“Seriously? You were acting so brave.” Issie hugs her arms around her chest, hopping to stay warm in the cold. The wind blows again. The Dumpsters rattle. The snow swirls.
My stomach falls into some faraway place. “I’m going to have to reach in there and fold the blanket back.”
Issie stops hopping. “Uh-huh.”
I reach out and tug the edge of the blanket, folding it back just enough to show his strained white face. Little lines of blue seem to trace right under the surface of his skin, making him look less human than usual. He used to be so handsome with his thick black hair, his features angular and masculine, the eyes that focused so intensely on everything, but now . . . Now his face is as pale as winter feet. Now his eyes hunch into his face. Now blue lines tattoo their meaning underneath the surface of him, declaring his foreignness. He looks like he’s about to die, and that is basically my fault.
His chapped lips twist up into a half smile. I almost want to reach out and touch him, soothe him somehow, but I don’t. I can’t. I know what he is.
“Princess,” he whispers.
I nod. “Dad.”
Pixie Tip
If you have to fight pixies, remember to use weapons with some sort of iron. As in the metal. Not the thing you use to dewrinkle clothes.
A lot of people suffer from vitricophobia, which is a fear of your stepfather, but neither Devyn (whose parents are psychiatrists and shape shifters) nor I can find the name for fear of your biological father. And I would say in my case this fear is not irrational, since my biological father is a pixie. It is rational to be afraid of pixies.
“Dadophobia,” I say.
My father’s eyes flash.
“What?” Issie whispers. She’s sort of half hiding behind me.
“Dadophobia. It’s a word I just created.”
“Zara, sweetie, I don’t think this is the time to—”
He cuts her off. “You don’t have to be afraid of me, Zara.”
I don’t respond.
“I’m not your enemy.”
Issie’s not taking that. “Dude, you tried to kidnap her to bait her mom into coming to you. Then you tried to turn her mom into a pixie. Come on. I mean, no offense, but you are not Daddy of the Year stuff here.” Issie steps a little forward. “Plus, you didn’t even show up on the scene for what? Sixteen years? That’s lame. Seriously. That is very deadbeat dad stuff right there.”
His hand shoots out from beneath the blanket and he grabs her wrist. “That wasn’t my fault.”
She squeaks in pain.
I bang forward, try to pry his fingers loose. That’s when I notice the iron wire hanging loosely off his wrist. I growl. “You let go of her or I swear—”
“Fine.” His voice is calm. “I’m letting go.”
Each of his fingers leaves her wrist, one by one. Issie snatches it back to her chest and starts rubbing at it. “He’s really strong.”
A truck backfires and Issie and I jump. He doesn’t move his hands or legs, but he winces like he’s in pain.
“Does the iron in the car bother you?” I ask, not bothering to hide the hope in my voice.
He ignores the question. There are scorch marks on his fingertips. But he used those same fingers to grab Issie’s lower arm. He’s tough. He may be weak, but he’s tough.
“It wasn’t my fault that I wasn’t there . . . when you were a child . . . ,” he says, almost wheezing. “Your mother left with you. She hid you away.”
I point at him. “Because you’re an insane pixie king who drains guys of blood and tortures them.”
“Only when I’m without a queen,” he protests. “Only after years without a queen. And only because my people were restless. You know that. That was the only way to maintain order. And now . . . now . . . it’s chaos. You have no idea how horrible things have become.”
Somehow I know he’s thinking about the big house where we trapped them all a few months ago. I think about how they’d strapped Jay Dahlberg to a bed. Fear made him crazy. There’d been bite marks in all his limbs where they took his blood. The pixies stood around him, around me, like we were on an altar.
“I know you think I’m a monster, Zara. I know your mother thinks so too, but if I was I never would have let her go the first time. I never would have let you live your lives.” He swallows. “But the need became too great. I was losing control. And now . . .”
“And now?”
“Not all pixies are like me. Not all kings are like me.”
“What do you mean?” Hope surges in my heart. Maybe that pixie was right.
“I mean that most have no mercy, no thoughts about human death or torture, no remorse. It isn’t a last resort for them. It’s a daily occurrence.”
The pixie I pulled off the tree? He said the opposite. I meet my father’s eyes. We have the same shape eyes; they tilt up just a tiny bit at the edges. “What are you saying?”
“They are coming.”
“Coming where?”
“Coming here.”
Issie looks at me with frightened eyes. The wind seems to mold itself into something solid for a moment. Then it lets go, drifts and swirls and batters against us.
“They’re already coming,” I tell him. “Some have already been here. We’ve put them in the house with you.”
He sighs. “None of them have been kings. They’ve all been scouts. You know the difference, Zara. Your skin reacts to those of us who are kings or who have the potential to be.”
“The spider feeling,” Issie gasps.
“Why? Why does my skin do that?”
“It’s because you’re looking for a mate. You respond to power,” he says.
“I have a mate!” I cringe at the word and correct myself. “A boyfriend. We haven’t actually mated.”
He scoffs, “He’s an animal.”
I whirl on him. “He’s a man. He’s a hero kind of man. He is not an animal.”
“Not that there’s anything wrong with animals,” Issie says, getting all huffy. “I don’t get why they’re always on the bottom of the hierarchy. Like you go to jail for less than a year if you kill a dog but you kill a person and you’re in jail forever, and birds . . . Anyone can just kill birds unless they’re on the protected species list.”