“A queen merely has to kiss with intention, just the same as before.”
“You’re going to kiss me?” I croak out the question. The thought is beyond revolting. Not because she’s a girl, but because she’s old and she’s crazy-evil or maybe it’s evil-crazy, one of the two.
She smiles. “I kiss you. You become human. Astley loses his power and the prophecy has no hope of becoming true.”
Finally! She’s finally said something important. “Prophecy?”
“You still don’t know even that? But what can one expect from a group of heroes that can’t even remember BiFrost is the bridge and not BiForst.” She giggles. The mouse scuttles around some more. “So silly.”
“It was both ways on the Internet,” I spew back. “And the newspaper spelled it the BiForst way.”
She arches an eyebrow. “The Internet? You base your defense against the apocalypse on information you’ve gathered from the Internet and a tiny local newspaper? Oh, that’s so precious!”
She starts laughing for real this time, which really doesn’t make me feel much better about myself, or the situation. If she’s confident enough to laugh, then I really don’t have a way out, do I? Issie’s tied. Astley is passed out on the floor, bound up in iron, skin sizzling. There are two goons blocking the door that leads out of here, all massive muscle. There’s been no sign of Nick and Amelie. And Isla is right in front of me, rubbing her hands together like she’s about to get a brand-new clock or something.
“You just said that if I were human I could still start the apocalypse. But now you’re saying that if I’m human the prophecy won’t come true.” Damn. She is so convoluted.
“The prophecy isn’t about starting the apocalypse. It’s about stopping it. If you are human you can no longer stop it.” She backs up, away from me and closer to Astley, and pokes at him with her foot. Anger and despair flood into me as she says, “It’s too bad he’s unconscious. I’d like him to witness what I’m going to do to you. But at least the human will see. She’ll be a witness to tell my son how horrible it was, how painful, how you screamed and begged for mercy. You will do that for me, won’t you, Zara? You will scream? Or maybe just beg. I do have sensitive ears.”
Swallowing hard, I wait as she approaches me. One step. Another step. Another. I look over at Astley and relief spreads into me. I don’t want him to see this, I realize. I don’t want any more hurt for him. He’s endured so much. Just having a mother like this …
Her face hovers in front of me.
“Are you ready to be human?” she whispers.
The smell of lilacs engulfs me, overwhelming my senses. I don’t answer, just close my eyes as her lips move closer. I turn my head, clench my own lips, though it won’t matter. She snaps her fingers and the two goons stride away from the door and toward me. Large, strong hands move my head so I’m facing her again. She giggles and I can tell from the sound that she’s just a couple inches from me. I try to think of some last-minute way to get away, some compelling argument to keep her from doing this, but sometimes you can’t argue with crazy, sometimes you can’t dissuade evil. Sometimes you just have to clench your lips, close your eyes, and pray. I focus on my power, the branches that Astley and I have twisted together. I try to take all the pixie energy in me and shape it into wings that take flight to Astley. I can almost imagine it, but then her lips touch mine.
Soft and minty smelling, they push against mine for a second before the sensation changes. Pain sizzles through my face and brain and then my body. Screaming, I jerk back against the cold wall, jerk sideways against the hands of the men, try to flee the kiss, but there’s no escape, no escape at all. My hand yanks at the man closest to me, grabs fabric, rips at it, frantically trying to find something. I hear more scuttling of mice, the ticking of a clock, and Isla’s giggle. A goon guy laughs. My heart slows. One beat. Another. I’ve failed. I’ve failed us all. Something wet touches my face. It’s tears. My tears. I refuse to die like this. But no, it’s not dying … I refuse to change like this.
My hand loses its hold on the fabric even as she keeps kissing me. Something skitters across the floor and hits my foot. Did Issie kick me a weapon? Blindly, I toe it up onto my boot and then kick whatever it is up into my hand, a maneuver I would never have been able to do as a human because I am not much of a soccer player. But for the moment I am still pixie and it works. Something cold and hard meets my fingers, which clutch at the metal of it. The back of my head knows what it is—a knife. It’s a knife that must have been on the floor. Issie was going for that, not Astley. I clench it, solidify my grasp around it while the world spins. Opening my eyes, I see Isla’s face, her beautiful, evil face that’s kissing mine and that’s when I do it—I plunge the knife into her chest. I plunge the knife and try to yell, but there’s nothing left of me—no pixie left, maybe no human either.
