His lips lose their straight line and soften. I lean. Our lips meet and he is all gentle and tender. His hand moves through my hair. “You are complicated, though.”
We sit on the couch and kiss some more. I happy sigh and squash myself against him. “We’ll have to go looking for him now. I’m sorry.”
“I know.” He flops down and puts his head on my lap. His long legs hang off the side, over the armrest. He smiles and closes his eyes. I run my fingers across his forehead and the delicate skin on his eyelids. He grabs my hand and kisses it, then lets it go.
“You’re so good to me,” he murmurs and then—just like that—he’s asleep. Guys.
I manage to get my laptop and put it on the couch next to me. I keep looking up things about Valkyries until I hear a tapping on the window. It’s a robin. There’s a piece of paper dangling from its beak. It hits the window again and drops the paper before it flies away.
I slip away from Nick as gently as I can and tiptoe across the room to open the front door. The paper is on the bench on the porch. It’s tiny and all rolled up. I look around. There’s no sign of the robin. In fact, there’s no movement anywhere. I unroll the paper. The writing is minuscule and almost calligraphic:
Your wolf is in danger. If you want to know why you’re going to have to set me free. Two days. Do not bring the weres.
I tuck the note into my pocket and shuffle back inside. Nick moans in his sleep. I touch his eyelids. I have no choice if Nick’s in danger. Of course I don’t. I have no choice at all. I’ve been summoned by a pixie via a bird. A bird? Panic fills me. If he can summon me via a bird, can he summon someone else? Maybe get rescued?
“This is not good,” I murmur. “Not good at all.”
Pixie Tip
Pixes are ruled by kings—and by needs. Exercise extreme caution. Turns out they can use birds.
Two days later, Is and I are frantically driving away on crazy, tree-lined paths.
“I’m not sure this is smart,” Is says.
“Can we ever be sure things are smart?” I say, all philosophical. “We have to be confident, Is. We have to trust ourselves to do the right thing.”
“Uh-huh,” she says not very convincingly.
The note freaked me out. I didn’t tell Nick even though I wanted to. Instead, I planned—I recruited Issie’s help.
From the back of the station wagon comes a tired male voice. “As much as I enjoy the prattling insecurity of teenage American females, I was hoping for some relief back here. Could you untie me now? Or must we continue with this mock-kidnapping charade? It was my idea for you to release me.”
“No! No untying!” I yell. Then I put my hand over my mouth. “That sounded mean, didn’t it?”
Issie nods. “It’s okay, though. You’re not good at the tough stuff. That’s why we have Nick.”
“I need to be good at it. We can’t depend on Nick for everything,” I say.
The voice comes back. “I’m also not altogether comfortable being tied up with iron wire in a motor vehicle made of steel.”
“That’s a big hint,” Issie yells back. “And we are so not taking it, Mr. Pixie.”
I clutch the steering wheel with my right hand, flick on the directional to signal I’m going out on the road even though there’s no sign of cars anywhere, just woods, woods, and more woods. The pixie house is hidden pretty deep in there. I explain to Is, “It’s just not cool to kidnap people.”
“They aren’t people. They’re pixies. And technically we aren’t kidnapping him because we’ve already imprisoned him. This time he agreed to be tied up and dumped in the back of the car. Right?” Issie logics out. “This is a mutual agreement and not a kidnapping at all.”
“Right. Right,” I say, but I’m still thinking about what that other pixie had said. I’m still wondering about making a massive generalization based on just my own anecdotal evidence. But that guy was a different guy and this pixie, the pixie we’ve hauled out of the house and put in the back of Yoko, this pixie I know has done some evil bad things. I know it. I will not feel guilty.
I lean toward Is and whisper, “I feel guilty.”
She fake punches me. “Not allowed.”
“Tell me how you controlled the bird,” I yell toward the pixie.
“I talk to him. Some of us are capable of that,” he answers.
“Then why didn’t you have him get you rescued for good, have someone take down the iron around the house?” I ask.
