Carrie Jones - Need

He nods. "That was after I went through the woods searching for him. I dropped my jacket before I turned. I probably picked it up then. I can't believe you thought I was a pixie."

"Only a little." We sit there for a minute. "I think we should call Issie and Devyn and tell them."

"That we made out?"

I elbow him. "No. The pixie/were stuff."

I haul myself up off the couch and grab the phone off the brick hearth. It's warm. I start pushing in numbers. "And then maybe we should all go out looking for Jay."

The phone makes a funny noise. The display reads "no signal."

"Great," I say.

Nick gets up and grabs the other phone, listens. "The lines are out."

I flip open the cell. "No signal."

I pocket the phone.

Nick points outside. Blue lights fill the windows, flash through the windows. "The police are here."

Pogonophobia fear of facial hair, mostly beards Two cops come to the door, both sheriffs deputies. Their hands are on their guns, like they're ready for action.

"You Zara?" the taller one with the beard asks. His hair is red and short.

I nod.

"Sergeant Fahey," he says, taking his hand off his gun and reaching out to shake mine. He sees Nick behind me and lets himself smile. "Hey, Nick."

Nick nods and smiles.

"So, you found your way back," Sergeant Fahey says, taking in the blanket around Nick's waist. He nods to the other officer, who is beardless and really young looking. "Safe and sound. So… Deputy Clark and I don't have to go searching."

"Nope," Nick says. "Sorry about that."

"Sorry? It's a good thing," Deputy Clark says. Then he shivers in the cold.

"Oh, do you guys want to come in?" I ask.

"Nope. Thanks," Sergeant Fahey says, all straight-backed and official, which makes Officer Clark grimace. "But your grandmother told us you heard a man in the woods saying your name?"

I nod. "And he tried to attack Nick."

Sergeant Fahey's eyes grow all big. "Really?"

Nick glares at me and then I realize that there's no proof. His wound's already healing. "It was nothing. I ran away."

His mouth twitches. Running away is so the opposite of who he is. That lie is costing him.

Deputy Clark whips out a pad. "Can you describe him?"

Nick does. They come inside, sit on the couch, and ask questions. Deputy Clark asks a lot of questions, mostly I think because he doesn't want to go back outside into the cold. Then they get up and head into the woods with these supercharged flashlights looking for the man.

We stand at the windows and watch the light flash through the darkness, searching.

"They'll never find him," Nick says.

"You don't know that."

"He doesn't leave a trail." Nick turns away and sits back on the couch.

I don't join him. I just keep staring out at the night and the officers. My voice hitches inside my throat. "I thought you were gone."

"I'm tougher than that."

"Because you're a were?" I close the curtain again.

"Yeah."

"You got hurt even though you're a were." I turn around and look at him, so solid and healthy on the couch, so normal looking, in a ridiculously good-looking human kind of way.

"But you read what it said on that Web site. We're the natural enemy of pixies."

"Did you even know pixies existed until this week?"

He cringes, touches his shoulder. "No. But for the last month or so Devyn and I knew there was something out there, something bad. Issie too. We told Issie."

"Your parents are weres too, right? But they're out on some photo shoot somewhere."

"Making a documentary."

"And they just left you here alone. I thought wolves were pack animals, that they hang together."

"They do, but my parents… We've got some interesting family dynamics going on."

"How do you mean?"

"When the son of an alpha wolf, the leader, grows, he matures into alpha himself, and then there's some tension because there's just this genetic need to be alpha."

"To be the one in charge. The hero."

"Basically. But there can only be one alpha, so my parents have been taking an extended trip this year, and next year too, until I go to college. That way my dad and I don't rip each other apart."

"Because you're both alpha?"

He nods.

"Wow. That's weird."

A truck rumbles into the driveway. I watch the police walk out of the woods and talk to Betty by her truck. Then they leave and she comes inside, all business.

She points at Nick. "Take off your shirt."

He does.

"Why are you making him take off-," I start to ask.

"She knows," Nick interrupts. "She knows I'm a were."

Betty nods, peers at the almost invisible wound. "Did you tell her?"

"That you're a were too?" I flop down in the green leather chair by the door. "Yeah, he told me."

"How is she taking it?" Betty asks Nick.

"Not well."

She laughs. "Your wound looks fine. You did a good job, Zara."

I manage to nod.

"The police haven't found anything," Betty says, putting some wood into the stove. It crackles. "But I didn't expect them to. You can always hope, though."

"We think he's a pixie, Gram," I sputter it out.

She nods. "You think right. Where's the poker?"

I find it by the front door. "I took it, um, as a weapon."

"Good idea," she says, taking it from me and using it to shift the logs. A couple of embers fly into the room and wisp out. "I've called your mother. She wants you to come back home. She thinks it was a mistake to send you here."

My throat tightens up and I flip my feet up under me, studying her face in the shadowy light of the fire.

"What do you think?"

Nick answers for her. "It might be safer for you to go away."

"I'm not going to run," I say. "He'd find me anyway, right? He found me in Charleston. And he hasn't attacked me or anything, not even when I was out there in the woods. It's not like I'm in danger."

"You don't know that, Zara," Betty says.

"But she sent me here because she thought I'd be safer, safer with you," I say to Betty. "Because you're a were. And if Nick's a were too I must be doubly safe, right?"

"Hopefully," she says.

"I'm not going." I stand up and walk next to her, look up at her. "You won't make me go back."

"No," she says. "I won't. But it's dangerous here. We don't know how to stop him."

Nick stands up, puts his arm around me. "We'll figure something out."

Nick stays the night. There's no school the next morning, and when I wake up it's already day and white snow light fills up the room. Everything seems so much safer, less scary.

Nick walks down the hall, peeks in, and realizes I'm awake. He smiles. "You sleep forever."

"I was tired," I say, stretching and worrying about my hair and my breath and if there's crud in my eyes.

Then I notice something. "You have pants on."

"I keep an extra pair in the MINI." He comes in and sits on the edge of my bed. "Disappointed?"

"A little."

I sit up against the headboard and rub my eyes. "What've you been doing?"

"I called Devyn and Issie. They're trying to figure out if they can come over. Devyn's parents have a snowmobile but they don't want him on it because of the whole injury thing. Betty went in to work in that kick-ass truck of hers."

"Kick ass?"

"It is. Have you looked at her tires?"

"You have a MINI Cooper."

"That doesn't mean I can't appreciate a good truck." He smiles and scruffs my hair like he's my big brother or something, which is not cool. "Anyway, I made pancakes. There's some in the oven, and I've been reading old Stephen King books."

"Oh, that's a good idea, scaring yourself more?"

"I'm hard to scare."

"So tough."

He laughs. I laugh too and then I smile. "Did you really make pancakes?"

He grabs my hand and yanks me out of bed. "Come on."