The wind blows hard and awful. Seconds stretch into two or three minutes. I have to do something intelligent, something that doesn’t involve just staring at a guy who is passed out on the snow. He’s youngish, probably just a couple years older than me—if that’s how pixies age. I have no idea. He’s not wearing a coat, just a dark Irish sweater and jeans. He must be freezing.
I look up into the white sky searching for the woman. Snowflakes drop into my eyes, instantly melting. She’s vanished. Blinking the water away, I check the guy for major wounds, big bleeding ones. I find a whopper: a massive bite mark on his stomach. The flesh is jagged and torn. It oozes blood that’s a deep bluish red, maybe because it’s mixed with the dark fibers of his sweater, or maybe that’s how pixies bleed or something. I don’t know.
Another second flips by and his eyes start to flicker open.
There’s nothing to wrap the wound with except my outer coat so I whip it off and wrap it around his stomach. I tie the arms and try to apply pressure. The smell of blood is coppery and metallic.
Flipping open my phone, I press my grandmother’s cell number. She’s good with the massive-wound thing. She’s not just an Emergency Medical Technician, she’s a weretiger. Weird, I know. The phone rings once. His hand clamps over mine and the phone disconnects.
“What are you doing?” I say, anger rippling through me. “I’m calling for help.”
“No. No help.” His lips are parched. “Have to hide. Until I heal.”
“You’re speaking in sentence fragments,” I explain, “and that means you are not in a position to make this decision.”
He shakes his head. “Please. No one else can know I am here. Kill me—while I’m weak.”
The phone starts ringing. It’s Gram calling back. I start to run my hand in my hair but forget it’s all bloody. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Please.”
“I can’t let you die.”
He coughs out a bitter laugh. “If I was about to die Thruth would have taken me.”
“Thruth?”
“The Valkyrie.”
My phone stops ringing.
“Oh. Yeah.” I swallow hard. “I have no idea what a Valkyrie is.”
He raises one eyebrow and sniffs. “You are pixie, are you not?”
“No . . .,” I start to say, pressing my hand against his wound. He moans, but still manages to give me a look. “Okay. I am half pixie. Does that hurt?”
“Some.” He cringes more like it’s a lot. “You are half pixie. It is true—”
He loses his sentence to a moan and I suddenly feel really badly for him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I’m snapping. I don’t want to be mean. I’m not a mean person. But we need to get you out of here. You’re hurt. I need to get you fixed up. I need to bring you to the hospital or something.”
He groans. “Not the hospital. My room.”
“You should go to a hospital,” I insist.
“They cannot treat me.” He pulls himself into a standing position. Snow covers his dark jeans. “I need you for balance. Is that all right?”
“It’s okay,” I say as he drapes his arm over my shoulder. I get my arm around his waist. He is much lighter than Nick, which is a very good thing. We start a sort of quasi shuffle through the woods. He coughs like a seal and stumbles a bit. My heart kind of breaks for him. “Don’t worry. My car’s not too far.”
He nods and murmurs something. Beads of sweat drip down his forehead. The wind picks up a little bit. The snow keeps trundling down, covering us, sticking in our hair, erasing our footprints. It’s a long haul, but I get him to the parking lot, which, thankfully, is nearly empty. He seems to be regaining a bit of strength.
“I have to take you to a hospital,” I insist.
“It will kill me.”
I lurch backward. “I know you aren’t human. Are you a normal one, though, or a king?”
He shakes his head. “No more questions, please.”
“Are you a king?” I ask again.
“I said—”
“I know what you said, but that doesn’t mean I have to do what you say.” I swallow hard. “We have a place to put pixies.”
His eyes whip up and meet mine. “The rumor is true?”
“What rumor?”
“Someone has been trapping us.”
I don’t answer. Cold fills my nose, crystallizing it. I hit the key fob and unlock my Subaru. It beeps.
“That is barbaric,” he snarls.
I don’t completely disagree. We hobble closer to my car, Yoko, which is parked next to a big black truck, the standard motor vehicle of Bedford High School’s male population. I try to explain. “They were killing people. They were torturing guys.”
