Entice (4 page)

“I only just found out, Devyn.”

He doesn’t say anything. Nobody does. I pluck at the fraying edge of the seat belt and try to imagine that I’m in their shoes dealing with me—a newly formed pixie. How would I feel? I’d feel worried and nauseated. I’d want to trust myself, but I’d hold back a bit, right? I’d be worried and looking for any tiny sign of deception, because I would have to in order to stay safe. These aren’t simple problems with simple solutions. It’s not like I borrowed Issie’s dress and forgot to give it back, or cheated off Devyn’s test paper. I’ve turned pixie. I could kill them pretty easily if I wanted to—not that I ever would want to, I don’t think. Would I?

“I am not hiding things from you,” I say, trying to convince them. “I am still me. I am still Zara in love with Nick, friend of you guys, part of the gang. Okay?”

Cassidy sighs heavily into the car air. “They’re just nervous because—”

“Because I turned. I know.” My voice is soft. “I thought you guys trusted me.”

“We do, sweetie. We do,” Issie simpers. “We just don’t know how much influence he has on you.” She lifts one hand off the wheel and gestures back toward Astley.

“None,” I say. “He has none.”

But I don’t know if this is actually true. Who am I really? Am I still the same person if I’m not even technically a person anymore? Does being stronger make me different? Will it? I mean, I’ve always thought tall people had a totally different perspective on the world than short people, and that culture and circumstances and choices make you who you are. So by being pixie rather than human, I have changed who I am, or at least who I will become. My head rests against the seat back and I close my eyes.

“Uh-oh, Zara’s having an existential moment,” Cassidy says.

I snap my eyes open. “How would you know that?”

“Elf blood.” She smiles and taps her temple with one of her long fingernails.

“Excuse me? What does ‘existential’ mean?” Issie asks.

“Well, according to Kierkegaard,” Devyn begins in this totally pompous teacher tone, “a person is solely accountable for creating meaning in his or her life. And she/he should live that life with passion and sincerity despite all the horrifying roadblocks that confront him or her, such as despair, boredom, angst, pixies …”

“I hate when Devyn says ‘she/he,’ ” I mutter to Cassidy. She snorts.

“So, what does that have to do with Zara?” Issie asks.

“I just mean that Zara is focused on herself and her place in the world right this second,” Cassidy explains. She puts an arm around me. “Which is absolutely understandable given the circumstances.”

“True,” Issie agrees. “Plus, you’ve missed a few days of school and you are so behind on AP Bio. And the whole track team is floundering. Now that Ian and Megan are gone and Nick is gone and you …”

We are all silent. We drive through the darkness on crazy roads, bumping from potholes and frost heaves. Roads are meant to be smooth paths, straight lanes to destinations, but they aren’t like that at all, are they? Life isn’t like that either. I rest my head on Cassidy’s shoulder and let Issie drive us the rest of the bumpy way to my grandmother’s house.

“We have to find Astley’s mother,” I announce. “She knows how to get to Valhalla.”

Cassidy pets the side of my head. “Awesome. We’ll do a Web search.”

“A name would help,” Devyn suggests.

A name. Of course. We need a name.

They were monsters. We were attacked by monsters. All I can remember is blue and teeth.

—
STATUS
UPDATE
,
SUMNER
STUDENT

We spend most of the car ride home talking about the escalation of violence, about how
FBI
agents have shown up in town to help the local police, how people still don’t realize that it’s not a serial killer but a group of paranormal creatures that’s hurting everyone. And because we spend all that time talking about how we can stop them, how we have to do something, but how we feel almost powerless, I kind of repress the fact that I’m about to see Betty.

“Should I call first?” I ask as Issie pulls into my driveway. Panic edges into my voice, shrilling it. Betty is not an easy woman. She is tough and awesome and blunt, but not …
easy
. And she was really anti me turning pixie. “Maybe I should call first and warn her.”

“Zare, you are already here. Calling is pointless,” Issie says as she puts her car in park.

“Agreed,” Cassidy declares. She pats me on the leg. The dress fabric makes slithery noises as I stare at my grandmother’s shingled Cape with its cute porch and woods all around it. It looks so calm and happy, not like a weretiger lives there, not like a pixie king once ransacked it.

