His face crumples. “She died,” he whispers. “And it was my fault. I killed her.”
His glamour comes back. His eyes implore mine, soft and needy human eyes.
My hands reach up and grab his shoulders. “Just tell me, Astley.”
“I didn’t want you to ever know,” he says. His voice is still quiet, church quiet.
“Why not?”
“I want you to think I am perfect.” He closes his eyes as if it’s too much to look at me.
Nobody is perfect, though. We all want everyone to think we are, but perfection is some crazy mythical state that we can never achieve. It is a goal beyond our grasp, always shifting and changing and taunting us, because it knows … it knows we can never reach it.
His voice breaks as he says, “I wanted you to always feel safe with me.”
I bring Astley over to the couch. He sits down, docile and quiet. I groan as I sit down next to him.
“You hurt.” He states this as a fact, not a question.
I resist the urge to be all melodramatic and say, “We all hurt.” Instead, I just nod.
We sit there for a moment.
“Are you going to tell me?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “It’s not as important as finding your wolf.”
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, it is.”
He stares at me for a moment. The tension and pain inside of him is palpable. “My mother was right. I killed her.”
Something in my face must show my fear, because he throws up his hand and rails off the side of the couch. He staggers toward me before falling on his knees in front of me.
“Just tell me, Astley,” I say. My hand reaches out and touches the top of his head. His hair is thick and soft. His eyes flicker shut like he’s trying to keep back tears.
“We had been destined to marry from the time we were babes. Her family was old and powerful, although not royal. I did not care about that. She was beautiful.” He keeps his eyes shut as he speaks. The words leave his mouth slowly, making ripples in the air, like hard, heavy rocks dropped into a brook. “She was Amelie’s youngest sister. Her name was Sacha.”
“Oh.” My hand stops its movement in his hair as I try to imagine her—strong, dark, beautiful, brilliant, and focused, if she was anything like Amelie. Something knots in my stomach—it almost feels like jealousy, but it can’t be that.
“I had heard about a rogue in my kingdom. Someone was killing other pixies. Amelie, Sacha, and I had worked so hard to root out the problem, but we were always coming to dead ends, and I was so young then. We hadn’t, um—we hadn’t solidified our relationship in a physical way, just as you and I haven’t, and that, coupled with my youth, allowed for rogues to exist without me automatically knowing who they were.”
I swallow hard trying to figure out the implications for my relationship with Astley. If we had done the deed, would he have automatically known about Vander? Would my dad not have died? I shake my head and try to focus on what he’s saying now, because that line of thought is just not comfortable. He doesn’t notice my distraction and keeps blurting out the story in hard phrases. His mother, of all people, had told him where the rogue lay in wait for his or her victims. It was an old cathedral in the lower part of the city. He knew the attacks happened at night and so he waited there with Amelie. They waited for hours, until just before dawn they heard the choked-off scream in the graveyard at the back of the building. They rushed there to find the queen kissing the corpse of a pixie, blood covering her clothes, her mouth, her hands. She had murdered him.
“You have to kill her,” Amelie had insisted. “Kill her now.”
But he couldn’t. He stood there horrified and stunned as his queen turned to look at him. Fear and anger filled her eyes. Still, Astley couldn’t move. Amelie rushed forward and snapped her own sister’s neck.
“I was too weak,” he says. His voice breaks into shards that stab the air with grief. “I could not do it myself.”
“You loved her.”
“I love all my people,” he says, opening his eyes.
Placing my hands on both sides of his face, I urge him to stand up again, and he does. We stand so close that I can feel his chest rise and fall with his breaths.
“She’d been killing,” I say. “And you weren’t the one who killed her, Astley. Amelie did.”
He jerks away. “You do not understand. We found out later that it had not been her. The murderer had actually been the pixie Sacha had found. She had killed him for me. My mother had told her the same information she had told me. She led us both to the same place. She—Amelie—has never been the same.”
