Carrie Jones: Entice

“The Norse god?” I feel one of my eyebrows creep up. “You’re telling me there are other gods? I don’t believe in other gods.”

“ ‘Gods’ might be the wrong word for them. They are creatures like us, but not like us, maybe not like your God either.” He crams his hands into his pockets. “My point is that we believe we are made in Odin’s image-as pixies, not humans. We are made in his image and he is not evil, Zara. He is supposed to be wise and good and kind.”

“Supposed to be?”

“Well, I have not met him.” Astley smiles. “He is also one of the keys to finding Valhalla, because it is his home.”

“So we just have to find him-and that’s basically as difficult as finding heaven?” I say as hope pretty much deserts me. “And how do we do that, since you can’t even find your own mom, our one big lead?”

His lips flatten into a hard line that matches his eyes.

“I’m sorry. I sound so harsh. I’m just scared that we won’t find him.” I hide my head in my hands for a second. “I appreciate your help. Please don’t think that I don’t.”

He gently moves my hands away from my face and says, “This is not easy for you, Zara. I am aware of that. You have lost your wolf. You have lost your humanity. Your reality has shifted and your town is under siege. It is unprecedented what is happening here.”

A car engine starts, then another. Someone yells, “It is so freaking cold!”

This kid, Sam Cambridge, shouts, “Crap! It’s snowing again.”

And I hear other voices: talking about ugly dresses, how this Stephanie girl totally hit on this other girl’s date, people who were flirted with…

“I cannot believe her,” someone shrills. “She was totally all over him.”

I feel the air change. My muscles tense.

Astley cocks his head. “What?”

Reaching out to grab his arm, I feel dizzy with the enormity of everything that has happened, that is happening. “You’re right. They are all so innocent. I used to be like that. Now I don’t fit in.” He opens his mouth but I stop him. “Do not say that I fit in with you, because that would be super cheesy.”

He nods and I let go of his leather sleeve. We stand there for a second, and then I ask, “Can you patrol in the air? Glamour yourself so nobody sees you and circle around? I’ll stay on the ground. Man, I wish I could fly.”

“Occasionally a queen is capable of flying. My mother is capable. We shall talk to her about Valhalla as soon as I can locate her, and I shall locate her,” he insists. He gives me a probing look, but I can’t tell what it is about. “I have already asked Vander, one of my top lieutenants, to look into it.”

After just a heartbeat, he lifts into the sky and blinks out, glamoured.

“Thank you!” I yell after him, staring into the darkness and all the tiny flecks of snow tumbling down toward me. My tongue darts out and I catch one. It melts instantly, cold and wet in my mouth.

Then I smell them. Two pixies. One is coming from the woods at the right edge of the parking lot. The other is simply walking up the access road to the high school.

“Astley!” I yell.

Some freshman kid looks at me. His eyebrows lift up.

“Sorry,” I mutter as he walks by. “Looking for a friend.”

Astley appears above me for the briefest of seconds and whispers, “You incapacitate the one from the woods; I shall get the other.”

He’s gone before I have a chance to respond. Wow, though. He thinks I can handle one. That’s kind of a flattering big deal. Nick never let me fight alone. He always thought I’d get hurt, and I wasn’t good at it, really. But now I can, right? I just handled those two in the high school. I quickly walk toward the woods, trying not to draw attention to myself and following the scent while simultaneously waving bye to the people leaving the dance. In my head, I’ve got a ridiculous monologue going on, like a voice-over in a movie…

My name is Zara White and I’m almost seventeen years old. I’m a pixie, and my boyfriend was killed by a pixie king with the ludicrous name of Frank.

Sometimes I worry about my mental health.

There’s a line of parked cars in front of the woods and a slight narrow incline with grass that separates those cars from the trees. I stare into the darkness, trying to isolate the pixie. It isn’t easy.

People talk behind me, distracting me. I don’t want them to get hurt. I’m trying to magically will them away when the pixie emerges from the dark, slipping between two trees. He doesn’t seem to smell me and starts toward a girl from the volleyball team who is skipping through the parking lot with a friend while their dates straggle behind. The pixie is wearing jeans, a winter coat, a red wool hat pulled low over his ears-human clothes-but he’s not glamoured, so he looks like some sort of blue humanoid devil. His teeth glint under the parking lot lights. He smiles slowly and it’s obvious that his attention has turned to the guys. Pixies prefer to torture and drain guys. I am not sure why-it’s another one of those secrets.

I race up the little hill in two quick steps and rush him, tackling him at the knees. His entire body makes an oomph sound, like all the air has just been knocked out of him, but he quickly whirls around. His hands go toward my throat. My hands go toward his and I try to pin him down. He flips me over and I smash his face with my elbow, which feels super violent and horrible. Crunching bone sound fills the night air. His hands loosen. I take the opportunity to grab his throat and apply just enough pressure to hurt his vocal cords, to cut off air but not to kill him. He tries to snarl at me, but it comes out more like a whimper.

Bringing my face just a few centimeters from his, I whisper, “Do not touch the humans. Got it? No killing. No bleeding. No torture. Or you die.”

I can’t believe I’ve just said that. I squeeze a tiny bit more and then let go, shoving his head into the snow. He growls at me, but his eyes are defeated and he scrambles to his feet, then runs off. I wipe my hands against the side of my dress, turn around, and look behind me. Callie and Paul-Mohawks covered by matching orange hats-are standing there, mouths wide open. Their eyes are large and confused, a bit panicked. Crud.

“What the hell?” Paul manages to say. His hand is clutching Callie’s arm like he’s holding her back, and she’s one step ahead of him like she is protecting him or was going to intervene or something. Tiny snowflakes swirl around them.

“Just, um- Hey, guys! He just got-he just-he just gave me an opportunity to show off my fine wrestling skills… WWF domination for me! Um, yeah… boys…” I stumble for an explanation. I am obviously not doing well, because they keep staring.

Callie’s mouth closes and opens again like she wants to say something, but no actual words come out. The silence is beyond awkward.

I keep trying. “You have a good time at the dance? Need me to show you any wrestling moves? Oh! There’s Issie. Got to go.”

I race off toward Issie’s car before they can ask any questions. I’m not sure how long I’ve officially been a pixie, but it’s less than a couple days and I’m already outing myself. Great. I rush up to the group and stop. I stand still and try to sense pixies. All I get is Astley.

Is grabs my arm. “Where were you? Do not make me go all nagging mother on you. You can’t just disappear like that. The last time you did you were gone-”

“Issie, she was out patrolling. I told you that,” Cassidy says, pulling her wrap around her shoulders. It starts to fall off. Devyn catches it and fixes it.

Issie lets go of my arm and opens the door to her Toyota. “My heart can’t take all this patrolling, disappearing, dying, morphing into new beings-”