Carrie Jones - Need

"It could have been worse. He didn't slash the pillows or anything," I say, but my voice sounds fake.

It fools Mick, though. "Right."

We start picking things up. I check my cell phone and the regular phone to see if they work yet. They don't. We open up the door and snow tumbles into the house. Any pixie prints are long buried.

My breath catches.

The world has a fairy-tale, Nutcracker, Christmas look. The snow covers the trees, turning them white and magical. Nick's MINI is completely blanketed. It seems beautiful and orderly, and natural and safe, the opposite of Betty's house.

"We're snowed in," I announce.

He sniffs the air. "It's a big storm. It'll probably last all afternoon, and not end until tomorrow morning."

I tromp across the living room and try to radio Betty. I get Josie, the dispatcher, who says, "She set out for home two hours ago."

"Oh, God."

"No. Don't you go worrying. I'll try to call her up on the other channel. There's been no word on the Dahlberg boy. The storm's supposed to last through tonight, and the roads are bad, so it might just be taking her a little bit of time. And the satellite's down, too, so some of the other channels aren't working."

I press the button on the radio. "Okay. Don't tire yourself out, Josie."

She laughs and it comes through the static loud and clear. "I'm not dead yet, Zara. I still got some life in me."

We all do, I think, and I go back to trying to clean up the living room.

We clean forever it seems and finally both our stomachs growl louder than the wind.

"I'm starving. You hungry?" he asks.

I pat my belly. "Yep. You think Betty's okay?"

He hugs me. "I think she's okay."

He strides into the kitchen and grabs some eggs out of the refrigerator, while I move the rest of the contents outside into the snow so they won't go bad.

He has two frying pans set up on top of the woodstove and is opening up a can of corned beef hash when I come back inside.

"Corned beef hash?" I say. "That's disgusting."

"It's good, puts hair on your chest."

"Fur, you mean."

"Exactly."

He pops off the metal lid and puts it on a paper towel. He slops the hash into the pan and stirs it around.

"This might take a while." He grabs another spoon to stir the eggs. "I was thinking we might need to get some help for this pixie situation."

"Okay, I thought wolves had packs. Do you have a pack?"

"Not in the traditional sense."

"Sorry, Nick, but when it comes to werewolves, I don't know what the traditional sense is."

"I don't run with other wolves."

I nod. I wait. I finally give up and say, "So you run with…"

He winces. "Coyotes. But they have some wolf DNA" It's hard not to smile. "You are alpha at least, right?"

"Of course I'm alpha." He almost growls at me.

"Sorry. Sorry. So, are we going to ask your pack for help?" I ask. "If you're alpha, you can tell them what to do, right?"

"We'll ask them. They can do little stuff, try to divert the pixies, keep them busy. But they're just regular coyotes, Zara, and they get scared of magic." He breaks up the hash a bit. "No, I was thinking about asking somebody else."

"Who?"

He points the spoon at me. "You have to be calm about this, okay? When I tell you, you can't get hysterical or anything."

"Just tell me."

"Issie and Devyn."

I whirl around at him. "We can't do that. First, they could get hurt. Second, what? You're going to tell them you're a werewolf? Oh, yeah. That's going to go over well."

"They already know, because…"

The fire crackles again. The wind shakes the house. He stands alert and ready, but nothing happens, including him finishing his sentence.

"They already know because…," I prompt, completely impatient.

He pulls in a big breath.

"Oh my God! lssie's a bunny, isn't she? Do they have those? Do they have werebunnies?"

"Big leap there, Zare." Nick cracks up. He shakes with laughter.

I pout. "She'd be a good bunny."

"True. But it's not her. It's Devyn."

"Devyn? Devyn is cute and normal."

He scrapes at the bottom of the hash pan. His voice comes out dead calm. "He's an eagle."

"Oh. Okay. I am not going to freak out about this, but let me say that I am surprised."

"Because he's in a wheelchair?"

"No! Because he's a bird."

Agateophobia fear of insanity The wind rallies the house, makes the flames dance in the woodstove. I'm eating a bizarre combination of meat and diced potato with a guy who is actually hotter than the fire and what do I say?

I say, "We need to figure out how to keep the pixie from kissing me, from making me his queen."

"I know," Nick says.

"I don't suppose just saying no would work." I give a nervous laugh.

Nick starts scraping at the brown, crunchy hash that clings to the bottom of the pan. He mixes it into the softer hash parts, clumping it into a big brown, red, and white mess.

Still, it smells good, almost good enough to make me not think about pixies. Almost. Or that the only cool people in school are weres.

"Seriously, Zara," he says, moving on to his egg scrambling.

"First off, I can't believe pixies have kings and queens. That's so old school. I don't care if they are Shining Ones. It's just lame. Are they some sort of totalitarian dictatorship based on a monarchial ideal of superiority, because those are some of the worst governments possible. I mean, the human rights violations in governments like that-" He puts his free hand over my mouth just like Devyn did to Issie once. But I don't do an Issie and giggle or lick his fingers. I just glare. Nick keeps scrambling the eggs with his free hand as if nothing is going on, nothing at all, as if this is a normal conversation for people to be having.

"Zara, these arepixies and when it comes to human rights violations, pixies don't really care," he explains. "One, they aren't human. Two, torture is part of their M.O."

I try to stomp on his foot, but he just pivots it away in some super quick werewolf maneuver and never stops scrambling the eggs, which are holding together now, almost finished. He doesn't move his hand off my mouth and his eyes twinkle like he thinks I am so amusing. l am not amusing.

"I'm going to move my hand now. Okay?"

"I am not queen material," I sputter.

He wipes his hand on his shirt.

"What? Did I drool on you?"

"A little," "You're a wolf. You should be used to drool."

"That's low."

He takes the egg pan off the top of the woodstove and places it on the brick hearth that surrounds it.

I cross my arms over my chest. "I don't care."

We stay silent for a minute while he scrapes at the hash in the pan again. The windows seem like empty white blanks because of all the snow that keeps tumbling down. Some of the flakes splatter against the house like they are trying to escape the wintry reality.

"This isn't their normal behavior, obviously. I mean, the pixies haven't been killing everyone all this time.

There's a gap," I say. Nick starts to interrupt but I hold up my hand to stop him. "I know we know that.

I'm just thinking out loud, trying to process it. It's got to all be connected to my dad's letter."

"And they've been without a queen for a quarter of a century. There's got to be a rule about that." He points the scraping spoon at me. "Zara, I know you're a little freaked out by all this and that's normal, but I think that-" "Normal? What's normal about any of this? You, possibly the best-looking guy in the universe, actually like me, but you're a werewolf." I can hear the hysteria in my voice but can't stop it. "Two of my favorite people at this crazy school are a werewolf and a were-eagle. Did I get that right? Werewolf and were-eagle? And of course, my grandmother is a weretiger."