Entice (8 page)

His voice breaks with emotion, raw and jagged, an ache so huge and real that I cannot believe he is sharing it with me. I think about Nick and how he’s never trusted me enough to tell me about his parents.

“Is it hard to tell me this?” I ask.

“Quite.”

I wait. “Then why are you telling me? I don’t mean that meanly. I just—I just want to know why you are if it hurts you to do it, you know? I’m not making sense, am I?”

“You are. You usually make sense, Zara. Honestly. I am telling you because you are my queen and I count you as my friend and because you deserve to know.” He takes a sip of his cranapple juice. I wonder what I haven’t told Astley, what he should know about me, what I haven’t told Nick. Astley’s hand shakes and he finishes his story. He had landed on a sea of people, knocked his head a bit, and passed out. When he woke up, he was in a Spanish hospital; Bentley, their butler, was hovering over him, his mother had gone mad with grief, and his father was just gone.

“He saved me, Zara.”

I nod and grip his hand tighter. He squeezes back and then lets go. He uses that same hand to tuck my hair behind my ear as he says, “He saved me. He had an instant to choose my life or his and he chose mine to save. That’s how I know that pixies can be good. I have seen it with my own eyes. I know what my father was. He was good. And that’s what I want to be, what I want my people to be.”

I pull my lips in toward my mouth. Tears threaten. “You are,” I say, and I believe it without a doubt. “You are good, Astley.”

He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. “I hope so.”

Astley suddenly sits up all intense. “Do you smell that?”

“What?”

“Pixie. A powerful pixie.”

I focus. “Maybe. There’s that Dove soap smell. I just thought it was the restroom and you.”

“Lovely.” He unbuckles his seat belt. The flight attendant scoots right over. “Sir, I need you to sit down.”

He stares at her like she’s asked him to eat a truckful of Twinkies. His frustration slams into me like a fist. It’s not intentional. I just
feel
it.

“The captain has turned the seat belt sign back on,” she insists.

We hit some turbulence just as she says, “Sir, I must—”

“He has diarrhea!” I interrupt.

Astley gasps and his whole face and even the tips of his ears redden. I feel a little bad about it, but it’s
so
going to work and, seriously, it was the only thing I could think of.

“Oh!” She is at a loss for a second and staggers back a step as Astley rushes past her toward the bathroom. I don’t know how he’ll sneak out of there to check out the plane, but it was the best I could do on the spot. The flight attendant and I make eyes at each other.

“He’s horribly embarrassed about it,” I whisper. “He had bratwurst. Or maybe it was the baked beans. Either way you might want to get some deodorizing air spray.”

Ten minutes later Astley appears beside me again.

“Were you in the bathroom this whole time?” I ask, fiddling with my anklet.

He rolls his eyes and tells me he used a glamour to hide himself. He walked up and down the aisle but couldn’t locate the source of the smell.

“I don’t like that,” I say as he clicks the seat belt back in place.

He is still. His whole body is tense, as if waiting for an attack. After a moment he says, “Neither do I.”

“Did you recognize it? Who did it smell like?”

“Your father.”

I canNOT even tell you how creepy it is here. Seriously. I swear I hear people whispering my name every time we go outside, and sometimes it’s like there’s someone scratching on my window. I swear I am not crazy. It’s just Bedford, man.
LOL
.

—
BLOG
POST

“Everything looks like an
IKEA
store,” I say, grabbing Astley’s elbow as we walk through the airport in Iceland.

He laughs and smiles. His happiness and purpose seem infectious, almost like the air is full of pink bubble gum, only not sticky.

“It has so many windows,” I say, looking out into the darkness where the airplanes taxi and the luggage trains roll around. “And look at the chairs. They’re all posh.”

“Keflavik is known for being an amazing airport.” He points at all the shops: Burberry, Calvin Klein, Gucci. “Would you like to buy anything? I know you are a bit lacking for stores in Bedford.”

“No, no … I’m good.” My feet almost feel like happy-dancing across the sleek light wood floor. “When do you think your pixie friend will contact us? What should we do while we wait?”

He reaches over and grabs my carry-on. “I do not know exactly when. He said he’d call sometime today, and he’s arranged for a car to take us to Reykjavik.”

