She nods quickly and I let go of her braids, unlock the doors to the truck. The mechanism makes a popping noise. I search for another one of Astley’s iron-resistance pills and pop it in my mouth. Iron is poisonous to pixies. Just being near it—like in a car—gives us headaches. Luckily, Astley’s people have developed a pill that lets us tolerate it. Still, my head hurts a bit and it’s hard to focus for a second while the pill kicks in. Maybe it’s the fact that people are predicting my death. It’s only four o’clock, but the light is fading as a mom hurries down the street, clutching her toddler’s hand. As we get out of the truck, the mom looks from one side to another like she’s expecting to be killed right there. A white police car trolls down the road, snow flipping out from beneath its moving tires. It’s Detective Small. She waves. We wave back. I can feel the pill reach my stomach and settle there, and I turn back to Cassidy as I press the fob to lock the truck.
“Is it soon?” I ask her as I step over some snow slush on the sidewalk. “Do I die soon?”
“Yeah,” she says. “I think it’s soon.”
“Do you know where?”
She shakes her head. “It’s dark. There’s a curtain that hangs to the floor. Other than that, nothing.”
“Well,” I say trying to be lighthearted for her sake. “I’ll avoid all places with curtains.”
“Zara, this is serious.”
I clear my throat. I know it’s serious. “We aren’t telling anyone else about this.”
“But—”
I interrupt her. “Seriously, Cass, they’ll freak. It will get us all unfocused. You know how we go off on tangents. The other day Issie talked for twenty minutes about what we should call ourselves. She wanted a group name, remember? And then there was that time that Devyn started explaining chaos theory.”
She stops on the first step to the coffee shop. Her hands go to her waist and she glares at me, her voice hard to match her no-nonsense eyes. “You dying isn’t a tangent.”
“Well,” I say, stepping around her to pull open the door, trying to ignore the horrible feeling of doom that seems to be crushing my kidneys into my spine, “yeah. Am I the only one?”
“What?”
“The only one who dies?”
“No.” She sighs. “I don’t think so.”
Nick, Devyn, and Issie are already waiting inside the Grind, sitting on two leather couches, sipping drinks. Nick gives a little wave like he never told me I was soulless. I give a little wave back because it’s more mature than giving him the finger. I’m a pixie queen now.
Is holds up two Super Juices, which she’s already bought because she knows that Cassidy and I don’t do coffee. It makes both of us wacky-hyper. While we wait for Astley and our pixies, we settle in and start talking about the giants, what Cass just saw, what steps we need to take to stop the apocalypse and deal with the crazy pixies who are tormenting our town.
It isn’t nice coffee-house chatter. Throughout our entire conversation Jay Dahlberg keeps making eyes at us. He’s sitting with Callie and Paul, Cierra, and some other people from school like Austin and Danielle, who I don’t know that well. Callie’s got her Mohawk bejeweled with some crystals and Paul’s rocking a new surfer-boy haircut. Cierra’s touched up her roots. For a second I’m almost jealous that they have time to deal with their hair, but that’s just wrong of me. I’m happy for them.
“Something is going on over there,” I whisper to Issie.
Nick looks up. His gaze meets Jay’s and Jay stands.
Jay’s blond hair flops over his eyes, shading them a little bit. He grew his hair out after he was kidnapped by evil pixies. It’s hide-me hair, not teen-idol, pop-star hair, although it’s the same kind of trendy cut. He walks over and leans on the coffee table, making direct eye contact with me now instead of Nick. “I remember things.”
The air goes still. The only noise is some background hum of coffee and espresso machines, the mechanical droning of refrigerated display cases and the music. It feels like my entire body is shaking, but it isn’t. My stomach lurches and I get this image of Astley grimacing. He’s so late. I hope he’s okay. It doesn’t feel like he’s okay, and I start thinking about Loki and frosty giants, Cassidy’s prediction. That kidney-crushing feeling inside me gets worse.
Jay’s voice snaps me out of my worries. It is low and urgent as he says it again. “I remember that you were there, Zara. You saved me from those—those things. You got me out of the house.”
Issie’s hand goes to my arm, and I think she’s trying to be reassuring because we both know that now I am one of those things.
Earlier this year, Jay was kidnapped by my biological father. He was tortured and bound to a bed where pixies fed on his energy—his soul, basically. We rescued him from this hellish pixie house in the woods, Devyn and Issie, Betty, Nick, and me. He didn’t remember any of it.
“It’s not just that Jay is remembering what’s happened to him.” Callie clears her throat. She meets my gaze. I resist the urge to look away. “We saw you take that guy out the other night after the dance. That wasn’t playacting and it wasn’t because he hit on you. Those were mad fighting skills, Zara. Mad. Fighting. Skills.”
Austin does this weird male-posturing thing where he lifts up one leg and puts it on the coffee table and then he goes, “And that’s just weird, Zara. You’re all Miss Pacifism, Amnesty International, write letters for political prisoners, end all war, and there you are just whaling on somebody?”
None of us say anything. Cierra and Danielle hang back watching. Winking, Paul reaches over and takes a sip of Cassidy’s drink. “You mind?”
She shakes her head.
“Thanks.” Paul puts it back. He’s like that—always in everybody else’s stuff. Nobody thinks anything of it anymore. He crosses his arms over his chest. “If we’re in danger, we should know. If you know something, you should tell us. It’s your responsibility to tell us.”
And it is. It is our responsibility. Would I want to be in the dark while pixies were running around? Is it fair to not tell them? Honestly, though, I’m not sure of the implications of telling. I’m not sure if it will make them safer or make them panic, and we don’t even know for sure everything that’s going on.