Endure (24 page)

“Sometimes not helping
is
helping,” she pleads.

“Not this time.” I’m out the door before she can make me doubt myself anymore. It’s freezing. The wind makes part of the car’s back bumper rattle against the ground and whips up snow. Close to me, Amelie is fighting off two pixies. Nick has taken another one down. I look away from that because it’s gross and violent and bloody, and even with all the fighting I’ve done, I still don’t like it. Farther down the road, close to the back of the second car, Astley’s battling two more. He’s doing a good job too. His fist connects to a stomach. He back-kicks the other behind the knee, dropping him.

The one still standing sees me and yells, “She’s out of the car.”

Oops. Maybe I
was
the target.

My knees bend and I grab at the bumper. It’s not too hard to rip off because it’s already damaged. One of the pixies leaps at me, springing like a cat, claws outstretched. Wielding the bumper like a baseball bat, I smash it across his head. Flesh burns.

“Nasty,” I mumble. He twitches and stays still, sprawled out, eyes closed. I adjust my hold on the bumper, plant my feet. “Who is next? Huh?”

One that Amelie had been fighting raises his eyebrows and takes a step forward. My heart beats faster.

“I said, ‘Who is next?’ If there’s no takers then y’all need to leave,” I announce, and I have to admit I’m pretty proud of how brave my voice sounds. You can even hear it over the sound of fighting wolf and cursing Amelie.

The pixie that Astley had dropped starts to get back up. I rush toward him, bumper ready, but something knocks me down from behind. My face smashes into snow. I turn it sideways just in time to keep from breaking my nose. Claws wrap around my head.

“Damn it, queen!” Amelie roars, yanking the pixie off of me.

“I’m not a queen anymore.” I hustle back up and belt the pixie over the head with the bumper as Astley dispatches another one. Nick’s taken care of Amelie’s second enemy. For a second all is calm, and groaning or dead pixies lie around us. It’s horrible and disgusting, all this loss of life. Something sobs inside of me.

Astley notices.

“Come on. Let’s get home.” He drapes an arm around my shoulders, and even though he’s gross and bloody, it feels good.

“It looks as if someone doesn’t want us to get back,” Amelie says as she gets in the driver’s seat. We all have rushed back into the car, which seems safer than outside.

“Or wants us dead. Or just wants us.” I grab a bag, throw Nick some clothes, and then dig into my own bag for the first-aid kit we brought with us. I start working on everyone’s wounds, crawling over everyone because it is awkward and crowded.

While I’m cleaning a cut on Astley’s hairline, he touches the inside of my wrist gently. His eyes meet mine, and I feel almost as connected to him as I did when I was his queen. He pulls his lips in like he’s wetting them and then whispers, “You did well with that bumper.”

“Assorted car parts. Weapons of choice,” I quip, taping a gauze pad down.

Before he can answer, I move toward the back of the car and the now-dressed Nick, checking for any wounds that his were blood hasn’t already healed. He shakes his head, telling me he’s okay, and I start toward Amelie.

“Driving!” she says. “No patching up while I am driving.”

I sit next to Issie and grab her hand. She squeezes. We move on toward the airport, silent.

PROBABLY NOT SANE BLOG

Latest Post:

Dude. They are outing themselves—these crazy-ass blue things with shark teeth. I freaking swear. Some are good. Some are evil. It’s très confusing, but they say there’s some sort of apocalypse coming and the only way to stop it is to fight it. Pixies. Human sized. Ka-bing. Some are hot too. I don’t know. I don’t know. But they don’t want us to blab about it, which is why I am, you know, blabbing about it. Color me a rebel.

For the next two days, we don’t stop moving. We use locked groups on social-networking sites, plan on chat rooms, do everything we can to get everyone in Bedford on the same page. Issie and I are in charge of this part of the effort. At first, older people don’t quite believe, but Betty handles those. Because of all the lives she’s saved, and legs she’s splinted, and spaghetti suppers she’s volunteered at, she’s respected by the people of Bedford. Plus, she doesn’t give the impression of being crazy. And for those who still doubt, we have Amelie or Becca change in front of them. When people see attractive women morph into blue-skinned, razor-toothed pixies, it tends to convince them.

We worry about it going viral, about someone telling the rest of the world, but the stakes are too high to get obsessed over it, and the one guy who narks on all of us via his blog is quickly berated by the rest of the blog-i-verse, or the equivalent, which is like thirteen anonymous users.

Nick finds it amusing. At night he reads the blog comments to Betty and me before Betty falls asleep in the armchair. We’re hanging on the couch in a very happy and very non-boyfriend/girlfriend way. He’s got a laptop perched on his knees. Betty’s snoring and I’ve thrown a blanket over her. She snarls and snaps at you if you try to wake her up and get her to go to bed. Believe me, I know. So we leave her there.

“Listen to this one.” Nick laughs and then puts on this fake surfer voice. “ ‘Dude, if they are hot and the end is coming just bang one.’ ”

I roll my eyes and he laughs some more. I swear, it’s nice being friends with him again. Then he turns and looks at me, closing the laptop.

“We can do this, Zara,” he says. “Try not to worry too much.”

I swallow hard. “People will die, Nick.”

I want to say,
like you did.
But I don’t.

He nods, puts the laptop on the coffee table, and says, “It will not be your fault if they do.”

“It feels like it is.”

“It isn’t. You didn’t start this, Zara. Astley’s cracked-out relatives did. You didn’t make Hel or Loki or any of that real.”

“But I made the decision for us to be proactive.”

“We all did. We have to do it this way and you know it, or else we’re just sitting ducks wondering when they’ll attack. Amelie’s recon shows another hundred pixies have arrived. We have no time left, Zara. People are
dying
. You’re such a martyr sometimes. I swear that—” He starts to say something else but there’s a knock on the door. “Astley.”

