I just stare at her.
“Psych 101,” she says. “You should have taken it. It’s such an easy A.”
She jostles me around, and Dev comes out too and explains, “Betty had a call.”
It’s the first time I’ve noticed that the ambulance is missing.
“Oh,” I manage. “Okay.”
Issie pivots me toward the car. “We’re going to go to your house. No fussing. We still love you. Right, Nick?”
Nick reaches out to put his arm around me again and stops. His voice is like a big piece of hurt. “Zara?”
I swallow.
His nostrils twitch. Dev gets closer. “Crap.”
“What? What is it?” Issie asks.
“She smells,” Nick says. He’s frozen, not sure whether to come closer or back away.
Issie still doesn’t get it.
“Duh. We all smell. It’s called pheromones or perfume.” She sniffs at my hair. “Zara smells exactly like the Body Shop Honey Almond Conditioner with a little mango body butter lotion mixed in. Am I right?”
I barely manage to nod.
“Issie, she smells like a pixie,” Dev explains.
“Oh!” Issie says. She clutches me even closer, though, which is why I love Issie. “Oh. Does that mean she’s turning?”
Nick doesn’t even look at her. Those brown eyes of his just stare into me. “She smells like the guy in the woods.”
“Zara! What is wrong with you?” Devyn asks. “Are you hanging out with pixies?”
His words hit me in the gut like bullets, like a torturer’s fist. But he’s not a torturer. He’s just Dev, and I am the one who is holding back information. It’s me. Not him.
“No,” I say, “and how come you never smelled Ian or Megan? They were pixies.”
Nick glares at me.
“What? I’m just wondering.”
“Because I didn’t know what to smell for then,” Nick explains. He pulls in a breath. It’s obvious he’s trying to calm himself down. “Now I know. It smells like Dove soap.”
“The problem,” Devyn says, “is that a lot of non-pixies use Dove soap. The smell isn’t a sure bet. It’s ridiculous, actually. Dove soap . . .”
I gently extract myself from Issie and open the passenger-side doors of the car. “Why don’t we get out of the cold and then I’ll tell you what happened, okay?”
Dev’s and Nick’s eyes meet. I wish I knew what they were thinking, but finally Nick nods and at least his hand trusts me enough to brush the hair out of my face. “Okay.”
Nick speeds so fast that the trees just blur by us and I tell them what happened with me and Astley.
“Astley? That means ‘star,’ ” Devyn announces from the front seat.
“How do you know that?” Issie leans forward, then thinks better of it and comes back.
“He’s a genius. Devyn, my man, you are a genius,” Nick says. He reaches over and ruffles Dev’s hair. It is the first hint that Nick might not explode.
“I’m not a genius. I just retain things, mostly useless things,” Dev says, but he’s smiling and not bothering to fix his hair.
“So, what do you think this all means?” Nick asks as he yanks the car around a hairpin corner. Is and I sway in the backseat.
“Me? I don’t know,” Dev says.
“Well, he’s the king Zara’s father talked about,” Issie says, trying not to slam into me by hanging on to the seat back. “Gold dust. Spidery feelings . . .”
“What I’m wondering is why was he so insistent that he wasn’t like Zara’s father?” Devyn asks. His words come out slowly. “You know? Why he’s so . . . Does it seem to you like he was trying to say something but not saying it? Did you tell us everything, Zara?”
He turns so our eyes meet. I am annoyed. “Of course I told you everything.”
“Okay, okay! But you and Is weren’t exactly forthcoming about the little excursion with your dad,” he replies somewhat snidely. Issie seems to fold into herself.
Nick snorts. “Forthcoming?”
“Shut up.” Dev punches Nick in the arm. “I aced my Critical Reading SATs. It is nothing to feel humiliated about.”
“Be proud, Linguistic Acuity Man,” Is fake cheers. Her words fall into emptiness.
“Linguistic Acuity Man?” I echo, trying to make it better.
“Oh, Is . . .” Devyn turns to look at her.
“It can be your superhero name,” I say.
