He bent his head toward me and smiled. “But you love it.”
He must have downloaded it for me, which was so sweet. I snuggled in closer, as close as I could. “You know it’s about the Polish Solidarity movement?”
“Really?” He acted mock surprised. And then we kissed. His lips fit perfectly.
“Zara,” a male voice by my ear makes me jump. The clean smell of Dove soap mixed with mushrooms seems to overwhelm my nose. It is how I smell now too. It is the specific smell of pixie kings and queens.
Astley stands in front of me, dark blond and tall and much more rugged looking than when he was half dead and bound to a tree just a few weeks ago. My skin bristles. So much has happened so quickly. I lost Nick. I lost my humanity. And what did I gain? I became a pixie.
I grab Astley by the impeccably dressed elbow and fast-walk him to the side of the room by the vending machines, scanning the crowd. People have noticed he’s here. Devyn makes to come over, as does Cassidy, but I shoo them away with my hand and loud-whisper to Astley, “What are you doing here? I already had to deal with enough pixies tonight, thank you. No offense.”
He doesn’t answer my question. Instead he appraises my outfit. “You look lovely. I am used to you in those jeans with the holes and peace signs inked onto them. They have that homeless look, but—”
He pauses for a second, awkwardly, and I can tell that he’s remembering me when I turned pixie, after he’d kissed me when I was a bloody, awful mess, feral and barely conscious. I can feel my face flush with heat that comes from embarrassment. I don’t know how I know he’s thinking about this, but I do.
“Yeah … well … Issie and Cassidy dressed me, so no homeless look tonight,” I explain, feeling pretty self-conscious. Letting go of his elbow, I yank on the bodice of my dress so I don’t show too much skin; then I realize how silly this is since he pretty much saw me naked when he turned me. I lean my shoulders against the wall. Do not think about it. Do NOT think about it …
He shifts closer to me, puts an arm up on the wall, hand next to my head, and asks, “How did they take the news that you had changed?”
“They were suspicious at first,” I say, putting it pretty mildly. I don’t explain how they didn’t want to let me in Issie’s house at all or how Devyn basically threatened me. “But they’ve accepted it—I think.”
For a second I contemplate telling him that they only trusted me because Cassidy checked me out for evil intentions, which she could do because, unlike me, she has an elf ancestor a long way back. But I don’t quite trust him a hundred percent yet even though I trusted him enough to dehumanize me and turn me into a pixie. Strange but true, like pretty much everything in my life.
“Did you hear what I said before about pixies? Devyn and I had to bounce two pixie girls who were munching on a drunk guy,” I tell him.
“Bounce?” He lifts an eyebrow. His voice gets lower when he’s confused. I never noticed that before.
I tell him the story. He doesn’t say anything for a minute, and then he touches my arm lightly, just brushing it with his fingers almost like he’s afraid to startle me. It’s the quickest of movements, and then he uses that same hand to gesture toward the dancers. “They are all so innocent, are they not?”
“Innocent?” It’s hard to think of Cierra and her current boy toy, Jake, as all that innocent since they are basically dry-humping in the corner. One of the teachers, Mr. Burns, heads straight over there. He’s power-walking like a pro.
“They are so unaware of all the magic in their midst. Here we are, pixies. Your friend Devyn is a were. Outside, in the woods, scores of pixies lurk, regrouping, hungry, filled with needs.”
I whirl on him. “We have to protect them.”
He cocks his head just the tiniest of bits. His hair shakes out over his eyes and then falls back into place. He is standing so close to me. I step backward as he says, in his super-calm voice, “Of course. And you have to meet our people, Zara. They need to meet their queen. They will fight beside you.”
“And we have to find Nick,” I insist. “We have to get started.”
He doesn’t answer, just puts out his hands. The music switches to another ballad about love and loss. “Dance with me, Zara?”
“Oh …” I stumble for words. “I don’t—ah Nick—”
He swoops me into his arms before I finish my sentence. He dances formally, gracefully, not like a high school guy at all, but I guess that’s the pixie king in him. He’s more like a professional dancer on one of those dance competition reality shows. His posture is straight and his movements are fluid. He is nothing like Nick, who dances like a big goofy dog, really. Dancing with Astley is easy. It feels like I’ve been doing it forever.