“She’s going to kill me,” I say.

Issie turns off the car while murmuring supportive things, and Devyn says, all matter-of-factly, “Absolutely. Do you want us to come in with you?”

I think about it for a second. “I do but I don’t. I don’t want you all to witness her yelling at me, but I also don’t want her to tear me apart. You know, literally tear me apart. She does that to pixies.”

“Witnessed it.” Issie shudders.

I open the car door. Cassidy grabs my wrist, stopping me before I get too far. “You sure, Zara?”

I nod. “I’m sure. You guys be safe going home, okay?”

“We will,” Issie chirps, all confident and proud. “I’m driving.”

I’m about to say something about being extra careful when I smell Astley. He lands on the snow in front of me, tall and steady. If Issie wants to learn how to be confident, she should study him. He’s a textbook case. He cocks his head as I stare and then says, “I expect this might be difficult for you, Zara. Would you like me to accompany you?”

“We already offered,” Devyn says out the window, which he’s opened again. His voice is snippy. “Why don’t you leave before you do any more harm? And what’s your mother’s name?”

Astley doesn’t even acknowledge that Devyn has spoken. He just keeps his eyes locked on my face. I shake my head.

“I’ve got to face her myself,” I say. I lower my voice so the others don’t hear. “Can you follow them? Make sure they stay safe, especially Issie after she drops off the others. Hide, though, so they don’t know, okay?”

He pulls his lips in toward his teeth and then slowly nods in agreement.

I wave to Issie. “I’m good, guys. You can go.”

She turns the car back on and Devyn yells out the window, “Do not do anything stupid, pixie.”

“His name is Astley,” I shout back, but Devyn merely raises an eyebrow as the passenger-side window goes up. Just then the front door of the house opens. Betty stands there. Her dark blue plaid flannel pajamas from L.L.Bean hang off her wide shoulders; her close-cropped gray hair is all askew. My heart whooshes into my spleen. Astley puts out a hand to steady me.

“You sure you don’t want me to stay with you?” he asks. His voice is low, husky.

“No. Take care of the others, please. I have to do this myself.” I swallow hard and take a step forward. “But thank you.”

He lifts up into the sky and disappears into the white snowflakes and darkness. The night seems to have gotten even colder somehow as I trudge through the snow toward our porch. Betty stands there under the yellow light, simply staring. She doesn’t say a word, which makes it even worse, you know? Because Betty is always saying something, imparting wisdom, cracking dirty jokes, whatever.

That’s when I realize what I’ve done to her. I’ve made her wait, helpless, while I went off and became a pixie, and then even went to a freaking dance. All that time she had to wait, knowing I could have died and that there was nothing she could do about it. I’ve done this to her because I was so dead-set on not being helpless about Nick, about being proactive, about finally being a hero.

Everything inside me seems to freeze and then break into tiny shards of ice. My breath hitches in my chest, but I manage to take one step forward and then another. My foot hits the wood of the porch. Betty swallows so loudly that I can actually hear it, although that might be because of my new, improved pixie hearing. The snowflakes are wet and sloshy as they fall.

“Gram,” I start as I step fully onto the porch, planting both feet. “I’m so sorry. I’m so—”

She opens her arms and leaps toward me, crossing the porch in one long, springy step. Right now she is still human, totally human, and clutches me to her—not with weretiger anger, but with love. My face smooshes against the soft flannel. Her hand goes up to my hair and she says, “No words, Zara. Just let me be happy you’re home.”

She invites me inside without hesitating and sits me gently on the sofa before slouching next to me. Our legs touch. We talk for a long time. I tell her everything and she growls every once in a while. I know she’s disappointed in me, but she’s proud in a weird way too.

After a couple hours we head upstairs to our bedrooms. She kisses me good night and says, “You are just like your father.”

I back into the wall, hitting my head on a picture of me when I was three, dressed in a princess ballerina costume. “That’s mean.”

“Not your biological father, that pixie.” She spits out the word “pixie” and wipes her hands on her pajama legs like they have cooties on them. Her eyes flash. “You are like your real father, my son. Stubborn. Kind. Always wanting to save everyone. Foolish. Sweet.”

