Carrie Jones: Entice

Then I grab her hair. My fingers smoosh into the twist. Yanking her head to my ear, I say, “Get out of here before I ruin your heels and your dress and your face.”

She snarls menacingly at me, but there’s no way she can move.

“Devyn, is anyone looking?” I ask.

“Nope,” he answers.

The other pixie harrumphs. “Fine. We’ll go. Can we take the meat?”

She gestures toward the drunk boy, who is trying to crawl back toward the punch table.

“No,” I answer. “This is me in my warning phase. This is me telling you to get out before I really lose my pacifist ways and kill you. So tell your little king- Who is your king?”

“Frank,” Barbie answers.

“Frank,” I repeat, taking it in. Not my biological father. Frank, the one who released all my dad’s pixies from where we’d trapped them in an old Victorian house in the woods. Frank, the one who killed my boyfriend, Nick. “Well, tell Frank that he has a ridiculous name for an evil pixie king and also tell him that I will not stand for any of his little minions attacking people at my school. Got it?”

“And to return the people who are missing,” Devyn adds.

Something clutches my stomach. It’s dread. I look at Devyn. What’s happened since I’ve turned? “How many people?”

“Too many to count,” Eighties Dress says. “The people here are so easy to take. And to kill. And scaring them? It’s delicious.”

Anger scrapes my throat. “No more. Tell him no more. The people here are not toys.”

Even I can hear the threat in my voice, hard and even, a drum pounding war beats into the air.

Eighties doesn’t answer. Her friend does. “Who are you to tell Frank what to do?”

Good question. I shove Barbie toward the fire door and try to come up with a snappy answer worthy of cult movies and TV shows. But before I say anything, Devyn answers for me, almost like he’s proud of me rather than horrified that I’ve just turned into one of them. “She is Zara White, a pixie queen.”

Life goes on as usual in this small coastal Maine town. Even though eight boys are missing, local teens celebrated at the high school’s annual winter dance tonight. -NEWSCHANNEL8

After the pixies are safely disposed of outside, Devyn and I find Issie and Cassidy waiting by the bathrooms. Devyn continues the looking-at-me-out-of-the-corner-of-his-eyes routine, but I’m hoping the fact that I dispatched the pixies will make him trust me a bit more. That I managed to do it without going blue and feral makes me feel just the tiniest bit more confident about my new species, but the truth is I really don’t know what it means to be a pixie. I don’t know if it’s changed my insides, that soul part of me, the pacifist part.

“Was there an apocalypse in there?” Is asks when she and Cassidy and I enter the empty bathroom. “Is everyone dead? Please don’t tell me everyone is dead.”

“Nobody died,” I say, sighing and reaching up. “Except maybe my hair.”

They usher me toward the bathroom mirrors, where I tell them what happened. Cassidy twists my hair into a messy knot. Issie tries to wipe a bloodstain off my arm. I stare into the mirror, take in the crazy circles under my eyes, the whole blah look of me. “I look horrible.”

“Naw,” Issie lies. I know she’s lying because her bottom lip trembles.

Cassidy grabs me by the shoulders, stands behind me, and rests her head on top of mine. “You look like a warrior.”

“Yeah!” Issie agrees. “A slightly short warrior. A pixie warrior.”

There’s an awkward pause.

“Do you feel different?” she asks in a much gentler voice. “Now that you’re all… you know…”

“Yeah.” I nod. “Stronger. I feel… I smell things more. It’s like my senses are sharper but I feel more volatile, you know? Like anything will make me cranky.”

“Especially evil pixies trying to steal away members of our male student population?” Issie suggests.

“Especially,” I agree as I borrow Cassidy’s mascara, which you’re not supposed to do because of bacteria, but considering the rest of my crazy life, I’m willing to take this particular health risk. “I can’t believe there are so many people missing. Eight? That’s just horrible, Is. We have to get Nick back and stop this.”

Cierra slams into the bathroom with Callie, who is sporting ribbons in her bright blue Mohawk. They smile hello and everyone compliments one another’s dresses, and then they go into the stalls. Issie leans down and whispers, “What do you want to do? Should we all go home?”

I want to, but that would be selfish. “Nah, I want to see you and the Devster dance. And stuff.”

She goes up on tiptoes. “Really?”

“Swear.” I put up my hand like a Girl Scout promise. “And we will all just pretend everything is normal and supernatural threats don’t hover outside the fire exit door.”

“So we go into denial,” Cassidy says, smiling, as she scratches her waist.

“Yep.” I reach up and wipe some mascara that’s clotted near her eye. “But only for the rest of the dance. Then we go into action.”

All around us people are dancing, laughing, spinning, having fun in the kind of corny, cheese ball way that people do when they know the dance is beyond lame but somehow that ultra-geekiness almost makes it cool. Along the wall and in little clumps are the dateless girls who are eyeing the dateless guys. I am one of those dateless girls now, because Nick is gone, really gone.

Issie stops dancing with Devyn long enough to wrap an arm around my shoulders. She leans in and yells in my ear because that’s the only way her tiny voice can be heard over the raging music. “You miss him, huh?”

My stomach clenches up. “Yeah.”

“We’ll find him,” she insists. “We’ll bring him back.”

I give her a half smile and nod, because the truth is I have to believe what she says. I have to believe that Nick is alive in Valhalla and that somehow we can bring him back here, where he belongs.

“We’ll get him,” I yell back, trying to sound as determined and positive as I can. My lips hit her dangling pink flamingo earrings. She smells like coconuts.

She does one of her super-vigorous nods. “That’s right. We will!”

Devyn looks back and forth between us. His mouth presses into a line and I know-I know -that he has doubts.

Just then the music changes from loud and awesome and frenetic to slow-dance time. I groan. Devyn pulls Issie into his arms. He looks tired from all the exercise. I can see it in the crinkles around his eyes, the tightness of his lips, like he’s holding the pain in so Issie can have fun and not worry. He’s only just started walking again. He’d been injured and was stuck in a wheelchair, paralyzed in a pixie attack, actually.

Cassidy and I stand together while Issie and Devyn sort of sway side to side and press into each other. They both look fragile and bird boned, easily broken.

“They are so sweet,” Cassidy says into my ear.

I nod. She smells like lavender and herbs.

“You doing okay?” she asks again. Her voice flits down to me.

I nod again.

This time she doesn’t let me get away with it. She bumps me with her hip. “Liar.”

I kneel down and fidget with the anklet Nick gave me. It’s thin and silver, a reminder of him flush against my skin. I check the clasp, make sure it won’t break, and say, “To say this sucks is an understatement.”

She pets my head like I’m a puppy. “I know, honey. I know. Your misery is pretty obvious.”