Captivate (28 page)

“It’s the myth. It’s the myth behind what’s happening now. You know, with the Valhalla stuff. The myth says there will be a massive battle. Fenrir will try to swallow the world.” Devyn looks to Is for help. “It’s also in
Buffy
!” Issie pipes up. “The high school was right on a hell mouth and every season Buffy had to stop the apocalypse and stuff so Sunnydale didn’t get all sucked in with the rest of the earth following.”

“What?” I don’t get it.

“Why don’t you watch
Buffy
?” Issie pouts. “I have all of them downloaded. I’m always begging you. You’d totally get this if you did.”

“I don’t—I -um, because I was always making out with Nick?” I say.

She presses her lips together, smiling, and then says, “Good answer.”

Cassidy agrees but Devyn gets impatient. “But we don’t think that’s exactly what’s happening here.”

“No giant wolves waiting under the high school to swallow us up?” I snark.

Issie elbows Devyn. “Look! Even turning pixie has not made our Zara into a true believer. Her level of scepticism continues. Yah!”

I point at her. “No teasing. It just sounds ridiculous.”

“It is ridiculous.” The fact that I’m an eagle is ridiculous, but it is, Zara. It just is.”

Devyn runs his hands through his hair, frustrated. “Anyway, all of this is in the Poetic Edda. You can look it up. However, it might just be a massive metaphor for evil taking over the world and not a literal mouth of a wolf that will eat us all. I know this is hard for you. It’s hard for all of us without Nick. And we thought we lost you too.”

His voice breaks. Issie and I both jump up and hug him. Cassidy rubs his back. We all stand there for a second.

He breaks away first and continues. “This relates to us because Nick was taken to Valhalla to be a warrior for when Ragnarok happens.”

“That’s the big end of the world fight where everything is destroyed, including heaven and hell,” Cassidy interrupts, pulling her sweater around her.

“Astley told me this. I got it,” I pull away from Issie and go to the window and look outside. The world is cold and quiet. I can’t see Astley. I can’t see the other pixies hiding in the woods waiting to pounce since it’s so dark, but I can smell them. “And this big fight—you think it’s going to happen soon?”

Devyn blows hair off his forehead. “I hope not.”

“You’ve always got to root against the apocalypse,” Issie says. “You know?”

“I know,” I sigh. “So all we have to do is get Nick and then, you know, save the world.”

Even though Cassidy is there I blurt it all out: I tell them about Astley, and how mad I am that I don’t even know if Nick is alive; how freaky it was turning pixie; how I was so afraid I’d hurt them but how it’s cool being so strong, and not being quite so cold. I don’t tell them all the crazy mixed up feelings I have about kissing Astley; about how I miss Nick.

“We can find out if he’s alive, I think,” Cassidy says when I’m done.

“Cassidy did that for us before, with you,” Devyn explains. He looks at her like a proud dad or something. “She showed us you in the hotel room—”

“You were screaming,” Issie says, “and shaking. It was scary because you were so pixie, you know? No offense.”

“None taken,” I say, but I’m not even really paying attention. I’m totally focused on Cassidy. “Can you do this?”

She nods and starts fiddling with her crystals, running a small one back and forth between her fingers. “I can try. You guys talk. I need a minute to prepare.”

“I hate when she does this, actually.” Issie says, and her skin pales like she’s going to pass out or something. She starts hard hugging one of her stuffed bunnies, a Peter Rabbit in a blue coat. “The pixies have been tracking us. There are probably some in the woods right now. Every time we go out, we have to be careful. One grabbed Mrs. Nix.”

“She got away,” Devyn says.

“It’s been horrible,” Issie continues, “these last couple of days and we were so worried about you. Worried that you might have died—that you might have—”

“Gone all evil?” I suggest.

She nods. “Yeah.”

I swallow hard. The silence in the room is unbearable. I think about the ceremony I just went through. I think about the plan, what needs to happen next. I clear my throat. My breath scissors through my chest. I press my hand into my stomach and accept what I’ve done. I’ve done if for a reason. I’ve abandoned my former self to save Nick, and that’s worth it. No regrets. Issie hiccups the way she does when she’s trying not to cry.

“So,” I say, trying to get them to move on, to get rid of the funeral feeling, “the other anagram…., did you figure it out?”

“No.”

