Need (27 page)

I stop biting my lip. “No, I’m not. I’m not like her at all.”

He sighs. “Just try to see what’s really there, Zara. Then we’ll go inside, out of the cold.”

“Fine.”

I stare at the clearing and it shifts, shimmers almost. A snowflake lands on my eyelash. I close my eyes as it melts. Then I open them again.

“Crud,” I mutter.

I can hear the smile in his voice. “You can see it?”

“I don’t know how I missed it.”

“The glamour.”

The house isn’t a house. It’s a mansion-huge with large-paned windows on each of its three floors. It’s clapboard sided and painted a creamy yellow, like old houses on the Battery in Charleston. Its stately straight lines seem to soar up toward the sky. It’s not ostentatious, but it’s large, screaming of old money and tea in the parlor and croquet in the backyard.

I turn my head to tell him that but my mouth drops open and my tongue seems to bail on being an active participant in the conversation.

“You see me as I am.” He smiles.

His teeth are a little pointy.

But it’s not his teeth that get me. It’s the fact that his eyes are silver with black pupils. It’s the fact that his skin shines like blue ice. It’s the fact that he’s taller than I thought, wider.

“I don’t look like you,” I say finally.

“No. You look like your mother.”

“I have your hair. My mom always said you abandoned us but that’s not how it was, was it?”

“No, she abandoned me.” His face shifts into sadness. His eyes seem smaller. Then he looks back at me. “Let’s get you inside, out of the cold.”

I follow him because I don’t know what else I should do. I follow him because I want to keep Nick safe and I’m hoping that my plan is still [_the plan _]somehow, that somehow they’ll follow us here and find me and Jay. I follow him because I want to find out what kind of monster my father is. Yes, it’s true. My father.

The large mahogany front door opens for us. He leads me inside to the front hall. One step. Another. It smells of wine and beef and mushrooms. Bright light shines off the marble floors. People line up against the upholstered walls. Most of them wear normal people clothes, but some are in prom-dress-type stuff and tuxes. They bow, one after another, an entire room. There must be a hundred of them. But they aren’t people. They’re pixies without the glamour. Their teeth are pointed like sharks’ teeth. Their skin is tinted blue and their legs are long, longer than normal. My knees shake.

“Our court, the dark court,” the king announces. “Please rise.”

The pixies stand up straight. I do not know what to do. I give a little wave as all their eyes stare at me, silver pixie eyes.

“We’ll meet you in the back ballroom,” he says, steering me into a side door. I watch the pixies swarm away before he shuts the door.

“Are those all the pixies there are?” I ask.

“No. Just most of the pixies in this region. The ones that belong to me.”

“There’s more than one region?”

“Of course.”

“Right. Of course.” I walk to the window and stare out at the snow.

“I’ll leave you here to wait for your mother,” he says. “I have preparations to make. Feel free to roam around the house, Zara, but I’m afraid you can’t leave.”

“So I’m a prisoner.”

“A guest.”

“Guests can leave,” I say. I face him. “I want to see Jay Dahlberg.”

He flinches.

“I insist,” I say.

“He’s upstairs. Two flights. Third door to the right. It’s not pretty, Zara. But I can’t hide what I am. What I need.”

I take in the beautiful curtains, the leather couch, the plush-ness, the orchids everywhere. “None of this is pretty.”

Once he’s out the door I count to sixty and then I leave too. I walk up the white marble stairs with the dark red Afghani runner. One flight. Another. I pass pixies who glare at me, pixies who sniff the air. Their movements are too fluid for humans, their eyes too fierce. They look at me like prey. Some touch my arms, my hair, whispering, “Princess. Princess.” It’s all I can do not to tear out of here screaming. Instead, I just keep moving up and up till I’m on the third floor.

I count the doors to try to focus, to calm my heart, and then it’s [_the _]door, the door that Jay Dahlberg should be behind. It’s just a regular door, wooden, with a gold, shiny knob that’s engraved with rune-like writing. I wonder how many prisoners are captured behind such ordinary doors. Pulling in a big breath, I turn the knob and open the door.

Jay Dahlberg is on top of the sheets of a large bed, twisted on his side. His arms are full of bite marks and he’s only wearing boxers and a ripped-up T-shirt.

