by Carrie Jones
“If hell even exists,” I say.
“Right.” He doesn’t seem convinced. “There’s another theory that there are five ancient races that came to the earth.”
“What?”
“They were pixie, fairy, were, elf, and one other. I can’t remember. They have a council. They are called the Shining Ones.”
“Like in my dad’s note.”
We lie there for a second and then I swallow and snuggle a little closer to Nick’s side. I don’t care what he says about pixies or werewolves or whatever. I feel safe with him.
I say, “You said that pixies can’t come inside unless they’re invited, like the vampires in all those Stephen King books.”
“I don’t know how vampires work. I’m not sure they’re even real.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, there’s a positive, I guess.”
His fingers tighten around my shoulder.
I take a big breath of his wolf/man/pine smell and steel myself. “My mom sent me up here to the land of cold and pixies. Great mom.”
“From what Betty said, she was really worried about you. They thought you were dead inside.”
“I was. I was empty. I’m not now,” I say, but I don’t want to talk about me. I think for a second, inhale the warmth of him. “Why would she send me here when we never came back here?”
“You never came back?”
“Betty always visited us. The last time Mom was here was when all those other disappearances were happening.”
“Yeah.”
“That was right after my mom graduated college. It must’ve been so weird coming home to boys going missing and having me, then marrying my dad and going off to Tulane to get her master’s. It must have felt like starting over. Maybe she just wanted to forget everything. I mean, she must’ve known some of the guys who got lost.”
The tingling feeling surges. The scrape on my hand burns.
“This is insane,” I say, plopping back on the bed.
He squeezes my good hand in his. “I know.”
I stare up at the flame on the Amnesty International candle. All those people in jails all across the world; tortured, imprisoned, lots of times for no reason at all, lots of times for just speaking their minds. How could this all be part of the same world? Me here with him, worrying about pixies. Them, all across the world, worrying about surviving.
What is the commonality there?
Just the flame of the candle.
Just hope.
“What happened?” I ask. “What happened the last time?”
“People kept vanishing. At night. Always when they were alone. The town had a curfew,” he says. “Eventually it stopped.”
“What stopped it?”
“No one knows,” his voice deepens. “Except maybe Betty. I’m thinking she might know something more.”
“Then she should have told us.”
“Maybe she didn’t think she’d have to.”
“Lame.” I cover my eyes with my hand and try not to think about that voice calling my name, but it echoes in my ears. “And they started taking the boys again right around the time I saw the guy in Charleston. And you, Nick Colt, somehow think it’s your job to protect people from this?”
“I can scare them away,” he says, like he’s boasting or something.
“How?”
“Weres have abilities.”
“What abilities?”
“We can hunt.”
I touch the metal zipper on his sweatshirt, flipping it up and down, and then repeat what he said, trying to understand. “You can hunt.”
Werewolves hunt.
“You kill things.” I move a little bit away from him.
“I don’t kill people,” he says, obviously annoyed.
I sit up on the bed. “How do I know that?”
He cocks his head. “Look at me.”
Hesitantly, I look. Sort of.
“Look in my eyes, Zara. I do not kill people.”
I swallow. “Okay.”
“You believe me?”
Nodding, I get up and walk across the room and light a candle. I begin stacking CDs in piles. They are scattered all over the floor. My bracelet bangs against my wrist as I work.
“Zara.”
“What? I’m just cleaning up, okay?” I am almost shouting at him so I settle my voice down. “This is all a little hard to deal with.”
He swings his legs off the bed and walks over, squatting on the floor like I am. “I know.”
His big hand pats my back and then he stiffens. I drop the CD I’m holding. A spidery feeling creeps along my hand. Nick grabs the fire poker again, clutching it in his large fist.
Then someone pounds on the door downstairs; loud, insistent.
I jump up. My voice sounds scared. “Nick?”
He gives me a steady look, but his hand tightens on the metal poker and his knuckles are white.
“Do not open the door, Zara.”
“Is it—”
A new burst of pounding interrupts my question.
I stare at Nick and catch my reflection in the dresser mirror. My eyes are huge and scared, just like how I feel. That spider feeling seems all over me now, creeping along, invading.
My foot knocks over the pile of CDs, scattering them all over the floor again. My heart leaps out and scatters with them, pieces of it everywhere. I step on a bunch of envelopes I have ready to mail out to dictators across the world.
I clutch Nick’s wrist.
“They can’t get in, right?”
He nods. “Not unless you let them.”
“And I’m not going to let them.”
“Right.”
Another round of pounding against the door. Another. Another.
“Nick?”
He wraps his arms around me. The cold iron of the poker chills a straight line against my back. It is nothing compared to his warmth. “You are perfectly safe here with me.”
“Are you going to change into a wolf?”
“Not unless I have to.”
“You don’t need a full moon or anything?” I whisper, clinging to him.
“Nope.”
I shiver. I wish I could crawl inside his skin and hide under there. “Do you think you’re going to have to change?”
He moves me toward the bed, sitting me down. He has the fire poker in his hand. It looks scary there; ready, metallic, heavy.
