Entice (28 page)

I know I should, but something in me doesn’t want to. Something in me actually wants to kill the pixie underneath me. I swallow that something down. It is like bile. It burns.

Beliel hisses at me. I shift my weight away, take my sword from his throat, but keep it pointed.

“We have it from here, warrior,” Thor says. Three other men grab Beliel and yank him out of the hall, through the open door, and into the springtime air. The others start stomping their feet on the floor and clapping. The entire hall shakes from the vibrations and the sudden loud warrior-man cheers. I blush. They are cheering for me.

Trying to catch my breath, I stand up straight and face Odin. He smiles down upon me. Astley is next to him. I can’t catch my breath at all. He looks so alive and so beautiful. But his face … I can’t read his face. Where did he come from?

“Do I win?” I ask Odin. I know what Thor said, but Odin is the decider here.

“You win.” His one eye blinks. “You win, Zara, Queen of the Star Pixies. You win and you win with honor.”

It’s all I can do not to jump up and down and scream. My eyes meet Astley’s eyes. He smiles and everything in my body explodes in a burst of happy. Without thinking about it, I leap over the table and into his arms.

The warriors start whistling and banging the table, the strength of their fists thundering their approval and applause.

“You are amazing,” Astley yells into my ear.

I wrap my arms around him and hug him back. “You were in my head. I could hear you, and your support made me stronger, Astley. I’m so glad you’re here.”

He starts laughing. “I was so worried, but I knew it. I knew you could do it!”

I lean away to study his face. “Wait. How are you here?”

“Odin had them bring me when they brought Frank.”

I break away. “The battle? Issie and Cassidy and Dev? Our pixies?”

“We won, mostly thanks to your grandmother. Your friends and our pixies are safe,” he says as he separates from me even more. We are an arm’s length apart and the distance feels like a cavern. “Now go get your wolf, Zara. I will be waiting for you in Bedford when you return.”

High school officials report that all after-school activities have been canceled pending further notice. In addition, the town’s curfew has been changed from dusk to three p.m.

—
NEWS
CHANNEL
8

The warriors insist on dressing my wound and finally tell me I can visit Nick. As I stand up to go, Astley waves good-bye. I mouth
Thank you
and rush down the hall and this time I don’t hesitate—I throw open the door. The light coming out of the room is bright, clean. It seems otherworldly and not like the rest of the rugged hall at all. I peer inside. There’s just a bed with solid wood posters and white, white sheets. There’s a body in the bed. My stomach clenches. A body.

“Nick?” I whisper.

He sits up. His eyes squint like he’s just woken up and is trying to focus. I remember that squint from when he woke up at Betty’s, groggy and sleep brained on the couch. Everything inside me stops the moment I see him. There’s stubble all over his cheeks. His eyes widen.

It
is
him. He exists and moves and breathes and lives. He lives. His eyebrows are so beautifully messy and big and his eyes are open and he’s breathing and … I swear I can taste my happiness. This can’t be, but it is. He’s here. He really is.

I take a step into the room and get ready to vault myself into his arms. “Nick!”

“Zara?” His voice sounds strong. It sounds alive and real.
He
is alive and real.

My voice explodes in happiness. “Nick!”

He leaps up out of the bed growling and lands a few feet in front of me, massive and angry. The room suddenly seems much darker than it did a moment ago.

“Someone has … has
turned
you,” he roars. “Who? Was it the same guy who killed me?”

I crawl backward, stagger to the doorway. Moss crawls over my heart, sinking its tiny tendrils into me. I knew it—I knew he’d hate me. His face is lined with anger and maybe age. He looks older and angry and alive, really and truly alive.

“You aren’t dead,” I sputter. Tears threaten to leave my eyes. “So he didn’t kill you?”

“He did kill me. They brought me back,” he corrects. He tilts his head. His hands reach for me and then clench into fists, as if touching me is too horrible to imagine. He jerks them back to his sides. “I swear, Zara, I’ll avenge you. I’ll find some way to make this right. Maybe there’s a way to reverse it. Maybe Devyn’s parents can—”

I hold out my hand as he steps closer. “It was my decision.”

He stops. His face twists. He pivots away and stands by a massive window. He leans forward, hands outstretched on the cold wood sill. His shoulders shake with emotion. “What?”

