The ground’s shaking increases. It’s as if the entire world is breaking apart. Astley rushes to my side just as I step toward my father. His arm holds me back as a giant wolf leaps from the falls. Gasping, I stagger back. The wolf is easily twenty feet tall. A broken chain dangles from a collar on its neck. Water darkens its fur. The mouth opens. Long canines spike into huge, monstrous spears.
“No!” I scream as my father jumps sideways, trying to get away. There is no chance of escape. The beast’s mouth hinges open even wider and swallows my father whole. Gone. He is just gone.
The wolf lands flat on the ground. Its head swings toward us. Huge, evil eyes widen with malice.
Shock freezes me in place.
“A—a w-w-wolf,” I stutter. “A gi-giant wolf.”
“Fenrir,” Astley murmurs. He clutches me around the waist, dodging up and backward, entering the sky of rainbows and mist, flying us away. I struggle against him for a second, screaming, and then I give in. My father is gone. Another father … gone.
The wolf leaps after us, snapping its jaws.
“Astley!” I scream.
“Hold on!” he hollers as I try to climb up his back. The frozen air streaks against us. Ice forms on our skin, but still Astley spirals toward the heavens, up and away from the wolf’s claws, away from another loss, another death.
I cling to Astley. The wolf howls below us. Finally it turns away as we hover a hundred feet in the air, and then it smashes toward the car.
“Oh no!” I yell just as it lands on the hood of the car, flattening it. It howls once more, triumphant, and runs away.
It’s so insane, so unreal …
“My father …,” I whisper into Astley’s ear.
“Died a hero,” he says. “He died on the side of good.”
There is nothing else for me to do except clutch Astley’s back, hide my face in the cloth of his parka, and cry.
He lands us near the car. Luckily, the driver is still alive and on his cell phone calling for a tow truck. He and Astley talk about how they will explain things, but I don’t listen. Astley whispers instructions about finding Vander. I stop paying any attention at all, just keep scanning the horizon for that giant wolf. My body won’t stop shaking. My father died. The monster we’d been so afraid of died for me. It makes no sense and breaks my heart all at once.
“Do you know what that was?” the driver asks. The fear in his voice breaks through my shock and I really look at him. His pants are wet all down the front.
“Fenrir,” Astley says. He puts his cell back in his pocket and stands with perfect posture, scanning the mist, the falls, the rainbows. “But more importantly, it was a trap. It meant to kill us. The king sensed it. He saved us.”
We were set up. Why would someone do that? Someone fed the Vander guy the wrong information? It makes no sense. I moan and plop myself down on the cold snow. Giant wolf tracks mar its perfection.
Astley comes to my side. “Are you well?”
“No,” I tell him, voice hoarse. “I am not well. I am broken inside. I am broken almost all-the-way deep, and I don’t know … I don’t know if I can ever be unbroken, let alone well again.”
He swallows so hard I can see it. He grabs my hand, places it on his heart. It thumps beneath my palm, a steady rhythm going on and on despite everything. Then he places my hand over my own heart. It beats the same rhythm, a traitorous beating. A sob erupts out of my chest and he clutches me to him, shushing me, whispering nothing words into my hair.
“Who will die next?” I whisper-sob into his parka. “Who?”
“Not one more.” He rubs my back in little circles. “But especially not you.”
I pull away, look up at him. “Or you?”
He cringes.
I grab his shoulders. “Promise me.”
After a second he nods. “I promise, but there is no shame in dying bravely, Zara, no shame in dying for good.”
“And there is no shame in living for it either,” I announce. The rainbows grow and shrink before my eyes, their colors shimmering against the gray mist, bright and hopeful somehow despite all the dark, all the thundering water, all the death … somehow still bright.
9
Things are SO crazy here. Seriously. Half the people in town are heading to Florida for sudden vacations, but it’s just to get away from whatever crazy person it is who is killing people. And that thing with the Sumner bus? Too weird. One of the girls in my Spanish class didn’t get home after school today and now everyone’s looking for her. I’m totally freaking out.