And then my head implodes and I start to lose consciousness. The last thing I hear is Isla’s scream, which far outlasts my own.
BEDFORD COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT RELEASE
On 12–15 at approximately 1755 hours, RCC Dispatch received a call from a woman in Trenton reporting a man was whispering her name while she was in the parking lot at the Bedford Marketplace.
When I wake up, I’m no longer hanging on the wall, but curled on the floor. Blood, probably my blood or Isla’s, is splattered around me. Moaning, I try to sit up but fail. I must be human. I can’t smell anything and I’m so terribly cold and alone feeling. It’s like all my connections to the other pixies, to Astley, is just gone. Rolling onto my stomach, I do my best not to cry from the pain. Isla’s men aren’t here. Issie is still bound up by the door making “free me” noises and nodding her head toward the side of the room. That’s when I realize that there’s a blood trail leading to some stacked white towels. Isla’s body is on the floor. She isn’t moving.
From where he’s still chained up on the floor, Astley stares at me with horrified eyes. I’ve killed his mother. I’ve orphaned him. I know she was evil, I know, but she was still his mom and I—I—
“I’m so sorry,” my voice croaks out.
His lips shake. “I thought you had died, Zara. I thought …”
“Not yet,” I say, staring at the iron around his wrists. The binds are so narrow, but so strong. It must be poisoning his system by now. That makes him the priority to free. “Let me get you loose.”
But I can’t walk. I have to crawl over there. It’s not even really a crawl—more a drag punctuated by little moaning noises. Astley’s eyes narrow as he watches me. I don’t have to be a pixie to see how angry he is, how hard it is for him to witness how pathetic I am now. When I finally get close enough, Issie scooches over and I manage to free her hands. She rips the tape off her mouth but doesn’t say anything, which makes me realize just how bad it is. When Issie is horrified she loses her voice.
She has lost her voice.
Even with Issie’s help, it takes the last of my strength to get Astley free. The moment I do, he pulls me into his lap, pressing me against his chest, rocking me slightly. Issie huddles close too and grabs my hand, squeezing it tight.
“You killed her,” Astley says.
“I’m so sorry.”
“I wanted to kill her,” he whispers desperately. “I wanted to kill her for what she did to you, for what she has done to all of us.”
Isla lies there, unmoving, a beautiful, bloody shell of a woman. Her hair, as pale as a cloud, floats around her head, only the ends sullied by blood. And my own soul? My own body? It is full of webs and dusk, aches that seem to breathe too big for me to contain them any longer. How am I going to keep everyone safe if I’m human? How am I going to help Astley and our pixies? How can I do anything?
I’ve killed his mother.
I’m human.
I’ve killed his mother.
These facts just flap around and around in my head, one after the other, pushing everything else out. I should be wondering about Issie and Nick and the res
t. I should be nursing Astley’s emotions. I should be fixing things, doing things.
I’m human again.
I’ve killed Astley’s mother.
“Can you change me back?” I whisper into his chest. My words cascade down into the air, waiting for an answer, afraid of an answer.
“Would you want that?” He rocks me in his arms, smooths back the hair from my forehead as I tilt my head up to look into his sad, tired face. “Would you want to be pixie again, be my queen? You know now what that means, truly know.”
It means no matter how we felt about each other, we would be entwined forever. It means I would have to be responsible for all those other lives forever. It means that I would feel more, need more, sense more, and have to take a heck of a lot of anti-iron pills. I think about what it would mean for me to stay human. I can’t fight well like this. I can’t stop the apocalypse. I can’t smell and hear as well, and Astley becomes weaker. But being a pixie means worrying about turning blue, worrying about hungers and needs and losing my humanity. “Does it matter what I want? It would be what’s best, you know? I have a responsibility to you, to the pixies, to Issie and my friends.”
