Captivate

  I make Astley stay outside. He stands on the driveway, wrapping his arms around his chest, which makes his jacket gape at the neck a little bit.

  “This is going to take a few minutes at least,” I tell him. I stare up at Issie’s bedroom. It glows yellow from the light. I can smell Issie and Devyn in there. Issie smells like butterflies and vanilla and yellow daffodils. Devyn smells like feathers and wind and some sort of musk. Devyn. A guy. Will I want to bleed him? No. No. I refuse to let myself even think about it. It’s so disgusting. I refocus. There’s another smell I can’t quite recognize—lavender, I think. I don’t know who that is. The front door waits for me. I don’t want to knock. I don’t want to wake up Issie’s parents.

  “Can I fly?” I ask Astley, who seems to be waiting for me to go before he leaves, which is polite.

  “Probably not. Maybe. Don’t try yet.” He stumbles over his sentences. “Usually, it’s only kings who can fly. It’s part of what makes us different. You can jump, though.”

  “Jump?”

  “Jump. Big jumps. Really long or really high depending on your need. Try that.” He motions for me to jump, using his hands and lifting them into the air.

  I bend my knees and focus on getting some momentum. I leave the air and thud onto the windowsill. My feet turn sideways for balance and I grip the molding. I’m too scared to rejoice in the fact that I’ve just jumped ten feet, but honestly? Wow.

  “Excellent!” he yells. “I’m going to fly off for a bit. There are a lot of pixies in the woods. I might try to convince some to pledge to me.”

  “Good. Great. Uh-huh.” I don’t know what to say so I try, “Be careful.”

  My fingers are turning white from the gripping. There are some paint chips on the window casing. I wonder if they’re lead. Does lead hurt pixies? I turn my attention to inside Issie’s. Her room is entirely green and she has a lot of stuffed bunnies on her bed and lining the floor. That’s enough to make me gasp normally, but that’s not why I’m gasping now. I’m gasping because Issie is in there with Devyn. They are all glammed up, which must mean it’s the night of the dance, and they are holding hands. Holding hands! I want to do a happy dance right there, hanging on to the windowsill, but then I look farther into the room. Cassidy’s in there too. She looks deep in thought and she’s studying a bunch of crystals like they are cheat sheets for the SATs or something. This makes no sense. Why is Cassidy there? When did Issie and Devyn start holding hands? I have got to find out, but first I test myself: Am I craving anything? Do I feel out of control? Wild? Do I have needs? No. No. No and no. I bang on the window with my knee because I’m too afraid to let go.

  Issie turns around and her mouth drops into a big O. She rushes over and her sweet round face shows up at the window. “Zara!”

  She throws the window open, pops off the screen.

  Devyn grabs her shoulder. “Wait. Don’t let her in.”

  “What?”

  Devyn scrunches his nose in a totally uncute way. His eyes cloud over. “She’s turned. I smell it. Plus, look, there’s dust all over the sill.”

  I check it out. I wonder if that’s my dust or if it’s from Astley. Do queens make dust?

  “So?” Issie’s brow furrows.

  “So, she’s pixie. She could hurt you,” he insists, looking at me warily.

  His hand moves to grab Issie’s arm. It’s the arm she used to open the window. Cassidy backs up against the wall. She’s gripping a black crystal really tightly in her hand.

  Issie’s face goes cranky. “Man, you’re a dork sometimes, Devyn. I mean, I love you, but you are a dork and you are way not trusting.”

  “You’re too trusting,” he argues.

  “It’s Zara!” Issie exclaims.

  “She could attack us,” Cassidy says. Her eyes narrow as she looks me over. “She’s pixie. We don’t know—”

  “You told her about pixies!” I sway on the windowsill and try to give them begging eyes. “Guys? Please! I’m going to fall.”

  Devyn reaches under the bed and grabs two knives and a sword. He gives both the knives to Cassidy and Issie. He takes the sword himself. He and Cassidy point the weapons at me. Issie’s points toward the carpet.

  “Okay! Come in.” Issie gestures for me to hop into her bedroom. Devyn starts to protest again and she wipes her free hand on the shiny fabric of her black cut-out dress. “My house. I get to decide. Don’t eat me though, Zara. Promise!”

