Law enforcement authorities are still investigating the strange bus accident that recently killed several Sumner High School students. Meanwhile, Bedford police advise that another boy has been reported missing from that town, bringing the total up to eight. —NEWS CHANNEL 8
“Am I really not allowed to complain about being here?” I ask as we enter Bedford High School about an hour late for the winter ball. In an attempt to make it more ball and less high school, the lights are dimmed in the front foyer and giant white snowflakes and twinkly lights dangle from the ceiling. They are supposed to look festive, but they are dingy from years of use. The white is sort of an off-yellow that looks like old tea-stained teeth more than snow.
Cassidy, my tall, braided, partially elf friend, puts her arm around me. “If we aren’t allowed to complain about your new pixie status, you aren’t allowed to complain about the dance.”
Issie stomps the real snow off of her pink and gold heels and chirps, “Actually, I think you are allowed to complain a couple times, but not—”
“Not excessively?” Devyn suggests, pulling his birdlike body up to its full height. It’s like he’s posturing, showing me that he’s protecting Issie. He keeps looking at me out of the corner of his eye like I might attack any second. But I won’t—I mean, I don’t think I will.
“Exactly. Not excessively.” Issie beams up at him, smiling, and it’s so sweet how she does it and how he smiles back that something inside me breaks a tiny bit. Nick and I used to be like that. Then he died. Sort of. A pixie king killed him. He died in my arms and then a winged woman took him away to some mystical place that only warriors who have died in battle can go. My breath stops, just remembering it—the blood, the way he was just gone.
“Zara?” Cassidy’s arm tightens around my shoulders as we march forward. I guess since she’s a bit psychic and can “see into my soul,” she’s the only one who seems to trust me a hundred percent when I don’t even trust me a hundred percent. “You okay?”
I nod. I am not going to ruin the night for them. But then I smell it … Dove soap, the copper metal tang of blood. “Something’s wrong.”
Issie sidles up to me. “I know you miss Nick, but we’ll find a way to get him—”
I shake my head, listening. “That’s not it. Something’s wrong in the school. I can smell blood … blood and fear.”
Issie drops my arm as Devyn stills and says, “I smell it too.”
Dev and I exchange a look and start running down the hallway. I yell behind to where Issie and Cass are. “Hide, guys. Okay?”
We burst into the dark, decorated cafeteria. White Christmas-style trees with blue lights are splayed along the walls. Hip-hop music pumps through the air. People are moving frantically, but they’re dancing mostly, not running for their lives. Devyn and I stand there, surveying all the gowns and suits, smelling the sweat and way-too-intense cologne.
“Do you see anything?” I ask.
He starts to say no, but then he points to the darkest corner, where fake Christmas trees half hide movement in the soda machine alcove. Two girls in bizarre gowns are yanking at a guy I don’t recognize, pulling on his tie, hustling him out the emergency exit door. He’s bleeding from the nose and the wrist. That’s the blood I’m smelling, and even though it’s pretty obvious he’s been drinking alcohol, I can smell his fear too. It rolls off him almost solid, like a color of air around him—yellow and dark brown.
“Dev—,” I start.
He interrupts me. “I can’t change here. People will see.”
Devyn is a were. He can shift into an eagle.
“Just back me up,” I tell him, which is a total role reversal. I’m usually the one who backs other people up. Still, I say it and mean it as I bump through dancing groups and couples who are so into themselves that they don’t notice anything at all.
Devyn murmurs in my ear, “There are two of them.”
“Devyn … let me go first,” I say again, trying to hurry without being too obvious. The girls are hustling the guy toward a door marked FIRE EXIT. They’re moving pretty fast and I know if they get him out of here he’s a goner, because they aren’t regular girls. They are pixies. They’re going to bite at him and torture him and basically drain his soul until he goes insane or dies.
How do I know this? I know because now I’m a pixie too.
I bang toward them and position myself between them and the door. Just like me, they appear human, hiding their blue skin and their freaky sharp teeth with a glamour. One wears a red dress that looks and smells like it’s been hanging out in a Goodwill since the 1980s. Puffy sleeves with shoulder pads give her football uniform shoulders, and monster ruffles along the bottom hem do not help things. The other one wears a black cutout dress that only supermodels should even look at. She’s got her hair in a French twist.
“Stop,” I say.
Eighties Dress raises an eyebrow. “We are having far too much fun to stop.”
Oh, that’s original.
The second pixie, who looks like a red-haired Barbie, snarls at me while batting her eyelashes, which would be weird enough even if she didn’t have blood on her teeth.
I try to make myself as tough seeming as possible. “I said stop.”
They laugh.
I admit that I am not the most intimidating-looking person—pixie? whatever—but laughing at me is so not cool. This horrible, horrible primal rush of anger surges through me as I take a step forward and the guy in between the pixies staggers backward, hitting the wall. His suit coat rumples up behind his butt as he starts sliding down. Devyn lunges forward to help him, but Evil Red-Haired Barbie shoves Devyn backward into me. I catch him at the waist and leap around him.
“You need to calm down,” I say, pointing my finger at her like some kind of angry teacher-person, “and you need to leave. This is my school, and you are not messing with the people here.”
“You and Mr. Skinny are going to stop us?” Barbie tucks her hair behind her ears, obviously not impressed.
“Eww. Why would you even want to claim this school? It smells like a strip mall,” the other one says.
I don’t answer either of them, just stare the first one down as Drunk Boy flops onto the floor and starts crawling away.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I say, stepping forward, “so this is your last chance.”