Nick rolls his wolf eyes, which is pretty impressive, albeit annoying.
“Nice,” I say. “Very supportive of you. Thanks.”
He barks a short retort.
“You are so lucky I don’t understand wolf,” I tell him.
It takes us about twenty minutes to get back to the parking lot between Bedford High School and the softball field. Nick stays in wolf form the entire way so I can’t bounce ideas off of him about whether or not we were hallucinating or if we really just saw giants. I can’t ask him why I rarely see him in human form since he came back despite the fact that we’re living in the same house. Seeing him at school hardly counts since he avoids me and doesn’t even come to lunch. In this form, I can’t ask him one freaking thing, which is probably why he’s like this—all wolf and quiet.
When we get to my car he just turns around. He doesn’t even give a nice bark or anything like a dog in a Disney movie would. Then again, he’s not a dog and this is not Disney. Disney pixies are decidedly different. Nick just takes off into the woods without looking back.
“Yeah,” I mutter, “nice seeing you too. You want to go get some pizza, ’cause I’m sick of spaghetti? Maybe thank me for bringing you back to the world of the living? Yeah … awesome.”
I open the door to the truck, sighing, even though sighing is cliché. I sigh because there is nothing else to do. I sigh because sighing about Nick is all I have left in me right now. Just that. A sigh.
I start the engine right away because if some evil pixie is going to sneak attack me it’s best to be able to drive away super-fast. But when I let my brain relax for a second it’s not evil pixies I think about or even Nick. It’s what just happened in the woods—the fight.
Images of the ax wound in the ice giant’s neck and the fire giant erupting into flames flash into my brain, searing themselves there, and I shudder as I grab my phone and text our friend Devyn because Devyn is brainy and research oriented and occasionally a bird. It’s too late to call.
Giants? One icy. One fire. Signs of Ragnarok?
In Norse mythology, Ragnarok is this ancient prophesized end of the gods and of humans, which a year ago I would have rolled my eyes at but now … now … Well, I’ve met Odin and Thor and been to Valhalla. It’s hard to really roll my eyes at anything.
Air starts blasting in through the heaters. I hold my breath. Something is watching me again. I can feel it, a nasty darkness that shouldn’t be there. The tiny hairs on my arms stand up and brush against the fabric of my shirt. I don’t have to move my sleeve to know that I have goose bumps.
“Astley?” My voice whispers into the truck. It’s pretty pathetic that when I get creeped out I automatically hope that Astley’s close by, or Amelie, his kick-butt second in command.
“Betty?” Maybe my grandmother is nearby, stalking, protecting? Maybe she’s found me while I’ve been looking for her.
She doesn’t answer. Nothing answers, which is a good thing. Bad pixies aren’t known for being silent.
Resisting the urge to just give in to nerves and play damsel in distress, I don’t call Astley for backup, don’t call Issie for moral support. I focus instead on my own power. I’m a pixie queen. I’m powerful now. I have to remember that.
I haul in a big breath and put the truck in reverse. That’s when the smell comes again, hard and true, a rotting smell like dead mice in a hot attic—only magnified about twenty times. Gagging, I put my gloved hand over my mouth and pull out of the parking space, then put it in forward so I can get out of the lot. Then I think better of it and brake. If there’s something dead in my grandmother’s truck, I’d like to get the darn thing out before we get home.
“Why me?” I mutter. Sure I’m a warrior and all that, but I’m not so good at actually looking for dead things, especially in my truck. Just as I’m unbuckling the seat belt and twisting around to check behind the seats, my phone beeps. I shriek because I’m so on edge. My in-box icon flashes that there is one new text from Devyn.
I keep holding my breath while I read it.
It’s just two words: Why? and Yes.
I don’t answer right then. I just can’t. Closing my eyes, I lean my head back against the headrest and pray. The smell is gone again, the feeling vanished with it. My flesh has lost its goose bumps, but the worry about us and the future makes my skin terribly cold. I reach over, turn the heat up past eighty, and head home.
When I get there I finally text back, We need to talk about Loki. I send it to all of our crew.
The moment I step out of the truck, I notice the wolf tracks that head up the porch steps. Nick is already back. As I slam the car door shut, he steps out of the house, a bag slung over his shoulder, looking human—sad and human.
“What are you doing?” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.
He steps closer, one step, another. It’s like it’s all happening in slow motion. The snow swirls around us, tiny specks of fluff stick to his hair, his cheeks. His voice is hoarse and tired. “Zara …”
All he says is my name, but it rips me apart anyway because he fills my name with pain and regret.
I step toward him, raise my hands, cover his lips. An ache of sorrow threatens to take over me, rising up from my stomach. “Don’t say anything.”
He can’t. He can’t say anything because I can’t hear anything bad, anything …
“You feel so different,” he murmurs. His lips move beneath my fingers, forming syllables of hurt. “You don’t feel like Zara anymore.”
My fingers drop from his lips. My fingers did nothing to stop him from saying it. My changing did nothing to stop me from losing him. I lift my hand again to touch his face, to say goodbye, but a muscle in his cheek twitches and instead my hand just hangs in the air, not sure where to go.
“You said you would love me, that you would always love me, no matter what,” I say, reminding him of right before he died. “Do you remember that?”
His lower lip sucks in toward his teeth for a second. His voice is broken and weak. “I remember, Zara, but—”
My heart collapses in on itself. “But what?”
“You aren’t you anymore. The Zara I loved—the human Zara—is gone.”
I whirl away because honestly I can’t stand to look at him, can’t stand to have him look at me, look at my face crumpling or my eyes getting mad—so mad. My hands shake as I cover my face and give in, just for a second, I give in to the sorrow; let it take me down into some place that’s dark and desperate. I’m so familiar with that place from when Nick died, when my dad died, when Mrs. Nix died, when I lost my humanity. I know it so well and I know that if you stay there too long, it is so very hard to get free. The sorrow never wants to let you go.