  “Never.” I slide in through the window. I want to hug Issie but I can tell she’s still nervous by the way she’s hopping up and down so instead I just say, “Thanks.”

  Devyn gets in between us, probably to protect Issie or something. He levels the sword at me. “How are you feeling?”

  “Achy. Strong. Fine.”

  “Do you feel compelled to hurt us?” His hand holding the sword doesn’t shake. His voice is all strength.

  “No.” I want to tell him to calm down but Cassidy is still brooding against the back wall, staring at me like she can actually see my pixie self, and Issie’s getting all talky again.

  “Wow. Is that all it takes? I was hoping I had to mumble some ancient Latin words or recite something in Celtic or maybe, you know, do a special dance or something in order to let a pixie inside. It seems so anticlimactic. What am I babbling about?” She shakes her head, drops her knife on the bed, and lunges forward, hugging me.

  “Issie, don’t!” Devyn yells.

  “Devy, shut up.” She is thin boned and fragile, but hugging her is still warm-good. It feels like home. She smiles super big when she lets go. “I am so glad you’re back!”

  “I’m glad to be back,” I tell her and then I ask, “So you trust me still?”

  “Of course!” Issie exclaims while Devyn says flatly, “No.”

  Cassidy has moved closer, her knife ready. “Issie, you should grab your knife again.”

  “Why? She’s not going to hurt me,” Issie answers. “It’s Zara.”

  “Pixie Zara,” Devyn corrects. “Not our Zara.”

  Not their Zara. I close my eyes for a second, trying to not let my frustration overwhelm me. Emotions are so much stronger now they are almost solid. I open my eyes and pull myself together enough to say, “I don’t know what to do to convince you that I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Cassidy steps forward and slips in between Devyn and Issie until she gets to me. She’s wearing a long beaded skirt and a couple of thin spaghetti-strap tops layered in black and purple. Her bracelets jangle on her wrist and she lifts up her hand toward my face.

  Devyn starts to grab at her arm. “Be careful—”

  She waves him off. “I’ll be able to tell.”

  I have no idea what’s she’s going to do or even why she’s doing it but I choose to stand perfectly still and let whatever happens happen. Her eyes are brown and deep. They remind me of Nick’s and that’s reassuring somehow. She reaches up and gives Issie her knife. Both her hands and her fingertips touch my forehead. For a second nothing happens and then I feel like I’ve stepped into a spa. The world is humid-warm and my blood pressure drops about forty points.

  She smiles. “No evil intentions. Her soul is pure.”

  She drops her fingers and smiles triumphantly while I stutter, “W-w-what? How would you know?”

  Issie lifts her eyebrows. “Turns out Cassidy is part elf. Her great-great-grandfather was fae. It makes her be able to do certain things.”

  “Elf? Seriously?” I shake my head and then I start laughing because it’s just so wild and cool and not what I was expecting at all.

  “Not that much,” Cassidy explains, “but enough that I can read people, tell if they are good or not, do a little magic to see what people are doing, see the future sometimes.”

  “That’s why she was itching all the time. Elves have reactions to synthetic fibers in human clothes. It’s also why she’s hanging around Devyn all the time,” Issie explains, flopping on her bed. She motions for me to join her and I do. “She co
uld sense that he and Nick were different too.”

  “I wanted to figure it out,” Cassidy explains. She goes back and sits on the floor, surrounded by stuffed bunnies and crystals.

  “But I thought . . .” I don’t finish my sentence because it’s too embarrassing.

  Issie finishes it for me, “That she liked Devyn. Yeah. That’s what I thought too, obviously, and I thought Devyn liked her, but that’s not what was going on at all.”

  “Oh,” I say because I can’t think of anything else to say. I want to ask about Devyn and Issie holding hands. I want to ask about it so badly but I don’t know how.

  “Devyn and I are a couple now,” Issie blurts out.

  Devyn nods. He’s still got a death clutch on the sword, but at least it’s not pointing at me.

  “Really? That. Is. So. Cool!” I squee and launch toward Is. We hug hard and she laughs. I turn to Devyn. “It’s about time.”

  “I know,” Devyn groans and flops himself into Issie’s green beanbag chair. “I was just so afraid to ruin our friendship, and I was worried about the were/human interaction, and then when we lost Nick—”

  Sorrow crashes back into my chest, hard and fast. Something goes ping in my heart.