We drive along in awkward silence. The tension from Issie is pretty thick. I know it’s hard for her to be in the car with Devyn because she wants him to invite her to the dance and she feels weird about the whole Cassidy situation. We drive past trees and logging trucks. We drive up hills and around curves and then Nick slams on the brakes. My head pounds into the head rest.
“What is it?” Issie yells.
“Holy—” Nick jumps out of the car. He’s looking up at the sky.
We bail out of the car too. I crane my head up. There is something funny flying up high. It looks like two figures pushed together, with giant wings.
“It’s the Valkyrie,” I whisper. “She’s got someone.”
We stand there staring for a second and then I bark out, “Devyn? Can you change?”
He nods. “I think so.”
“Well, try. Follow her. See where she goes,” I order.
Devyn ducks down low. Issie comes to my side of the car and Devyn starts throwing his clothes over it. It doesn’t take long and he’s a bird. He takes off, super large eagle wings flapping hard and strong into the cold white sky. The clouds are high and stormy looking.
“Stay safe!” Issie yells. “Do not get hurt, Linguistic Acuity Man!”
He just soars up and away. Issie leans against me and I hustle her into the car. Nick grabs Devyn’s clothes and comes inside too. We blast the heater and wait. None of us talk about anything; not about pixies or dances, not about love or science tests or blue skin.
Luckily, it’s not long before Devyn’s back. He turns human by the side of the car, gets dressed, and shudders from the cold. Putting his hands in front of the heat duct, he tells us what he saw: a woman with swan wings. She held a female pixie in her arms.
“I lost her. She went into the clouds and then she was just gone.” He runs a shaking hand over his head. “I can’t believe I lost her.”
Devyn and Nick theorize that it’s a good thing the Valkyrie is here because if she’s taking pixies, then there are fewer pixies for us to deal with. They think she might be why we haven’t seen so many in the last week. But me? I’ve seen her up close, and I am not so sure.
Pixie Tip
Pixies are stronger at night. Stay inside. Nighttime is not the right time for pixie hunting.
“Easily the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Issie says.
We’re back at my house and I am showing them the book I found upstairs and what my dad wrote in it.
“Leave Risk Sixty? Baa Ebbed Fly Tight Vigor Trolls? Those aren’t the best clues,” Nick says playfully. “Sorry, baby.”
I poke him right above his belt loop and hand the book to Devyn. “I think they are anagrams.”
Devyn takes it. “You’re probably right. Let me think. The only one I can get off the top of my head is A Evil Sexy Skirt, which isn’t grammatically correct. It should be: An Evil Sexy Skirt.”
“There’s an anagram server on the Net,” Issie says, opening up Betty’s laptop. “Let’s see what we get.”
She gets to the site and types in: “Leave Risk Sixty.” There are 14,683 results. We all crowd around the laptop as she starts reading them aloud. “Relatives Xi Sky. Relative Xis Sky. Relative Six Sky. Relaxes Skit Ivy. Relaxes Kits Ivy. Leaver Ski Sixty. Reveal Ski Sixty . . .”
“This isn’t working,” Nick growls. He starts to back away, but I touch him on the arm and he breathes out slowly. It’s almost like gentling a horse.
Devyn agrees. “There are too many results. And it doesn’t show them all, only the first hund
red. There’s no way to access the others.”
“We’re not giving up. It might not have anything to do with anything, but it could be important,” I say. “Leave Risk Sixty. That has all the letters of Valkyrie in it, doesn’t it? Issie, open up a blank document.”
She does. I make her write it:
Leave Risk Sixty
Then we cross off the letters in “Valkyrie.”
Leave Risk Sixty.
“So that leaves—oh, exist,” Devyn says. His lips do this weird sort of half raspberry noise. “ ‘Valkyries exist.’ That’s not that helpful.”
“Crud.” My hope seems to fizzle out.
Nick squeezes my hand. “No. There’s still the other one. Don’t give up.”
