The Pixie Prince

by Kirsten Krueger

  “I’m for it,” Demira agreed, pushing away her empty tray. “Anything that prevents me from being thrown down the stairs like a sack of potatoes.”

  “You want us to go over there and fawn over that guy like he’s some kind of god?” Calder clarified, not bothering to hide his disgust.

  “No,” Nixie said slowly, a devious smirk stretching across her lips. “I want us to earn his respect—become one of his equals.”

  Calder shook his head before consuming his last piece of bacon. “You’re insane, Nix. All I want is to figure out my power and then bust out of this place. You know I wasn’t planning on going back to school, and now we’re stuck here for, what—five years, that oily guy said?”

  “Five more years of school does seem unappealing,” Demira conceded. “Even going to class today seems like a drag.”

  The way she eyed him then, like a predator sizing up her prey, was enough to quell Calder’s dread and send a spark of intrigue through him. When they descended into the Naturals Building’s basement with the rest of the primaries, he was unsurprised when Demira discreetly slipped her arm through his and guided him away from the crowd without even telling her cousin or his sister that they were sneaking off.

  “I don’t need Science of Affinities,” she whispered in his ear with a glance back at the lecture hall they were leaving behind. “I’d rather study the anatomy of you.”

  Calder had a hard time not choking as they approached a door at the end of the corridor. Typically, he’d always been the one to flirt with the girls, not the other way around. Demira was assertive, though, and he admired her determined swagger and lack of care as to whether she was accepted. It made her impossible to reject—even when she pushed open that door at the end of the corridor and revealed a sprawling indoor pool.

  The dim lights flickered on automatically, illuminating the clear blue water of the rectangular pool. It was lined and marked, as if used for competitive swimming, and the wooden benches built around the perimeter were bolted to the white-tiled floor. The lighting was soft enough that the pale walls weren’t blinding, but Calder could still feel a headache budding near the base of his skull. He’d always avoided bodies of water, but now that Demira was kicking off her shoes, there seemed to be no escape.

  “How’d you know the pool was here?” he asked roughly as she plopped onto one of the benches to peel off her socks.

  “I snuck down here last night to look for it,” she informed him as she shucked off her right sock. “I was hoping you would have the wits to join me, but…I guess now is as good as then. Can you remove your own clothes, or would you like my help?”

  Calder was unable to react to her sass, though; his eyes were currently glued to her left foot, which she’d just exposed. Unlike the right one, made of brown flesh, the left was composed of silver metal.

  “What? You’ve never seen an artificial limb before?” she questioned, standing to unbutton her cargo pants. She stood so normally, and she walked so well… Calder hadn’t even noticed anything odd about her gait.

  “No,” he managed, meeting her eyes. “Is the whole thing…”

  “Just ‘til my knee,” she replied, wiggling out of her green pants to reveal two meaty thighs, two regular knees, and a metal calf beside the natural one. The design was skeletal and robotic, but it moved so fluidly as she stepped out of her pants…

  “You control it with your Affinity,” he concluded, unable to even appreciate that an attractive girl stood before him in only her panties. Even as she pulled off her white t-shirt to reveal her teal blue bra, he could only marvel at that remarkable artificial leg.

  “You should be a detective,” she droned as she padded from the bench to the pool. Both feet were light against the floor, and he could barely hear the clink of the metal on tile. “A gay detective, maybe, since you’re so unimpressed by my sexiness. For your lack of enthusiasm, I think I’ll leave my undergarments on.”

  “I am impressed—by your body and your ability to control metal with such precision.”

  “You’re the first. Every other guy I’ve shown my Affinity to has been so appalled that I’ve had to smack them over the head with a metal rod and convince them they’d dreamed the whole thing.”

  “Really?” he asked as she sat on the lip of the pool and dipped her feet—metal and flesh—into the clear water.

  She pivoted her head back toward him, her turquoise eyes sparkling. “Does that seem like something I wouldn’t do?”

