It doesn’t matter. We have a world to save, and if I have to go to Hel and back to save it, I damn sure will, no matter what the cost.
INTERVIEW WITH HOLIDAY INN ROOM #321 OCCUPANT
Investigator: So why are you visiting Bedford?
321: Sightseeing.
Investigator: In winter?
321: Yes.
INTERVIEW WITH HOLIDAY INN ROOM #322 OCCUPANT
Investigator: So why are you visiting Bedford?
322: Sightseeing.
Investigator: In winter?
322: Yes.
Having Betty back shifts something in all of us, gives us a sense of purpose, and yes, even a bit of hope. We are all a flurry of happy text messages and phone calls. In a meeting at the hotel’s conference room, I manage to convince our pixies that having people fight with us is a good thing. Astley acts all proud of my leadership/speaking skills. Our pixies join in the training, showing all the humans how hard pixies are to fight in hand-to-hand combat, how weapons are pretty much necessary.
Austin looks over at Becca, who basically resembles a small cheerleader—the kind they toss around in the air. “This is our scary enemy?”
Amelie leaps in front of him. “Do not be an idiot, boy. Size does not matter.”
Austin laughs like she’s made a dirty joke. “What matters then?”
A light flickers in the high ceiling of the YMCA gym. “Fierceness.” Amelie twitches almost imperceptibly—a signal to Becca, who leaps over Amelie’s six-foot-tall frame, landing catlike in between Amelie and Austin. Her hand grabs his neck. His eyes bulge.
“You are all very slow,” she says. “Too slow for even a scary enemy like myself.”
Becca has the best time doing this fighting stuff and she struts around like a vampire slayer or something, yelling out pointers and directions. Keith participates. So do Devyn’s parents but mostly to check on Astley’s health, I think.
Amelie groans as Callie tries to karate chop Sherman, a male pixie, in the knee. “What are you doing? What?”
“If you take out their knees, they fall,” Callie explains.
“But you expose yourself, your neck, your back, and the movement is so slow.” Amelie looks at me with a frantic, exasperated expression. “You must kick at the knee if anything. Go for the eyes. Blind us. Go for the head. Bash our skulls. This is child’s play! Child’s play!”
“We need better weapons,” I say.
“We need a freaking army,” Nick agrees.
“This is pathetic.” “This is our army,” I tell him. I cross my arms over my chest and look at everyone trying so hard.
“It is pathetic,” he says again.
“The rifles will help,” I say.
“Not everyone has a rifle.” He states the obvious a lot, that Nick.
Later that day, Betty joins us for a pow-wow in the living room. We have a lot of new people here in the house—Becca, Amelie, Callie, Paul, Jay Dahlberg—along with the old standbys, and it’s strange and sort of beautiful how Grandma Betty is letting pixies inside the house when not too long ago she refused to let Astley cross the threshold. And I like it—I like that most of us are trusting each other. I like that there are shifters and pixies and humans all in the same space. And it’s during this meeting, with people in chairs and on the couch and even sitting on the floor, that we realize what the issues are.
1. We have to calm Frank’s pixies the hell down so that they stop killing people. We need to round them up and get them out.
2. We have to stop the apocalypse.
SAFETY ANNOUNCEMENT ON FLIGHT 132
Flight Attendant: In the event of a water landing, your seat-bottom cushion may be used as a floatation device.
She demonstrates.
Flight Attendant: After exiting, slip your arms through the straps and hug to your chest as shown on the safety card in the pocket in front of you.
She pauses.
Flight Attendant: Have any of you heard about the strange news in Maine? All those disappearances. I bet you’re glad to be getting out of there.
Awkward laughter.
For the flight to New York we are not seated next to each other. Amelie and Issie are in the middle and back of the plane, the plane-phobic Astley is sort of on the side, while I’m in 1F next to a thin man with shiny shoes and crisp suit pants, a bright pink shirt. He looks like he should discover the next social networking site and make billions. He helps everyone who comes on board.
You need to wait right outside the door to get your ticket claim for your carry-on.
You want to stow that up here.
He is nice and helpful, but I want to be next to Astley, who is five whole rows behind me, because something doesn’t feel right. There’s a heaviness, a watching, a creepy feeling that just seems to keep following me around.
As the stewardess glides down the aisle, the guy next to me watches way too intently, checking her out. I can feel his need for her. It hangs in the air. Pixie transformation byproduct I guess—feeling people’s wants, emotions, but only when they are super-strong, super-intense. His eyes move to me and I shift closer to the window.
“Do you want water or anything?” she asks him.
“No, I’m good.”
We drive by U.S. Air Force jets, dark gray and parked pointing at us, each has canvas green covering their engine parts.
“Excuse me.” Astley stands over the man, then crouches to his level, whispers in his ear. The man unbuckles and vacates the seat, glancing at me.
“What did you say to him?” I ask.
“That you are gassy and that it would soon be quite obvious to him that he should switch seats with me.”
I hit him in the arm, groaning. “Nice.”
“I know.” He buckles up. He’s so pale, so afraid of flying in planes. The last time we were in a plane it was also to Iceland, and I had been the one who embarrassed him. I guess this is payback. Even so, he looks scared and nervous.
I grab his hand in mine and squeeze, trying to be reassuring. “I’m glad you’re here.”
He squeezes back. “So am I.”
And since I know he doesn’t mean “here in this plane,” it has to mean that he’s glad that he’s here with me. I should be uncomfortable about that, but I’m not. I just keep holding on to his hand as the nose of the plane lifts up and takes us forward.
“Does it seem weird to you that we’re going back to Iceland and searching for Hel?” I ask.