—MYSTIC EMBRY BLOG
Night arrives terribly early. The long hours of darkness and sorrow have melted into the outside world, with only the lights of cars and offices posting any reassurance that the world is not utterly, totally a pit of hell.
The air in my hotel room smells of lemons now that Astley has left. When he is with me, all I can smell is him. We spent hours rehashing everything, using his cell to call Amelie (who refrained from saying “I told you so”) and Betty (who did not refrain) and Issie and Devyn and Cassidy (who mostly groaned and exclaimed). We tried to figure out why someone would want to attack us specifically. Was it just for control of Bedford and the region? Was it for bigger power issues? Was Vander in on it or had he been used? We don’t know. We just know that it was a deceit created on purpose to trap us and have us killed. According to Devyn, the wolf Fenrir is a sign of a great war. It was originally tethered by the gods, but now it runs free.
Everyone is surprised by the actions of my father—everyone except Astley, who seems to have more faith in souls and in good than the rest of us. Although, according to Nick, I was always the silly one, believing the best in people and pixies. Maybe I should have given my father more credit for trying. Maybe I never gave him enough for struggling so hard for so long, for keeping away from my mother as much as he could. I don’t know. All I know is that he died for me.
The ache in my heart weighs too much, so I take a shower, let the warmth fall down on me. Then I shove on some shorts and a T-shirt and wrap a bathrobe around me. I don’t put socks on because the heated floors feel nice. It’s the only thing good I can feel.
There’s a smell coming from the bedroom area. A rustle of trouser leg moving against trouser leg.
I stop.
Someone unknown waits. More than one someone, it smells like. I start humming like I’m just combing out my hair, but my toes flatten on the floor as I look around the foggy bathroom area for a weapon. A hairbrush? Oh, man. The knife is still in my backpack, which is flopped on the floor by the bed. For some extra protection, I swallow one of the anti-iron pills from a bottle on the sink and then grab the towel holder that’s been drilled into the wall. I tug. It doesn’t move. Both hands grip it. With all my strength, I yank it out. The bolts clatter to the floor.
It’s enough to alert the intruders.
Three large men in crisp European-fancy suits rush around the corner. They stop and stare at me. One of them is Vander. I take a second to scream, “Astley!”
Then they charge. I brandish the towel bar like it’s a sword and I scream like a banshee, hoping it’ll be enough to push the pause button on their attack. They just keep coming. Only two can move in front, though, because there isn’t enough space between the walls. I attack the one on the left, hitting at him with the bar. The skin on his face sizzles as the iron makes contact, and he growls, losing his glamour and revealing his blue pixie self.
He swears at me and I swing again, popping him in the chest, but the other one tackles me. The bar sizzles between us. He screams but doesn’t let go as Vander gets into the action and yanks me backward by the hair. His thick arms lift me up and against him. One arm holds me at the waist. Another holds something sharp at my throat. A knife? It must be. The other two haul themselves off the floor as Astley flashes into the room. His face is twisted with anger. He has a dagger in his hands.
“Let her go, Vander,” he orders. “I am king of the birch an
d stars. You are my subject and I command you to release my queen.”
Vander barks. I think it’s a laugh, but I don’t know. The sharp blade on my throat presses so tightly against my skin that it’s actually cut me. The pain isn’t so horrible, but I can smell the blood, and the sight of it seems to be making Astley twitch.
“You can’t order us around, King. We belong to another,” Vander says.
The wound on the other one’s face is still sizzling. That will scar. He says, “Put down your weapon or Vander kills her right now.”
“He will kill her either way,” Astley says, as calm as anything.
I gasp. That is not a cool thing to say. My heart lurches. I trusted him. He said he needed me, and now what? He can just throw me away? I clutch at the fabric of my robe, willing the lump in my heart to vanish, but it doesn’t. Then Astley’s eyes meet my eyes and he looks a bit to the right. It’s just the slightest of looks, but I catch it. He wants me to jump out the monstrous window. We’re five stories up. I can’t fly. But he can. Will he catch me? For a second I wonder if this is all some weird setup to kill me too. Kill my dad, kill me, get rid of the bloodline. But that’s so elaborate and this is Astley. I trust Astley, I tell myself. I do.