“Zara!” Issie frantically whispers. “Don’t give him any ideas.”
As I curse myself, he explains that most people wouldn’t notice a bird carrying a note. The paper is so tiny. It would be ignored. It turns out he sent the bird about five times before I finally saw it. Then there’s the fact that it is Maine in winter. There aren’t a ton of birds here anyway.
I pull out onto the road, trying to let things process. The bird thing is not even my priority. For most of my life I thought the world was normal, round, safe, populated by people (good and bad) and animals (wild and tame), but then it turns out that’s not the way the world is. Reality isn’t round, it’s flat. There are edges where you can fall off and this October when I moved to Maine, I fell off one. That’s when I learned about pixies and shape-shifting weres. That’s when I learned about need and pain and how unsafe, how unround the world can really be.
“We’ve trapped them,” I say, convincing myself all over again. “So people would be safe. That’s the right thing to do.”
“We had no choice,” Issie says, biting her nails. “No choice at all.”
“And talking to him now? Just because he summoned us?”
“We have no choice about that either.”
It’s a solution, yes. But lately I’ve started to wonder if it’s the right one.
I park the car behind Hannaford’s, the Maine grocery store chain. Big, elevated cement docks for loading produce stick out of the back of the building. Tire tracks mar the snow. Ugly green Dumpster covers rattle in the breeze. The wood creeps in behind us.
Issie gulps as I turn off Yoko. “Maybe we should’ve just gone to your house.”
“No. Nick or my grandma would have smelled him there. You know their noses.”
“Like they aren’t going to smell him in your car?”
“Good point. Okay. Good point.” I run my hands over my face. “But they never actually get in my car, do they?”
“That’s because nobody would voluntarily ride in your car because you’re such a bad winter driver. No offense.”
“You volunteered.”
She half smiles. “I’m a little nuts. Plus, I love you. Plus, I am a worse driver than you.”
I pull on the knit hat that my mom ordered me from American Eagle. There are no outlet stores up here. No malls. It’s crazy. The big place to hang out is actually the grocery store.
“Let’s just do this,” I say.
“Yeah.”
Neither of us moves.
“Girls . . . ,” comes the voice from the back of the car.
“Do not talk!” I yell. “If you talk I will just haul you back to that house and put you inside, got it?”
“You plan to do that no matter what I do,” he says.
Issie’s hand twitches on the door handle. “He has a point.”
The wind blows loose snow across the back lot in random patterns. It has no path. It doesn’t know where it’s going. It just moves and settles, moves and settles.
“Okay. I’m going.” I push open my door and hustle around to the back of the car. Issie does the same. We stand there together, staring at the back of my Subaru. It’s covered with road filth. Sand and slush obscure the license plate.
“We don’t have to do this,” Issie whispers. Her hand grabs my coat sleeve.
I take in a deep breath. “He said that Nick was in danger.”
“He could be lying.”
“He might not be.”
“True. But I’m not in a super trusting mode
since he is Mr. Evil Pixie Man.”
“He let us tie him up,” I argue.
“True.” Issie lets go of my arm. “But maybe he thought we sucked at knots.”
I reach forward and squeeze the handle-latch thing that’s underneath the middle part of the door. I don’t know what to call that. Luckily, the word doesn’t matter. The action does. The back of the Subaru slowly lifts open.
There’s a blanket there, an old red quilted blanket. Issie and I sewed iron into the batting last night, filled it up with tiny bars. Then we wrapped iron wire around his feet and hands.
“You think that’s enough to hold him?” Issie asks.
“He didn’t escape when we were driving.”
“True. I kept thinking he was going to jump up and strangle us.”
“Me too!”
“Seriously? You were acting so brave.” Issie hugs her arms around her chest, hopping to stay warm in the cold. The wind blows again. The Dumpsters rattle. The snow swirls.
My stomach falls into some faraway place. “I’m going to have to reach in there and fold the blanket back.”
Issie stops hopping. “Uh-huh.”