We don’t give up, but we don’t get anywhere either. Eventually Devyn goes home to research and give his parents my blood. Nick goes out patrolling with Is for backup. Instead of curling up with a mirror and turning all fetal, I write letters to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole, e-mail the information forward, wish I could do more for human rights. In the back of my head are these worries thundering about, static, insistent: what the blood test will mean, why the pixie guy in the woods was nice to me, what Nick will do if I am pixie now because, let’s face it, weres are pretty bigoted against pixies, and seeing what I’ve seen, I can’t really blame them.
“Do not think,” I order myself. “You have thought this over and over again. It is self-indulgent. Just research.”
So this is what I’m doing, scrunched up with Gram’s laptop googling “how not to turn pixie,” when my grandmother struts through the door, all in uniform, all tall and brave and fearless—all unlike me.
“Hey,” she says, kicking the door shut behind her. “You still moody, still . . . what’s the word? Emo?”
“Emo is a derogatory word.” I close the laptop, running my hand across the cold, blank surface.
She laughs. “Why? Because it’s short for emotional? There’s nothing wrong with being emotional. There’s a lot of good emotions out there, you know.”
The phone rings. Gram grabs it. “Hello?”
I wait. Images of Astley flash into my head. I force them out by thinking of Charleston, dolphins breaking the surface of the water, warm air, flowers.
“No. I just got home, Josie. What’s up?” Gram asks.
I plug in the power cord to recharge the laptop and then find my grandmother, who has wandered into the kitchen, still talking on the phone.
“I’m going to take a shower,” I whisper. “I’ve got a date tonight with a pixie-hating werewolf. I have to smell human.”
She makes a fake, exaggerated sniff and then an overacting mimic of grossness.
“Nice,” I bounce back. “You’re such a nice grandmother.”
She waves me upstairs. Dismissed.
My cell phone rings when I’m in the shower and since I’m a total slave to technology, I answer it.
“Zare?”
“Hey, Nick.”
“What are you doing?”
My good arm drips water onto the little pink rug that’s right in front of the toilet. It deepens the color. “Um . . .”
“Are you taking a shower?”
“Yeah.”
He doesn’t say anything. I don’t say anything. His breath is so loud that I can hear it over the water. I’m naked. He knows I’m naked. This is freaking me out. I eye the towels and finally say, “I’m not blue anymore.”
“Is that because you’re red?”
“Huh? How do you know I’m red?”
“Because you’re blushing.” He laughs.
The water splashes hot against my ankle, which is still under the stream of it. He doesn’t say anything. I don’t say anything. I am wasting water. I don’t care. Bad Zara. Bad pseudo-environmentalist, pseudo-human Zara.
“You aren’t actually standing in the shower with the cell phone, are you, because that’s dangerous.” He coughs.
I press my lips together for a second and ruin the mood. “You don’t trust me at all, do you?”
“I do,” he answers too quickly.
“Yep. Uh-huh. Right.”
Even though the shower’s making so much noise I can still hear his breath rush out, exasperated.
The drain sucks the water down.
“You know,” he says. “I really, awesomely, amazingly love you.”
“You say the perfect boyfriend things.” I step out of the shower, grab a towel.
He laughs. “I say the perfect boyfriend things, but what about what I do? I mean, you are always complaining about the whole macho alpha dog thing.”
“Well, yeah, there is that and your whole secret love of Snausages.”
“You promised to never mention that!” he says all mock upset.
“No, I promised to never mention the whole fire hydrant thing.”
“Zara!” He cracks up.
“Or the barking at the vacuum cleaner.”
“Do not go there,” he warns, but he’s still laughing hard.
“Despite your vile nature we still have a date tonight. And you are also still going to that dance with me.”
I imagine him clutching his warm stomach as he laughs. I close my eyes. “You think you can get Dev to ask Issie, too?”
“I’ll try.”
“Cool.”
Nick picks me up later. He doesn’t even knock on the door, just comes right in like he lives here or something, which he practically does.
“I’m kidnapping your granddaughter,” he shouts to Betty. She’s in the kitchen cleaning up dinner dishes. I am off dishwashing duties because of the whole injured arm thing. Score!
