I tack on the “please” because I figure it’s best to be polite to Viking gods. My dad taught me to be polite to everyone. Have I forgotten that? My dad …
“Are you sure you are ready?” she asks.
“Yes.” The word just slips out.
She walks over to a mirror, not let going of my hand, and all I can think of is the mirror in the Harry Potter books where you get to see whatever you desire. But when we stand in front of it, the mirror doesn’t show us a vision of me saving the world. It just shows us, standing together.
“You are amazingly tall,” I mutter, and my voice sounds astonished, even to me. “You must be seven feet.”
She smiles but doesn’t say anything. She waves her free hand at the mirror and it opens on a hinge like a door. The air behind it smells of fire, rotten eggs, death. But the light isn’t red like you’d expect. It’s an icy blue like the inside of an iceberg.
“Step forward and look,” she says. “But do not let go of my hand.”
Her fingers tighten around mine and her arm extends to give me enough room to really see. The moment I step away from her, I can feel the tug of it—a gigantic pull, like gravity times a hundred. It’s a pit, an icy blue pit, that belches out a heat like an oven but worse, much worse. The pit or hole or whatever seems to go down forever and ever.
“What is this?”
She hauls me back to her. “The mouth of Hel.”
“Your mouth?”
“The Hel of this place, this land.”
I try to digest that. Issie had said there was a hell mouth in Buffy shows. I should have paid more attention. Why do I never pay attention to pop-culture references? Probably because that one involved Issie going on and on about cute British vampires.
“This is what will swallow up the world,” Hel’s voice breaks into my thoughts, “if you fail.”
“And I succeed by not doing what exactly …?” I try to get her to just come out with it.
“There is a prophecy that not many are aware of. It says that the fall of one who is half of the stars, half of the White, half of the fae, half of the willow, can stop this.”
“And you and Frank and Isla believe this is me?” I say. “But not anymore. I am not a pixie anymore. Not any of me.” The hopelessness of it gets to me. “I can’t stop this. It’s already too late. Isla turned me back—I wish she’d just killed me! Why didn’t she just kill me?”
“That I do not know, but you still have power, Zara of the White. And some might want that power.”
“I am human.” I sputter it out almost like being human is a fate worse than death.
“Do not devalue humans.”
“I’m not! It’s just that the prophecy says ‘half fae.’ I’m not even that anymore. I’m all human now. So, honestly, how can I do this? Astley says I could die if I turn pixie again. I can’t save anyone if I’m dead.” I let go of her hand as the mirror door slams shut. “And you haven’t told me how I fall. Do I fall in the pit? Do I fall down on the ice? Why must prophecies be so freaking obscure? Why can’t they just state things nice and easy, like, ‘Zara White must be in full pixie form and fall down outside her high school at precisely two a.m. on December 23 for the apocalypse to be averted.’ Why can’t it be like that?”
She sort of chuckles. There is nothing worse than gods chuckling.
“It’s not funny!”
“Are you speaking back to me?” she asks, laughing even harder.
I cross my arms over my chest. “I guess.”
“Only gods do that.”
I apologize.
“I found your ranting amusing,” she says, composing her face into something slightly more serious. It looks like it takes her some effort, because her eyes are still twinkling.
I make a harrumphing noise, which I figure is a nice cross between politeness and showing my disapproval. “I just wish I knew exactly what to do.”
She places both her hands on my shoulders and I tilt my head up so that I can meet her eyes. Her voice is serious again as she says, “Let me give you a warning.”
I wait.
“Zara, others may still try to trap you, even turn you back into a pixie, to make your power their own,” she says.
I feel like that little glittering deer figurine, unable to move by myself, trapped by everybody else’s wishes and needs, trapped by destiny.
“You mean Frank?” I spit out his name, then realize she might not recognize him by that one. “Belial?”
Nodding, she drops her hands from my shoulders, moves back to the wall of mirrors, and rests her forehead against one. “When you are turned, your king’s needs become your own. His darkness or his light begin to infect your soul. With the star king, it was light. His goodness and your goodness combined to make you and all your pixies stronger. Even though you are no longer a pixie, you still have that goodness and you are still the key to stopping the apocalypse. However, that also means you may still be the key to starting it.”
“So even though I’m not a pixie, they need me to start it all.”
“No matter what your enemies might think, starting the apocalypse has nothing to do with being pixie. It has everything to do with being human. However”—she pauses—“the pixies who want to end all things human believe that if they kill you immediately after the apocalypse begins, there will be no entity capable of stopping it.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Yes,” she echoes me. “Oh.”
FROM AGENT WILLIS’S PERSONAL LOG
I think I’m going to have to request more manpower in this case. I honestly feel like I’m in a sci-fi episode playing the clueless federal agent, but I have never seen such a lack of evidence or pieces that just do not go together. Sometimes I think we are dealing with one killer. Sometimes I think we are dealing with dozens. Possibly a Satanic cult? The town is on the edge of all-out panic. People are leaving on extended vacations, and those who have stayed behind have a look of intense anxiety. I am failing these people. I know it.
Hel gives me a second to compose myself, which is kind of her. She moves out of the room and issues orders in a language I don’t understand. The air trembles with the first sounds of a flute. It trills into a beautiful song that lilts with the promise of spring and kittens and flowers poking from the earth. There is music in Hel. Who knew?