I ignore Is, who always rambles when she’s nervous, and keep trying to move forward. I ask him, “Why are they coming?”
“Because they know I am missing. They know I must be weak. Everyone wants more people to rule, more territory.”
I put my hands into my pockets. “We’ll just stop them. That’s all.”
He shakes his head. “One of them will find the house. They’ll hire humans to take down the bars you’ve made. They’ll release us, and my people . . . my people are hungry. They’ll go with him and it’ll be chaos. Without a queen, I can’t control them. You know that, Zara. That’s why all this happened.”
I hear what he’s saying, but this isn’t why I brought him out here. “What? What does this have to do with Nick? I mean, with Nick more than anyone else?”
“Your were.” He snarls on the word a little. “Your beau—”
“Beau?” Issie interrupts.
“Boyfriend. It’s an old-fashioned word for boyfriend,” I explain impatiently.
My father’s eyes are angry. “Your beau is also the self-proclaimed protector of the town and of you.”
“Whatever.” The whole “Nick protecting me” thing drives me insane. I can protect myself.
His lips move for a second like he’s trying to figure out the words ahead of time and then he says, “When the other pixie or pixies come, their king . . . he’s not going to be worried about Nick or his welfare. And Nick is the biggest stumbling block to you, so he will be directly in the line of fire, if you will. The pixie king will not care about one were’s death. He’s just going to be going after the prizes.”
“’Es? Did you say prizes, as in plural?” Issie asks. She asks it slowly as if it takes forty-two lifetimes to get the question out of her mouth and into the frozen air.
“Yes. Plural. Prizes.” He shifts beneath the blanket. His eyes are hollow, pained.
“And those are?” I ask.
“My pixies, my territory, and you.”
The wind gusts again, pushing Issie and me toward him. I brace my hands on the car. My hair flies all crazy in my face. Issie’s does too. When we can stand up straight again, we do. I try to tuck my hair into my coat collar.
“You’re angry,” my father says.
“Really? How can you tell?” I’m being sarcastic. I don’t care.
“The flames coming out of your eyes are probably the tipoff,” Issie says.
I fluster. “I just don’t like people thinking of me as a prize. That’s sexist.”
“Sexist and disgusting,” Issie adds. “And totally representative of the male dogma that has persisted in keeping us sisters all subjugated.”
“Exactly.”
His eyes drape down. “It’s my fault, Zara. Your blood is half mine.”
“I am human.” My stomach knots. The taste of Tic Tac mintiness in my mouth somehow makes me want to throw up.
“Not all pixies torture. Only the bad ones, the neglected, who don’t have a leader, or those who have a leader who is cruel or weak, or without a queen. Some of us are on the side of good. Some on the side of evil. Some, like me, are in between due to circumstances and fate.” My father doesn’t blink. “Zara’s human. But she smells different than humans. The weres sense it. The pixies sense it. And if she turned—”
“I will never turn!” I shout.
“—she would be powerful, a powerful queen.”
I sort of stare at this pixie man who is my biological father. He’s all hunkered down on the gray carpeting in the back of my car. He looks almost human and almost innocent. He’s not.
An old McDonald’s quarter-pounder-with-cheese wrapper whips into my ankle and sticks there. I reach down and grab it, even though it’s vile and gross. I can’t just let it blow around forever, littering the world.
“Can I sit up?” my father asks.
“No,” Issie says at the same time as I say, “Yes.”
She stares at me. The wind twists her hair around her face. She doesn’t even notice.
I try to explain. “Issie . . . he asked. He could have sat up a million years ago. Think of how he grabbed your wrist.”
“That is what I’m thinking about.” Her mouth becomes a tight line and then she loosens it to add, “I think it’s a ploy.”
“It is not a ploy,” he says. His voice is infinitely weary. “My ploys are much more interesting.”
“You can sit up,” I say. He scoots backward and slowly brings his body up. His breath comes out in a cold puff, mingling with the air and then dissipating. I reach in and wrap the blanket around his legs. “Just in case.”
He half smiles. A dimple appears at the left side of his mouth. “For a moment I thought you were being maternal.”
“Daughterly would be more appropriate,” I say.
We stare each other down. His eyes are mesmerizing, really. They pull at you. It is creepy.
“You survived before because I let you,” he says.
My head snaps up so hard something cracks in my neck. “What?”
He is calm, propped up against the seat. “I let you survive. I let your boyfriend survive. I was out of my mind with need, out of my mind wanting your mother, and still I let you, my daughter, survive. I saw that you were trapping us there and I let her escape through the wires while I pretended to be distracted by you. That has to give you some assurance that I am not against you.”
“Then how come you’re not out of your mind now?” Issie asks, hands on her hips. “Huh? How come you aren’t lunging at me, trying to pixie kiss me or something?”
“You are not meant to be my queen,” he says matter-of-factly.
“Geesh. Nice.” Issie blows air out of her mouth.
“Don’t be insulted,” I say. “It’s a good thing.”
My father stares into her eyes. “And you are not a young man. You are not someone I can bleed.”
Creepy tension charges the air. I shudder. Something in my coat starts vibrating and then I hear it: Nick and my song.
“Crap.”
Issie gives me big eyes. “Is that him?”
I pull the phone out of my pocket. “Just a text.”
My father ignores us and continues. “I know you think that I am a monster, Zara. And maybe I am. However, I know that if my needs are not taken care of, then the others, my people, they are worse, much worse.”