“I’m going to throw up,” I whisper amid the standoff.
“What?” Vander growls the word.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” I say again. I force myself to hitch at the stomach. I can’t really throw up, but I can pretend I will. Betty once told me during her weekly “how to survive predators” talks that pretending to throw up can sometimes stop muggings, even rape. Let’s see if it can stop pixies and murder. A choking dry heave sound erupts from my throat. It’s enough to make Vander give me a little slack. The knife is not so sharp against my throat.
“What should I—?” he starts to say.
But he doesn’t finish, because I’ve elbowed him in the gut and launched myself sideways into the window. My shoulder smashes through it. Pain prisms out and down my arm, up my neck. My body follows my shoulder through the broken glass and into the cold air. No words escape my lips as I fall through the snowflakes, rushing toward the ground.
I should close my eyes.
I don’t.
My body tilts sideways. The bathrobe unties from the movement. The fabric billows above me. I lift out my arms, wonder if I look like a falling angel. The rumbling of the cars below gets louder. I’ll land on one or on the hard pavement. My body will flatten and break. Hopefully, it will be quick. Hopefully.
I close my eyes.
Hands clutch at my robe, hauling me off my straight-down course. Astley. I try to grab at him. He smashes me to his chest, cursing quietly, as my fall down becomes a movement sideways and then up.
“Astley!” I sob.
“We are always saving each other,” he whispers into my hair. “Hold on.”
And we take off into the night sky.
I’m completely frozen by the time we get to the airport. We land in a horrible thud behind a big truck. Astley apologizes, rubs at my arms, and helps me retie my robe around my waist. I’m shuddering so horribly that I can’t do it myself. He rushes inside to the duty-free shops to get me better clothes and a coat and shoes.
“I shall be as quick as I possibly can,” he assures me. “Huddle down by the tire. Make your body a ball. It will help.”
Our cell phones, our suitcases, our bags are still at the hotel and our flight doesn’t leave until morning, but we’ve decided the airport is the safest possible place. It’s full of people. It’s warm.
“What about our passports?” I ask.
“I have them on me. I have kept them on me the entire trip. I am paranoid about passports.”
“Good thing.”
His eyes are so sad. “Yes. Good thing.”
He leaves and a plane rumbles above me as I wait. I push my back against the tire, not wanting anything to sneak up on me. I’m so tired, but it isn’t until we’re inside and I’m dressed and my shoulder is bandaged that I fall asleep, in one of the airport chairs. Astley’s arm is wrapped around my shoulder for warmth or reassurance or something, and I don’t move it away. I don’t know why. I just can’t. I need it there.
10
Tensions rise in the small Maine town of Bedford as another of its young people goes missing. This time it’s a girl. She was reportedly last seen walking out of the YMCA and entering the woods. —CNNS NEWS
The entire plane ride back I have a hard time talking or even thinking. The plane blows reconditioned air into my face, stale and ugly, the same thing over and over again, and it reminds me of my life. I try to help: people get killed. I try to be a hero: people die. Astley puts his arm around my shoulders again, and I don’t object, because I know that he knows how it is too, what it’s like to see people die for you, to have that burden. I reach up and try to shut off the air, but the fan is broken. It just keeps rushing out. Eventually, we both give in to exhaustion and keep still, our heads leaning against each other as we rush through the air.
When I finally get home, Betty takes me into her arms and whispers, “I knew no good would come of this.”
“He died, Gram,” I murmur into her shoulder. She smells of wood smoke and fur and spaghetti sauce.
“I didn’t think he had it in him,” she admits crossly.
That hits me wrong and she knows it, because she hugs me tighter.
“At least your mom can finally rest easy.” She pets my back a couple times like she’s a football coach or something, awkward and aggressive, and then tells me to go take a shower; she’s going to make some cinnamon toast. But when I go upstairs, I fall into bed and sleep kidnaps me before I can even take off my shoes.