“Oh …” My stepdad, the dad who raised me, died less than a year ago from a heart attack—maybe brought on by a pixie sighting. That’s part of how I ended up here in Maine, living with his mom, my grandmother Betty, while my mom fills out the rest of her employment contract in Charleston.

Betty straightens the picture I knocked with my head and clucks. “I like it when you smile.”

“Even though I’m a pixie.” I regret saying it the moment the words are out of my mouth.

She grabs me by the shoulders, suddenly intense and strong. “You will never be a pixie. You will always be my granddaughter, Zara. That is who you are, damn it. Don’t forget it. We are not defined by our species any more than our nationality or our gender. What we do, our choices, that’s what defines us.”

I have a hard time meeting her eyes. That’s what I’ve always believed too, but somehow I keep forgetting it now that I’ve turned. It’s like I don’t get the benefit of the life rules I make for everyone else.

“Okay,” I whisper.

Her breath comes out in tiny spurts as she leans in and kisses my forehead again. I don’t think she’s ever kissed me so much. “You get a good night’s sleep,” she says, “and then in the morning we’re going to get started figuring out how to get the bad pixies out of this town of ours.”

The clock chimes the end of an hour and a shudder breaks through me.

“What if he’s dead, really dead?” I suck in the air, trying not to give in and cry. “Gone-forever dead, you know? And I changed for nothing.”

She raises an eyebrow, probably startled by my big change of topic. The clock downstairs keeps chiming midnight. “You don’t believe that, do you?”

I shake my head hard, the way a little kid does when she’s trying to convince herself of something important. Cassidy used her elf powers to show me Nick alive. He was in a bed and not moving, but he was alive. We all saw that. He was real.

Betty’s voice is solid in the air. “Then don’t say it. Saying it gives it power. Good night.”

Betty must be annoyed at me, I think, because that’s abrupt even for her. I go into my room and change out of the silly dress-up clothes Issie and Cass made me wear and put on some flannel boxers and a Luka Bloom T-shirt. I pull the covers up to my chin and stare up at the Amnesty International poster on the ceiling. I can hear Betty sniffling downstairs. She’s crying softly, trying not to let me hear it, but I’m a pixie now and I do. I do hear her. I hear and know so many things I’d rather not hear and know … the weakness inside people, the soft squish of snowflakes hitting the roof, the ache in my grandmother’s heart, and the ache in my own.

Law enforcement officers have imposed a curfew on all Bedford residents under the age of eighteen. At a press conference held at Bedford City Hall today, Sheriff J. Farrar explained, “The majority of the disappearances have occurred after dark. We are advising that everyone only travel in groups. Do not go into wooded areas alone. Do not accept rides from strangers.”

—
NEWS
CHANNEL
8

I spend the day planning out strategy with Devyn, who comes over after lunch. He insists I catch up with AP Lit and AP Bio first, and a couple other of my harder classes. It all gives me a headache. Schoolwork is not at the top of my list right now, even though it has to be, because if I survive all this, I do want to go to college someday. I can’t imagine going into the interview and explaining that I failed out of high school because of a pixie invasion.
Right
. We set up camp in the living room. Devyn moves stiffly because of his old pixie injury, but it makes me so happy to see him walking without help in front of the woodstove and pacing past the couch and coffee table as he pontificates and goes into professor mode. Betty is still at some craft fair with Mrs. Nix, her best friend and our school secretary.

We spend some time trying to figure out the anagram my dad once wrote in the margin of his Lovecraft book until Astley texts me his mom’s name and we start to type it obsessively into various search engines. We come up with some mentions of her at antique shows and clock symposiums throughout the world, but nothing that pins her down, let alone an address.

While Dev surfs the Web, we talk and I keep walking toward the windows, looking out, searching the woods for signs of pixies. It’s like I can’t keep still. I wonder if this is some sort of pixie-change side effect.

“They aren’t attacking in the daylight anymore,” Devyn says. “Not after the Sumner bus incident and a couple after that.”

“What are people saying?”

“That there’s a serial killer.” He groans. “There was a news crew from Boston up here when you were off changing. Some federal agents have been sniffing around too. People think Nick’s parents sent for him to get out of danger. Some people think there’s an alien apocalypse coming. You missed a lot, Zara.”