“Sore spot for Mr. Genius.”

Devyn comes to where I’m sitting on the bed and grabs my hand. “You think he’s dead, don’t you? You think you’ve been tricked.”

It’s all I can do to nod my head a little up and down. “Yes.” My voice is tiny again, just a frantic, desperate whisper. “And hoping that—no, believing that—he’s alive is the only thing holding me together, you know? Because I just don’t want to—I just can’t imagine existing without him. I know that I can exist without him, but it would be so hard.”

I lean into Issie. She wraps her arms around my shoulders and pats my head.

“I’m ready,” Cassidy says.

“Maybe we shouldn’t—,” Devyn starts.

“We have to,” I interrupt, sitting up straight again but still holding his hand.

Cassidy has cleaned out a corner of the bedroom floor so there are no bunnies or clothes.

She’s placed crystals in a circle around her and it looks like she’s put some water into a salad bowl in front of her. She sprinkles water around the circle and then she reaches out her long arms and closes her eyes, mumbling something. The air suddenly feels different, charged, the way it is before a thunderstorm. Her hair begins to move around her face like there’s a wind there, centered just on her.

Devyn’s hand tightens around mine. A tiny whimpering noise escapes Issie’s mouth and then it’s like the wind that’s been centered on Cassidy moves out and hits us, only it’s not just wind. It’s more like an electrical current, charged and seeking power. All my atoms seem to buzz and drain and shimmer somehow. “It’s draining us,” I gasp. “It will be okay,” Devyn reassures me.

Cassidy no longer seems aware of anything. Her body trembles like she’s overwhelmed with electricity. The lights in the room snap off without anyone touching them and there’s a ghostly glow right where Cassidy is. I start off the bed. “I can’t see her.”

Devyn holds me back. “It’s part of the process.”

And then suddenly the glow changes. Gray lines shift within, turning into shapes.

There’s an image of a bed, and something is in the bed. For a second, I think it must be me in the hotel room again, but the bed is all wrong. This one looks like it’s made out of tree trunks. The bedspread isn’t standard hotel issue. It’s made of fur. I squint at the image. My heart stops. There’s a familiar guy in that bed. His eyebrows are a little too big on his perfect face. His cheeks are sunken in like he’s lost weight but his mouth is moving. His mouth is moving.

“He’s alive.” I sob out the words and every single organ inside of me seems to slam into one another in some sort of crazy happy dance. The hole that dread made just fills up with hope. “Issie. Look! He’s alive.”

She’s crying too. Devyn’s hand releases mine and he pulls in a huge, heartrending breath.

Nick’s mouth keeps moving.

“What’s he saying?” I ask and lean closer. The image isn’t perfect. It’s foggy and not even in color, but I don’t care because it’s Nick, my Nick, and he’s alive. I stare at his lips. Those lips I’ve kissed and lost myself in a hundred million times. They move and shape a word: Zara.

“I’m coming, baby. I’ll come find you, I swear.” I step toward him.

He doesn’t hear me. He moans in pain and the image shivers. I grab for him, but I’m zapped back, shocked away by whatever magic Cassidy is making, and then the whole thing is gone. In just a second it blinks away and the lights turn back on. The computer hums to life. Our cell phones beep. In that same instant Cassidy starts to fall forward but I get there and grab her before she can hit the floor. I bundle her into my arms, stand up, and carry her to the bed, trying to lay her on it as gently as I can.

Issie gasps. “You’re so strong.”

“I know! There are pixie advantages. I smell everything too and I can jump,” I put a pillow under Cassidy’s head and smooth out her hair. She looks like she’s suddenly lost ten pounds. Nick looked like that too. I turn around and wipe at the tears that are still trucking down me cheeks. “He’s alive, guys. Nick’s alive. Do you know what this means?”

Devyn’s eyes are watering too and he starts to answer but he seems too choked up to be able to speak for once and Issie just motions for me to go on, for me to say it, probably because she know I want to say it so badly. I want to scream it from the mountaintops and every other single miserable cliché in the universe.

“It means that I’m a pixie for a reason. It means that I’m going to find Nick and bring him home,” I say.

Devyn and Issie grab hands. Their fingers twine together. I notice it. I think Cassidy notices it too, because she murmurs from the bed, “So cute.”

“You forgot a part,” Issie says to me.

