Carrie Jones - Entice

His voice breaks as he says, “I wanted you to always feel safe with me.”

I bring Astley over to the couch. He sits down, docile and quiet. I groan as I sit down next to him.

“You hurt.” He states this as a fact, not a question.

I resist the urge to be all melodramatic and say, “We all hurt.” Instead, I just nod.

We sit there for a moment.

“Are you going to tell me?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “It’s not as important as finding your wolf.”

“Yes,” I say. “Yes, it is.”

He stares at me for a moment. The tension and pain inside of him is palpable. “My mother was right. I killed her.”

Something in my face must show my fear, because he throws up his hand and rails off the side of the couch. He staggers toward me before falling on his knees in front of me.

“Just tell me, Astley,” I say. My hand reaches out and touches the top of his head. His hair is thick and soft. His eyes flicker shut like he’s trying to keep back tears.

“We had been destined to marry from the time we were babes. Her family was old and powerful, although not royal. I did not care about that. She was beautiful.” He keeps his eyes shut as he speaks. The words leave his mouth slowly, making ripples in the air, like hard, heavy rocks dropped into a brook. “She was Amelie’s youngest sister. Her name was Sacha.”

“Oh.” My hand stops its movement in his hair as I try to imagine her-strong, dark, beautiful, brilliant, and focused, if she was anything like Amelie. Something knots in my stomach-it almost feels like jealousy, but it can’t be that.

“I had heard about a rogue in my kingdom. Someone was killing other pixies. Amelie, Sacha, and I had worked so hard to root out the problem, but we were always coming to dead ends, and I was so young then. We hadn’t, um-we hadn’t solidified our relationship in a physical way, just as you and I haven’t, and that, coupled with my youth, allowed for rogues to exist without me automatically knowing who they were.”

I swallow hard trying to figure out the implications for my relationship with Astley. If we had done the deed, would he have automatically known about Vander? Would my dad not have died? I shake my head and try to focus on what he’s saying now, because that line of thought is just not comfortable. He doesn’t notice my distraction and keeps blurting out the story in hard phrases. His mother, of all people, had told him where the rogue lay in wait for his or her victims. It was an old cathedral in the lower part of the city. He knew the attacks happened at night and so he waited there with Amelie. They waited for hours, until just before dawn they heard the choked-off scream in the graveyard at the back of the building. They rushed there to find the queen kissing the corpse of a pixie, blood covering her clothes, her mouth, her hands. She had murdered him.

“You have to kill her,” Amelie had insisted. “Kill her now.”

But he couldn’t. He stood there horrified and stunned as his queen turned to look at him. Fear and anger filled her eyes. Still, Astley couldn’t move. Amelie rushed forward and snapped her own sister’s neck.

“I was too weak,” he says. His voice breaks into shards that stab the air with grief. “I could not do it myself.”

“You loved her.”

“I love all my people,” he says, opening his eyes.

Placing my hands on both sides of his face, I urge him to stand up again, and he does. We stand so close that I can feel his chest rise and fall with his breaths.

“She’d been killing,” I say. “And you weren’t the one who killed her, Astley. Amelie did.”

He jerks away. “You do not understand. We found out later that it had not been her. The murderer had actually been the pixie Sacha had found. She had killed him for me. My mother had told her the same information she had told me. She led us both to the same place. She-Amelie-has never been the same.”

“Have you?” I ask.

“No.” His face breaks in half. “I killed my queen.”

I want to say, “Not technically,” but I know that wouldn’t matter to him.

“She has never helped me, my mother, not ever.” He laughs softly under his breath; his eyes lose their tears and glint with pain and anger instead. “Even when she attempts, she just brings death. She said a good king would have known who the rogue was, that a good king just takes what he needs. Why does she never help?”

Before I can show him the book, he starts to rage, leaping off the couch and swearing against her, calling her all sorts of names. As he does, lightning strikes outside, lighting up the park in a vivid, vicious kind of tantrum. The tree limbs sway and rock, battling to stay attached to the trunks. The house itself doesn’t sway, though. It is solid. I will myself to be like the house as Astley continues his pacing and fist wagging.

“Astley…,” I say, trying to interrupt the tirade. “She didn’t tell me, but-”

He paces past me. “I knew she would not! She would never help me. Never do anything that was not selfish, that did not give her gain. I have failed you, Zara. I have failed. I am so sorry. I shall personally go to the high council. I shall-”

“Astley…”

He passes by me again, not noticing. I pull the book out of my pocket and wave it in front of his face as he starts the third pass.

He stops.

“She didn’t tell me anything,” I say, smiling. “But she gave me this.”

HatesME: Dude, this place is messed. I am so out of here.

Happyfeet: Then leave already.

HatesME: I should. Rents won’t let me.

Happyfeet: Convince them.

HatesME: We r like sitting ducks here.

Mohawk: No, we aren’t. We’re fighting back.

HatesME: Against what?

Happyfeet: Ducks can fly away.

Mohawk: Against evil.

– B EDFORD A MERICAN.COM CHAT ROOM

As soon as we’re out of New York and on the Connecticut interstate, I start reading parts of the book aloud to Astley because all that arcane language is basically gobbledygook to me.

Astley slows down by the exit ramp to a rest stop. “Do you need to get out?”

I tell him I don’t.

He nods and speeds the car up again. “Basically, I think what it is telling us is that BiForst is the bridge between here and Valhalla. Reread that last part again.”

I begin. “ ‘Where a snake of water that cuts the earth meets the mouth that swallows it and becomes the belly; where the land rises to the Valkyries’ flight, the sacred words must be said, the land of gods meets the land of men, make haste and ascend the rainbow.’ ”

“Exactly. So we need to take BiForst to the place where river meets sea and then land slopes upward. There we light a fire and say the sacred words, and there will be some sort of rainbow or bridge. A portal almost.”

“That sounds hokey,” I complain.

“Hokey?”

“Cheesy, dorky.” I lean farther back into the seat and cross my legs a different way. I am so tired of driving but so excited about the book and the possibility it offers. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it works.”

“Do you know of a place where those conditions are met?”

“Yeah. Down by the town pier the Union River turns into the Union River Bay. There’s a conservancy and a big hill there. An eagle nests there. Not Devyn. A regular one.” I think a little more as we pass a Saab and a station wagon with bumper stickers about having kids on the honor roll. “That has to be it.”