MDI police responded to a bar fight tonight. Details are sketchy, but it appears a local teen was shot and is in critical condition. The police stress that the shooting is in no way related to the rash of disappearances in the nearby town that’s been plagued… -NEWS CHANNEL 8
Days pass where I’m in and out of consciousness. Someone tells me my mother is stuck in Europe because of some airline strike. I didn’t even know she was in Europe. Slowly, my body heals. Cassidy’s been helping too somehow, using herbs and praying. Sometimes I see her in the corner of my room, her eyes closed and hands together. Betty tells me I’m lucky I’m pixie now, because if I were human, things would be really bad.
“Weeks,” she says. “Weeks in a hospital.”
I wake up again and there’s an Amnesty International poster above me. It’s thumbtacked to the ceiling. It takes me a second of staring at the image of a candle wrapped in barbed wire before I really make the connection: I’m home. The information processes a little slowly, and for a second I almost think I’m back in Charleston, where life was warm and full of flowers, where my stepdad was still alive, where I didn’t know pixies existed, where I was human.
That tiny hope is snatched away quickly when I turn my head to look out the window. It’s still snowing, lightly now, but persistent. The light of the snow fills my room with a cold brightness, but it’s nothing like the light in Charleston. There are branches of trees in each corner of my room. I think they are aspen. I don’t know how they got there. Cassidy maybe? There are camellias scattered around as well, white and pink balls of petals. And there’s some sort of incense burning. The scent is so strong it feels like the inside of my nose is being rubbed by a bristle brush.
I groan. Not from that, but because just moving my head makes it throb. I reach beneath the covers and touch my side, which is all bandaged up. That’s when I remember: I was shot. I was in the hospital. Everyone was there, coming in and out of my room one at a time, blurs of memory and action and words that I can’t really grab on to.
Now?
Now I’m alone.
I check out my arms, still pale human skin. At least I haven’t lost my glamour. I guess you have to consciously make it go away or else it just stays working, just like when I sleep. A twig hits my window, scratching against the pane. My entire body is stiff, but I force it to slowly sit up. Then I swing my legs off the edge of the bed and pull back the comforter. It’s bright yellow and sunny. My socks touch the floor. Someone changed me into pajamas and Christmas socks with little snowmen on them. I hope it was Betty and not some horrible group effort. If I had the energy to blush, I would, but just sitting up is a chore. I push my body straight. Pain throbs across my chest. Ignoring it, I shuffle across the floor, grabbing on to the bedpost for a little support. Then, once I get far enough, I lunge forward and grab the wall and the doorknob. I turn it and shuffle into the hall like I’m a hundred and four years old and have lost my walker somewhere in the nursing home.
There are voices coming from downstairs.
“There is no way I will let her know this. You know what she’ll do.” It’s Betty’s voice, and it drops off into the nothingness.
“But we have to… Nick…” Issie’s voice is high and she’s speaking in sentence fragments, which is never a good sign. My heart hitches a little bit and I move as quickly as I can toward the stairs.
Issie, Cassidy, Devyn, and Mrs. Nix are all sitting in the living room. Betty is pacing back and forth, and Astley stands outside the door. Pixies aren’t allowed inside. House rule. Also, they can’t actually come inside unless invited in, like that old saying about vampires. And all tied up next to Astley on the porch is BiForst. There are chains around his hands and feet. It’s a safe bet that they are iron.
“What’s going on?” I say from the stairs. They all look up. Issie’s mouth drops into an O and she and Cassidy both jump up like they’ve been caught doing something really naughty.
Betty, however, has the opposite reaction. She roars at me like I’m the one screwing up. “What are you doing out of bed?”
I swallow hard. She starts up the stairs and stops halfway. Her nostrils flare.
“I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed out,” I say, trying to solid myself up so I don’t seem frail.
“You just got back from the hospital. Of course you aren’t allowed out.” She scowls at me and then bounds up the rest of the stairs. She puts her arm around my shoulder and starts to pivot me around. “Now let’s get you back to bed.”
My hand grips the banister. “Tell me what you all are talking about.”
She stops tugging on me. Nobody says anything. The air is still and cold and heavy. The furnace kicks on, a big rumbling monster. Issie jumps.