  “He realized that life is too short and too precious, yada, yada, yada,” Cassidy says. “That’s not important. What’s important is our next step and catching up. Right?”

  I almost smile. I like Cassidy.

  “Everything has gone all to hell,” Devyn says. His hand scruffs up the top of his hair. There’s actually product in it. He went all out for Issie.

  “It’s nice that you aren’t zombie/uncommunicative Zara now. It’s weird that being a pixie is an improvement, but I guess it’s because you’re hoping you can get Nick back and . . . Sorry!” Issie takes a big breath. “We’ve all been a little stressed since you disappeared.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “me too.”

  Then they catch me up. They tell me that the pixies have been wild. There are two eighth graders missing. The pixies have surrounded Betty’s house pretty much all the time. She has to make up excuses and carpool with a cop in order to come and go.

  “I’m worried this was all a trick, Zara.” Devyn leans forward on the beanbag. “I mean, there may be good pixies, Zara, but we don’t know for sure. We don’t know if we can trust them. We don’t know anything. Honestly, I’m still having a difficult time trusting you and your transition despite Cassidy’s reassurance. Our lack of knowledge is ridiculous. You’d think that, being weres, we’d have a clue, but we don’t. We’re finding new things out all the time.”

  “Like?” I prod.

  “Like . . .” He stops for a second, thinking. “Like that Cassidy is part elf.”

  I grab one of Issie’s pillows and hug it to my chest. It smells so human, so Issie. For a second I just want to wait here forever and let whatever happens happen, you know? But that wouldn’t bring Nick back. That would just be wasting all this pixie pain, and I so want it to mean something.

  Issie and Devyn have been doing this little telepathic/psychic message eye-contact thing and Devyn finally loses his aggressive posturing and returns to his normal dorky self.

  “So I was doing some research—,” he starts.

  Issie interrupts him, all proud. “He found a professor who specializes in Norse mythology, which is just so brilliant cool. He found his number and Skyped him in Sweden and everything.”

  “Cool.” I nod. I’m impatient to hear more.

  He continues, “And I was asking him all these vague questions until he finally just blurts out, ‘Are you seeing pixies? Or shifters?’ And I was really hesitant about it, but I told him the truth.”

  “And he didn’t think Devyn was nuts!” Issie covers her mouth with her hand. “Oops. Interrupting. Sorry.”

  “Well, from what I gathered, the professor is not fae, but he believes, which is rare,” Devyn starts.

  Is clears her throat.

  “With our lovely Is as the exception,” he adds and pets her head. She sort of wiggles. “Anyway, he referenced this ancient book, The Vercelli Homilies, which talks about Satan being the mouth of this goliath dragon reaching up to swallow the world. It was first referenced in 800 BC as the Crack of Doom. Fenrir was this ancient wolf monster who will be killed by Vidar. That’s the myth that happened first. The Christians adopted the image.”

  “I have no clue what you’re talking about,” I tell him.

  “It’s the myth. It’s the myth behind what’s happening now. You know, with the Valhalla stuff. The myth says there will be a massive battle. Fenrir will try to swallow the world.” Devyn looks to Is for help.

  “It’s also in Buffy!” Issie pipes up. “The high school was right on a hell mouth and every season Buffy had to stop the apocalypse and stuff so Sunnydale didn’t get all sucked in with the rest of the earth following.”

  “What?” I don’t get it.

  “Why don’t you watch Buffy?” Issie pouts. “I have all of them downloaded. I’m always begging you. You’d totally get this if you did.”

  “I don’t—I—um, because I was always making out with Nick?” I say.

  She presses her lips together, smiling, and then says, “Good answer.”

  Cassidy agrees but Devyn gets impatient. “But we don’t think that’s exactly what’s happening here.”

  “No giant wolves waiting under the high school to swallow us up?” I snark.

  Issie elbows Devyn. “Look! Even turning pixie has not made our Zara into a true believer. Her level of skepticism continues. Yay!”

  I point at her. “No teasing. It just sounds ridiculous.”

