by Carrie Jones
The ruffle drops back into place. The feet retreat into the hallway. The door slams shut. I yank my head back to get my nose free.
“That was so close,” I whisper.
His hands grab both sides of my face. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Nodding, I make the words come out. “I’m sure.”
“There is no going back, Zara.” His fingers run down my cheeks, twining into my hair.
“I know.”
His silver eyes are so close to mine. His breath touches the skin by my lips, just above my lips, really. “Is your wolf worth this, Zara? Worth losing your humanity for?”
“Yes, he is.” I close my eyes, picture Nick and then Is, Gram, and Devyn. I even imagine Cassidy and Callie and Giselle. “They all are.”
My words rest in the air for a minute. We scramble out from beneath the bed and sit there. My hands wait in my lap. My wrist is still bleeding. All that matters is that I buck up enough to do this, and that I survive; survive to get Nick back, survive and maintain my humanity too.
There is no failure allowed here.
And my fears? I’ve just got to push them away. Astley smells like mushrooms and man. He smells like the earth and the cold wind. I open my eyes for a second, but his face is so close that it just kind of blurs.
“I’m going to do it now.” His lips are so near mine that they touch when he says the words “going” and “do.”
My hand clenches into a fist. The blood seems to drip faster out of my wrist.
“Relax, Zara. It is far less dangerous if you relax. I promise.” He backs away a half inch or so. I can feel it. The air shifts. I swear I can feel his longing, feel him trying to wait, to be strong.
“I feel like I’m cheating on Nick,” I blurt.
“By kissing me?”
I open my eyes. “Yes.”
He has put his glamour back on. He’s a handsome guy again. His nose crinkles a little bit as he stares at me, trying to figure me out. “Do you think he’s even going to love you after this? Your wolf’s a bit of a bigot.”
“I was a bigot too.”
“Not anymore.”
I shrug. “I don’t know. Bigotry isn’t that straight and easy. It isn’t there and then suddenly gone. It’s like a bad germ waiting to pounce and infect you even when you think an antibiotic has eradicated it from your system. But that’s not the point. What the point is—is—Oh! Can we just do this?”
Without thinking about it, I reach up and grab his face with my hands. I’m not super powerful because let’s face it, one arm is hurt, the other arm is bleeding, but I manage to yank his head an inch toward mine. Our lips meet. Nothing happens. It is just lips touching lips. My eyes stare into his grass green ones. He isn’t too blurry now. I don’t know why. I start to pull away. I am going to ask him why nothing is happening.
I don’t get the chance. His hands, his uninjured hands, wrap around the back and side of my head. He pulls my face closer to him. Our lips press against each other. The world goes weightless. There is only our lips, just our lips touching each other. It is smoke. It is dust. It is light and earth and wind. The world spins away, losing itself layer by layer. I know this. I know it, but I can’t stop it. I can’t stop anything about it. All I know is the kiss.
Need.
That is all there is. If I could move, I would press his lips closer to mine. If I could move, I would beg him to never stop.
Words.
His lips move against mine, still kissing, but murmuring words in a language of wings and gods; the language of pixies. It has to be. His fingers spread across my hair. My whole brain throbs with words that I can’t give meaning to.
Pain.
And then it all changes. The words become fire stabbing into my head. My skin burns with some sort of flame that seems to shoot right out of my neurons. His lips leave my lips and I am alone. I am consumed. I am pain. I am lost, lost, lost.
“Astley!” I gasp his name.
His hands reach underneath me, lift me to the bed. I twitch. I know I’m twitching. He smooths the hair off my forehead. “It has started. It will be okay, Zara. I will be here the whole time.”
“Make it stop,” I moan.
“I can’t. I can only share my strength, help it go more easily for you.”
“This. Is. More. Easily?”
He laughs. It’s a sad sound. I try to open my eyes to see him, but I can’t quite. It’s like someone is rubbing red dirt into a million little cuts all over my skin. I pant out the words. The cuts spiral deeper than my skin. They twist down to my veins, my muscles, my bones.