“I chose to turn.” My words are quiet knife wounds to his heart. I know that, but I can’t change it.

“What are you saying? What…?” His hands go into his hair, rubbing it into crazy spikes.

“Our lives are bigger now,” I try to explain as my heart breaks. “We have responsibilities to protect people, to protect each other.”

“Zara? What … what are you talking about? We always have,” he insists. “That doesn’t mean you had to change. What the hell have you done?”

“But now I can help for real. Now that I’ve become a pixie—”

He shudders when I say the word, but I keep talking. “I’m much stronger; I can do so much more now. I couldn’t even get here, couldn’t come bring you back, if I stayed human. I could only come if I was fae.” And a queen, but I don’t say that.

He whirls around. “Then you should have stayed there. You should have stayed human.”

“Without you?” My stomach twists. I press my hand into it. My voice is a plea. “I had to find you. We need you. Issie and Devyn and—everyone. We need you. It’s gone crazy. There are two other kings around; my dad’s dead. The town is in total chaos. There are
FBI
agents there. More than twenty people are gone.”

“So you need me to fight.” He snorts. “That’s why they want me here too. Because I’m supposedly such a great warrior.”

“You are.”

“If I was, I wouldn’t have died, would I? If I was, I wouldn’t be here and you wouldn’t have turned pixie to save me. I’d be back in Bedford protecting you from them, and now—ah—now you are one of them.” He cringes and backs up against the wall, his arms wrapping around his trunk. “Oh God, Zara … I can’t believe you did this. You aren’t even human anymore. You aren’t you.”

“I am me. I am still me.” I step toward him. My voice is a quiet want. “I did it for you.”

He shakes his head and closes his eyes.

I give up. I rush over to him and take his forearms in my hands and try to pull them down so I can reach in and hug him, press my head against his chest like I always used to when I was human. He cringes again.

“I. Am. Still. Zara,” I insist. I wrap my arms around him, press as close to him as I can. “Please,
please,
believe me.”

He tightens up, but he doesn’t push me away. Every fear I’ve ever had is nothing—nothing—compared to this. This horror of him not loving me, of not hugging me back when I hug him, of not wanting me near him.

“It doesn’t matter,” I whisper.

After a second he goes, “What?”

I don’t answer.

“What doesn’t matter, Zara?” he asks.

“That you don’t love me. That you hate me now. What matters is that you can come back home. You hating me is just—it’s just— I can be okay with that as long as you are there.” I gasp out the words and let go of him, rush-turning away, but he grabs me by the arms and pulls me back to him.

His deep brown eyes stare into mine. His lips move. “I love you.”

“What?”

I don’t think I got it.

“I still love you, Amnesty,” he says. He swallows hard. “I love you so much. It just—it just kills me that you changed to save me. I don’t know…”

For a moment I cannot speak. Wiping my cheeks dry, I try to push the feelings of hurt out of me, try to be the leader I’m supposed to be, and say, “I’m taking you home with me.”

A woman’s voice comes from the doorway. “Like Loki you are.”

Nick stiffens and I turn around, even though I recognize the voice. Thruth, the Valkyrie.

“Oh, not you,” I mumble.

Thruth storms into the room. “Yes, me.”

“Don’t try to intimidate her,” Nick scolds the Valkyrie.

“I don’t have to try. Even as a queen she’s puny and weak,” the Valkyrie spits out.

I stomp toward her and point. I’ve
so
had it with her. “That is
so
not nice.”

“You don’t even talk like a queen.” She glares at me.

Nick raises an eyebrow at me. “You’re a
queen
?”

I walk to the edge of the bed, stand just a few inches away from her. Power rolls off her. “Okay, please refrain from your insidious comments, which are obviously geared to inflict harm upon my psyche. I do not appreciate it.”

Nick cracks up. “Well, you
are
the same Zara.”

I turn to smile at him and reach out my hand. He takes it. His fingers in mine are easily the best, most amazing-feeling fingers ever.

“I’m taking him home,” I announce. “I have come for him and we’re leaving.”

“You cannot,” she blusters. “You can’t just leave. Nick must go through a ceremony. His memory must be purged of his stay here. There are certain rules, ways. You can’t just expect those to be ignored because of your trivial wishes, your ludicrous love.”

