Endure (21 page)

I hide my face in my hands so she won’t be able to look into my eyes, won’t be able to see how much this decision hurts me, but I am sure she already knows.

She seems to understand and becomes brusque, no-nonsense, as if intuiting that any extra kindness will break my will, change my mind.

“I am sorry,” she says, and in those three words I can tell that maybe she doesn’t have a choice either. Maybe the rules are older than either of us, and stronger than I can ever imagine. Or maybe not, but I don’t think she can change the rules she must play by.

I grab her hand, the rotting one, and squeeze a little bit. “Tell me what I need to know, please.”

I tack on the “please” because I figure it’s best to be polite to Viking gods. My dad taught me to be polite to everyone. Have I forgotten that? My dad . . .

“Are you sure you are ready?” she asks.

“Yes.” The word just slips out.

She walks over to a mirror, not letting go of my hand, and all I can think of is the mirror in the Harry Potter books where you get to see whatever you desire. But when we stand in front of it, the mirror doesn’t show us a vision of me saving the world. It just shows us, standing together.

“You are amazingly tall,” I mutter, and my voice sounds astonished, even to me. “You must be seven feet.”

She smiles but doesn’t say anything. She waves her free hand at the mirror and it opens on a hinge like a door. The air behind it smells of fire, rotten eggs, death. But the light isn’t red like you’d expect. It’s an icy blue like the inside of an iceberg.

“Step forward and look,” she says. “But do not let go of my hand.”

Her fingers tighten around mine and her arm extends to give me enough room to really see. The moment I step away from her, I can feel the tug of it—a gigantic pull, like gravity times a hundred. It’s a pit, an icy blue pit, that belches out a heat like an oven but worse, much worse. The pit or hole or whatever seems to go down forever and ever.

“What is this?”

She hauls me back to her. “The mouth of Hel.”

“Your mouth?”

“The Hel of this place, this land.”

I try to digest that. Issie had said there was a hell mouth in
Buffy
shows. I should have paid more attention. Why do I never pay attention to pop-culture references? Probably because that one involved Issie going on and on about cute British vampires.

“This is what will swallow up the world,” Hel’s voice breaks into my thoughts, “if you fail.”

“And I succeed by not doing what exactly . . . ” I try to get her to just come out with it.

“There is a prophecy that not many are aware of. It says that the fall of one who is half of the stars, half of the White, half of the fae, half of the willow, can stop this.”

“And you and Frank and Isla believe this is me?” I say. “But not anymore. I am not a pixie anymore. Not any of me.” The hopelessness of it gets to me. “I can’t stop this. It’s already too late. Isla turned me back—I wish she’d just killed me! Why didn’t she just kill me?”

“That I do not know, but you still have power, Zara of the White. And some might want that power.”

“I am human.” I sputter it out almost like being human is a fate worse than death.

“Do not devalue humans.”

“I’m not! It’s just that the prophecy says ‘half fae.’ I’m not even that anymore. I’m all human now. So, honestly, how can I do this? Astley says I could die if I turn pixie again. I can’t save anyone if I’m dead.” I let go of her hand as the mirror door slams shut. “And you haven’t told me how I fall. Do I fall in the pit? Do I fall down on the ice? Why must prophecies be so freaking obscure? Why can’t they just state things nice and easy, like, ‘Zara White must be in full pixie form and fall down outside her high school at precisely two a.m. on December 23 for the apocalypse to be averted.’ Why can’t it be like that?”

She sort of chuckles. There is nothing worse than gods chuckling.

“It’s not funny!”

“Are you speaking back to me?” she asks, laughing even harder.

I cross my arms over my chest. “I guess.”

“Only gods do that.”

I apologize.

“I found your ranting amusing,” she says, composing her face into something slightly more serious. It looks like it takes her some effort, because her eyes are still twinkling.

I make a harrumphing noise, which I figure is a nice cross between politeness and showing my disapproval. “I just wish I knew exactly what to do.”

She places both her hands on my shoulders and I tilt my head up so that I can meet her eyes. Her voice is serious again as she says, “Let me give you a warning.”

I wait.

“Zara, others may still try to trap you, even turn you back into a pixie, to make your power their own,” she says.

I feel like that little glittering deer figurine, unable to move by myself, trapped by everybody else’s wishes and needs, trapped by destiny.

“You mean Frank?” I spit out his name, then realize she might not recognize him by that one. “Belial?”

Nodding, she drops her hands from my shoulders, moves back to the wall of mirrors, and rests her forehead against one. “When you are turned, your king’s needs become your own. His darkness or his light begin to infect your soul. With the star king, it was light. His goodness and your goodness combined to make you and all your pixies stronger. Even though you are no longer a pixie, you still have that goodness and you are still the key to stopping the apocalypse. However, that also means you may still be the key to starting it.”

“So even though I’m not a pixie, they need me to start it all.”

“No matter what your enemies might think,
starting
the apocalypse has nothing to do with being pixie. It has everything to do with being human. However”—she pauses—“the pixies who want to end all things human believe that if they kill you immediately after the apocalypse begins, there will be no entity capable of stopping it.”

“Oh,” I say.

“Yes,” she echoes me. “Oh.”

FROM AGENT WILLIS'S PERSONAL LOG

I think I'm going to have to request more manpower in this case. I honestly feel like I'm in a sci-fi episode playing the clueless federal agent, but I have never seen such a lack of evidence or pieces that just do not go together. Sometimes I think we are dealing with one killer. Sometimes I think we are dealing with dozens. Possibly a Satanic cult? The town is on the edge of all-out panic. People are leaving on extended vacations, and those who have stayed behind have a look of intense anxiety. I am failing these people. I know it.