“It’s not so bad, is it?” Astley whispers near my ear.
I pull away, a little jarred. “Yes. Yes. No— I mean—”
He smiles at my confusion but doesn’t let go. His hand moves slightly against my back. It’s like I’m hyperattuned to every move he makes. I don’t know if it’s just normal pixie senses or because he’s my king.
Their clothes are different too. Nick dresses like a guy from Maine, massive boots or running shoes, jeans, clothes from one of the nicer stores at the mall, while Astley’s clothes are textured and expensive, richly made. The fabrics are deeper and more rugged somehow. They make me think of Scotland.
I decide to use the moment to ask him some of the questions that circle round and round inside my mind. “Did you find out anything? Did you talk to your mother?”
His mother is supposed to know how to get to Valhalla, this ungettable place of myth that supposedly has Nick. Astley frowns and then pulls me all the way into his chest. It moves with each of his breaths. “She is missing at the moment.”
“Missing!” This time I pull all the way away. “How convenient.”
His hand reaches out and grabs mine before I can react. “I am not lying to you, Zara. She does this a lot.”
“Right,” I say as he tries to draw me closer. That’s not going to happen. I pull against him. Frustration rattles my teeth. “I refuse to dance with you.”
“I could force you.”
“But you won’t.” I say this like I’m certain of it, like I’m certain of who he is, but really I’m not certain of anything.
We stand there for a moment, staring down each other as the rest of the people in the cafeteria swirl and swoon and fall in love. We are at a stalemate. His eyes soften. He lets me go, dropping his arms away, and I feel suddenly, terribly alone. I almost kind of want to dance with him again, which is so wrong, I know.
For a moment his face is sad, but he covers it quickly with a smile. “I apologize. I have confused you somehow. I am going to patrol outside, make sure it is safe for the students as they leave.”
He bows and backs away, leaving me in the middle of the dance floor. He cuts through the throngs of people easily, bumping and jostling no one, as if he could do it blindfolded.
I reach down and check the clasp of my anklet. It’s still tight, still secure. I am not alone, not while there is still hope of finding Nick, not while I still have my friends. My will seems to solid up. There is so much to do and so little time to waste.
Despite my total dread over the big Grandma Betty confrontation that’s waiting for me, after forty-five minutes of dance hell I go outside and patrol around for pixies, just to make sure all the happy-dancing humans are safe when they leave to go home.
This is the world of a pixie—my world now, I guess—pacing and hunting, sniffing the air and looking for threats. I look for threats because I need to keep people safe. I look for threats because I do not want to be the threat. It’s a fine line, I guess—a fine line between good and bad, between savior and predator, between hero and villain. I do not want to be the villain and I do not want people dead, not on my watch, not ever. I have to believe that every step I take is a step toward good, because if I don’t—if I don’t believe that—then everything, absolutely
everything, is lost.
Something thuds onto the snow. I dart toward it even as my fists start shaking again, imagining Frank.
“It’s just sludge,” I tell myself, and I’m right. It is only snow and ice packed behind the tire of a truck. It’s come loose and fallen to the ground.
Every noise I hear is a potential problem. Every smell I take inside me is a potential warning. Every squirrel leaping from one tree branch to another could be not a squirrel but a pixie. Now that I am pixie I hear so much better and I smell so much better—not me personally smelling good, but my sense of smell has improved—and so I sniff in. It’s not a sniff. A sniff is an involuntary action; this is an actual intentional sniffing in.
The whole time I’m thinking: How will we get to Valhalla? How will we find Nick?
I pace back and forth in the parking lot, listening for pixies, and then—the smell wafts through my nostrils. My muscles tense and I’m pacing right by Issie’s car when Astley jumps off a big streetlamp right in front of me. He stands beneath the light, which makes his hair seem more gold than ever. A fine coating of pixie dust mingles with the snow.