Nick loses his smile completely, and for a second I think he’s going to let go of my hand. Instead, he pulls me to his side and growls. “Valkyrie. You have no right.”

“Don’t tell me what rights I do and do not have, wolf.” She straightens up even more, looks like she’s ready to fight.

“Fine,” I cut in.

She taps her long blue fingernails against the bedpost. She looks at Nick. “Do you choose to leave the sacred halls of Valhalla, to renounce your rightful place as a warrior of Odin, and return with her?”

He hesitates. He closes his eyes for a moment and he actually hesitates before his voice comes out gruff and slow. “Yes, I do.”

The words seem to hang in the air, powerful. Thruth bristles even more.

“I shall be back for you again, wolf.” She fast-turns out of the room and flutters away, all purpose and fury.

“I really can’t believe she’s on the good side,” I say.

Nick groans a little as he moves.

I study him. “Are you still hurt?”

“Not really.” He’s panting, though, and there are little stress lines around his eyes.

“You are such a bad liar. Sit down.” I motion toward the bed.

He resists, but I push his chest gently and he falls back on the sheets. There’s a faint shimmer of sweat on his forehead. He’s paler than he should be too. I didn’t even notice that before. I rest my hand on his forehead. He smiles.

“I can’t stand that you’re a pixie,” he murmurs.

“I know.” I close my eyes for just a second. “Most of the time I can’t stand it either.”

“Most of the time?” His voice cracks and I’m not sure if it’s because he’s upset or because he’s still healing. I don’t want to push him too far right now, overload his brain.

I lightly trace his too-big eyebrows and say, “I want you to rest.”

“Just for a minute,” he agrees. His voice is hoarse and sleep deep.

I keep my hand on his forehead, hoping it will calm him down, make him feel safe. “Mmm-hmm…”

In about thirty seconds he falls asleep. I can’t resist the urge. I crawl into bed next to him and drape my arm across his chest. There is something so good about this moment. I can hear his breaths. He’s alive and he’s Nick and he obviously has some issues about me being pixie but he can get over it. I know it.

Still, a tiny bit of fear gnaws away at my stomach. Worry nestles inside my bones.

Because Mrs. Nix is dead and Betty is all feral and Nick is about to lose his memory and I am a pixie and there is war everywhere and danger everywhere and even though we are together and that is so good-good-good, nothing really is the same, and it won’t ever be the same again.

And part of me feels like I’ve betrayed Astley.

I watch Nick sleep for hours, it seems, just thinking, memorizing his face, and eventually I fall asleep too.

They will take all of Nick’s memories of being here. It is part of the conditions to getting him home, and while I’m not too cool about that, I guess it’s worth it. I get to remember because:

1. I’m a queen and therefore the rules are different for me (this is totally unfair).

2. I was not brought here by a Valkyrie.

3. I did not die.

4. Blah. Blah. Blah.

We follow the bridge back. We ride the horse because Nick isn’t fully recovered. The slope is extreme and powdery dust molecules lift into the air as the horse moves slowly and carefully down the yellow part of the rainbow. With each step, Nick grows wearier. He battles to keep his eyes open. Eventually, I have to hold him up so he doesn’t fall off the horse. The weight of him is massive. As we ride I watch him sleep. I press my hand against his face, count his breaths. I trace the line of his ear with my fingertip. Every single inch of him is so precious to me. I want to shackle myself to him, bind our hands together, make it so that he can never be taken from us again. And I think of the other people I love who are gone, like Mrs. Nix and my stepdad, or who are vulnerable, like Issie and Astley, Devyn and Cassidy, my mom. I wish there was some magic way that we could always be together. Losing them would be as horrible as losing Nick.

Mrs. Nix wasn’t in Valhalla. Nor either of my dads. I guess not all warriors go there. I wonder if they are in heaven instead.

How much more grief will there be? Odin said there is a war coming, an end-of-the-world kind of war, and we have to keep it from happening somehow. That’s going to put
everyone
‘s lives in jeopardy. My heart thumps hard remembering how the world went still when I lost Nick, when I lost Mrs. Nix, how there’s a huge, gaping hole in my chest from their deaths, and my dads’ deaths, and from Betty going were and never coming home anymore. Why do we have to hurt so much? Why does life have to be so hard?