“Sorry.” She blushes. “Jumpy.”
“Well, it’s not easy when there are two pixies on the front porch.” Devyn mollifies her and puts an arm around her shoulder. For a second, jealousy rips through me. Nick would have done that for me, tried to make me feel better. I honestly don’t know if he’ll ever be able to do that again.
Everyone looks at each other. Tension makes the air prickle.
“What? Let me in on the secret,” I persist.
“Okay… the thing is…,” Issie starts. She clears her throat nervously, takes a step toward me, and stops. “You need to be calm about this, honey, okay?”
Not a good sentence. She used the words “calm” and “honey.” The world hazes around me, but I fight the dizziness even as Betty’s hand tightens on my shoulder.
“What is it?” I ask.
Once again they all exchange a look. Cassidy clears her throat. Mrs. Nix stands up out of her chair slowly, but Astley, still outside, is the only one brave enough to just say it.
“There is a time constraint about getting Nick,” he says, nodding toward BiForst. “Our lovely associate here has told us that if the warrior is not retrieved from Valhalla within a month, he may never return at all.”
“What?” I make a quick calculation of how much time has already gone by and start stumbling down the stairs. Betty must not have expected me to move, because she doesn’t stop me as I stagger-walk down the stairs and toward the front door. I step outside, ignoring Issie and Betty and everyone else, focusing only on Astley. “We don’t even know how to get there. We don’t know how long it takes. We don’t-”
I stagger in the thin layer of snow that covers the wood boards of the porch. Astley, who has been crouching by BiForst, reaches up and grabs me by my arms. I can’t read his eyes. The cold soaks into my snowmen socks, sharp and raw.
“Zara,” he says, staring into me, “we can do this. We will do this.”
I cringe. The snow falls around us. BiForst rolls his eyes as if Astley is too smarmy for words. I don’t know what’s going on in the house behind me as I scan the woods for other pixies. It seems clear for now. I swallow hard again. It’s so hard to even swallow, let alone stand.
“We have to get him,” I whisper, and I’m whispering it only to Astley. “We can’t just leave him there. He’ll think we abandoned him. We need him here to fight.”
“It is okay.” A pulse shows on a vein in his neck. His eyes meet mine.
I have thought about Nick’s death for so many hours and days, twisted in my head with moments of every day and night, that the entire memory is solid with echoes. It is like I can touch it, hold it to my chest and squeeze it. The only thing that was letting me continue was the knowledge that I had a chance to save him. Now there’s a time constraint?
“Did he tell you what he told me? In the bar?” I gesture toward BiForst. “He was all cryptic and said the queen I replace is in the apple.”
“That’s why she kept talking about the apple!” Devyn says to everyone in the house.
“We thought you were delirious,” Mrs. Nix clarifies. She breathes deeply and tilts her head just the tiniest of bits. Kindness emanates from her.
“So my mother is back in the city?” Astley asks BiForst, anger rippling out of him. “And you didn’t tell me this because…?”
“You didn’t ask,” BiForst snorts.
I stare at Astley. “New York?”
“The Big Apple,” Astley explains.
I feel suddenly very stupid. How could I not have figured that out? My whole body aches from tiredness and cold. I sway a little bit and a soft voice comes from behind me. “Come inside, Zara.”
I turn around slowly, because it’s all I can manage. Mrs. Nix’s round face looks down on me. Her big brown eyes are kind. She’s wearing her sweatshirt with the Christmas tree embossed on it.
She tucks a piece of my dirty hair behind an ear. “Now come away from these pixies and into the house with us and get warm. We still have to figure out who is setting these traps for you and why. You were almost killed in Iceland. You were shot in the bar. We’ve got a cage almost finished in the basement. We’re going to keep that pixie there until he talks some more.”
I turn my head to check to see if Astley is okay with keeping BiForst trapped, since I know he disapproved when we trapped my father’s people. He nods, but then stops midmotion, listening to something. I hear it too-a motor. No, a car. It’s coming down our driveway.
“Someone’s coming,” I say.
The rest of them come to the door just as a silver sedan rolls into sight. The driver cuts the engine and leaps out of the car, her short legs rushing across the snow, her brown hair flying behind her.
I gasp. “Mom!”