“I am a pixie,” I mutter under my breath. “I am a pixie who is going to save her boyfriend and there is nothing to be scared of. I am the thing to be scared of.”
I wish I could believe this more. Reaching inside my jacket, I touch the book. It makes me feel safer. It is hope.
It’s like suddenly being in a nighttime fairy tale. There’s this calm, tiny lake surrounded by lawns and trees. At one end are the shadows of a gentle little waterfall. At the other end is another waterfall that sloshes into a loch. I follow the path on the west side and then head up a staircase. There’s a garden with winding trails. I basically get lost for a while before I finally stand on the top of Great Hill and I see… not much. It’s pretty dark. A meadow rests against the earth and there’s a dirt running track. It’s about one-fifth of a mile and it loops around. It looks like a really nice track, actually, the kind that wouldn’t make your knees scream and ache even after you’ve gone ten miles. There’s a restroom with a CLOSED sign. I don’t see Astley anywhere. What had Bentley said? Look toward the Ravine? There was a glamour? I don’t even know where the Ravine is.
I try to focus, will myself to see the truth beyond the illusion, which is the trick in seeing a glamour. You look for a shadow that doesn’t seem like it quite belongs. Sometimes it’s not a shadow. Sometimes it is more of a gleam. I search the grass and get nothing. Then I look up at the trees, and that’s where I see it, just the faintest kind of shimmer, like the tree is not perfectly in focus.
“Astley?” I call.
There’s no answer. I focus hard to make the glamour fade away as I walk closer. The shimmer vanishes and in its place is a house supported in the branches of one of the largest trees. I gasp. The house is made of wood and has a giant window facing outward. Tiny white lights drape all around it and entwine into the branches of the trees. A staircase winds up the trunk of the tree and leads to a porch deck that seems to have roots for railings. It all looks incredibly magical, and I guess it really is, in a pixie way.
I start up the stairs. I have no idea if Astley is actually here, but even if he wasn’t, I’d want to explore. Honestly, it might be cooler if he wasn’t here, because I have no idea what I’m going to say to him about what just happened at his mother’s house and how he abandoned me there, or about what she said. He had another queen and he never told me. Even if he didn’t quote-unquote kill her, that’s a pretty big lie by omission.
Nick did that too. He lied to me when he didn’t tell me that his parents were dead. I never even had a chance to confront him about that. I learned after he was gone.
I pause for a moment, trying to will the pain in my chest to dwindle down, and also so I can think. Why do people and pixies and weres lie so much? Why can’t we all just be honest with each other? It would be so easy to just not trust anyone ever, but you can’t go through life with a pair of scissors in each hand, snip-snip-snipping away at everything people say or don’t say, can you? You have to leave one hand free to catch the truth.
I contemplate my situation for a second. The stairs would normally be easy to climb, but thanks to ye olde gunshot wound they’re proving a bit much for me. Still, I start up again, climbing to the level of the house, which is probably thirty feet or so above the meadow. When my feet hit the deck, the world goes a little wiggly and I almost think I’m going to pass out.
“Pixies don’t pass out,” I mutter. “We are total badasses. We do not pass out.”
Looking through the giant window, I try to spot Astley inside the house. There are globes of light that seem to float at different levels in the air. They cast a soft and mellow glow, like candles. It is the opposite of how I feel inside. What am I doing? I’m confronting another pixie killer, and this one happens to be my king. Brilliant. I am brilliant. Obviously I have a thing for drama now too.
There’s a door in front of me. It’s made of glass and twisted wood that’s been sanded soft and smooth. The handle is wood too and has the face of a horse carved into it. My fingertips touch it before I think about it, caressing the horse’s nose. It almost feels real. The door opens easily. It’s not locked. I step inside and let the door shut behind me, trying to sense if Astley’s here. He is. I can feel his sorrow like a paper cut against my heart.
I don’t see him, though. I look across the living room I’ve stepped into. Unlike his mother’s house, the furniture is all streamlined and modern. It seems expensive, but a different kind of expensive. It’s almost a Japanese feel. I step into the room. My sneaker leaves a wet mark on the floor. There are other wet marks from where Astley must have stepped. I’d follow the glitter trail, but there’s glitter all over the shiny wooden floor-it’s more like someone shook a carton of it over the floor than there being any one traceable trail.
Bamboo-type mats rest on the floor. Water that has dripped off Astley’s clothes darkens the white into gray. I follow the water trail around the squarish white sofa and armchair. He’s in the corner, huddled into the fetal position, perched on the balls of his feet and facing away from me so that all I can see is his back.
“Astley?”
When I say his name, his back shivers, even though I know he’s not surprised. His senses are amazing. He heard and smelled me way before I came inside, probably before I even climbed the stairs. Still, his back moves as if I’ve startled him. Nothing else moves, though.
I try again. “Astley?”
Still no answer. Against my better judgment, I reach forward and gently touch his shoulder. It is hard beneath the leather jacket.
He stands up and turns around so slowly. All my skin crawls. A million spiders seem to run up and down the surface of me. I yank my hand back, touch my face, but there’s nothing on me. It’s him that’s making me feel this way. He turns fully around and he doesn’t look human at all. The glamour is gone. He is in full pixie mode, all blue skin and teeth, eyes that glint. I shudder even though I know that this is how I look too-like a monster. But it’s more than that. He feels like a monster, like some horrible, primal, lethal pixie king instead of the usual calm, slightly troubled Astley.
I back away. I can’t help it.
“Stay,” he commands.
I can’t move. My feet stick to the floor, held by some invisible force that must be coming from him.
“You’re scaring me, Astley,” I say, but my voice doesn’t sound scared. It sounds calm.
“Am I?”
Back in 2004, this forty-nine-year-old guy Ye Guozhu was sentenced to prison in China because he applied to demonstrate against forced evictions. The court said he was “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble.” He was upset because people’s homes and businesses were being destroyed so that fancy places could be built. His restaurant was one of those buildings. His home was another. The government didn’t give the people any money. They just evicted them.
According to Amnesty, he was tortured. The police beat him before his trial, suspended him from the ceiling, hung him by his arms. According to Amnesty, the police used electroshock batons.
These are the sorts of things out-of-control pixies would do, but worse… even worse. How can I imagine worse? I don’t have to imagine it. I saw it when I rescued Jay Dahlberg from my father’s lair. But pixies can do good. Both Astley’s dad and mine sacrificed themselves for us, and can there be a higher good than that?
Astley winds around me again in a clockwise circle. His hand lifts up to my cheek. His fingernails are claws. Yes, I am scared, but I’m also not scared, because I know he needs me and he’s never been mean to me. But his mother said…
“Did you kill her by accident?” I ask.