 

 

 

Hel gives me a second to compose myself, which is kind of her. She moves out of the room and issues orders in a language I don't understand. The air trembles with the first sounds of a flute. It trills into a beautiful song that lilts with the promise of spring and kittens and flowers poking from the earth. There is music in Hel. Who knew?

The chandeliers jingle lightly, almost as if they are reacting to the flute song. I walk past the mirrors and giant windows that look out upon the snowy landscape. I move past the gilded moldings and the seven-foot gold candelabras that burn with crystal flames. Each step on the marble floor pushes a little more strength into me. Each step convinces me that I've done the right thing. Each step makes me harden up a little more, because if I don't make myself harder, I will just fall down and cry over losing the chance to see my dad.

Hel waits for me at the end of the hall. She envelops my hand with hers and ushers me onto an interior balcony that wraps around a large courtyard-type room full of people who are both lounging and busy. The flute music comes from a little girl who sits on top of a gilded piano in the center of the room.

“She's so young,” I whisper.

“Many of us are young when we die.” Hel states this like it is nothing, and maybe to her it
is
nothing, but to me? It's a whole lot of something.

As we walk, I get a better angle at the room below us. There are about two hundred statues, spouting water. They are bronze and gold and crystal, and most seem to have something to do with Norse mythology. Giant wolves snap at the moon. Horses paw at the air. Giant tree sculptures reach up to the ceiling and embrace it.

“So,” I say again, hoping for more information, “how do we stop this Ragnarok thing?”

“You can't wait for it to happen. You have to go to it. What is the word you use in your country, in your time? You have to be proactive, not reactive?” Her hand flutters up into the air like she's trying to find the right way to tell me.

“Strike first?” I can't believe a god is telling me to be proactive.

“In a way.”

“Everything we've read says that freeing Loki is the big signal that starts the apocalypse rolling. It's in all the books, the ancient texts, the Internet sites. Because I can refuse to do that. I will never do that.” My voice comes out so hard and so tough that it surprises me.

She stops and leans on the marble railing. Her hands look so different from each other. I stare at them as she says, “You cannot say what you will never do, Zara. Loki is trapped unfairly. Though I am partial because he is my relation. But it is better for him to stay trapped than to kill all in your world. Still, there will be circumstances that may sway you.”

I ask, “Can you see what happens like Cassidy does?”

“The girl with elf blood? Like her, I see only glimpses.” She sighs, uses her ghoulish hand to pick a speck of dust off of the railing. She holds it in the air and lets the current of wind whisk it away. It catches the light and then I can see it no longer. “Let me tell you what I can: you need an army that has nothing to lose.”

Her voice matches my insides like they are made of the same sad emotion. Where do I find an army that has nothing to lose? I think about all the kids we're training. They all have so much to lose. Still, we
are
fighting against an apocalypse, so we sort of have nothing to lose. I start to explain this and ask her if I'm right. She gives a slight shrug, the kind of shrug that makes me think I am probably wrong.

“Can you tell me anything else?” I ask.

“Only magic will stop them.”

“A magic thing?”

“The kind of magic that comes from inside.”

Something beneath us has caught her attention. I figure out where she's looking. It's past the galloping horses fountain, past a lovely old couple in tweed, over to the left a bit and—

“There's something going on down there,” I say.

“There is,” she agrees.

“Should we check it out, maybe? Is everything okay?” I'm worried by her lack of concern.

The air in the room seems to empty out. The flute stops. I see him.

My voice fills the void with a rushed whisper. “That's my dad, isn't it?”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

He's leaning against a wall, talking. His legs are crossed casually at the ankle. He stops in midsentence and his head slowly moves up so that his gaze meets mine. His lips part just the tiniest bit like they always do when he's surprised.

“Daddy!” It's a little-girl word, but I don't care. That's what he is. That's who he is to me.

I fly down the stairs, head spinning, any resolve I had before about not seeing him no longer mattering. My father—here. He is truly here. I hadn't quite believed it. And so close. And he is running too, racing across the marble floor. People part for him, stepping out of the way so we can get to each other more quickly.

“You're here! I mean, I knew you were here, but I'm not supposed to see you. I chose . . .” My words have rushed out of me before I even know what I'm saying, and I break them off as he scoops me up into what we used to call the Daddy Bear Hug. He squeezes and squeezes and I clutch on to him. Nothing has ever felt so good. Not ever. I hold on and hold on. I will never let go.

My feet come back to the ground, but we still hug.

“You died?” he whispers. “So soon?”

“No! No! I'm still alive, just trying to save the world.” I rush out the briefest explanation I can and since he's my dad and ridiculously smart he understands all of it pretty much instantly.

“I'm so sorry I left you like that, Zara,” he starts. His voice breaks and he tries again. “I-I've been so worried about you and your mother. I'm so sorry. So sorry I'm not there for you, to help you, to take care of you.”

“Daddy, you can't apologize for that.” My fingers flutter up, go to each side of his beautiful dad face. He is scruffy. “You didn't choose to die. It's not your fault at all.”

He swallows so hard that his Adam's apple visibly rides up and down in his throat. An icicle of light shines in his brown eyes.

“I saw him at the window and I was so shocked. My heart froze in my chest. That's what it felt like . . .”

“Saw who, Daddy?”

He eyes me. “Your biological father.”