“Because their king was weak.” He shakes his head and coughs. “If I were not injured I would force you to bring me to them now.”
I state the obvious. “Well, you are injured.”
His eyebrows lower and his pupils focus on me for a second. Then he scans my face. “Your skin is tinting blue.”
“It’s cold,” I sputter.
He smirks and I resist the urge to scream. I have no idea what to do with him now. I mean, he’s hurt, but he’s a pixie. He’s a hurt pixie, possibly a king. This is so not good. This is beyond bad, really. I blurt out, “I’m going to take you there to the house.”
“You must not.” His voices goes panicky and high. His face contorts in pain and he steadies himself. His hand clutches my wrist. “I cannot go there in this state.”
I twist my wrist away and open the passenger side door of my car. “I can’t let you kill people.”
He grabs my arm, higher this time. “I do not kill people. Just enemies. I am under control. I swear it. Not all pixies—not all of us—are like the ones here. You cannot judge all of us by your experience with a few. It is unfair.”
That hits home. Something inside me weirds up again. The world dizzies out. I must be getting the flu. I force myself to focus. “Who bit you?”
“What?” His eyes scan me, searching.
“Who. Bit. You?”
His mouth hardens. “A wolf.”
I was right but the rightness of my assumption does not make me feel any less sick. The pixie guy watches my face looking for a reaction. I try really hard to make my face calm. “A wolf, huh?”
“You know him.” It is a statement, not a question. His grip on my arm tightens and it’s pretty strong even though he’s wounded.
“Yeah, right. I know a wolf. We hang and get pizza and I brush out his fur. Of course I don’t know a wolf,” I snark. “Get in the car.”
He cringes when he gets in the passenger seat. I’m not sure if it’s because it hurts or because the car is made out of steel and iron. Pixies are no good with steel and iron. For a second I ponder the point of the seat belt. It would go right over his wound. I bypass the idea and start to shut the door. “Watch your feet.”
He does.
After I shut his door, I head around to the other side of Yoko and check my watch. I should be able to get him to the pixie house and be back before Issie gets done with French, but something niggles at me. I don’t know if he deserves to be there. I don’t know if he’s ever done anything wrong. What’s his crime, really? All I know is that he was born a pixie. Am I condemning an entire race just because of what happened here? Are they really not all super creepy and insane bad guys?
I open my door.
Nick would not have any doubts, obviously. There wouldn’t be a wound across this guy’s stomach if he had any doubts. Nick’s a little more black-and-white when he looks at stuff like good and evil. Me? I’m into the gray areas. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just different.
I sit down and buckle myself in. I glance over at the pixie guy. He’s leaning back in the seat. His mouth’s a little open. His eyes are closed. He must be in so much pain.
“I’m sorry you’re hurt,” I start to say. I must be getting dehydrated, because I’m dizzy.
I put the key in the ignition to start Yoko up, turning and looking over my right shoulder so I can back out of the spot. “I mean, it’s not cool that you’re hurt, especially if you really are—”
Something flashes in the corner of my eye and a hand locks on my shoulder. The world suddenly goes dark.
Pixie Tip
Despite folklore, pixies do not prefer to be naked. Fortunately they wear clothes. This prevents a lot of indecent exposure charges and frostbite.
When I wake up I’m alone in the car and Issie is banging on the window. The hair that’s not tucked underneath her rainbow-striped hat flies all around in the wind.
“Zara!” Is yells. Her little fist thumps hard against the glass. “Zara! Unlock the door!”
I unlock the door.
“Devyn! Hurry up!” Is yanks the door open and leans in. She’s almost crawling on top of me. “Oh my gosh, are you okay? Are you okay? I thought you were dead!”
“I’m not dead,” I manage to say, wiping a hand across my eyes. “I feel dead though. Groggy.”
“This is not a good place to sleep! Oh my gosh, I totally don’t want to disempower you or your choices but this is dangerous, Zara. Your car is halfway out of the space, but the engine is off,” Is rushes out. Her eyes are frantic bunny big.
“He must have shut the engine off,” I say, still trying to get a grip on what’s happened.