“The capital?”

“You have been reading up,” he says as we get to baggage claim. He looks down at me like he’s all proud for a second. My whole body tingles in some strange, wild way and my heartbeat jumps to five hundred beats a minute. I almost think he’s going to kiss me, but he’d never do that. He only did it that once just to turn me. His lips part a little, but he just says, “You stay here; I shall get the bags.”

I packed heavy because I didn’t know what to bring on a rescue mission to a mythological land or to Iceland.

I check my clock. It’s ten a.m. and it’s still dark outside. The sun won’t rise for another ninety minutes, and then it’ll set four hours after that, which is totally wild. I thought Maine was bad, but this country is so close to the north pole that it’s even darker.

Astley returns with our bags. “You’re shuddering. Are you cold?”

I shrug and make to grab my suitcase, but he nods toward a man in a dark suit, who must be our driver. The man hurries over, bows at Astley, doesn’t actually say anything, and takes our stuff.

By the time we’re done with customs and the bags and getting settled in the car, the sun has started to rise. The sky is gray and overcast. Snow melds into the ground and there aren’t forests, just occasional clumps of big Christmas-type trees. It’s Maine cold. Squat buildings sprawl up out of the ground as if they sprouted there.

“It seems so unreal to be here,” I say to Astley. We’re sitting together in the back of the car. It’s all cushy even though it’s small. He looks healthy again. The cut on his face is gone. His color is good. “It’s like the world is suddenly shifted and this place couldn’t possibly be on it.”

“I know.” He crosses his legs.

I turn my cell phone on and stare at its blankness. “I don’t have a signal.”

“Did you have them turn it on so you can get calls internationally?” he asks.

Of course not. I didn’t know you had to. As we drive toward Reykjavik, I can’t even begin to count all the things I should have done but I didn’t. I begin to list them in my head and give up.

He smiles and settles back into his seat. “Excited?”

“Ridiculously.”

His smile gets even bigger. “It is nice to see you happy.”

“Well, thanks for making me happy,” I respond, adjusting my seat belt. There’s an awkward silence except for the rumbling of the car’s engine. We just stare out the windows, not touching each other, but I feel really close to him somehow anyway. Maybe it’s the bond between king and queen. Or maybe it’s because the car zooms closer to the city of Reykjavik, one mile, then another. We’re one mile closer to Nick.

Nobody calls Astley on our ride in. We get no tips. We get no advice. Nothing. I try to be patient and not disappointed as we check into the Hotel 1302, which is this boutique hotel that’s totally monochromatic, just whites and blacks and grays—stark elegance. The oak floors are actually heated and there’s funky art and sculptures everywhere. Astley and I have suites next to each other. An adjoining door attaches our rooms. When we say good-bye, I crash on the big white bed, stare at the black walls, and grab my phone. But there’s nobody to call, thanks to my failure to get an international calling plan. I haul myself off the bed and yank off my shoes before padding over to the bathroom, which doesn’t even have a wall separating it from the rest of the suite, which is just weird. Still, it’s just as starkly beautiful as everything else—a huge glass shower waits at the end of granite walls. Fluffy towels in white and black sit on black shelves, with a modern white sink above them. There’s even a white claw-foot tub, but it’s the shower that calls to me. And I listen.

After my shower I read the city guidebook and stare out the windows at the ridiculously early setting sun and the beautiful white buildings that house the theater and the cultural center. My hands press against the glass, making marks. The glass chills against my skin, unlike the wood beneath my feet. I should make Betty install heated floors—it makes the cold much more bearable. Just the thought of Betty makes me feel more lonely. I close my eyes, wonder what she and Issie and Devyn are doing; Cassidy too. I wish I could call my mom and check up on her. It really wasn’t easy leaving Bedford. I made Astley dispatch extra pixies to watch over everyone because I was so nervous about it.

A knock comes from the door to Astley’s suite. I shuffle over and open it. He stares down at me, eyes focused and concerned.

“Are you sad?” he asks. “More than you usually are?”

I nod but say, “I’m okay.”

His hand reaches out like he is going to touch my face, but he pulls his arm back to his side again. “Get some sleep, Zara. You must be exhausted.”