“Oh, Jay,” I whisper and shut the door.

He doesn’t stir as I step quietly across the plush carpet, another oriental, hand woven. Figures. He doesn’t move as I touch his arm, right above five slashing marks, where they must have taken his blood. His skin freezes against my fingertips. His skin pales beneath the fluorescent light. His back is carved with slashes and bruises.

“Jay?” I say, touching him a little more. “Jay?”

He moans. His eyelids flicker and open. His lips are cracked but still manage to move. “Hey, you’re the new…”

“Girl. Yeah, I’m the new girl,” I say for him. “I’m going to untie you and get you out of here.”

His eyes shock wide open. “You can’t. The pixies.”

“I know all about the pixies,” I say, working on the knots that bind his feet. “I do not give a rat’s ass about the pixies. I am getting you out of here.”

I start on the knots around his hands, but it’s hard with my splint on. I finally get them and ease my good arm around his waist. “Can you stand?”

“Sure,” he says, but he wobbles the moment his feet touch the ground. “Sorry.”

“You can lean on me. It’s okay, but there are a lot of stairs,” I say. “We’ll take it slow.”

We are almost to the door when he stops. “New girl…”

“Zara.”

It is an effort for him to speak. His body trembles away from my hands even though he needs me to hold him up. “He cut me. He licked my blood. And then they all do. It’s like… it’s like they’re sucking your soul away. He could… he could do that to you.”

“It’s fine,” I say. “I’ll be fine. You are going to be fine. No one is going to hurt you again, okay? Not on my watch. Now, let’s just get you out of here.”

I open the door and listen. Nothing.

“Wait,” I whisper. “Did you see any other guys here?”

He works to move his lips. “No.”

“A boy? The Beardsley boy?”

“They said he was dead.”

Anger knots inside of me, matching the ache of my broken arm. “I am getting you out of here.”

We start down the hall. I think of all the stairs. I think of all the pixies. I do not care.

It isn’t easy, but we make it down the hall, down one flight of stairs.

“Where are the pixies?” Jay whispers. “They’ll suck on us. They’ll come.”

“I don’t know. In the back room, I think. It’s okay.”

But then we hear voices, reaching up the final flight of stairs. The voices come from the front hall. My heart pains in my chest. This is not part of my plan. She shouldn’t be here yet. She’s supposed to be here later when everything is over.

“Yes, you got what you want, okay? I’m here.” A woman’s lilting voice says, shaking, trying to be tough, but not quite making it. Why couldn’t she have just told me all this before? Why did she have to lie? Because she wanted to keep me safe, I guess.

“My mom,” I whisper to Jay.

“Your mom is here? Why is your mom here?” Jay totters against the banister.

“To save me.” I pull him closer, trying to keep him upright.

He struggles to understand. “But you’re saving me.”

“I know, it’s okay. Come on.”

We make it halfway down the stairs and I can finally see what’s going on. My mom is standing in the middle of the front hall, right on a large white square of granite. Her arms are crossed in front of her chest. The king stands on the black square next to her. The pixies are lined up on the walls again, surrounding them.

“It looks like a giant chess board,” Jay whispers.

I haul him down another flight of stairs.

“You have no idea how much I’ve missed you,” the king says.

My mother smirks. She does not say anything.

“You’ve made me wait a long time.”

She rolls her eyes. I thought she only rolled her eyes at me. Jay and I make it down another step. Nobody seems to notice.

Finally she says, “Your pixies attacked our daughter.”

“They were renegades. They’ve been dispatched.”

“Yes. By Betty.”

He does this giant melodramatic sigh. “I have dispatched the others.”

“The others?”

“It was quite the conspiracy. You know I lose my power when I don’t have a queen with me. So upstarts who arc power hungry take advantage.”

I’m not going to let him get away with this so I yell from the stairs, “You killed Brian Beardsley. Look at Jay. He’s almost dead.”

Everyone turns to look at us, including my mom. Her arms drop.

The pixie king throws his arms out to the sides. “You know I can’t help it.”

“You could just stop!” I yank Jay down another stair, closer to my mother, closer. She looks at me with panicked eyes. I’d like to hug her, even though I’m so mad at her. I’d like her to know that I forgive her, that I understand what she is trying to do. I focus on him, the king.