“I thought you left,” I said.
“Why?” he asks roughly. “I said I would be patrolling. You didn’t believe it?” He squares his shoulders and looks away from me.
“I thought maybe you’d given up. Too many evil pixies. Too many humans to keep safe.”
“I am not the sort who gives up.” He gives a half shrug. His shoulders seem to stretch out the hard fabric of his jacket. With all that blond hair and golden-tinted skin, he looks almost like he could glow, but he doesn’t quite. Instead he leaves tiny traces of glitter wherever he goes. It’s the sign of a pixie king. He squints his eyes, looking in the distance, and adds, “I decided I should stay and be assured that you’d manage to make it safely home. Are you leaving now without your friends?”
I squat down, drag my finger through the thin layer of snow. “No. I’m just patrolling too. I don’t want anyone to get hurt by—” I break off and don’t know how to say it without being rude.
“Pixies like us?” He half asks, half finishes after a slight pause.
I don’t answer and instead look down. I’ve been writing the letter N in the snow, N for Nick, tracing and retracing the three solid lines of it, and I hadn’t even noticed what I was doing. Standing up, I ask, “Have you seen any?”
“Quite a few. Amelie is out there patrolling about a half mile away. Between the two of us, we have pushed off a good number.” He rubs at the side of his face like he’s checking for stubble or something. “She loves a decent fight. It frightens me sometimes how much she loves it.”
Amelie is one of his subjects. She is tall and has dreadlocks. She is a lot older than us. She’s maybe around thirty. I don’t know much about her. I don’t know much about anything pixie, actually—things like how their society is set up or how they began. There are so many secrets, floating around me like the snowflakes. I try to catch them in my hand, discern their shape and identity, but they melt into tiny pools of water. It’s just long enough for me to know they existed but not enough to let me examine them.
“Zara? What is wrong?” Astley reaches out. His finger touches the bottom of my chin and he lifts my head so that I meet his eyes. I step backward to put some distance between us, but I don’t look away.
“I’m worried.”
“About?” he prods.
“That we won’t find Valhalla and Nick.” I make a rough motion to indicate myself. “That this will be for nothing and that my grandmother will kill me or kick me out of the house for going all pixie on her.”
I cross my arms over my chest. He nods. People start coming out of the school.
“That I can understand. She is fierce.” He pauses like he’s weighing his words, or maybe he has to burp. I don’t know. A clump of snow falls off a tree and onto the hood of a Subaru. He tenses and then continues. “But if she loves you, she will still love you despite your species.”
Right. I cringe. “Weres don’t like pixies.”
“Not everywhere. We aren’t always enemies.”
“Around here you are.”
“Around here things are not the way they should be. Your father was a weak king. He was a weak man. We are not all like that.”
I don’t want to hear it. I’ve already heard that my pixie father is weak so many times already.
“It’s just …” Struggling to find the words, I pull in my lips for a second and then start again. “I just … I want to be the same person I was before. I don’t want to be beholden to you because you’re my king—no offense. I don’t want to think that it’s cool to torture people. I want to be good. I want to have a soul.”
I kick at the snow around my N. Some of it ruins one of the lines. “I know that sounds stupid,” I mumble. I start to squat down to fix the N, but before I can he grabs me by the shoulders.
“Listen to me, Zara. I do not know what you believe. I believe each of us is a replica. Similar to the way Christians believe Adam was made in the image of God, replicated.” He pulls in a deep breath as car doors start to open. I can tell he’s trying to search for danger. I search too, but I can’t find any except right here with Astley, my king, the guy I kissed, the guy I let turn me. He continues on, placated, I guess, by sensing no immediate threats. “So too do pixies believe that we are replicated from Odin—”
“The Norse god?” I feel one of my eyebrows creep up. “You’re telling me there are other gods? I don’t believe in other gods.”
“ ‘Gods’ might be the wrong word for them. They are creatures like us, but not like us, maybe not like your God either.” He crams his hands into his pockets. “My point is that we believe we are made in Odin’s image—as pixies, not humans. We are made in his image and he is not evil, Zara. He is supposed to be wise and good and kind.”
