth shine even in the dim light. His blond hair flops into his forehead as he gingerly touches the wound on the back of my head and he loses his smile, which is too bad, because his smiles are really nice. I breathe in the familiar smell of him and it gets rid of the decaying stench of that monster woman and the coppery smell of the cold. Almost against my will I lean my head against his chest, shut my eyes for a moment.
Honestly, I haven’t felt safe in a very long time, and this time it doesn’t last because the muscles in Astley’s chest stiffen. Opening my eyes, I see what has made Astley tense. Just a few trees away is a beautiful, huge wolf. He sniffs the air. His ears are back and fangs bared as he growls his anger toward us. We’re hugging in front of him, I realize, and he obviously doesn’t like it.
“Nick.” My hand reaches out to him, but he has already turned away and darted back into the trees, gone. Pain shudders through me.
Astley scoops me up into his arms. “We need to get you home.”
“Yeah,” I murmur.
“Are you hurting?” he asks, eyes staring into mine.
“Naw.”
“You lie,” he says, but he doesn’t press it, which is really kind of him, I think. I let my side settle against his chest.
The sky is dark and cold. The snow keeps falling and the only thing that has any color in it right now is Astley’s green sweater that’s peeking out from beneath his navy blue peacoat. Still, I breathe in. Still, I push the pain outside of me and solid up.
“I’ll be okay,” I protest. “We don’t have to fly. You don’t have to carry me. I promise I’ll be okay.”
“Of course you will, but right now I need to get you home and bandaged and let you have some rest.” He eyes me. “You will tell me what happened as soon as you feel well enough. Deal?”
“Deal.” I sigh as he lifts us into the cold air, brushing past the edges of pine tree branches and finally into clear unobstructed space just above the numerous treetops. “I feel well enough to talk now.”
“Good,” he says. “Tell me as we fly.”
It doesn’t take long for him to get us back to Betty’s house. Unfortunately, Astley is not the best at landings and he tumbles in the snow. He twists his back to take most of the impact and his arms clench around me tightly, trying to brace me from any more bumps and pain.
“Sorry,” he murmurs into my hair and then we stand up. I groan a little bit, but manage to stay upright. He insists on putting an arm around my waist and helping me inside my grandmother’s house. The lights are on and the heat is going full blast, which feels so nice when we walk inside.
He sits me on the couch and I text some woozy messages to Devyn, Issie, and Cassidy about what just happened. I’d text Nick too, but since he is currently in wolf form and he saw me all beaten up and just ran off anyway, I figure I don’t need to.
“I’m glad you were well enough to fly,” I call out to Astley, since he’s in the kitchen.
“Thanks to you and Cassidy.”
“It was nothing,” I lie, trying not to remember how it felt for every single cell to be drained of energy and life. I am going to repress that torture. That’s just how I have to deal with it. It was worth it to get Astley strong and whole, I think as he strides back into the living room with a dishtowel wrapped around an ice pack.
He gently places it on the back of my head. “Your stomach and ribs?”
“They’ll be okay,” I say, but my teeth are gritted so it sounds more like “Theeebeeekayyy.”
My phone starts beeping with new texts. Devyn and Cassidy are coming over. Issie can’t because she’s still under massive curfew.
Astley and I settle down on the couch, not touching or anything, but just waiting for everyone else to get here. The ice pack keeps slipping sideways and he insists on holding it on my head for me, which is so nice. He is always so nice. I shoot him a sideways glance. He looks calm and mellow. Not like me, I bet. I wish he didn’t have to see me like this, even though I know he’s seen me looking worse.
Someone scratches at the door.
“Betty,” I say. “Be careful.”
“I shall be fine,” he says as he gets off the couch and heads to the door. He opens it like there’s no danger at all from a weretiger. Her huge white body enters and she blinks at him, gives a slight hiss, then storms to the couch. She pokes her nose right at the top of my head and sniffs at my injury there, and then at the bruises on my face. After a long, pondering second, she rubs her giant head against my shoulder and cheek, marking me, just like regular cats do. Then she pounds off into her bedroom.
Two minutes later she’s back, changed and human.
“I lost it,” she groans. Her long fingers lift up the washcloth and inspect my bump. She stares into my eyes. “Pupils are okay. No concussion, I don’t think. Or you’re already healing. Anyway, it was like the flipping thing just vanished in midair. I’ve been tracking it for days. She’s been around, almost like she was stalking you. I can’t believe she got to you.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” I ask.