Pulling my lips in toward my mouth, I swallow hard. He notices; I can tell. This time his hand lifts up and his fingers push some hair behind my ear.

“We shall find him very soon,” he whispers. “I promise you.”

Then his hand falls and he closes the door.

...

A frantic knocking wakes me up. I fall out of the bed, bump my shin on the end table, and stagger toward the door between our two suites.

Flinging open the door, I start to say, “What?”

But Astley motions for me to be silent, pointing at his phone, which is on speaker. An accented male voice echoes into our wide-open rooms, loud and easy to understand, though I can’t place the accent at all.

“It is me, your highness. Please meet me at the Blue Lagoon. Be there in one hour. In the pools.”

“Where?” Astley asks as my fingers clutch his naked forearm. “Where in the pools?”

“I shall find you near the entrance. Do not worry.”

“Fine,” Astley says as the line goes dead.

Astley clicks off the phone. We’re staring into each other’s eyes for a full second before I realize what’s happened. When I do, I end up shrieking and leaping into his arms, screaming about how awesome he is and how grateful I am, basically making all these noises that make no sense at all. He swings me around, and for a second everything is beautiful and hopeful even though the sun has already set outside and darkness covers the world.

The Blue Lagoon pools spread out before us, almost an acre of extraordinarily warm spa water. The lagoon is a gorgeous deep blue lit up by overhead lamps. Steam rises from it as it meets the cold air. People swim around, tiny dark silhouettes in all the steam and blue. We’ve both changed into swimsuits in the locker rooms and now we’re standing in the outside air, looking around like we’ll magically sense where to go and what to do.

Astley’s arm goes around my shoulders. “Your teeth are chattering, Zara. You need to get in the water.”

I don’t argue. Iceland air is colder than Maine air and I’m in a bathing suit. A
bathing suit
! That I had to
rent
. Just the fact of that alone kills me, it’s so skeevy.

We hurry down the steps. Warm, cozy water hits my body. It’s better than a bathtub. The water feels thicker. It’s easy to float. On the way over Astley told me that the lagoon was made from a natural geothermal spring, that two continents are pushing away from each other and right here is the crack. Old lava covered with delicate moss frames the pools, which seem to go on forever.

Astley sighs contentedly as he dips into water up to his neck. I bob around next to him. The bottom of the pool is all knobby, not smooth at all, but the water is amazing, like having a heated bathrobe wrapped around you.

“It is beautiful,” he says, looking at everything longingly.

“It is,” I agree, but I’m looking around like a crazy woman. “But where is this Vander person? Is this how we get to Valhalla? I mean, it almost makes sense if there’s this crack growing here.”

“That is not exactly how it works.” He floats on his back.

“Whatever.” I don’t care how it works. I just care about finding Nick. Still, I can’t resist floating on my back next to Astley, closing my eyes for a second and just letting the water hold me up. Sometimes it’s so hard to hold yourself up. This is a nice change.

“Sometimes I wish my life could always be like this,” he says.

I bob. “Like what?”

“Peaceful. Beautiful. No violence. No threats.” He turns his head to smile at me. His eyes are soft, mushy looking, but strong. I’m not sure what that look means.

“That would be so amazing.” I start to say something else, but Astley’s distracted. I follow his gaze, which is on a very pale man in a horrible black Speedo. Nobody except professional swimmers should wear those.

“That is him,” Astley says, waving.

The man enters the water and wades over. He bows at Astley, then takes my hand and kisses it. “Your highnesses.”

If I wasn’t so psyched about finding Nick, I’d freak out about being called that.

Vander smiles at me. “I am sorry to be so cryptic earlier, but the location of the home of the gods is not exactly something you want to go out on a cell phone line.”

Astley smiles. “We understand.”

“Thank you for being so kind, your highness.” The man breathes in deeply and meets our gaze, each in turn. He looks at Astley when he says, “The bridge is at Gullfoss.”

Gullfoss! I actually know where that is. It’s this huge waterfall that I read about in the guidebook. I squeal and do the best I can not to faint from happiness.

“The best time is the morning,” he says. “The pathway between the worlds is most accessible then. There will be a rock tied with gold ribbon that you must throw into the waterfall. I will leave instructions there as well.”