“Your skin looks funny. Bluish almost. Wait. He? Who is he? Nick?” She gets close to my nose. Cold air rushes in the open door as she stares into my eyes.
I’ve been slumped across the front seat and there’s an embarrassing drool spot on the dark gray upholstery. I pull myself up into a sitting position. “Oh, that damn pixie guy.”
Is gasps. “What did you say?”
He must have knocked me out somehow. I don’t know how. I touch my shoulder, but there’s nothing there. No pain spots. No blood. There’s a smear of blood on the passenger door handle, but that’s it. That’s the only sign someone was here.
Devyn appears with Cassidy standing behind him. Her mittened hand rests on his wheelchair like she owns it. His face staggers into worry. “Zara? What’s happened?”
I give him big eyes and glance at Cassidy’s concerned face. Her braids swing in the wind. “Nothing. I—I just fell asleep, and, uh—”
“She hit the parking brake. The car rolled.” Issie covers for me.
Cassidy’s eyes narrow. She’s good-looking and dark. She’s a lot taller than Is, a lot more glamorous too, and, it seems, a lot more savvy. “We aren’t on an incline.”
“Oh, you know gravity!” Issie blunders. “It’s always pulling on you, right?”
She elbows Devyn in the shoulder so hard that his wheelchair skitters to the side. Cassidy catches it. He makes eye contact with her and says, “Thanks.”
Things seem to go all slow-motion then and I don’t know if it’s because I’m a little woozy or if it’s because of Issie. She gazes at Devyn. Devyn’s still looking at Cassidy. Cassidy’s smiling down at him adoringly. Crap.
“Are you sure nothing happened to you, Zara?” Devyn asks, once he’s managed to look back at us. It’s obvious that each of his words carries a double meaning. There’s no way I can tell him the truth, though, not with Cassidy right here.
So I use the code we’ve developed. “I’ve been tinked.”
“What’s tinked?” Cassidy asks. She tugs at the end of her coat sleeve.
For a second none of us say anything. “Tinked” is the code word for “Tinker Bell,” which is the code name for “surprise pixie interaction.”
Devyn lies authoritatively with that professorial voice of his. “Tired. Fried. Frazzled. A state of extreme exhaustion.”
Cassidy smiles at him. “Oh. I am always tinked after Mr. Burns’s tests. You too, Zara? That man is evil. I thought bio was supposed to be fun.”
I nod a little too aggressively, because the world gets woozy again. Issie leans forward. “You almost look blue, Zara. You’re more pale than normal.”
“Yeah,” I manage to say, “that test killed me.”
For a second everyone is silent and awkward. Cassidy takes charge, scratches at her jeans. Then she says, “Well, Devyn, you ready to go?”
“I’m—uh—” He fidgets with the folder in his lap. It’s the book we’re working on. “Yeah. Cassidy’s driving me home.”
“Sheesh, dude. You make it sound like an apology.” Cassidy stretches her long arms above her head. She fixes her long purple scarf and gives Issie a weird, probing look. Then she itches at the skin the scarf just touched and jokes, “Is driving home with me so awful?”
“No,” he bumbles. “I didn’t mean—I didn’t mean that.”
He is not looking at Issie. Her face is one ball of crushed. For a second I forget about the pixie guy. Issie’s hurt wipes out everything else.
“Call me later, Zara,” he yells as he and Cassidy head toward her car.
Issie slams into the passenger seat of my car. “Are you okay to drive?”
“Yep.”
“Then drive,” she orders. “As fast as legally possible so we can get away from here.”
I turn Yoko on, steer back into the travel lane of the parking lot, and drive over something that crinkle crushes with a horrible noise as the tire moves over it. I poke open the door and peek. It’s an abandoned Coke can, flattened now. I shut the door and as soon as the car is positioned forward I reach over and brush the hair out of Issie’s face.
“Is, you want to . . . ?” I start.
“No. We are not going to talk about it. My lack of a love—whatever—is not important. What’s important is that you were passed out in the car. So talk. Talk now.” She pulls her arms in front of her chest.
“But—”
“Seriously, Zara, just tell me what happened.”