She sighs. Her bones crack as she stands up straight. “I was too busy being feral. And then this afternoon—Well, we didn’t have a lot of time. I’m making s
ome tea. You both are having some too. We all need something to calm us the hell down.”
Devyn and Cassidy get to the house right after the teapot starts boiling. Devyn is all quick, intellectual energy. Snowflakes cling to his thick black hair as he squints his dark eyes at me, probably trying to get in as many details as he can. That’s how he is. Cassidy strides in right behind him, long braids swinging from her knitted wool hat. She scratches at her neck and rushes inside and out of the cold. Nick trots in behind them and heads directly up the stairs in wolf form, dripping melting snow on the carpet as he goes. He doesn’t say anything to anyone and anger rolls off of him.
“Nick is probably just changing,” Cassidy says. She’s attempting to make peace, but then she sees me and must lose that train of thought, because she pretty much flies over to the couch and reaches into her cool Tibetan-motif bag and starts taking out herbs and candles.
“It would be nice,” she says sweetly, “if I didn’t always have to heal you two.”
Betty sets down some tea on the coffee table next to Cassidy’s bag. “It’s like we’re their own private medics.”
“I owe you a supply of candles,” I say as Cassidy lights two big yellow pillars.
“I’ll put it on your credit line,” she jokes. “You currently owe me about $18,000.45 in candles. Matches? Those come free with the healings.”
I start to smile at her but all the happy leaves the air as Nick comes back down the stairs, dressed in jeans and a maroon Henley. His dark hair is scruffy from the turning and there are fatigue lines by his eyes.
Devyn says, “Hey!”
Nick nods in acknowledgment and slumps into a chair, glaring at Astley. Astley smiles at him, which only deepens the glare.
Devyn clears his throat and opens up his laptop. “I promised Issie that we’d Skype her in.”
Two seconds later he’s got Issie’s happy face on the screen. She’s in her pajamas, wearing ear buds to listen to us.
“I have to be quiet or my mom will kill me,” she whispers. She uses a finger to make a slicing motion across her neck. “I’m supposed to be in bed.”
Cassidy’s still murmuring some sort of elfish incantation and lighting an incense stick, and for a second I wonder how she even learned elfish—was it on the Web?—but I start talking anyway, trying really hard to ignore Nick, who is glowering in the corner. Guilt about the hug ripples through me even though I really shouldn’t feel guilty at all.
I start off, “The attack came out of nowhere. It was a woman, sort of, she was half normal and half rotting flesh.”
“Like a zombie?” Devyn interrupts, cruising through the Internet on his cell, probably because if he researched on his computer he wouldn’t be able to see Issie.
“Yeah. Half zombie and incredibly tall,” Betty says.
“Tell them what she said to you, Zara,” Astley urges.
He reaches across the couch and touches my arm. I swear tension suddenly fills the entire room. I refuse to look at Nick as Astley quickly moves his hand away. My washcloth falls off, plopping into my lap. I fix it and tell them how the woman said that she didn’t want to kill me, that she was testing me, that she wanted to see what I was made of.
“Oh, you’re the chosen one!” Issie breathes out. “That’s so cool.”
“I am not any sort of chosen one,” I argue. “That’s a cliché anyway. ‘The chosen one.’”
I spit out the phrase pretty disdainfully. Cassidy rests her hand against my shoulder and perches on the couch. She’s so peaceful. It makes me feel a little better.
“She also said that I can’t let him out,” I add.
“Who?” asks Nick. It’s the first word he’s said.
I shrug, meet his eyes. “I don’t know.”
“Well, if it has to do with Ragnarok, it might mean Fenrir, the giant wolf you unleashed in Iceland, but that has already happened,” Betty says.
Astley rubs the back of his hand across his eyes like he’s either tired or trying to wipe the memory away. “Or it could mean Loki. The giant mentioned him too. He was—”
Cassidy interrupts. “I’ve been dreaming about him.”
The conversation in the room stops. Cassidy pulls in a big breath and explains that she’s been dreaming about a man tied up with serpent venom dripping into his mouth. His bindings are intestines that have turned to iron. He is pleading with her to help him get free.
Despite all my aches, I put an arm around Cassidy. “That’s horrible.”
She nods.
“That’s probably it,” Devyn agrees. “And look what I found. Is this the woman who attacked you?”
He passes his phone to me. There’s a picture on the screen of a half-zombie/half-human woman. She’s more skeleton than the one I saw and her flesh isn’t two different colors.