“The process is going quickly,” he reassures me. His hand rests on my forehead. “I promise you. You will survive this. Feel my hand. Feel my strength. It is yours now, my queen. I promise you. I am yours.”
My head swims. Images flash in front of my eyes. Issie hopping up and down in the hallway because she managed to get a C on her physics test. My stepdad opening his arms for a big hug after I broke the five-minute-mile mark for the first time. My mom brushing my hair with my Barbie princess brush. My mom swimming with me in the pool shouting “Marco” with her eyes closed, laughing, looking for me. Betty burning spaghetti and somehow crusting it to the bottom of the pan. Nick. Nick’s beautiful brown eyes. Nick writing Amnesty International letters with me, his super-big hand making the pen disappear beneath his fingers. Nick’s lips, warm and wild and real. Nick lifted up into the sky.
I scream.
Astley’s hand comes over my mouth. “I am going to make you pass out now, Zara. You cannot scream. We are in a hotel and people will notice. It is better this way.”
The last thing that I hear is him promising that everything will be okay. The last thing I think is Nick’s name, one syllable that means everything in the world to me. Nick. I hold on to that name, hold on to him, as my body spirals downward and away. But then I lose that too and the final thing I think is about me, Zara. What will I be when I wake up? I don’t know if I’ll survive and if I do—I might be so awful, so horrible, that Devyn will have to kill me, or I will have to kill myself. A giant whimper fills up my soul. I may have just made the biggest, most awful mistake. I may have just given myself away.
Pixie Tip
Many pixies hide their true appearance through use of magic called a glamour. This is a good thing.
I have absolutely no idea how much time has passed but when I wake up, the hotel room looks exactly like a hotel room, only the sheets on the bed are ripped to shreds, there’s blood splattered on the white telephone on the bedside table, and there’s a tired-looking blond guy gripping my hand. These are pretty significant differences.
Someone moans. It takes me a second to realize that someone is me and that I’m moaning because my skin feels like it’s been shrink-wrapped and ironed. My mouth aches and everything tastes coppery, like blood. My stomach groans and clenches. That’s a familiar feeling—hunger.
Astley leans up on his elbow but doesn’t let go of my hand. “Hello, beautiful.”
“Don’t ‘hello beautiful’ me,” I whisper. My voice is so hoarse. I clear my throat but my voice still comes out weak. “I know I’m not beautiful.”
He smirks. “Believe what you have to believe.”
“Did it work?”
He nods. His eyes shift. “We were successful.”
“You look sad.”
He’s still nodding, just the tiniest of movements. “I suppose I am.”
The whole hotel room seems stale and dirty now. The drapes are shut over the window. The heater rumbles on, blasting out moderately hot air. Astley is in human form and wearing a gray T-shirt and jeans like any normal non-pixie person. His face is rigid. I’d say he looks sad and frightened. My heart softens.
“I thought you wanted this. I thought I made you more—powerful, made you more—stable or something?” I clear my throat again. “Wow, I sound like I’ve been smoking for fifty years.”
“I am a pixie king. It is what I
have to want.” He gets up and goes into the bathroom.
He must turn a faucet on, because I can hear water running. My tongue sneaks out of my lips. It brushes against my teeth—my very sharp teeth. Panic hits me. I have to see. I sit up. All my muscles protest. Things pop in my shoulders and stretch along my spine. My fingers seem to all suddenly have arthritis. I reach down my leg. The anklet Nick gave me is still there. The fragile chain hasn’t broken. The dolphin and the heart still hang against my skin. I start to swing my legs over the side of the bed.
“What are you doing? Lie down! Stay still!” Astley rushes back in with a glass of water. His hair is all askew and his eyes are wide. He pushes me toward the head of the bed, grabs some pillows off the floor, and says, “I saved these. I couldn’t allow you to destroy good pillows.”
As he puts them behind my back I ask, “I did this to the sheets?”