I don’t know what she’s talking about. My fingers flex, long for Nick’s fingers, and I say, “Which is?”

Devyn finishes for her. “That we’re going to help.”

“All of us,” Cassidy insists.

“All of us.” I repeat her words and let myself smile for the first time in days. I touch the anklet Nick gave me. It’s still there. It hasn’t broken. “Cool.”

Issie checks her watch. “We are totally late for the dance.”

Cassidy gasps. “True.”

Devyn kind of rolls his eyes.

“I better get going,” I say, but Issie’s grabbed me by the arm. Anger floods through me, irrational and hard. I could totally rip free from her. I could strangle her. I could kill her. I shudder. That’s what I can do—this new me. I can kill easily. But I won’t.

Breathing out, the anger dissipates.

“You are coming with us,” Issie insists.

“I don’t think so.” I flash Devyn panic eyes but he just lifts his hands into the air. “Dude, I am looking for help here.”

“Nick would want you to go,” Cassidy says, standing up. “You need a dress. Do you have a dress? Or is it all old band T-shirts all the time?”

“Not nice,” Issie says, wiping at her eyes, “but true. And we have no time for Zara to go home to get a dress. There’d be a big scene with Betty. You aren’t up for that right now, are you?” Before I can answer she says, “No, I didn’t think so.”

I flop down on the bed. Devyn says, “I don’t think Nick would want her to go without him.”

“Thank you.” I smile at him.

“No problem,” he answers.

“Well, Nick isn’t the boss of her and he isn’t here and
I
want her to go.” Issie has gone over to her closet. “Now, what you may not know about me, Zara, is that when I was a freshman I had a thing for dresses.”

“She only wore dresses,” Cassidy agrees. She goes to the closet with Issie. They start murmuring about colors and sizes.

“There’s no fighting this, is there?” I ask Devyn.

He plops onto the bed next to me, leans back, and puts his hands under his head. “Nope.

It’d be harder than killing a pixie. No offense.”

“None take.” I poke him in the side. Then all the air rushes out of me. I’m a pixie.

Everyone is acting like that’s okay and maybe it is, but things—things are different. I am different.

Cassidy turns around holding up a deep green dress with a plunging sweetheart neckline that has all these ornate circles around the empire waist. “How about this one?”

“It’s fine.” I try to smile.

I must fail, because Issie goes, “What’s wrong? DO you not like the dress? It’s beautiful.”

“No. That’s not it…It’s super nice, Issie…” I struggle to find the words. I sit up. So does Devyn. “
I—I
just don’t know how this is all going to work. I’m different now…”

Cassidy drapes the dress over the chair at Issie’s desk. She comes over and squats in front of me. Her hand grabs mine. “You said it before: you are a pixie for a reason.”

“How do you know?”

She tilts her head. “The elf in me.”

“That’s her excuse for everything now that she’s out,” Issie explains, “but she’s almost always right.”

“You must feel different, Zara,” Cassidy says, ignoring her. “I know you think this is all about Nick, but it isn’t. It’s about you too. You changed for
him
, but
you’re
the one who changed. You were brave and crazy and proactive, and Betty and Devyn have been monumentally ticked off at you this entire time, but Zara,
you
did it and it was meant to be.”

Her words echo around in my head. I always think of Nick as the brave one, but I am too.

“I want you to be right,” I finally say.

“Well, good.” She let’s go of my hands. “Because I am. Devyn please move your guy self out of the room so we can get Zara dressed.”

“Done.” He skedaddles through the door, closing it behind him.

Issie claps her hands. “Good. Let’s make you presentable, pixie princess.”

My heart hiccups as I hear her say that word—princess—and it’s like all the truth in the universe is falling down, like the descent of snowflakes taking one last trip from sky to earth before settling on the reality of what they really are.

I whisper my question, stare at myself in the mirror on her wall. “You think you can?”

“Anything is possible. Right?” Issie pauses and answers her own question, grabbing a hairbrush. “Right.”

And the thing is? She
is
right. Anything is possible. I am a pixie for a reason. I am Zara—a different Zara, but still Zara. What happens to us all is partially up to me and it is my job, my duty, to protect my friends. So that’s what I will do. That’s what the pixie in me makes me capable of.

“Make me presentable, guys,” I say, standing up. “Make me look like a queen.”