“It’s close,” I say as Betty points out the differences. “Who is it?”
“Hel.” Astley breathes out the word like it’s a curse. Even Betty stops talking.
“Hell is a place,” Nick says after a second of frozen silence.
Devyn directs all his professor-style attention at Nick. “In Norse mythology it is a place and a woman who rules that place. Hel is where people who die of old age and sickness go.”
“As opposed to Valhalla?” I ask, dizzy. “Where you get to go when you die in quote-unquote glorious battle.”
Cassidy blows out the match. “The Vikings thought that dying in battle was the way to go. It’s what they aspired to, but Valhalla versus Hel isn’t anything like heaven versus hell. It’s not a good versus bad thing.”
“Well, they weren’t a society that promoted peace.” Devyn walks across the room, shows the image on his phone to Nick, and says, “If you lived a long and peaceful life, you were destined to spend eternity with a zombie woman. If you killed people, then you were assigned to Valhalla, where you drank beer all day and trained with Valkyries.”
“I think I’d rather go to Hel,” Issie chirps from the computer screen.
“Me too,” says Cassidy, all quippy. “I hate beer.”
Astley looks at me and smiles super sweetly and I swear steam starts to come out of Nick’s corner of the living room. It’s frustrating, but I ignore his crankiness and try to get us all back on track by saying, “Then that is what we have to do.”
Everyone looks at me with mouths hanging open, which usually means that:
1. I have had a massive jump in logical thought that nobody else is following.
2. I’ve had a ridiculously bad idea.
I’ve decided that it’s the first option, so I shift my weight and explain.
“This Hel woman obviously knows what is going on.” I start it out slowly, trying to rationalize it to myself as well as everyone else. “So we need to find her. To find her, we need to find Hel.”
“Hel!” Issie whispers frantically. “We cannot go to Hel.”
“It doesn’t sound all that bad,” I say as Betty harrumphs in the kitchen, where she’s retreated to start making more tea.
“No … I just watched a History Channel special on hell,” Issie insists, leaning closer to her computer screen, so close that I can see the pores in her nose. “And you do not want to go there. It’s all tortured souls and screaming, nine layers of horrible horribleness.”
“That’s the Christian version,” Cassidy says.
“And the Greek!” Issie says. “And the Roman.”
“Issie, you’re yelling,” I tell her. “Your mom is going to hear you.”
She gets terrified eyes and slaps her hand over her mouth. Then she lets go and whispers, “The special said there were gates kind of like in Buffy—hell mouths between here and the underworld.”
“Like Dante,” Devyn says, and then recites:
Through me you pass into the city of woe :
Through me you pass into eternal pain :
Through me among the people lost for aye.
The words echo in the room, creepy and silent, and Nick is the on
e who breaks it. “There is no way in hell, uh—”
“Excuse the pun,” Cassidy interjects.
“—that I’m going to let you go to Hel, Zara. You’ve just been attacked by that monster woman, you’ve nearly died saving his life.” He glares at Astley. “You just got back from Valhalla. No, just no,” he finishes, standing up and glowing as if he’s on fire.
A whole bunch of emotions rush through me simultaneously and I can’t sort them out anywhere near quickly enough. He cares enough to be worried about me even though I’m a pixie. I’m grateful that he cares, but mad that he thinks he has power over me to “let me go.”
I shake my head, and I’m about to say something when Betty speaks instead. “We don’t even know how to get there. It’s like Valhalla all over again.”
“No,” I say. “We’re smarter now. Before, we didn’t know if Valhalla was real. We don’t even doubt this stuff anymore.”
“Smarter now? Smarter?” Nick sputters. “You want to go to Hel, Zara. You want to chase after some zombie-beast-woman thing that just beat you up. She could have killed you.”
“But she didn’t,” I argue, standing up. Astley grabs the face-cloth as it topples off my head. I wobble a little bit but manage to stand okay.
“Right. She didn’t. Because she was playing with you the way cats play with their prey, the way pixies”—Nick spits out the word—“play with their prey.”
Astley drops the limp washcloth on the coffee table. “Do not insult us.”
“Why?” Nick asks.
Astley’s eyes twitch. Without a word, he stands up next to me and then takes a step toward Nick. Nobody else answers either. The room is just a chamber of tension and worry. I close my eyes.
“It’s not up to you to decide if I go or not,” I say, opening my eyes again and staring at Nick.
He meets my gaze. “Why? Because it’s up to him?”
“No, because it’s up to me,” I say. “Or it’s a group vote.”