“Oh. Yeah.” I swallow hard. “I have no idea what a Valkyrie is.”
He raises one eyebrow and sniffs. “You are pixie, are you not?”
“No . . .,” I start to say, pressing my hand against his wound. He moans, but still manages to give me a look. “Okay. I am half pixie. Does that hurt?”
“Some.” He cringes more like it’s a lot. “You are half pixie. It is true—”
He loses his sentence to a moan and I suddenly feel really badly for him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I’m snapping. I don’t want to be mean. I’m not a mean person. But we need to get you out of here. You’re hurt. I need to get you fixed up. I need to bring you to the hospital or something.”
He groans. “Not the hospital. My room.”
“You should go to a hospital,” I insist.
“They cannot treat me.” He pulls himself into a standing position. Snow covers his dark jeans. “I need you for balance. Is that all right?”
“It’s okay,” I say as he drapes his arm over my shoulder. I get my arm around his waist. He is much lighter than Nick, which is a very good thing. We start a sort of quasi shuffle through the woods. He coughs like a seal and stumbles a bit. My heart kind of breaks for him. “Don’t worry. My car’s not too far.”
He nods and murmurs something. Beads of sweat drip down his forehead. The wind picks up a little bit. The snow keeps trundling down, covering us, sticking in our hair, erasing our footprints. It’s a long haul, but I get him to the parking lot, which, thankfully, is nearly empty. He seems to be regaining a bit of strength.
“I have to take you to a hospital,” I insist.
“It will kill me.”
I lurch backward. “I know you aren’t human. Are you a normal one, though, or a king?”
He shakes his head. “No more questions, please.”
“Are you a king?” I ask again.
“I said—”
“I know what you said, but that doesn’t mean I have to do what you say.” I swallow hard. “We have a place to put pixies.”
His eyes whip up and meet mine. “The rumor is true?”
“What rumor?”
“Someone has been trapping us.”
I don’t answer. Cold fills my nose, crystallizing it. I hit the key fob and unlock my Subaru. It beeps.
“That is barbaric,” he snarls.
I don’t completely disagree. We hobble closer to my car, Yoko, which is parked next to a big black truck, the standard motor vehicle of Bedford High School’s male population. I try to explain. “They were killing people. They were torturing guys.”
“Because their king was weak.” He shakes his head and coughs. “If I were not injured I would force you to bring me to them now.”
I state the obvious. “Well, you are injured.”
His eyebrows lower and his pupils focus on me for a second. Then he scans my face. “Your skin is tinting blue.”
“It’s cold,” I sputter.
He smirks and I resist the urge to scream. I have no idea what to do with him now. I mean, he’s hurt, but he’s a pixie. He’s a hurt pixie, possibly a king. This is so not good. This is beyond bad, really. I blurt out, “I’m going to take you there to the house.”
“You must not.” His voices goes panicky and high. His face contorts in pain and he steadies himself. His hand clutches my wrist. “I cannot go there in this state.”
I twist my wrist away and open the passenger side door of my car. “I can’t let you kill people.”
He grabs my arm, higher this time. “I do not kill people. Just enemies. I am under control. I swear it. Not all pixies—not all of us—are like the ones here. You cannot judge all of us by your experience with a few. It is unfair.”
That hits home. Something inside me weirds up again. The world dizzies out. I must be getting the flu. I force myself to focus. “Who bit you?”
“What?” His eyes scan me, searching.
“Who. Bit. You?”
His mouth hardens. “A wolf.”
I was right but the rightness of my assumption does not make me feel any less sick. The pixie guy watches my face looking for a reaction. I try really hard to make my face calm. “A wolf, huh?”
“You know him.” It is a statement, not a question. His grip on my arm tightens and it’s pretty strong even though he’s wounded.
“Yeah, right. I know a wolf. We hang and get pizza and I brush out his fur. Of course I don’t know a wolf,” I snark. “Get in the car.”
He cringes when he gets in the passenger seat. I’m not sure if it’s because it hurts or because the car is made out of steel and iron. Pixies are no good with steel and iron. For a second I ponder the point of the seat belt. It would go right over his wound. I bypass the idea and start to shut the door. “Watch your feet.”
He does.
After I shut his door, I head around to the other side of Yoko and check my watch. I should be able to get him to the pixie house and be back before Issie gets done with French, but something niggles at me. I don’t know if he deserves to be there. I don’t know if he’s ever done anything wrong. What’s his crime, really? All I know is that he was born a pixie. Am I condemning an entire race just because of what happened here? Are they really not all super creepy and insane bad guys?
I open my door.
Nick would not have any doubts, obviously. There wouldn’t be a wound across this guy’s stomach if he had any doubts. Nick’s a little more black-and-white when he looks at stuff like good and evil. Me? I’m into the gray areas. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just different.
I sit down and buckle myself in. I glance over at the pixie guy. He’s leaning back in the seat. His mouth’s a little open. His eyes are closed. He must be in so much pain.
“I’m sorry you’re hurt,” I start to say. I must be getting dehydrated, because I’m dizzy. I put the key in the ignition to start Yoko up, turning and looking over my right shoulder so I can back out of the spot. “I mean, it’s not cool that you’re hurt, especially if you really are—”
Something flashes in the corner of my eye and a hand locks on my shoulder. The world suddenly goes dark.
Pixie Tip
Despite folklore, pixies do not prefer to be naked. Fortunately they wear clothes. This prevents a lot of indecent exposure charges and frostbite.