I shake my head and laugh the kind of laugh that means you think someone is being silly. “I wish, Daddy. I wish I was. I wish you were still with us. I’m so glad to see you, but we miss you. We miss you so much.”
“I miss you and your mom and Betty, too, honey. So much.”
“Daddy? Why the books? Why did you hide pixie notes in books? Why not just write them straight out in a notebook or something?”
He smiles. “I thought people might find them and think I was crazy. If I wrote them in margins of books, people might think I was writing my own. I was young, Zara.”
“I wish you’d just told me. You and mom.”
“We wanted you to be safe. We wanted you to grow up free of fear.”
People around us murmur. Have they all been listening? I forgot they were here.
“Zara, we don’t have much time.”
“What do you mean?” Throughout all of this, I’ve pretty much refused to blink because I don’t want to miss one second of seeing him. Trying to memorize his face all over again, I watch his lips move as he talks.
“When we are done with what we are meant to do here, we move on to another place.”
The room goes silent. There are no murmurs.
I speak into that silence. “What other place?”
“Nobody knows.”
I whirl around to look at Hel because she must certainly know.
“What place?” I demand.
My dad’s finger touches the point of my chin and gently turns me back to face him. “Not even she knows. But it’s good. We know it’s good and I can feel it happening. It’s happening now, honey.”
“How can she not know? How can you know it’s good? Daddy, explain this to me.”
Even as I speak, he seems to change, to glow. He unclicks the big silver diver’s watch from his wrist. It has a blue face and lots of dials. I used to love it when I was little. We buried him in it.
“Take this,” he says, and slips it over my hand, onto my wrist. It’s far too big for me and hangs off my wrist bones. “Know that I love you, that I always will love you no matter what choices you make, what paths you have chosen, and what paths you choose in the future. I will always, always love you, baby girl.”
I can feel my face squish into itself, the way it does when I try not to cry but the tears just want so badly to come. My dad smiles a sad, sweet, tender smile.
“You can’t take something from Hel without giving something up in return,” he says. “I’m so sorry, Zara. It has to be something that matters to you.”
“But I just have my clothes and they are just clothes …” Then I realize I’m wearing Nick’s anklet still. It’s the only thing on me that matters even the tiniest bit. It’s the one last thing I have from when we were happy together, and even though it’s dorky I don’t want to be without it, but still I squat and reach into my boot to unclasp it. A dolphin and a star dangle from it. The color changed again. Every time I change species, it changes. I have no idea why. In that short amount of time that I’ve been fiddling with it, my father has changed too. He’s turned completely gold. He’s shimmering with it, shimmering and beautiful. I hand him the thin chain. “Here.”
He takes it and tucks it into his shirt. “Thank you. Tell your mother I love her, and know, Zara—please, please know—how I love you.”
“I love you too,” I whisper.
He taps the watch face on my wrist with his big, solid finger. “I am always with you. Always.”
He steps back.
“Daddy!”
And then he smiles, one final, slow smile that reaches his eyes. He tilts his head and mouths the words “I love you” just before the light coming out of him becomes too intense to witness. I close my eyes for the briefest of seconds and feel it—the rush of him leaving, the good soul of him hanging in the air like the sweet smell of magnolias in Charleston.
“He’s gone.” I gasp as people around me start to applaud.
As I struggle to take it all in, Hel’s arm wraps around my shoulder. “This is a halfway place, a step toward somewhere else.”
“What somewhere else?”
“Your father spoke the truth. I do not know.” She squeezes a little and then drops her arm. “However, I am positive that it is somewhere good for him. Do you not feel it?”
The gold of the air still shimmers around me. “I feel it.”
“It is not always so,” her voice warns and then lightens again. “Your companions await. You must go.”
My fingers reach out to touch the watch that dangles on my left wrist. It is there, solid, functional, and completely my dad. Still, it feels right and I am so glad it is there.
“You let me see him. You said it was an either-or situation. Either I see him or you tell me how to stop the end, but I got both.”
She doesn’t answer my question, but instead leads me back toward the marble stairs. “Come with me.”
I follow, wiping at the tears streaming down my face. People stare at us as we walk up, make way for us as they come down the stairs. The balcony is empty when we get there. She leads me to an overlook. The courtyard below us has filled with people—all sorts of people of different races and genders and ages—and there are animals that I assume are weres, and there are tiny Tinker Bell–type people, flitting about the water fountains and resting on full-sized people’s shoulders. There are a couple people who might actually be giants, and there are pixies, blue in skin. Then, as I’m staring the room doubles and then triples in size and instead of looking down at hundreds of people, I’m looking down at thousands.
“What?” I start to say, but Hel speaks over me.
“Earn your army.”
“What?” I say again. “What do you mean?”
“They have nothing to lose, Zara. Make them fight for you when the time comes.”
“But I’m not even a pixie anymore.”
I swear she rolls her eyes the same way Betty does when she’s completely exasperated with me.
“It does not matter,” she says, looking down at the thousands below us. “It is your character that makes the difference, not your species. Now begin.”
Begin? How do I begin? They stare up at me, thousands of eyes and heads, thousands of souls, waiting to listen to me, Zara White, former pixie queen, current human being. I remember failing so miserably when I had to first talk to our pixies. I’d been so immature. And now? Now the fate of our world might depend on this speech. I breathe in as deeply as I can and grab the railing. The marble is cold beneath my fingers. I want to make my dad proud of me. Actually, I want to make me proud of me.