A muscle twitches in Astley’s cheek. His lips press hard against each other and tears spring to the corners of his eyes but don’t leak out. “Yes, Zara. It does matter what you want. It matters very much.”
Some sort of sob rattles around in my chest, but I refuse to let it out, refuse to let Astley see how much his words affect me.
Issie’s hand squeezes mine and then she lets go, standing up and trying the door. She walks fine. I don’t think they hurt her much. It’s just her insides that are messed up. She’s in shock, I bet. We’re all in shock, and shock isn’t going to do us much good. We need a plan. We need steps to take. We need to make this right, make me right.
“You have to change me back, Astley,” I insist. My hand flutters up, touches the side of his face. It’s so much effort just to move, just to touch him. I stare into his eyes and beg, “Do it now. Please.”
His eyes soften. He moves his head so his lips brush against my forehead. It’s the slightest of kisses, gentle and kind. He doesn’t answer my request, just bundles me against him. Thanks to his pixie blood, the burns on his wrists are starting to heal already but the skin is pink and mottled. If he looks this bad, I must look so much worse. I can taste blood on my lips, see it on my hands. He moves across the concrete floor and up the three steps, bringing us to the door that goes outside. The air is dry and bitter. It’s so cold. He pulls me in closer to his chest.
Issie isn’t having any success with the door, which must be locked from the outside. She yanks her bobby pin out of her hair, the one that held her bangs back. Then she uses it to start working on the locking mechanism in the middle of the doorknob.
“What are we going to do?” I whisper at Astley like he’ll have all the answers.
The hurt makes his green eyes deeper, more vivid. “We shall find a way, Zara. I promise you, we shall find a way.”
But I am broken all the way down and for a second, only a second, I allow myself to think we won’t, that we never will.
And just then, Issie manages to get the door open.
The cold and wind and sunlight stream into the room and she turns to us, smiling. “Got it!”
Her voice is so beautiful and still it doesn’t give me hope.
ICELANDIC PRESS RELEASE
The National Police Commissioner will hold a news conference to discuss the increase of missing-persons cases in the last few days.
It takes me two days to heal well enough to set out for Hel, which we decide to do via vote. In some sort of weird twist, Astley is against it and Nick is for it. Astley thinks that we should just pack up, go home, and focus our efforts on keeping Bedford safe. He wants to go to the Pixie Council and plead for help. Nick rightly says that it hasn’t done anything for us before. Nick thinks that Isla’s motivation for turning me human has more to do with us being so close to Hel, so close to stopping the apocalypse.
“It’s an act of desperation,” he argues. “That means we have to keep with the plan.”
Amelie, Issie, and I agree.
“But why don’t they just kill Astley then?” I ask.
“They must need him for something,” says Nick. “Or they are sentimental. Or they still hope to have him join their side.”
“Oh yeah, changing his queen’s a good way to do that.” Issie pulls her knees to her chest and rolls her eyes.
And then they argue about Issie and me staying here while they search for Hel, but I refuse that option. So we wait an extra day. I figure if I can walk, I can ski on the trail to the mountain, which takes four hours to hike. Skiing is faster, even if I’m the one who is doing it.
So I spend my first day as a human again on the bed with Issie fluttering about. Astley flies off somewhere to get enough of a signal to call home. Nick cooks. Amelie paces and patrols outside, making sure there are no more threats.
The second day, I get up and stagger around, getting stronger.
Being human again after being pixie is strange. It’s like I’ve lost another sense. I don’t smell or see things as intensely. I don’t feel people’s emotions as if I could grab them and hold them in my hands.
But I don’t miss the way I always felt right on the edge of evil, that if my needs weren’t controlled, then I would go feral and violent, a crazy predator thing.
When the sun rises on the day we’re going to ski and look for Hel, I’m so stir-crazy I walk outside for a minute while everyone gets ready.
The lake is no longer frozen. The heat from the nearby volcano has warmed the water, broken the ice into massive sheets that smash into each other. When the sides of one ice chunk slides against another, it sounds like a roar. It makes me wish Betty were here, that she wasn’t still back in Maine battling and training the others.