  “It seems exactly like something you’d do.” His expression morphed into one of mischievousness as he mentally blocked out the water beyond her and focused on her freckled skin and sly smirk. “That must mean, though, that you’re a virgin.”

  “Or that boys tend not to notice an artificial limb when their minds are focused on the other parts of me.” With the perk of her eyebrows, she launched off the lip and slipped into the water, sending a gentle ripple through the entire pool.

  Watching Demira’s head submerge sent a buzz of panic through Calder’s nerves. Without hesitation, he rushed to the edge and bent over, searching to see if she was struggling. When she popped up a moment later and grabbed the crew neck of his t-shirt, yanking him down toward her, all air evaded Calder’s lungs, and he could only gawk.

  “Why are you so afraid of the water, Mardurus?” she questioned melodically, her fingers drenching the white fabric. His face was less than a foot from the pool’s surface; if he lost his balance—

  “How did you lose your leg?” he deflected, hastily pushing his fear from his consciousness. Instead of watching the nauseating waves flitting through the pool, he met her turquoise gaze and observed emotionlessly as her face soured.

  “You want to talk about that?” Groaning, she shoved him away and waded back into the pool, letting her body float toward the middle. “Let’s just say that, when you’re ten years old and a metal beam falls on your leg, you probably won’t walk away—or walk ever again.”

  “That’s what happened to you?”

  “Hypothetically.”

  Calder gnawed on the inside of his lip, his eyes fixed on the way her arms made lazy strokes through the water. “You didn’t have your metal power at the time?”

  “That was how I gained my metal Affinity, actually,” she informed him, dipping her head back to stare up at the plain ceiling. “Your Affinity is an adaptation. When something—usually traumatic—happens to someone with the chromosome, they evolve to overcome it.”

  “How—”

  “My uncle has an Affinity, too,” she explained before he could ask. “He did research and taught me and Colton all there was to know. That’s probably all we would have learned today in class, so even if this was a waste of your time, at least you won’t be behind.” Her eyes cut to him with that comment, but he remained stoic under her glare.

  “This isn’t a waste of my time.”

  “Hm. The fact that you aren’t taking this opportunity to undress and join me in this sexy pool implies otherwise.”

  He cocked his head, eyes flickering with amusement. “Sexy pool is a bit of an overstatement.”

  “Well, I’m in it, aren’t I? That alone increases its sexiness by an immeasurable amount.”

  Rising to his feet, Calder pursed his lips as she drifted toward the opposite side of the pool. Even without the migraine spreading through his brain, joining Demira in the water wouldn’t have been appealing—joining anyone in the water wouldn’t have been appealing.

  “Next time you want to skip class,” he began, his hands in his pockets as he backed toward the door, “find us a sexy car instead of a sexy pool. I think we’d both appreciate that more.”

  Demira simply hummed with disapproval as he disappeared from the room.

  4

  Lightning and Water

  Demira actually did find Calder a sexy car—and in less than an hour.

  After leaving the pool behind, he snuck out of the Naturals Building to explore the town of Periculand. It wa
s modern and pristine but not very lively at midmorning with only a few adults roaming the cobblestone streets. He intended to find a coffee shop and hide there until lunchtime, but he only made it as far as Louie’s Lenses when the silver chain around his neck suddenly constricted, leaving him breathless and motionless before the eyeglass store.

  “Come with me,” she murmured into his ear, her hair still damp. Droplets dripped onto his shoulder and soaked his hair, but when she finally pulled her body away from his, he was completely dry. Luckily, she was too busy keeping her finger on his chain to notice the supernatural occurrence.

  To his surprise, she dragged him deeper into the curved street and halted only when they stood at the mouth of a thin alley between a fitness facility and the café he’d been seeking out only moments earlier. In its depths, obscured by the dark, was an enormous object covered by a black tarp. Calder didn’t have to wait for Demira to yank the fabric off to guess it was a car.