I do.
Right after I’ve dropped Issie off Devyn calls, demanding to know what’s going on.
“It’s hard to explain on the phone,” I tell him. “Can I just come over?”
Then it dawns on me. I’ve never been over Devyn’s house. I don’t even know where he lives. There’s a big silence and then he goes, “No.”
I pull Yoko into my driveway, stare up at the cute wood-shingled Cape where my grandma Betty and I live. It looks so sweet, so normal; not like a place that’s been ransacked by a pixie king. Devyn’s been here a hundred times working on our pixie book, hanging out, researching. Something hardens in my gut. What is up with him? Hanging out with Cassidy, blowing off Is, never having me over. I can’t hold back the harshness in my voice. “Why? Is Cassidy there?”
“No.”
Now it’s my turn for silence. I put Yoko in park but don’t shut her off. I want the benefit of the heater. Half of me wants to ask him what’s going on with Cassidy. All of a sudden she is with him all the time like some sort of major character in our lives. I want to lay into him about how he’s meant to be with Issie, how every time Issie sees him with Cassidy her heart breaks a little bit. Instead I say, “Why not?”
“It’s just not a good time right now,” he says. “I’m sorry, Zara.”
I feel dismissed. I tell him everything that’s happened as quickly as I can. When I’m done, I rest my head on the steering wheel. It smells like ketchup for some reason.
“That is fascinating.” He pauses. “It implies a mythology behind weres and shifters, you know? It means I was right to start to explore those Norse myths.”
“Yeah. Can you use those mad research skills of yours and really focus in on Valhalla and Valkyries? I can’t believe there’s this whole other type of fae that we didn’t even know about, Devyn. It freaks me out.” I lift my head up from the steering wheel. Outside, everything is white and cold and barren. The wind moves the tops of trees, scratching them against the sky. “Can you tell Nick? About what happened?”
“Yes, Zara, I’ll tell him that you let a pixie go.” He sighs so loudly I can hear it through the phone.
&
nbsp; “Thanks.”
“He knows you’re soft, Zara. Don’t worry. He won’t be mad for long.”
“You think?” I open the door, scan the area for signs of pixies.
“I know. I’ll take care of it. Wow. Valkyries and Valhalla. I can’t even imagine what this means . . .” He hangs up mumbling and doesn’t even say good-bye.
I close the car door behind me and rush up the walkway to the front porch. I take the steps two at a time and shove my key in the door. I don’t look behind me. I never do. I’m always too afraid of what I might see out there, what kind of dangers are hiding behind the trunks of trees, waiting.
After an hour of doing homework I start googling “Valkyrie” on the Internet. The first thing that comes up is some 2008 movie about Hitler starring Tom Cruise. There’s about a page of that and some links to female bodybuilders before I get a hit on Norse mythology. I know Dev’s probably doing the same thing at his house, but whatever . . . I can’t not try to learn stuff. Basically, all I get is that Valkyries brought slain warriors to Valhalla, the hall of Odin, who is the head god guy. Yeah, I’ve got mad research skills. I can’t figure out if it’s an actual place on Earth like say, Norway, or more like heaven.
The door to the house opens. I don’t look up from the screen. “Hey, Betty!”
“Nope. Not Betty,” Nick’s voice says. He shuts the door behind him and steps into the living room. He yanks off his coat and puts it on the post at the end of the stairs.
I put my laptop on the coffee table next to some old Stephen King books my stepdad used to read and jump up toward him, talking as I walk. “You cannot be mad at me, okay. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure he was a pixie. He was dying and I couldn’t let that happen and when that Valkyrie woman came I just—I don’t know. I couldn’t let her take him.”
Nick’s hands catch the back of my head. He smells like the forest. His eyes stare into mine. I look down and he says, “I am not mad at you, Zara.”
“Good!”
“I’m just frustrated. I never should’ve left him there, but I ran out of time. Now he’s loose again and that sucks, but you—I know how you are. You aren’t someone who can just let something die.” His mouth moves in closer and he whispers, “I’m not mad. It’s part of why I like you so much.”