I reach out and tug the edge of the blanket, folding it back just enough to show his strained white face. Little lines of blue seem to trace right under the surface of his skin, making him look less human than usual. He used to be so handsome with his thick black hair, his features angular and masculine, the eyes that focused so intensely on everything, but now . . . Now his face is as pale as winter feet. Now his eyes hunch into his face. Now blue lines tattoo their meaning underneath the surface of him, declaring his foreignness. He looks like he’s about to die, and that is basically my fault.
His chapped lips twist up into a half smile. I almost want to reach out and touch him, soothe him somehow, but I don’t. I can’t. I know what he is.
“Princess,” he whispers.
I nod. “Dad.”
Pixie Tip
If you have to fight pixies, remember to use weapons with some sort of iron. As in the metal. Not the thing you use to dewrinkle clothes.
A lot of people suffer from vitricophobia, which is a fear of your stepfather, but neither Devyn (whose parents are psychiatrists and shape shifters) nor I can find the name for fear of your biological father. And I would say in my case this fear is not irrational, since my biological father is a pixie. It is rational to be afraid of pixies.
“Dadophobia,” I say.
My father’s eyes flash.
“What?” Issie whispers. She’s sort of half hiding behind me.
“Dadophobia. It’s a word I just created.”
“Zara, sweetie, I don’t think this is the time to—”
He cuts her off. “You don’t have to be afraid of me, Zara.”
I don’t respond.
“I’m not your enemy.”
Issie’s not taking that. “Dude, you tried to kidnap her to bait her mom into coming to you. Then you tried to turn her mom into a pixie. Come on. I mean, no offense, but you are not Daddy of the Year stuff here.” Issie steps a little forward. “Plus, you didn’t even show up on the scene for what? Sixteen years? That’s lame. Seriously. That is very deadbeat dad stuff right there.”
His hand shoots out from beneath the blanket and he grabs her wrist. “That wasn’t my fault.”
She squeaks in pain.
I bang forward, try to pry his fingers loose. That’s when I notice the iron wire hanging loosely off his wrist. I growl. “You let go of her or I swear—”
“Fine.” His voice is calm. “I’m letting go.”
Each of his fingers leaves her wrist, one by one. Issie snatches it back to her chest and starts rubbing at it. “He’s really strong.”
A truck backfires and Issie and I jump. He doesn’t move his hands or legs, but he winces like he’s in pain.
“Does the iron in the car bother you?” I ask, not bothering to hide the hope in my voice.
He ignores the question. There are scorch marks on his fingertips. But he used those same fingers to grab Issie’s lower arm. He’s tough. He may be weak, but he’s tough.
“It wasn’t my fault that I wasn’t there . . . when you were a child . . . ,” he says, almost wheezing. “Your mother left with you. She hid you away.”
I point at him. “Because you’re an insane pixie king who drains guys of blood and tortures them.”
“Only when I’m without a queen,” he protests. “Only after years without a queen. And only because my people were restless. You know that. That was the only way to maintain order. And now . . . now . . . it’s chaos. You have no idea how horrible things have become.”
Somehow I know he’s thinking about the big house where we trapped them all a few months ago. I think about how they’d strapped Jay Dahlberg to a bed. Fear made him crazy. There’d been bite marks in all his limbs where they took his blood. The pixies stood around him, around me, like we were on an altar.
“I know you think I’m a monster, Zara. I know your mother thinks so too, but if I was I never would have let her go the first time. I never would have let you live your lives.” He swallows. “But the need became too great. I was losing control. And now . . .”
“And now?”
“Not all pixies are like me. Not all kings are like me.”
“What do you mean?” Hope surges in my heart. Maybe that pixie was right.
“I mean that most have no mercy, no thoughts about human death or torture, no remorse. It isn’t a last resort for them. It’s a daily occurrence.”
The pixie I pulled off the tree? He said the opposite. I meet my father’s eyes. We have the same shape eyes; they tilt up just a tiny bit at the edges. “What are you saying?”
“They are coming.”
