Entice (12 page)

“Inside of me.” I give him an eyebrow raise to push my point a little further. “Even if you’re a pixie king, it’s okay to occasionally admit to the world that there have been fractures and that there is glue.”

“Even to his queen?”

I nod. “Especially.”

Astley leaves and I just sit in the
MINI
for a minute, trying to process everything that’s going on. Cassidy comes running down the sidewalk, her eyes frantic big. Her braids have morphed into dreads this last week, and the effect has made her prettier, but right now she looks like some sort of frazzled animal. She yanks on the passenger door, but it’s locked.

“Let me in,” she demands.

I push up on the unlock button in the center console under the radio and grab the sword I’ve stuck in the backseat in case of attacks. She slams into the passenger seat and shuts the door.

“Are they after you?” I ask. My fingers tighten around the sword’s hilt.

She looks confused for a second. “What …? No! No, I found something.”

“You aren’t in mortal danger?” I use the phrase because it’s so corny and I’m trying to ease the tension. It works. She laughs. I push the red button to turn the heat up a little bit because she’s shivering. I can’t tell if it’s from cold or excitement.

“Look at this!” She waves the paper under my nose.

I take the paper. There’s an article on health-care reform, a couple ads. I don’t get it. “What is it?”

She taps her finger on an ad for a party at a bar. “This. Right here!”

She’s so excited all her words just rush out, but she’s not really saying anything—or I’m not really getting it. “I’m sorry … a costume party at a bar on Mount Desert Island? That’s forty minutes away and we are way too young to get into a bar.”

“Look at the entertainer,” she insists.

I scan the tiny print. “It’s a fiddler?”

She takes the paper back and folds it neatly in her lap with the ad facing up. She smooths her hand over it and pulls in a few breaths, trying to calm herself down.

“Cass?”

She smiles serenely. “Sorry. Just trying to get a way to tell you. Okay … Every year my mom brings me to the Common Ground Fair, which is this big-time organic fair in Unity, right?”

“Unity?”

“It’s a town in the middle of the state.” She waves her hand dismissively. “It doesn’t matter. To get to the main part of the fair, you have to walk through this sweet trail that curves through these tall spruce trees. So, right in front of me was this guy. He had a weird vibe. He was wearing all corduroy—blazer, pants. And sticking out from his blazer was this long taillike appendage that was wrapped in different-colored earth-toned cloth. I guess he could tell I was checking him out, because he turned his head and looked at me. His eye was this startling silver color. How startling? So startling that I actually gasped and got creeped out.”

“Was he a pixie?” I ask.

“Yeah. His glamour wasn’t so good either, but I didn’t even know there were pixies back then.” She sighs. “I just knew that there were people who weren’t actually people, you know?”

“So what’s that got to do with the ad?” I ask.

Her eyes sparkle, she’s so psyched. She jabs the picture of the fiddler with her finger. “This is that guy—the guy I saw at the fair.”

“Cool …” I wait a second for some kind of big realization to hit. Maybe it’s because I’m so tired, but it doesn’t. “I still don’t get it. We’ve located a pixie, yeah. We’ll go get him.”

“No! That’s not it. Look at his name, Zara.”

I read the ad. “BiForst?”

“As in ‘shimmering path’?” She pokes me in the thigh with her finger.

“I still don’t get it.”

“As in the way to get to Asgard, where Valhalla is.”

“But that’s a bridge, not a person.” The world suddenly feels full of light. “But it could be a clue … He could know … Oh, man …”

She grabs my hand in hers and our fingers intertwine. “Don’t hyperventilate, Zara.”

I push my free hand against my heart.

“I am, aren’t I? Oh my gosh, Cassidy. What if he knows something?” I grab the paper from her. “This party is tomorrow night.
Tomorrow night!
”

We both do this tiny squee thing and hug each other, reaching over the shift and emergency brake. We separate after several seconds of this. I swear I would happy-dance all around the
MINI
if there was enough room to actually stand up.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” I raise my hand for a fist bump.

“Road trip!” she sings out.

“Road trip,” I agree, my whole body screaming out happy, hopeful thoughts as I hug Cassidy again. Inside my head, I whisper to Nick, who can’t hear me, I know, but I totally don’t care. “You hold on, baby. I’m coming to find you. I am.”

