Carrie Jones - Entice

“Oh, Zare Bear,” she murmurs into the hair by my ear. “You poor honey. What have these things done to you?”

Things. I am one of “these things.”

I force myself to move away enough so that I can look at her. She has more white hairs mixed in with all the brown. The skin under her eyes has little lines in it and her chin seems older too somehow, like it’s sagging maybe? I don’t know.

“I’m okay, Mom,” I say as she shakes her head. Tears collect in her eyes. She hasn’t seen me since I’ve changed into a pixie. And now she sees me like this-weak, injured, tired. Her lip curls up a bit and she steps away from me almost like I’m poisonous.

“My feet are kind of cold, though,” I say. I’d really like some shoes, actually.

Her eyes narrow and she whirls on Astley and the fiddler pixie guy, who really looks pretty casual for someone tied up on a porch. For a second she just stares at them. I sway backward once she lets go of me, and faster than humanly possible Astley moves to my side to catch the back of my head with his hand before it hits the cedar shingles of the house. My mother loses it.

“Don’t you touch her!” she says again. Her hands move into fists.

“It’s a little late to play the protective mother now,” he lashes back.

“What?” She spits the word at him.

“From what I have heard, you sent her up here into the heart of danger because you were too frightened to protect her yourself.” Anger boils up in him like I have never seen it before. I don’t know where that anger is coming from, but it rushes through the air, awkward and hard and surprising. I can feel it.

“Astley.” I say his name to try to get him to stop, but my voice comes out so weak that even I am not impressed.

He obviously isn’t either, because he just keeps going. “From what I have heard, you only come when it is convenient for you, too busy with your corporate job and life to take care of your own blood, instead entrusting her safety to elderly weres who-”

“Astley!” I yell his name this time. Why is he doing this? I think that maybe he’s not just mad at my mother but at all mothers. He stops, swallows, but does not apologize.

Crows alight from an oak tree near the corner of the porch. They caw as they flap away.

My mom steps forward. “How dare you!”

He opens his mouth again but is cut off by Betty, who is suddenly on the porch with us. She glares at Astley, probably because she’s not too cool with being called elderly by a pixie king, and roars out, “I think you should go.”

I sway, my body overwhelmed by everything. Astley lifts me into his arms. I’m too tired to protest much, but I manage to say, “I’m fine.”

“Let me bring her inside,” he says.

“You’re not stepping one foot into this house,” Betty says. “This is my house. You are not coming in. Give her to me.”

He hesitates. I nod slightly and he flinches, but leans me into Betty’s arms. I’ve got to say one thing for my grandmother: she is strong. My mother reaches out and moves the hair out of my face.

Astley stands in front of the door for a moment. His voice is soft and calm. “We are all on the same side here.”

“You turned my daughter into a monster,” my mother says. Her glare would kill lesser guys. “We are not on the same side.”

Something inside me breaks open and it hurts way more than my gunshot wound.

“She asked me to,” he replies, not backing down. The wind blows his hair back from his forehead. “We are not monsters.”

My mother doesn’t back down either. “You took advantage of her.”

He inhales deeply and steps away so that Betty can bring me across the threshold of the house.

“Maybe,” he says slowly, as if each word is an effort, “ she took advantage of me .”

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My mother is the only one in our family who cries when she’s frustrated or mad, and there is something both annoying and endearing about this. Once we’re inside the house, she slams the door, shutting out both BiForst and Astley. Tears well up in her eyes and she pushes her back against the wall. She closes her eyes as she whispers, “I hate pixies. I just hate them.”

I don’t say anything, but my wounds suddenly seem a lot deeper as Betty places me on the sofa. Issie and Devyn move so that there’s room for me. My mother crumples in the corner of the room.

“Zara really should be up in her bedroom,” Cassidy says. “All the healing things are there.”

“Cassidy has been working on you,” Issie says, fingering the whistle hanging from her neck. She looks proud of Cassidy and happy that conflict time is over. “That’s why she’s so pale and dead looking and why you’re healing so fast, even for a pixie.”

“Thanks, Is.” Cassidy smiles. Dark circles frame her eyes. She does look dead.

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way!” Issie blusters. “You’re a total hero.”

They are all sitting and standing throughout the living room. Mugs and glasses litter the coffee table and the end table. Issie and Cassidy aren’t wearing any shoes. They have the look of being camped out here for a while, and Cassidy isn’t the only one who looks tired. Both Mrs. Nix and my mom seem to need a good nap. I tell them it’s rude to leave Astley outside, but they all ignore me and chatter on about things. I can’t quite follow it all, because my head is foggy and I’m too busy wondering if they all think I’m a monster, if I’d be better off out on the porch with the others.

I clear my throat to get everyone’s attention. “The BiForst guy told you that there is only a certain amount of time to get Nick, right?”

They explain that he said they had to hurry or there would be no point. They don’t actually know how to get to Valhalla.

“But it’s not as if we can trust him,” Betty announces.

Mrs. Nix comes to the couch and squats in front of me. Her two hands touch the sides of my face. “He did tell us where Astley’s mother is, so that’s a good thing. Don’t worry, Zara. We will figure this out.”

Her eyes are brown and big and soft. She is a bear. She can fight, but she is so peaceful. She isn’t meant to be a warrior. None of us are meant to be warriors. Something inside of me hitches and threatens to break. I wipe at my eyes.

“Zara…” Both my mom and Issie say my name, but it is Issie, not my mother, who pats my back. My mother has moved far away from me, all the way across the room, and this entire time she hasn’t looked at me, not once, even though I’ve been shot and we haven’t seen each other in forever. She hates me now. I can feel her anger and sorrow just like I felt Astley’s. Cringing, I watch as she moves even farther away, pushing a chair to the edge of the wall, folding her arms across her chest when normally she’d still be hugging me so hard I couldn’t breathe.

I look at all their faces. My voice cracks before I even start to talk. “I changed so I could-we could… save him. I changed. I am not human, but I’m not-I’m not… bad.”

If I were bad, I’d want to attack.

If I were bad, I’d want to kill.

“I’m bringing you upstairs.” Betty announces this and swoops me into her arms. I don’t resist. “You are overwrought.”

She puts me on my bed and pulls the covers up to my chin. She smoothes the hair away from my face and smiles softly at me. Her eyes crinkle in the corners. She starts obsessively tucking the blankets around me again.