“They shouldn’t be able to get inside the house,” he says. “Not unless they’ve been in here before.”
“Are there a lot of them?”
“I smell five at least. The lesser ones I’m not worried about. But their leader?”
“They have a leader?”
“I’m pretty sure.” He pulls away from me and walks across the room and closes my bedroom door, flicking the lock in the doorknob. He doesn’t turn to talk to me, just keeps facing the closed door. His free hand spreads out against the wood frame of it.
Footsteps thud up the stairs. He turns his head to look at me. The irises of his eyes have gone slanted, like a wolf’s.
He speaks over his shoulder in low, menacing rumbles that are barely human. “I think at least one of the pixies has been in this house before.”
I freeze.
Nick’s back shakes with some sort of effort. I don’t know what kind.
“Nick? Can they all come in if one has been in before?”
“No. They’re waiting outside.”
“Can he come in the room if he’s been in the house?” Terror hobbles me.
“I don’t know.”
He snarls and I don’t know what to do, what to say, so I just say his name. “Nick?”
His voice is warm and aching all at the same time. “I’m trying hard not to change, Zara. But when people are in danger, I change.”
“And I’m in danger?”
He nods.
I touch his back. I’m such a mess I don’t even remember walking toward h
im. The muscles ripple and move beneath my fingers, like the fibers are struggling to stay themselves.
“Then change!” I order him.
“I don’t want to scare you.”
“I’m already scared!” I shriek. “I just don’t want you to get hurt!”
“Me? It’s not me I’m worried about. It’s you.”
A hand pounds on my bedroom door. The entire thing shakes in the door frame. Oh God. Oh God.
Nick swings around. His eyes fill with pain and grief. He rips off the sweatshirt and rushes to the other side of the bed where I can’t see him.
“Whatever you do, Zara, do not let him in. Whatever he says. You can’t.” He snarls and there is a knock at the door, a gentle, lovely sounding knock. I step farther away from it.
The pants Nick has been wearing fly across the room. I catch them in my arms.
He keeps trying to talk. “I might be able to take him one on one in here, but I’d rather not chance it. He’s stronger than the rest of them, and this isn’t my habitat, you know . . .”
“Nick?” I whisper.
A pillow flies over the bed.
“We just have to make it till Betty gets here. Just hold out till then, Zara.” His words rush out and the knocking on the door muffles them. But they can’t muffle the fierce growl that escapes his throat, half warning, half battle cry, all wolf.
“Oh God,” I whisper.
Someone knocks lightly against the door.
“Zara, let me in.”
The wolf growls and stands between me and the door. His fur, thick and full, seems to bristle against the threat.
He said there were at least five. One is here in the house with us, but as long as I don’t open the door we’ll be safe.
Why would Nick think I’d open the door? He must think I am the most naive human ever. There is no way I’m opening that door to let the pixie thing in.
But what about the other ones?
I peek out the window, moving the shade just an inch and spot two dark figures in the snow. The snow shovels down from a grayish white sky, billowing toward them, and everything seems almost peaceful.
The knock comes at the door again, a sweet knock, like when my mom would knock when she needed to wake me and my friends at a slumber party. I stare at Nick. He crouches down, ready to spring.
They are trying to trick me. I won’t let them. I’ll ignore the door and I’ll watch the ones outside.
Turning back to the window, I shriek. A face hovers, pale and wild eyed, attached to a body. I leap back and shriek even more. The shade flops down to obscure my view.
I sit in the middle of my bed and pull my knees to my chest, but I hold on to the poker. I will use it. Pacifism is overrated sometimes.
“This is not happening,” I chant. “This is not happening.”
Something scrapes against the window and I am so sure it’s not a tree branch. It is something scary that wants in.
Nick circles the room, patrolling, back and forth, back and forth from window to door, window to door. His lips pull back, revealing his teeth. Another light knuckle knock sounds against the door. Nick bares his teeth even more, all the way back to the gums.
“Zara?” The voice comes, deep, a little hoarse. It’s familiar and it’s not the voice from the woods.
My heart leaps up, and not because of fear.
“Zara, sweetie?”
It can’t be. It can’t.
I sit up straighter and swing my legs off the couch.
The candle flame on the bureau flickers, then catches a draft and leaps to twice its size.
I answer with a whisper and a prayer, a hope.
“Daddy?”
Vitricophobia
fear of a stepfather
It can’t be. There is no way, but it sounds just like him. My tongue seems to stick to my throat and my chest squeezes tightly, but I manage to say it again.
“Daddy?”
Nick’s growling goes out of control. His body shakes with it. It rattles. My body rattles too.
A wolf growling is not something you want to be within ten feet of, and I’m much closer than that and it’s scary. It’s really scary, but not as scary as what is on the other side of that door.
My dad died. And yet my dad is speaking. I can hear him over the growls. I can. I can hear him somehow, right behind the door.
My feet silently move across the floor.
“Daddy, is that you?” I whisper.
He hears me somehow.
“Open the door, Zara honey, and let me in.”