“Have you?” I ask.
“No.” His face breaks in half. “I killed my queen.”
I want to say, “Not technically,” but I know that wouldn’t matter to him.
“She has never helped me, my mother, not ever.” He laughs softly under his breath; his eyes lose their tears and glint with pain and anger instead. “Even when she attempts, she just brings death. She said a good king would have known who the rogue was, that a good king just takes what he needs. Why does she never help?”
Before I can show him the book, he starts to rage, leaping off the couch and swearing against her, calling her all sorts of names. As he does, lightning strikes outside, lighting up the park in a vivid, vicious kind of tantrum. The tree limbs sway and rock, battling to stay attached to the trunks. The house itself doesn’t sway, though. It is solid. I will myself to be like the house as Astley continues his pacing and fist wagging.
“Astley …,” I say, trying to interrupt the tirade. “She didn’t tell me, but—”
He paces past me. “I knew she would not! She would never help me. Never do anything that was not selfish, that did not give her gain. I have failed you, Zara. I have failed. I am so sorry. I shall personally go to the high council. I shall—”
“Astley …”
He passes by me again, not noticing. I pull the book out of my pocket and wave it in front of his face as he starts the third pass.
He stops.
“She didn’t tell me anything,” I say, smiling. “But she gave me this.”
18
HatesME: Dude, this place is messed. I am so out of here.
Happyfeet: Then leave already.
HatesME: I should. Rents won’t let me.
Happyfeet: Convince them.
HatesME: We r like sitting ducks here.
Mohawk: No, we aren’t. We’re fighting back.
HatesME: Against what?
Happyfeet: Ducks can fly away.
Mohawk: Against evil.
—BEDFORDAMERICAN.COM CHAT ROOM
As soon as we’re out of New York and on the Connecticut interstate, I start reading parts of the book aloud to Astley because all that arcane language is basically gobbledygook to me.
Astley slows down by the exit ramp to a rest stop. “Do you need to get out?”
I tell him I don’t.
He nods and speeds the car up again. “Basically, I think what it is telling us is that BiForst is the bridge between here and Valhalla. Reread that last part again.”
I begin. “ ‘Where a snake of water that cuts the earth meets the mouth that swallows it and becomes the belly; where the land rises to the Valkyries’ flight, the sacred words must be said, the land of gods meets the land of men, make haste and ascend the rainbow.’ ”
“Exactly. So we need to take BiForst to the place where river meets sea and then land slopes upward. There we light a fire and say the sacred words, and there will be some sort of rainbow or bridge. A portal almost.”
“That sounds hokey,” I complain.
“Hokey?”
“Cheesy, dorky.” I lean farther back into the seat and cross my legs a different way. I am so tired of driving but so excited about the book and the possibility it offers. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it works.”
“Do you know of a place where those conditions are met?”
“Yeah. Down by the town pier the Union River turns into the Union River Bay. There’s a conservancy and a big hill there. An eagle nests there. Not Devyn. A regular one.” I think a little more as we pass a Saab and a station wagon with bumper stickers about having kids on the honor roll. “That has to be it.”
“Read the chapter again. It seems too easy,” he suggests.
I read it again. Then I read it another time. I read it as we go from barren trees to snow-covered ones. I read it as we go north and as the sun rises and the snow falls. It’s seven thirty a.m. and a whole new day has begun.
“This is all assuming that Bedford is the place that they speak of. The place where the end of the world will begin,” he says, then sighs. He brushes hair off his forehead.
“I think that’s safe to assume.” I laugh and my wound spasms. “Although, maybe not. Maybe there are multiple places where it can happen. I mean, the Vikings came over to the New World, but I think all the Poetic Edda was before that—or maybe not … I don’t know, but we should try Bedford first, because it’s the closest.”
I cringe again.
“Are you hurting?”
I lie and tell him no and then riff on how cold Bedford is, how there seems to be a ridiculously large concentration of pixies and weres there, how he himself suggested it a while ago.