  “Voila,” she droned, rolling her eyes to the rusty old car wedged between the white brick walls of the alley. “The only car in this goddamn town. Before you ask, I know because I can sense them with my Affinity. It’s ancient, but it’s likely here illegally, so…that makes it sexy, wouldn’t you say?”

  Calder didn’t say anything as he prowled over to her and pinned her against the car. She didn’t protest when his hand cupped her jaw and his lips smothered hers. He barely noticed the residual water clinging to her skin and hair as they squeezed into the car and spent the remainder of the morning there.

  When they emerged hours later and trekked back to the school’s campus with triumphant smirks, they’d already missed History of Affinities, lunch, and math, which meant they only had to endure training before the school day’s conclusion. Nixie’s wrath, however, proved more torturous than the actual training.

  Demira and Calder were the last two students to enter the gymnasium in the Physicals Building, and every eye turned to them as they sauntered to the orange bleachers along the left wall. Fraco paused his speech long enough to give them a reprimanding scowl but then resumed explaining what this training session would entail. Nixie’s castigation was not nearly so brief.

  “What the hell?” she hissed at her brother when the two primaries joined her on the third row of bleachers. Colton was on her other side, listening to Fraco’s words too attentively to acknowledge his cousin’s presence. “Where have you been?”

  “I think that’s fairly obvious,” Demira drawled, running her tongue along her teeth as she jumped her eyebrows at Calder.

  Nixie began to seethe. “You ditched me the entire day to bang my roommate?”

  Calder shrugged, not daring to meet her eyes. “You could have done the same,” he suggested, glancing over his twin’s dark braids to where Colton watched Fraco speak as if it were a movie. Her reaction of disgust was enough to assure Calder he was only making this situation worse.

  “You’re despicable. We’re supposed to be discovering our powers, not screwing people we’ve just met!”

  “We were just having fun—and I made it here for this.” Calder nodded toward the orange mats at the center of the room, where they would soon see the upperclassmen demonstrate their Affinities. “We’ll discover our powers soon, Nix—”

  “Of course you will,” Demira cut in, peering around Calder to eye both twins, “since we already know both of your Affinities are water.”

  “You are one comment away from me strangling you in your sleep tonight,” Nixie growled at her roommate, who merely dismissed her with a wave.

  Calder was unsure of whose side he would take if a fight broke out between the girls. Thankfully, Fraco caught their attention before it could escalate.

  “The tertiaries and secondaries will now demonstrate their Affinities for the primaries’ observation. There will be no violence.” The man’s shiny eyes lingered in Nero’s direction with that comment, and the big bully, seated with his friends at the very top of the bleachers, snorted. “Primaries are expected to make intelligent inquiries and learn from this demonstration. This is not a time for fun.”

  “He doesn’t seem like the type who finds any time fun,” Demira mumbled, eliciting a grunt of agreement from Calder.

  Nixie still simmered on his other side, and her mood didn’t mollify until Fraco prompted everyone to join him on the orange mats. Demira announced she would wanted to watch the kid with the spiky green hair, who appeared to be spitting acid onto the plastic mats, to the oily man’s dismay. Colton wasn’t far behind his cousin, ditching the Marduruses to wander around the gymnasium in awe of objects and images no one else could see.

  “Cal—”

  “You’re jealous,” he concluded before Nixie could snarl something vicious. “Aren’t you? You’re jealous I’m giving Demira more attention than you.”

  Her eyebrows remained furrowed and her jaw hard, but Calder could see her eyes softening as they held each other’s gazes. “I should be pissed at you for even implying I’m that dependent,” she ground out, her nose twitching, “but…you’ve never been this serious about a girl before.”

  “I’ve known Demira for a day. There’s no reason for you to think I like her better than you.”

  “Yeah, but…I think I like her better than me.” Nixie’s eyes drifted down toward the mats, where Demira encouraged the acid-spitter to continue while Fraco shrilled at him to stop. “She’s cool and she barely even tries. I feel like she could be my friend if we stopped clawing at each other’s throats.”

  “If I remember correctly, you were the only one to make a death threat.”