  “It is ridiculous. The fact that I’m an eagle is ridiculous, but it is, Zara. It just is.” Devyn runs his hands through his hair, frustrated. “Anyway, all of this is in the Poetic Edda. You can look it up. However, it might just be a massive metaphor for evil taking over the world and not a literal mouth of a wolf that will eat us all. I know this is hard for you. It’s hard for all of us without Nick. And we thought we lost you too.”

  His voice breaks. Issie and I both jump up and hug him. Cassidy rubs his back. We all stand there for a second.

  He breaks away first and continues. “This relates to us because Nick was taken to Valhalla to be a warrior for when Ragnarok happens.”

  “That’s the big end of the world fight where everything is destroyed, including heaven and hell,” Cassidy interrupts, pulling her sweater around her.

  “Astley told me this. I got it.” I pull away from Issie and go to the window and look outside. The world is cold and quiet. I can’t see Astley. I can’t see the other pixies hiding in the woods waiting to pounce since it’s so dark, but I can smell them. “And this big fight—you think it’s going to happen soon?”

  Devyn blows hair off his forehead. “I hope not.”

  “You’ve always got to root against the apocalypse,” Issie says. “You know?”

  “I know.” I sigh. “So all we have to do is get Nick and then, you know, save the world.”

  Even though Cassidy is there I blurt it all out: I tell them about Astley, and how mad I am that I don’t even know if Nick is alive; how freaky it was turning pixie; how I was so afraid I’d hurt them but how it’s cool being so strong, and not being quite so cold. I don’t tell them all the crazy mixed-up feelings I have about kissing Astley; about how I miss Nick.

  “We can find out if he’s alive, I think,” Cassidy says when I’m done.

  “Cassidy did that for us before, with you,” Devyn explains. He looks at her like a proud dad or something. “She showed us you in the hotel room—”

  “You were screaming,” Issie says, “and shaking. It was scary because you were so pixie, you know? No offense.”

  “None taken,” I say, but I’m not even really paying attention. I’m totally focused on Cassidy. “Can you do this?”

  She nods and starts fiddling with her crystals, running a small one back and forth between her finge
rs. “I can try. You guys talk. I need a minute to prepare.”

  “I hate when she does this, actually,” Issie says, and her skin pales like she’s going to pass out or something. She starts hard hugging one of her stuffed bunnies, a Peter Rabbit in a blue coat. “The pixies have been tracking us. There are probably some in the woods right now. Every time we go out, we have to be careful. One grabbed Mrs. Nix.”

  “She got away,” Devyn says.

  “It’s been horrible,” Issie continues, “these last couple of days and we were so worried about you. Worried that you might have died—that you might have—”

  “Gone all evil?” I suggest.

  She nods. “Yeah.”

  I swallow hard. The silence in the room is unbearable. I think about the ceremony I just went through. I think about the plan, what needs to happen next. I clear my throat. My breath scissors through my chest. I press my hand into my stomach and accept what I’ve done. I’ve done it for a reason. I’ve abandoned my former self to save Nick, and that’s worth it. It’s worth it. No regrets. Issie hiccups the way she does when she’s trying not to cry.

  “So,” I say, trying to get them to move on, to get rid of the funeral feeling, “the other anagram . . . did you figure it out?”

  “No.”

  “Sore spot for Mr. Genius.”

  Devyn comes to where I’m sitting on the bed and grabs my hand. “You think he’s dead, don’t you? You think you’ve been tricked.”

  It’s all I can do to nod my head a little up and down. “Yes.” My voice is tiny again, just a frantic, desperate whisper. “And hoping that—no, believing that—he’s alive is the only thing holding me together, you know? Because I just don’t want to—I just can’t imagine existing without him. I know that I can exist without him, but it would be so hard.”

  I lean into Issie. She wraps her arms around my shoulders and pats my head.

  “I’m ready,” Cassidy says.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t—,” Devyn starts.

  “We have to,” I interrupt, sitting up straight again but still holding on to his hand.

  Cassidy has cleaned out a corner of the bedroom floor so there are no bunnies or clothes. She’s placed crystals in a circle around her and it looks like she’s put some water into a salad bowl in front of her. She sprinkles water around the circle and then she reaches out her long arms and closes her eyes, mumbling something. The air suddenly feels different, charged, the way it is before a thunderstorm. Her hair begins to move around her face like there’s a wind there, centered just on her.