I tell him all this stuff and then I fall quickly, promptly, soundly asleep. I dream of sitting in the middle of a road. Nick stands over me. Snowflakes dot his beautiful dark hair. He reaches down and hauls me up as if I weigh nothing, as if I am a body of air and feathers, which I’m not. I’m runner solid, small but muscled. Sort of. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he is in a dangerous place.
“What are you doing?” I demand. “You’re not here. You’re in Valhalla.”
I don’t move away, though. I don’t move away because his hands are solid against my hips, keeping me standing up. His hands stay there, but then he starts to fade … He’s fading … and I’m grabbing toward him, but there’s nothing to grab … just air.
“I could hear the danger coming.” His voice enters the night. “I can hear it now, Zara. It’s coming…”
I wake up to the deep, loud horn of a logging truck.
Astley glares at the tail end of the truck, the cutoff trunks of trees, all prone, helpless, and dead. “I could kill him for waking you.”
“It’s okay.” I wave his anger away. It seems too much, too intense. I swallow and attempt normalcy. “I should be keeping you company. Where are we?”
“Maine. Almost to Bangor.” He eyes me and swings into the passing lane. “How are you feeling?”
I lift up my hand from where it has been resting against my wound. There is blood on it. “Fine. Psyched about the book still, you know?”
There is a big pause, and then I fill it with, “It’s nice that your mother gave us the book.”
“You said you had to threaten her.”
“True,” I say. “But she could have tried to kill me and she didn’t, so that’s a bonus point for her.”
He doesn’t answer, just nods and drives. We sit there in a happy sort of silence all the way back to Betty’s house. I don’t think about my dream once, or about how crazy Astley was back in New York. Okay, that’s a lie. But I don’t obsess about it, which I think is a positive forward movement in my psychological development.
When we pull up into the driveway, there’s just my mom’s rental car and Betty’s truck waiting for us. I try to shore myself up with a deep breath, but it sends pain through my chest and actually makes me shakier.
Astley studies me before he opens the door. “Are you certain you are prepared for this?”
“Yep.”
“And you can face them?”
“Yep.”
“I’ll walk you to the porch.”
“You don’t have—”
He jumps out of the car and swings around to my side, opening the door for me before I can protest anymore. We walk across the snowy driveway, leaving a little gold glitter trail behind us. Each step I take is half excited and half worried. Pain ripples through my chest.
“They are going to be so mad at me,” I whisper as I slip a bit on the ice.
He grabs my elbow, steadying me. “Most likely.”
…
It’s my mother who throws open the door. She hasn’t put on her makeup or done her hair. She’s wearing one of Betty’s big green fleece jackets that zip up the middle. Her breath hauls in sharply and she shakes her head, tears in her eyes.
“Some days I think I might kill you, Zara White,” she sputters. But it’s not that much of a threat, because she’s crying.
“It’s been tried. I’m kind of hard to kill.” I gesture toward my gunshot wound.
She gasps/chokes/laughs. She almost hugs me and then stops herself. Something inside of me hitches and breaks.
She doesn’t notice. She just says, “Thank God … Thank God for that.”
Betty comes out of the kitchen carrying an armful of wood. She raises just one eyebrow and half smiles. No lectures from her. She knows that we headstrong types have to be left alone to do what we have to do. Instead she just says, “Well, well, well. How are you feeling, missy?”
“Okay,” I say. “Actually, good. Astley and I found out—”
“Zara!” Betty hustles over, dropping her wood on the floor. It bangs and clangs. My mother steps backward. Her hand shakes as she raises it up and covers her mouth.
“What?” I ask, panicked. No one answers. “What?”
I have no idea what’s going on. I glance behind me for Astley. He’s out on the porch still, looking clueless as well. Maybe I’m blue? Maybe there’s a bug on my face? I don’t know.