“Coming where?”
“Coming here.”
Issie looks at me with frightened eyes. The wind seems to mold itself into something solid for a moment. Then it lets go, drifts and swirls and batters against us.
“They’re already coming,” I tell him. “Some have already been here. We’ve put them in the house with you.”
He sighs. “None of them have been kings. They’ve all been scouts. You know the difference, Zara. Your skin reacts to those of us who are kings or who have the potential to be.”
“The spider feeling,” Issie gasps.
“Why? Why does my skin do that?”
“It’s because you’re looking for a mate. You respond to power,” he says.
“I have a mate!” I cringe at the word and correct myself. “A boyfriend. We haven’t actually mated.”
He scoffs, “He’s an animal.”
I whirl on him. “He’s a man. He’s a hero kind of man. He is not an animal.”
“Not that there’s anything wrong with animals,” Issie says, getting all huffy. “I don’t get why they’re always on the bottom of the hierarchy. Like you go to jail for less than a year if you kill a dog but you kill a person and you’re in jail forever, and birds . . . Anyone can just kill birds unless they’re on the protected species list.”
I ignore Is, who always rambles when she’s nervous, and keep trying to move forward. I ask him, “Why are they coming?”
“Because they know I am missing. They know I must be weak. Everyone wants more people to rule, more territory.”
I put my hands into my pockets. “We’ll just stop them. That’s all.”
He shakes his head. “One of them will find the house. They’ll hire humans to take down the bars you’ve made. They’ll release us, and my people . . . my people are hungry. They’ll go with him and it’ll be chaos. Without a queen, I can’t control them. You know that, Zara. That’s why all this happened.”
I hear what he’s saying, but this isn’t why I brought him out here. “What? What does this have to do with Nick? I mean, with Nick more than anyone else?”
“Your were.” He snarls on the word a little. “Your beau—”
“Beau?” Issie interrupts.
/> “Boyfriend. It’s an old-fashioned word for boyfriend,” I explain impatiently.
My father’s eyes are angry. “Your beau is also the self-proclaimed protector of the town and of you.”
“Whatever.” The whole “Nick protecting me” thing drives me insane. I can protect myself.
His lips move for a second like he’s trying to figure out the words ahead of time and then he says, “When the other pixie or pixies come, their king . . . he’s not going to be worried about Nick or his welfare. And Nick is the biggest stumbling block to you, so he will be directly in the line of fire, if you will. The pixie king will not care about one were’s death. He’s just going to be going after the prizes.”
“’Es? Did you say prizes, as in plural?” Issie asks. She asks it slowly as if it takes forty-two lifetimes to get the question out of her mouth and into the frozen air.
“Yes. Plural. Prizes.” He shifts beneath the blanket. His eyes are hollow, pained.
“And those are?” I ask.
“My pixies, my territory, and you.”
The wind gusts again, pushing Issie and me toward him. I brace my hands on the car. My hair flies all crazy in my face. Issie’s does too. When we can stand up straight again, we do. I try to tuck my hair into my coat collar.
“You’re angry,” my father says.
“Really? How can you tell?” I’m being sarcastic. I don’t care.
“The flames coming out of your eyes are probably the tipoff,” Issie says.
I fluster. “I just don’t like people thinking of me as a prize. That’s sexist.”
“Sexist and disgusting,” Issie adds. “And totally representative of the male dogma that has persisted in keeping us sisters all subjugated.”
“Exactly.”
His eyes drape down. “It’s my fault, Zara. Your blood is half mine.”
“I am human.” My stomach knots. The taste of Tic Tac mintiness in my mouth somehow makes me want to throw up.
“Not all pixies torture. Only the bad ones, the neglected, who don’t have a leader, or those who have a leader who is cruel or weak, or without a queen. Some of us are on the side of good. Some on the side of evil. Some, like me, are in between due to circumstances and fate.” My father doesn’t blink. “Zara’s human. But she smells different than humans. The weres sense it. The pixies sense it. And if she turned—”