  His sister’s responding glower was a death threat in itself. “Maybe I’ll go make amends.”

  Calder blinked in disbelief. “You’re gonna apologize?”

  “Well, no. I’ll just start being civil, and we’ll see where that leads.”

  “You might as well befriend her if she’s going to be your roommate. Demira needs a real friend, anyway—I think she only slept with me as a distraction.” After glancing around at the empty bleachers surrounding them, Calder lowered his voice and said, “She wouldn’t shut up about her dad after we…you know. They used to fix cars together all the time, and I think she misses him already. She’s smart enough to realize she’ll never see him again, unless we can break out of this place—”

  “So you think she’s using you?”

  “I wouldn’t be opposed,” he mused with a sly grin that provoked an eye roll from his sister. “What? You know I’m not into committing—it’s too boring. We’ll just be friends with benefits.”

  “And when another girl rolls around who you find attractive?”

  “Am I limited to only one friend?”

  Nixie shook her head—not in answer but in disapproval. “I won’t scold you, as long as you don’t leave me alone with your freak-show of a roommate again. His Otherworld shit drives me up a wall.”

  “Deal,” Calder agreed, shaking his sister’s hand before she stood.

  Her dark eyes trailed along the horde of students scattered on the mats, many showing off their abilities while the primaries gawked. Not far from the acid-spitter, a particularly large boy with light brown hair conjured rocks while another boy with frosty blue hair slid around on the ice he’d laid over the mat. Calder might have been in shock if he hadn’t seen the way Demira had wielded her power in that rusty car; Nixie was working very hard to keep her expression a mask of calm.

  “I’m gonna go cheer on the acid-spitter with my roommate,” Nixie informed her brother, craning her neck to look down at him where he remained seated on the bleachers. “Are you coming?”

  Calder was about to stand when his vision locked onto Nero speaking quietly with a lanky, pink-haired boy only a few paces from Demira and the acid-spitter. Although the bully currently seemed to have no interest in Calder’s presence, he wasn’t feeling inclined to draw attention to himself.

  “I’ll catch up with you in a few,” he said as he rose to his feet. “I
want to check out the ice guy.”

  Nixie followed his gaze to the boy still skating around the mats and shrugged. “Enjoy.”

  Without bothering to discuss the real reason he wasn’t accompanying her, which they both clearly knew, the twins parted ways. The boy with the ice Affinity had stopped sliding and was now producing an ice sculpture by spraying frozen mist from his hands. The frigid water consolidated before him to form a miniature ice statue of an extremely attractive female.

  “Hey, Orla, I sculpted you out of ice!” the boy called over to a girl with shimmering gold hair and features that almost perfectly aligned with the ice statue. A group of primary boys was huddled around her, ogling her beauty, and even Calder halted for a moment to study her. There was something so alluring about her fluttering eyelashes, voluminous lips, and generous hips…

  Pale fingers snapped in front of Calder’s face, jolting him from the trance. When his vision focused on the person standing before him, he had to force himself to meet her eyes, for they were completely white without the slightest trace of a pupil. Even so, they seemed to be looking at him, and those white eyebrows, as colorless as the hair atop her head, rose when their gazes met.

  “You’re one of the smart ones,” the girl reckoned, her blank eyes moving within their sockets. “Most boys need to be hauled to the next room to evade Orla’s charm—some girls, too. Jamad’s known her for years and still has a hard time resisting.” She jerked her head toward the ice guy, who’d gone from sculpting Orla to drooling over her like a mindless zombie. “I’m Zeela Mensen, and yes, I’m blind, but I can see—”

  “What an oxymoron,” a male voice drawled as a boy stepped up beside Calder and rested his elbow on his shoulder. Tall and just as lanky as the pink-haired boy that Nero had been speaking to, this guy sported orange cargo pants, which he’d rolled up above his knees, and had pale green hair that matched his pale green eyes. The hue of his skin was a warm brown, giving Zeela an even ghostlier appearance in comparison.