“We’re leaving for Hel soon.” Nick’s voice startles me. He’s snuck up behind me, and since I’m human I didn’t hear.
My heart slows down so I turn and answer. “I know. I just wanted a second.”
“Alone?”
“Yeah.”
He’s got a huge navy blue parka on with yellow insulation and a dark gray skull hat. Even his fingers are sheathed in puffy men’s skiing-type gloves. His dark eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiles just the tiniest of smiles as he looks at me. “You aren’t under his influence anymore.”
“What do you mean by that?” I turn back to the lake, stare at the ice slowly moving on the surface of the water. Pieces of the solid fall into the liquid, but it’s all just water no matter what its form.
“I mean his pixie power over you is gone.” He squats and pulls at a broken branch that’s been sticking up out of the snow. It reminds me once again of how Astley’s and my branches were entwined. Nick holds it in his hand for a second, almost like he’s balancing the weight of it, and then he chucks it toward the lake. The branch lands on an ice chunk and then skitters across it.
“He’s still my friend, Nick.”
“But that doesn’t—It’s not the same as him being your king.”
That’s true. Astley won’t feel it when I need him anymore. I won’t feel it when he needs me. We won’t be able to read each other’s emotions so easily. The world as a human is much thinner than as a pixie. It’s like watching a movie on your phone versus seeing real-life events.
I miss being less vulnerable to cold and super-strong, stuff that went with being pixie. I miss it a lot.
It is nice to be able to touch iron, though. It is nice to not worry about randomly turning blue or feeling your emotions race so close to the surface all the time, ready to explode.
Ice cracks into ice. A bird squeals overhead.
We stand there for a minute, just watching the water slosh in tiny waves up onto the shore. It comes in and out, predictable because it always moves in those two directions, but unpredictable because you never know exactly how far i
nto the beach the water will go. It crashes against some blackened algae-type stuff and slides back out to the lake.
Nick grabs my hand in his giant one. It’s hard to feel his fingers through the glove, but I know the shape of them, their warmth and roughness. It’s a good memory.
“You don’t love me anymore, do you?” he asks. His voice breaks with emotion.
I close my eyes but don’t let go of his hand. “When I needed you most, you weren’t there for me, Nick.”
Just saying it aloud makes it so much more real, and each word solids my heart just a bit more, making it seem less like something that beats and breathes and more like ice on the lake. He wasn’t there when I needed him.
He moves closer, facing me. His free hand goes to my hair, brushes it away from my face. “What do you mean when you needed me the most? When was that? When you were shot? When Mrs. Nix died? I was in Valhalla, Zara. I couldn’t be there and I am so sorry for that, baby.”
My eyes meet his. His eyes are deep brown and beautiful, earnest and fierce. How can he have eyes like that and not understand?
“That’s not what I mean.” My lips dry out suddenly. They are hard to move. “I mean when you learned I was pixie. I needed you to love me then. But you didn’t. You were too busy with your hate.”
His hand goes to my shoulder. “I did still love you then, Zara.”
“No. You walked away. You left.” My words break into crying things. “You told me I was soulless.”
The waves keep breaking small against the shore. A car drives down the road toward the hotel, the radio is on so loudly that the bass beat thuds through closed windows.
“I left because I was jealous,” he says. “Not because you were a pixie.”
I think he’s lying, but I’m not sure. If he is lying, he’s probably lying to himself too.
“Whatever.” I twist away from him, walk two steps, and realize I don’t have the will to walk anymore, to move anywhere. I crouch down instead and this time I’m the one who grabs a piece of twisted driftwood. The water has stripped it of its bark, and insects or lake creatures or something have bored holes through it. I wonder what’s happened to my branch now that I’m not a pixie. Did it separate? Is it all alone like this poor piece of broken tree? I don’t know. I don’t know if it matters. Nothing matters. My fingers trace the joint where a nub of a branch once was. That’s not true. Things matter. Keeping people safe matters.