The next day, I take Nick’s MINI into town, thinking about how Vander betrayed us. Astley doesn’t know why or how Vander was not actually pledged to him but to another king. He had an agenda, and Astley needs to figure it out. I need to find Nick, and we both need to keep the town safe. There’s so much to do. It overwhelms me.
Parking on Main Street, I get out and sniff the air for pixies. It seems clear. There are cars parallel parked up the sides of the road, smooshed near to the concrete sidewalks that border the brick buildings, all of which are three stories tall, except the bank, which tops out with a whopping fourth story. According to Betty, the entire downtown, which is basically two streets a quarter mile each, burned down right before World War II. Some crazy firefighter was bored and set the fires. They rebuilt and it’s nice and everything, but it lacks that old-time colonial era feeling that most New England towns have.
I step onto the concrete sidewalk, which has patches of ice and a thin layer of snow on it. The town snow-removal crew is having a hard time keeping up with all the precipitation. A man outside the health food store sighs as he shovels. The metal of the shovel scrapes against the concrete, making a horrible noise.
“Hello!” he says.
I smile at him and his rosy cheeks. He reminds me of Santa. “Hi. You need help?”
“I got it. Thanks.”
I pass Finn’s, the Irish pub that all Betty’s EMT friends adore, and rush up the steps to the Maine Grind, which is in another brick building that used to be the Masonic Hall. The Masons are some kind of secret society that goes back for centuries, but they’ve lost membership, probably because only men can join. They sold the hall and meet in the basement of the YMCA now. The Maine Grind is cute and as close to trendy as anything can get in Bedford, Maine. There are big tables made of solid wood with legs painted orange and purple. There are comfy couches everywhere. The music is usually contemporary folk, but not in a bad way. They even have chai. In Bedford this is huge.
I order a chai and head to the big brown leather couch that Devyn and Issie are already hunkered into. It sort of swallows you when you sit. Is sips hot chocolate. Devyn gulps water—I have no idea why. It’s the perfect day for warm drinks full of calories and sugar, but Devyn is on this “my body is a temple” kick all of a
sudden and eats only whole foods and no refined sugars.
“Cassidy’s in the bathroom itching,” Issie says as I adjust myself on the couch. “Her sweater is driving her crazy. People were staring ’cause she couldn’t stop scratching. It was sort of sad. I always thought being fae was cool, but if all synthetic clothing makes you itch, it sort of negates the whole awesome factor. Oh my gosh, I’m babbling. I’m so glad you’re back.”
“It’s too bad she couldn’t just run around naked,” Devyn says. He takes a swig of water.
Issie elbows him hard in the stomach and he makes an oomph noise. A little bit of water spurts out of his mouth.
“I meant too bad for her, since clothes drive her crazy.” He rubs at his side and grabs a napkin to wipe at his jeans where the water fell.
“You meant too bad for the male populace’s viewing pleasure,” Issie insists. Her voice gets half huffy and half teasing, and it’s hard to tell if she’s being funny or serious. She crosses her legs. She’s wearing bright yellow tights under a jean miniskirt and hot pink boots to match. Only Issie could get away with that. She regains her composure and puts up her hands in surrender. “Sorry! Sorry. Total insecure moment. I am unworthy.”
Devyn just smiles and pulls his laptop out of its bag. “So, Iceland. Is there anything you’d like to go over? Any subtle clues? Any idea why the pixie set you up?”
“And are you emotionally okay? About the king sacrificing himself like that? It was so unexpected,” Issie says, reaching out to pat my arm.
“Did you guys know Betty doesn’t want us to look for Nick?” I blurt, not answering any of their questions.
They exchange a look and Devyn nods. “We knew. She’s pretty adamant that none of us try again. She believes Nick is gone for good, Zara.”
“He’s not.”
Issie grabs my hand in hers and squeezes. “We know. Don’t worry. We haven’t given up on him either.”