I want to. I really want to, but shock makes my limbs slow and heavy. Then Nick smashes up onto his hind legs and presses his front paws against the door, blocking me.
“Move, Nick,” I beg and step closer, lean in, put my hands flat against the door, like I can somehow feel through to the other side and touch my dad’s face, feel his skin warm again, pulsing with life. But I can’t. Of course I can’t. The cold wood against my hands seems so unfair.
“You can’t be here.” My voice sounds tiny and weak. My heart thumps in my chest.
If I opened that door would he be there? Would he smile at me and show his dimples? Would his cheeks be scruffy because he needed a shave? Would he hug me? All I’ve wanted all these months was for him to be alive.
But I’d seen him on the floor. I’d seen him in the coffin. And you can feel it when someone has died, you can feel that his soul is gone, just gone, the emptiness of his body. But if werewolves and pixies can be real, then maybe this can be happening. Maybe my dad can actually be here, right here, just a few inches of wood away from me.
I sway against the door. My shoulder presses into Nick’s side. “You can’t. You can’t be here.”
“I am, Zara. Let me in. I’ll explain,” he says.
He died. He died. I saw him die. The water on the floor. His face cold beneath my fingers.
But what if he didn’t? “Daddy?”
“I’m right here, baby.”
Lumps form in my throat, going all the way down into the core of me.
It’s his voice. His. Right there. I reach toward the doorknob but I don’t get to turn it.
Nick smashes at me with his head, pushing against my lower jaw and cheek, like a blow. His muzzle moves my head away from the door. He presses his face in between me and the wood. Fur gets in my mouth. I spit it out and push at him.
“That’s my dad. My dad.” I slap the door. “He’s on the other side. The pixies will get him.”
Nick shows me his teeth.
“I can’t lose him again, Nick.”
The wolf snarls like he’s ready to bite. My head jerks back and away, but then I steady myself.
“Get . . . out . . . of . . . the . . . way.”
Pushing against his thick neck, I slam my hands against him over and over again, pummeling him. He doesn’t budge.
“Move!” I order. “Move.”
“Zara, is there a wolf in there with you? Do not trust him,” my dad’s voice says, calmly, really calmly.
I grab a fistful of fur and freeze. All at once it hits me that something is not right. My dad would never be calm if I was in my bedroom with a wolf. He’d be stressed and screaming, breaking the door down, kicking it in like he did once when I was really little and had accidentally locked myself in the bathroom and couldn’t get the lock out of the bolt because it was so old. He’d kicked that door down, splintering the wood, clutching me to him. He’d kissed my forehead over and over again.
“I’d never let anything happen to you, princess,” he’d said. “You’re my baby.”
My dad would be kicking the door in. My dad would be saving me.
“Let me in,” he says. “Zara . . .”
Letting go of Nick, I stagger backward. My hands fly up to my mouth, covering it.
Nick stops snarling at me and wags his fluffy tail.
How would my dad know that it is a wolf in here and not a dog? How would he know that it isn’t pixies?
>
I shudder. Nick pounds next to me, pressing his side against my legs. I drop my hands and plunge my fingers into his fur, burying them there, looking for something. Maybe comfort. Maybe warmth. Maybe strength. Maybe all three.
“You’re dead,” I say and a sob breaks through my chest, exploding out of me. “You can’t be here.”
“I’m not dead, Zara.”
I move away from Nick, grab a pillow instead, clutching it against me like a shield. The memory of my dad on the floor assails me. I see the water bottle rolling across the wood. I see his mouth, loose, open, aching for air.
“Yes, you are. You’re dead,” I say. “You left me. I saw you. You left me. And now I’m here in Maine where everything is crazy and you can’t run at night and it’s cold.”
“Zara, let me in. I’ll explain.”
I throw the Annual Report on Human Rights 2009 at the door. It wallops against the wood. Nick ducks and scrambles out of the way. I grab another annual report and smash it against the doorknob.
“You liar! You can’t explain. You can’t! You left me!”
Sobbing, heaving, I race at the door and hit it with my fists.
“You left.”
He was the best hugger, my dad. He was an encompassing safe hugger, like a giant teddy bear, only warmer.
“Just let me in, Zara.” He sounds angry now, the way he sounded when I talked back to my mom. He sounds just like my dad.
One step forward, another. Nick’s wolf voice lets out a low rumbling growl. I hold my finger to my lips, trying to tell him to be quiet.
My fingers tremble but they still unlock the door.
“Open the door for me, Zara,” he says.
Nick nudges me away from the door and I let him.
“No,” I say. “If you were really my father you could open it yourself.”
There is no answer.
I knew that. I knew there would be no answer.
Nick nuzzles my hand. My fingers plunge into the fur.
“Why don’t you open the door then?” I ask. “It’s unlocked.”
Something shrieks inside of me, something violent and desperate and real.
“Go ahead!” I scream, wild and lost, alone but not alone. Nick pushes his side in front of me, blocking me from the door and whatever is beyond it. “Why aren’t you, huh? Why aren’t you opening the goddamn door?”
I stare at the doorknob. It doesn’t move. He knows he can’t fool me.