“You certainly did. You scratched me as well.” He shows me long marks down his forearms. They are starting to heal already but it’s obvious that they were deep and painful.
My stomach threatens to explode. “Oh . . . man . . . I am so sorry.”
“It is normal.” He grabs the glass and puts it to my lips. “What is not normal is that you are capable of sitting up already. That is extremely quick. Less than thirty hours. Most people are out for fifty at least. Not my queen.”
His queen?
What have I done? I sip the water and eye him. He actually looks proud of me. Glancing down at my blue skin, I notice that the wound on my wrist is gone. Wait! My wounds are gone. I put the glass on the nightstand and start waving my arm around in the air. “It’s not sprained.”
“An extra benefit when you are turned by a king. I heal you. If”—he gets all sheepish sounding—“I don’t kill you.”
I shift my weight, swing my legs over the bed. I croak out, “I need to go save Nick.”
“Not yet,” he insists. His hands go to my shoulders. I know he’ll push down if I try to stand up. “You aren’t strong enough yet. We aren’t even sure how to get to Valhalla. Rest for a minute, at least.”
The world stops. Anger pulses through me, cold, blue, and icy. I can hear it in my voice. “What?”
He doesn’t move his hands. “I’m asking you to rest for a moment. You’ve just gone through a significant change and—”
“No! What do you mean you don’t know how to get to Valhalla?” I jerk sideways to get away from his hands. “You let me change and you don’t even know how to freaking get there!”
He chuckles. He chuckles! “You said ‘freaking’ again.”
“Do not tease me.” I start sputtering, I’m so upset. I roll away from him and to the other side of the bed. “I can’t believe you tricked me! You’re just like all the other pixies. I never should have trusted you.”
“I am not like your father.” His mouth hardens.
“Liar!” I start to get up but he’s there before I can get my feet touching the ground. I put them down anyway and stare up at him. He’s all golden and handsome with his glamour on, but it’s not real. He’s not human. He’s pixie. And he’s tricked me.
“I haven’t tricked you, Zara. I just haven’t told you the entire truth.” His hand moves out like he’s going to touch my hair, but I swat it away. His face shuts down. “We will find a way to get to Valhalla.”
“I can’t believe I turned into this for nothing.” I lift up my hands. The nails are different, longer, stronger, more like claws. I repulse myself.
“It’s not for nothing. We will find your wolf.” I listen to his assurances and try to believe. Try to find faith in what I’ve done.
“And even if we don’t, you’re meant to turn, Zara. You are stronger now. You will be safer.” He taps my fingernails. “They extend when you fight. Your sense of smell will be enhanced. You won’t want to eat meat at all. My people don’t get the bloodlust, because I don’t really get the bloodlust.”
“ ‘Don’t really’?” I quote him.
“Not important.” He eyes me. “You know, you do not ever have to see your pixie self. You could just put on a glamour right now. It will hold awhile. Then you will have to reassert it again.”
I perk up a little, I think, but I’m still simmering over the Valhalla thing. Maybe I won’t need him to get there, maybe Devyn and Issie can help me figure it out, so right now I have to be calm, force the ice out of my veins, my strange pixie veins, and get information out of Astley. “I don’t ever have to see myself as pixie?”
“You will still be pixie. You just will not have to see it. And the world will not either, which is a good thing. The world is not quite ready for us.” He jumps away and hustles over to the closet with its sliding mirrored doors. He rustles around in there for a moment and comes back with a branch from some sort of tree. He is suddenly standing much taller. “Hold this.”
I take it in my hands. I can feel the life energy it used to have. It’s like a sound, a resonation. It’s amazingly beautiful.
“Each of us has a tree that represents our line. Your tree is now birch. It represents a purging or a rebirth, which is appropriate given that you are who you are.”
I get what he means, but I don’t push it. I make him work for it. My stomach growls.
He clears his throat, runs his hand through his hair, and journeys on. “You are the daughter of a pixie who has lost the way of truth. You are now the queen of a pixie who believes in honor. That is a sign of hope, of renewal for all our people. The birch represents that.”