[*Thomas Steffan Waiting for someone else to disappear. Better not be me this time. Or any of my homies. Got that, serial killer? —
STATUS
UPDATE

Things don’t go quite as smoothly as I expect. First, due to the Iceland debacle, I can’t even tell Betty about the bar thing without risking a full-blown scene. But then Devyn’s parents sequester him at their house because they are working like mad on a vial of my blood, trying to make a pixie toxin, and need all the help they can get. And Issie is still grounded.

“Even on the weekends?” I whine. We’re talking on our phones. Is has to whisper because she’s not even supposed to use her phone.

“The quote-unquote danger is even greater on the weekends, according to my mom. You’re lucky I got out to go to the coffee house,” she says. “I had to totally lie and say I was doing a community service project with Key Club and that I’d come right home afterward. My mom is totally paranoid. She’s all, ‘A serial killer is loose out there!’ ”

“Can’t you lie again?”

There’s a silence. I plop down on my pillows, stare up at the Amnesty poster on my ceiling.

“It’s okay, Is—,” I start to say.

She interrupts me. “No. I have an idea. I’ll say I’m going to church group. We have church group tomorrow night. I just can’t be super late. And I have to moan a lot about going, because I always do, or else she’ll suspect something is up.”

I hop out of the bed. “Issie, I love you! I would hug you right now if you were here.”

“Well,” she whispers. “Just let me live with you when my mom kicks me out, or rescue me from heaven when she kills me. Okay?”

Laughing, I clutch my pillow. “Okay.”

Issie picks up Cassidy and me. We cram into her car. It’s full of steak knives, which Issie’s mom insisted she take for protection. There’s also an emergency whistle hanging from a necklace chain. I’m in Devyn’s shotgun spot, mostly because Is won’t stop worrying about Devyn not being here, and I think it’s driving Cassidy crazy.

“We will be
fine
without him,” Issie says for the hundred millionth time as we drive onto Route 3. “Right? So it is all girl power tonight. Girl power! Yee haw!”

She raises her hand for a fist bump, but her voice rises up at the end of the sentence the way it always does when she’s stressed. Cassidy bumps it. I’m too busy trying to deal with the pounding pain rushing through my head.

“I think you need one of those deal-with-iron pills Astley gave you,” Is says. “You have one?”

I try to nod, but the movement breaks off because my head is basically exploding.

“Look in her purse,” Is orders Cassidy.

Cassidy reaches up to my lap and yanks my purse into the backseat with her. She pulls out a little plastic bag of pills. “These look so illegal.”

“Oh my gosh, Zara,” Issie chimes in. “They totally do. What if they are illegal? What if they count as drugs? That’s an automatic suspension from school, plus I think they give you a juvie record and everything if they think you are selling them. You can’t just carry them around in your purse like that or you will totally get arrested, and you can’t get arrested because do you know what they do to cute girls like you in jail? I mean, I know you’re a pixie, but they could still do that to you and—”

“Issie,” Cassidy interrupts, opening up the baggie and giving me one of the big blue pills. “Honey, you need to breathe.”

“Okay, yeah, right, breathing …,” Issie says and hauls in a couple big, hard breaths. “I’m just so nervous.”

“Thank you,” I say, and it’s just a whisper. I swallow the pill down and wait. It takes about a minute, but it works.

“Better?” Is asks.

“Yeah. Sorry. Pixie side effect,” I explain, trying to organize the steak knives.

“It’s not all glittery dust and Peter Pan love, huh?” Is teases. Then she reverts to stressed-out Issie, worrying about going to a bar without Devyn and without telling Betty. Cassidy and I spend most of the car ride reassuring her that we will be beyond fine. My entire body hums with excitement as we drive down Route 3, the two-lane road that goes through Trenton, past a shut-down water place and touristy lobster restaurants and an
IGA
, and then over the bridge onto Mount Desert Island. There are no streetlights and just occasionally houses before Bar Harbor. There’s so much darkness out there, and it’s strange how it’s people who light it up, giving us glimpses into their lives via their living room windows.

“Zara, you’re shaking the entire car, you’re fidgeting so much,” Cassidy says from the backseat as we pull into the parking lot.

“I can’t help it,” I say, unclicking my seat belt.

“You can’t click until we’ve stopped. You are so impatient!” Issie pulls into a parking spot. “That’s okay, but don’t get your hopes up, sweetie. You don’t want to—”

“Be disappointed,” I finish for her. “I know! But I’m not going to be. I can feel it. We are totally going to get Nick back. We are taking the first big step right now. Right now! Girl power, babies. Girl power.”