“You’re bleeding through,” Betty announces, ripping off my jacket. “Sit. Sit!”
I sit on the hardwood floor right by the stairs because she’s freaking out so much and I’m too stunned to argue. Cold air comes in. The stairs look high from this angle. The world actually seems a little tilted.
“Get gauze,” she orders my mother.
My mother stands there. Then she does a typical my-mother thing. She folds, just crumples to the floor, passing out. Her head hits the coffee table going down. The whack of it rings out.
“Mom!” I lurch toward her, scuttling along the floor.
“You. Stay. Still,” Betty orders. She cusses and says through the still-open door, “Pixie, come in! But if you try anything or ever try anything, I swear to whatever gods you cursed things believe in that I will rip you end to end.”
He starts but then stops himself just at the threshold. “Are you certain?”
“Yes, damn it, I’m certain. Get your fool self in here and help, but don’t make me kill you!”
Astley enters. He shuts the door behind him. He doesn’t react to Betty’s threat. I guess he is used to threats by now, used to death and pain and terror. He meets her eyes and says, “Where’s the gauze?”
“My med kit. By the door.” She almost smiles at me. “I’ll give him one thing. He moves fast. Calm in a crisis.”
“That’s two things,” I correct as she lifts my bloody shirt.
“Oh, I see you are still your witty self,” she says and then directs Astley. He gives her stitching thread and gauze and some sort of tool. He puts ice on my mother’s head. Betty explains she’ll be fine. It’s a slight concussion, not a subdural whatever that is.
“She used to pass out all the time when she was young,” Betty says as the needle pierces my skin, pulling my wound together by tension and force. “Can’t stand blood. Can’t believe she works in a hospital.”
I sometimes can’t believe that either, but she’s an administrator, not a nurse or a doctor or even an X-ray technician. My mother’s face is pale and drawn. Creases make homes beneath her eyes. Just seeing her feels bad to me, makes me ache for a life she could have had—a life without pixies or pain, without a dead husband or a turned daughter.
Astley lifts her u
p and puts her on the couch. She’s groggy but wakes enough so that she can still glare at him and mumble, “Don’t touch me, pixie. This is your fault. All of this.”
“Mom!” I object. She just closes her eyes again and moans.
Astley backs away. He doesn’t say anything to her. Instead he asks Betty, who is still stitching me up, “Can I help in any way?”
She shakes her head. “You might want to hold her hand. This hurts her.”
“I’m okay.” I grunt—it does hurt me. The words don’t matter anyway; neither Astley nor my grandmother believes them. Astley grabs my hand. Warmth spreads up my arms from his fingers. I can feel the power of him in my skin, warming it, calming it. We are bonded and this has to be one of the many effects, but it still makes me a tiny bit uneasy because it’s so terribly personal. Still, everything we’ve been sharing is personal. I push my qualms aside and turn up the corners of my mouth, which is as much as I can make of a smile right now.
Betty raises an eyebrow. “So, why don’t you tell us why the two of you ran away? Again.”
I do.
19
Tensions in the town of Bedford increase as there is still no news on the latest missing boy and funeral preparations continue for the several dead teens from nearby Sumner High School. “I just want it to stop,” one mother said. “I just want us all to be safe again.” —THE BEDFORD AMERICAN
“More young people have been reported missing in the greater Bedford area,” the television announcer blathers on, “which brings the total up to twenty-two. This unprecedented number has some experts talking about runaway plots since most of those missing are young men. However, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has sent in agents to investigate the possibilities of a serial killer or an international child prostitution ring.”
The screen switches to a guy who is obviously an FBI agent. He’s wearing sunglasses and has short cropped hair. The real tip-off, however, are the yellow letters announcing FBI on his dark blue jacket.
“Currently, we cannot divulge any of the possibilities for the cause of the disappearances,” he says in a deep take-no-prisoners voice. “We do, however, have leads, and we are investigating those leads.”