“But the birch is your tree already?”
He nods. “It is my line’s heritage. We have always been the hope of the race.”
“Pretty lofty there,” I tease. Wait. I tease? Why am I teasing? I’m angry. I am so angry but at the same time I feel comfortable, like I finally belong somewhere.
He blushes. “I know. Just hold it, Zara. There is a ceremony I must do.”
A ceremony. I don’t know what to think about that. I hold my breath. I was born holding my breath. That’s what my mom said. She said they had to encourage me to breathe. It was just like I was trying to kill myself as a baby, but when I finally took in air I gasped it in deep and hard like I was suddenly hungry to live, to breathe, to just be. That’s how I feel now. Part of me wants to hold my breath and not let this pixie self be real. That part is repulsed, clinging to my humanity. The other part is breathing in big breaths of air, filling my new lungs with it, feeling ready to save Nick, ready to face anything.
I blink hard, try to settle down my thoughts, and ask, “Is the ceremony thing going to hurt?”
“No. The hurting is over, I swear to you. This is important though.” He brushes a long dark hair off his T-shirt sleeve and drops it on the ground. “I am not yet exactly sure how to get to Valhalla, but I am positive that you have to do this and I am positive that I shall find a way to get you there, so help me, Zara. I shall not let you down.”
I believe him. I think it’s the way his eyes peer into mine or the way his lips move so confidently as he says the words, but I believe him. I don’t 100 percent trust him. I only trust Nick and Issie and Devyn and Betty that way, but I believe that he wants to help me.
“Okay.” I clench the branch so hard it makes a cracking noise. Before he can answer, my whole body twists in pain. I gasp. “I thought you said the hurting was over.”
“It is!” He gently loosens my fingers from around the slender branch. “But this branch is you now. You have to keep it safe. If it burns, you burn. If it breaks, you break.”
The branch suddenly seems very delicate, very precious. I can’t believe he’s serious.
“So all of us have a branch? All us pixies?” I spit out the word. When he nods I continue with my thought. “So if I wanted to kill that king who hurt Nick all I’d have to do—”
“Is find his branch and destroy it,” he finishes for me. “But it is not that easy. Most of us have pretty elaborate safeguards.”
My head jerks up. Our eyes me
et. “I don’t.”
“I know. The tradition is that the king and queen keep theirs together.” His gaze doesn’t falter.
“You’re asking me to trust you with my life.” I swallow hard. The vertebrae in my neck crack and stretch, trying to get used to the movement.
He gestures at me. “You already have, Zara.”
“True.”
I flop back on the bed and close my eyes. The world spins. All the smells of the room are way more intense than they used to be. The faux-lemon chemicals from the comforters, the smell of bleach and toilet, old cigarette smoke, Astley’s mix of mushroom and wind. There needs to be a turn-off button for noses. This is too much. My hands twitch against the smoothness of wood. I have to decide what to do with my branch, maybe trust Astley with my life again. It feels like every choice I make takes me farther and farther away from Nick. I groan.
“Are you in pain?” Astley’s voice tells me he’s hovering right over me. His smell is so intense.
I must keep from breaking apart. I must keep from breaking into myth and fable and stay Zara. I must stay Zara. Or else these new teeth of mine will rip the world apart. Or else this blue skin will glow with need and evil. “Do pixies have souls?” I whisper. I swear I can smell my words as they float out into the world. They smell like sorrow staggering into a lonely street.
The bed shifts as Astley sits beside me. “I believe we do.”
“So I don’t have to be evil.”
His laugh is forced, strained. “Nobody has to be evil. Not any pixies or any weres.”
“All the weres are nice,” I protest. These words? They smell yellow like old grief.
“Not all of them. Just like not all humans are good. You know that, Zara.”
I think about all the Amnesty letters I write, trying to save people, trying to convince leaders and dictators to do the right thing. Then I think about how I’ve killed. I’ve killed at least three pixies. I am both a murderer and a savior.
“What is good?” I ask.