Cassidy rolls her eyes because I am just a little bit too much PG-13 cheerleading movie for her. We get out of the car, and as Issie locks it we all stand there together, staring at the bar building, which is low, one-story, and has dark smudge marks on the white walls.

“Even the snow can’t hide the ugly,” Cassidy mutters as we hustle across the parking lot, our feet making tracks in the snow.

We pause outside. The bar is set up along one side of the public parking lot in Bar Harbor. The town is a wicked tourist place in the summer but pretty much abandoned in the winter. Almost all the stores on Cottage and Main streets are boarded up with signs that say BE
BACK
IN
MAY
.

“It’s so deserted feeling,” Cassidy whispers.

We’ve stopped our power walk and now we’re half crawling, half tiptoeing toward the building, which has two entrances. One is on Cottage and the other faces the parking lot.

“Mmm-hmm,” says Issie. “I know I’m the one who is always freaking out about getting suspended and arrested and grounded and everything, so I should probably not mention how worried I am about getting carded.”

“We aren’t even going to buy beer,” I say, trying to sound logical and reassuring even though I’m pretty worried about this too.

“Some places card at the door,” Issie retorts.

“And you know this how?” I ask. “Because last I knew, you weren’t a big barhopper.”

“I download things, that’s how I know,” she says, embarrassment raising her voice up an octave.

“Issie’s right,” Cassidy insists. “Some places do card at the door.”

“Well … um …” I don’t know what to say. I scuff my heels in the snow.

Issie perks up. “Maybe you can do one of those freaking mind-control things, now that you’re all pixie. You know, like the Jedi in
Star Wars …
?”

I grab her mittened hand in my own. “I don’t think I could do that, but it’s okay … We will deal with this. Together.”

I push open the steel door, and there’s no bouncer, no guy checking IDs. It’s actually so crowded nobody even notices us. I’m totally sure our costumes make us look older anyway. Still, something is wrong about the bar, and all my internal danger alarms are screaming at me to turn around and walk away, to go home. It’s not just that Issie, Cassidy, and I are totally underage and it’s illegal for us to even step inside the bar out of the cold. It’s not that the outside of the place looks like an overgrown trailer or that the inside, with all its folding metal chairs and sticky floor, isn’t much better. It’s something much worse than that. The wrong of it pushes against my skin, twists my stomach into braided knots, but I can’t figure out exactly what that wrong is.

“Eww, it totally stinks in here,” Issie says, wrinkling her nose. She hugs her arms around her coat like she’s trying to warm herself up. “We aren’t going to get arrested, are we?”

I give her a patented Zara White eyebrow raise. “We aren’t drinking, Is.”

“No, seriously. I know that’s wimpy to ask with everything else going on, but if we live through this, I want to go to college and I don’t want a record,” she whispers as people jostle us farther inside. I’m too short to see over people’s heads.

“You can leave, Issie,” Cassidy says.

“Nope. Not leaving my friends,” she says in a fake brave voice.

The fiddling guy has to be here somewhere, but I can’t find him. All I can see are backs, so I ask our tall friend, “Can you see him, Cassidy?”

“Not yet.” Her eyes flit around, taking in the scene. She’s cautious even when she looks. She lifts one of her long hands up to her dreadlock braids. She snarls at a big guy dressed up like a werewolf who has elbowed Is in the back. She puts her arm protectively around Issie’s shoulder. “Nobody will be mad at you if you leave.”

Issie shakes her head so violently that her rainbow knit hat falls off. “No way. I’m not going out there without Zara to protect me. Are you nuts? It’s night and a steak knife is so not going to hold back a pixie attack.”

I scoop her hat up off the beer-stained floor and hand it to her. “It’ll be okay, Issie. I’ll keep us safe.”

Although how can I do that? I’m not so sure. There’s only one of me and there’s a ton of … of … everybody else. I try to exhale, calm down, remember my purpose for being here, and take in the entire scene.

Then I see him—a strange guy fiddling over in the corner of the bar. When I say strange, I really mean bizarre more than just plain old everyday strange. He has way too much hair and fake horns sprouting up out of the top of his head. Still, he isn’t the weirdest person in here, not by a long shot. The bar is packed with people, most of them human. Some of them are dressed up like vampires with over-the-top black capes and plastic fangs. Some of the girls are supposed to be fae. They have sparkling wings and tiny tutu dresses. They all look clueless and drunk, which makes them look absolutely nothing like the real pixies and fairies they are supposed to be resembling.