“Good. Keep her awhile. She’s on my computer so damn much her fingers are curling into a perpetual typing shape.” She steps into the living room, smiles, wipes her hands on a bright yellow dish towel. “You two have fun. Don’t be back too late.”
I rush across the room and kiss her cheek. She pats mine and says, “You are a sweetie.”
Nick runs across the living room and does the same thing, giving her an overly exaggerated smack. Then he grabs her up in this big wolf hug and twirls her around.
“And you are just fresh,” she laughs, swatting him with the dish towel. “Now scoot.”
We hop in Nick’s MINI Cooper, which smells faintly like dog. I try to pull on my buckle and my hand is so cold that I can’t quite get it locked. Plus, the whole hurt wrist thing makes it awkward. Nick reaches over and does it for me. His fingers touch my fingers. All of my internal organs swirl and melt and tingle. His lips are beautiful. I am staring . . . I am staring at his lips. I should kiss him. I lean up and in. His lips open a little bit. The whole world is gone. It’s just his mouth and my mouth. His hand goes to the small of my back. It’s strong there, solid. I move my body toward him.
“Where are your mittens?” he murmurs. His breath hits my lips.
I murmur back, “Forgot them.”
“You want me to go get them?”
I shake my head but he leaps out of the MINI anyway. “One sec.”
“Nick!”
“No frostbitten fingers for my girlfriend.”
He grins and runs to the house, jumps up the stairs, and disappears. I settle in, rest my back against the cold upholstery of the Cooper and close my eyes for a second. It’s been a hard couple of weeks. I kidnapped my dad; I accidentally saved a pixie; my car blew up; my skin changed color; not to mention that I had a Spanish test and an art project due and I have nothing to wear to the dance except T-shirts and it’s semiformal. I blow on my hands and shudder because . . . the feeling? The spider crawling feeling? I’ve got it again. It’s like hundreds of arachnids have gone creepy-crawly all over me.
Something screams. It’s not quite animal, not quite human. It is definitely not a good noise. It is a pain noise. It’s not terribly close. I grab the handle of the door, clutch the cold metal in my fingers, listen . . . Nothing.
“Astley?” I whisper into the dark.
There’s no answer. The door to the house opens and Nick barrels back to the MINI. I expect things to jump out of the dark and bite him. I expect fear and blood and fight.
Nothing happens.
He slams shut the door, smiles, and hands me my baby blue fluffy mittens, my favorites. “There. All better.”
He leans over and kisses my nose, presses the start button, and cranks up the heater. The engine’s not warmed up enough yet so it’s really just blowing out medium-cold air. It’s just recycled cold air wandering back and forth from engine to cab to us to outside, wandering . . .
“Zara? You okay?” he asks.
I push my hands into my mittens, feel the warmth, try to make myself into somebody normal, not some half-breed thing. “Yeah.”
He cocks his head a little bit, looks at me. “You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“No spidery feelings?”
“A little one maybe.” I grab his hand in my mittened one. “I thought I heard a scream.”
He bolts up and out of the car again. This time I scurry out after him. He cocks his head, listening.
“I don’t hear anything,” he says finally.
The woods are so dark. A fog creeps in, hiding everything in mist, hiding secrets. I tug on his arm. “I probably imagined it. Let’s get in the car.”
We climb back in and we both take a breath. Nick leans over again and whispers into my ear. “I love you.”
I say it back and it is the biggest truth I know. “I love you, too.”
He smiles super broad. “Really?”
“Really.”
Pixie Tip
Pixies do not need an invitation to show up in public places like bowling alleys or cafeterias. Being in public doesn’t make you safe.
We hold hands the entire car ride and for a tiny bit I don’t think about being blue or pixies or women flying with people into the sky. I just think of my hand touching his hand. I think about how saying that you love someone can make your heart feel like some sort of brownie sundae, warm, gooey, sweet, and good. He takes me up the hill to Eastward Lanes and parks.
“A bowling alley?” I say.
He nods.
“You’re taking me bowling?”