“It’s in our nature,” he says.

“Then change your nature. You don’t have to torture. You don’t have to kill.”

“Then I would die. Then another pixie, perhaps one more cruel, one less enamored of human peculiarities will take my place.”

“So?”

Both my parents look at me. Jay wobbles. I balance him.

“People die all the time for the greater good. It’s called being a martyr. Plus, you were stalking me, calling me, trying to get me lost in the woods. That is a definite no-no in the Good Father Handbook,” I explain, taking one more step and finally I’m on the flat floor. The pixies hiss like wild animals. They inch closer to me, sniffing the air, smelling Jay’s blood probably, getting hungry, wanting to suck. The king motions for them to move back. They do, but you can tell they don’t want to.

“I wanted you to come to me of your own free will,” he says to me. “I wanted you to want to know your father.”

“Get this straight, getting someone lost and confused is not having them ‘come to you of their own free will.’ Plus, you pretended to be my stepdad, which is just pure evil.”

My mom leaves her white square, coming to put her arm around me. It feels good. “He did what?”

“I was getting desperate,” he explains.

“That’s lame. That’s a lame excuse,” I say, as Jay crumples to the floor. I try to catch him, but I’m too small even though he is light. [_No _]pixies even try to break his fall. “And now it’s time for us to go. I don’t suppose you guys have a wheelchair or anything I could put Jay in.”

My mother stiffens next to me. “Zara…”

I don’t want to look at her face, but I do. I almost double over, the hole inside of me is so big, so huge. “Mom?”

“What else can I do, Zara?”

“And you’ll just stay here? With him? The torturer?”

She nods, one slow movement of her head. She keeps her hands on my shoulders.

I stomp my foot like a baby. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I know you don’t always believe it, but you are the most important thing in the world to me, and I must keep you safe.” Her eyes sweep over my cast, take in Jay on the floor, and then she kisses my cheek before turning away from me, turning to him. “You’ll let them go. You promise. You’ll let them go and never bother them again if I stay here right now?”

He nods. “I promise.”

“Mom!”

She pulls me to her one last time. “I’m so sorry, Zara. I thought this wasn’t inevitable, but it is. What’s my freedom compared to-”

“He’ll make you a pixie,” I insist. “One of them.”

She doesn’t answer.

I pull away. “You said inevitable. Nothing is inevitable.”

Pixies pry me away. They carry me to the door, take me out into the snow, and drop me there. Two more plop Jay Dahlberg beside me.

“You could have at least given him some clothes!” I yell, but they just go back inside and close the door.

“Hell,” Jay mumbles. “Hell. It’s cold.”

“Do [_not _]worry,” I say, yanking him up with one hand. He barely makes it. “I have a plan.”

We hobble toward the boundary of the woods. I take off my jacket, try to get it on him. It’s way too short and small, even though he’s so skinny now, but it’s something.

“What are we going to do?” He shudders.

His feet are blue and naked.

“We are going to get help,” I say as we make it to the woods. I whistle and then I yell. “Gram!”

Nothing.

“Mick!”

Above us an eagle circles. It screeches. Two seconds later they storm out of the woods, a massive white tiger and a wolf, a beautiful brown wolf. They are wild and fierce looking. Gram is beautiful but so… so… I don’t know. She’s strong. Her muscles are massive, feral, gorgeous. And Nick? Nick is here. He came back to help, like he said he would before he found out about the whole pixie gene thing.

I raise my hand and smile so big my teeth hurt from the cold.

“Holy…Holy…” Jay staggers back.

“You’re hallucinating,” I tell him. “Do not stress.”

He passes out, which is only to be expected. I half catch him with my good arm, stagger, and place him gently on the ground.

Both Gram and Nick are growling and angry; teeth bared, ready to kill and ready to spring and tear before they are killed. But I know there are too many pixies in there for them to handle. I know that killing is not cool, no matter how awful people or pixies are.

[_”I _]have a better idea,” I tell them. “You’ve got to trust me. We’re going to go into phase two of my amended plan. It’s amended since Mom came early. I guess it’s part plan and part rescue mission. I’ll tell you at home, okay?”