“Supposed to be?”
“Well, I have not met him.” Astley smiles. “He is also one of the keys to finding Valhalla, because it is his home.”
“So we just have to find him—and that’s basically as difficult as finding heaven?” I say as hope pretty much deserts me. “And how do we do that, since you can’t even find your own mom, our one big lead?”
His lips flatten into a hard line that matches his eyes.
“I’m sorry. I sound so harsh. I’m just scared that we won’t find him.” I hide my head in my hands for a second. “I appreciate your help. Please don’t think that I don’t.”
He gently moves my hands away from my face and says, “This is not easy for you, Zara. I am aware of that. You have lost your wolf. You have lost your humanity. Your reality has shifted and your town is under siege. It is unprecedented what is happening here.”
A car engine starts, then another. Someone yells, “It is so freaking cold!”
This kid, Sam Cambridge, shouts, “Crap! It’s snowing again.”
And I hear other voices: talking about ugly dresses, how this Stephanie girl totally hit on this other girl’s date, people who were flirted with …
“I cannot believe her,” someone shrills. “She was totally all over him.”
I feel the air change. My muscles tense.
Astley cocks his head. “What?”
Reaching out to grab his arm, I feel dizzy with the enormity of everything that has happened, that is happening. “You’re right. They are all so innocent. I used to be like that. Now I don’t fit in.” He opens his mouth but I stop him. “Do not say that I fit in with you, because that would be super cheesy.”
He nods and I let go of his leather sleeve. We stand there for a second, and then I ask, “Can you patrol in the air? Glamour yourself so nobody sees you and circle around? I’ll stay on the ground. Man, I wish I could fly.”
“Occasionally a queen is capable of flying. My mother is capable. We shall talk to her about Valhalla as soon as I can locate her, and I shall locate her,” he insists. He gives me a probing look, but I can’t tell what it i
s about. “I have already asked Vander, one of my top lieutenants, to look into it.”
After just a heartbeat, he lifts into the sky and blinks out, glamoured.
“Thank you!” I yell after him, staring into the darkness and all the tiny flecks of snow tumbling down toward me. My tongue darts out and I catch one. It melts instantly, cold and wet in my mouth.
Then I smell them. Two pixies. One is coming from the woods at the right edge of the parking lot. The other is simply walking up the access road to the high school.
“Astley!” I yell.
Some freshman kid looks at me. His eyebrows lift up.
“Sorry,” I mutter as he walks by. “Looking for a friend.”
Astley appears above me for the briefest of seconds and whispers, “You incapacitate the one from the woods; I shall get the other.”
He’s gone before I have a chance to respond. Wow, though. He thinks I can handle one. That’s kind of a flattering big deal. Nick never let me fight alone. He always thought I’d get hurt, and I wasn’t good at it, really. But now I can, right? I just handled those two in the high school. I quickly walk toward the woods, trying not to draw attention to myself and following the scent while simultaneously waving bye to the people leaving the dance. In my head, I’ve got a ridiculous monologue going on, like a voice-over in a movie …
My name is Zara White and I’m almost seventeen years old. I’m a pixie, and my boyfriend was killed by a pixie king with the ludicrous name of Frank.
Sometimes I worry about my mental health.
There’s a line of parked cars in front of the woods and a slight narrow incline with grass that separates those cars from the trees. I stare into the darkness, trying to isolate the pixie. It isn’t easy.
People talk behind me, distracting me. I don’t want them to get hurt. I’m trying to magically will them away when the pixie emerges from the dark, slipping between two trees. He doesn’t seem to smell me and starts toward a girl from the volleyball team who is skipping through the parking lot with a friend while their dates straggle behind. The pixie is wearing jeans, a winter coat, a red wool hat pulled low over his ears—human clothes—but he’s not glamoured, so he looks like some sort of blue humanoid devil. His teeth glint under the parking lot lights. He smiles slowly and it’s obvious that his attention has turned to the guys. Pixies prefer to torture and drain guys. I am not sure why—it’s another one of those secrets.