He gets up and opens it. Astley’s on the porch with his retinue. They look serious and snowy but well dressed. Everyone except Astley wears parkas like they are about to spend time on some Aspen ski vacation. Astley wears his old leather jacket, no hat, no gloves. His eyes meet mine and my heart beats a little faster as he says, “May I come in?”

His voice is mellow and calm.

“Of course.” Nick opens the door wider. It’s a big step for the two of them to be talking and civilized. If they can work together it gives me hope—and hope is kind of rare right now.

I can’t help smiling as Astley steps inside and Nick closes the door, blocking out the cold. Astley smiles too. The others stay out on the porch. Frank and his minions are stalking Astley and me constantly. He can’t go anywhere without Becca and Amelie and three other bodyguard pixies, and it makes it hard to talk to him, hard to tell him what I’m feeling.

“I’m going to head upstairs,” Nick says, grabbing his laptop.

Astley waits until Nick’s retreated up the stairs and then he nods at Betty. “Is she—?”

She snores.

“Can’t you tell?”

His smile doesn’t show teeth, just pressed lips together. I take him into the kitchen so we won’t wake her up. He leans against the counter, right by the fridge. I lean against the island, opposite him. There’s a tiny bit of gold dust on the floor. For a second we just look at each other.

“I miss being connected,” he says.

“Me too.”

An awkward silence descends upon us. He runs a hand through his hair. “I cannot change you back, Zara. The Council believes it will kill you. I cannot take that risk.”

I know it’s all melodramatic, but I close my eyes. I can’t stand looking at him right now—looking and not being able to tell what he’s feeling. I turn toward the island, put my elbows on the wood top of it, and hold my head. He comes up behind me and after a moment, puts his hands on my shoulders.

“Zara—” His voice is a hoarse whisper full of emotion.

“I just need a second. Sorry.” I swallow hard and stand up. He spins me around so we stand facing each other and my eyes are open again, open and staring up at him.

“Our branches are still entwined,” he says.

“You saw them?” I ask the simplest question instead of the hardest. I can’t believe he even risked going to them. If Frank followed him—

“No. I had their guardian check.” His hands move from my shoulders and down my arms, almost to my elbows and then back again. I am glad that he doesn’t turn me blue anymore. He used to before I changed. It was some sort of weird reaction of my half-pixie blood and it happened whenever he was near. He may not do that, but he does still make me woozy—lightheaded almost, when he touches me.

I ask the hard question. “What does it mean? That they are still entwined?”

He tilts his head just the tiniest of bits. “That we are still entwined? That our souls are connected or our fates? I do not know.”

My head moves forward so the top of it touches his chest. “Do you think we’re still connected?”

He inches away. His fingers graze my chin and make me lift my head back up so our eyes can meet. His are blue today. The pupils are large and dark. His voice is deep. “I do think so.”

I nod. His fingers move from my chin to my neck, just gently placed against my skin, and I say, “I can never thank you for all you’ve done for me. For getting Nick back. For helping us. For just—for being here.”

He blinks. I don’t know what he’s about to say or do. When I was pixie I could tell, but not anymore. Now I’m just human. I try to will him to kiss me, say it in my head,
Kiss me . . . Kiss me . . .

My psychic powers obviously suck, because he says, “And I thank you.”

“For what?” For not kissing him? For not making this more awkward? For staring at his lips like they are this really important book I need to read for Advanced Language and Comp?

He barely moves except for those lips. The clock on the microwave clicks ahead another minute, but we stand still here in the kitchen. Nick still stays upstairs, hopefully not listening with his wolf ears. Betty is still sleeping. Everything is that one word—still. We are still.

“Thank you,” he says, “for being brave after being thrust into a leadership role. For trying so hard to do the right thing for my people and for yours.”

“And for loving you?” I ask.

That was awkward.

His breath pulls in. “You love me?”

I can’t say it again, but I can nod. His fingers spread out, press against my hair and skin. He closes his eyes for one full second.

“You don’t have to say it back,” I whisper.

But he does.

“I love you, Zara. I love you and I cannot bear to lose you to this—this—” He searches for a word. “This war. You are human now and so vulnerable.”

“So are you,” I interrupt.

“I am a pixie king.”

“And you can die. We are—”

His head moves even closer to mine. “Do you remember kissing me?”

“When you turned me? Of course.” I shudder.

“No, in the parking lot of that grocery store—Hannaford’s?” He whispers these words into my ear and I remember. I remember feeling guilty about Nick. I remember feeling that it was right. I remember pushing all those feelings away. But now . . . now I wrap my fingers around his waist, touching the leather band of his jacket, the edge of it, and pull him closer. He lifts me up onto the counter. My feet dangle free.

I whisper back, “I remember.”

And then I kiss him, because sometimes you have to take a risk, because sometimes you just can’t wait anymore. Our lips meet and call out, pushing toward each other. The world turns silver like his real eyes. My body seems pointless. It is just souls meeting, gesturing against each other, needing and hoping.

“You won’t turn me?” I ask, pulling away.

“We cannot risk losing you.” His words whisper against the skin near my lips, heating it. “I cannot risk losing you.”

My hands find his hair. My fingers sink into the softness of it and then our mouths meet again. In the back of my head, I hear something. A door?

Astley pulls away, turns his head to look. Issie, Devyn, and Cassidy all stand in the living room. Betty still sleeps behind them. Cassidy’s mouth is open in a big O shape, but Issie’s the one who speaks.

She punches Devyn in the arm. “We never kiss like that.”

“Sure we do,” he says, all defensive, rubbing his arm.

“We kiss like old people,” Issie retorts, crossing her arms over her jacket. “Like old people on TV, actually.”

Cassidy laughs as Devyn starts making excuses.