“It’s fine,” I say. “I’ll be fine. You are going to be fine. No one is going to hurt you again, okay? Not on my watch. Now, let’s just get you out of here.”
I open the door and listen. Nothing.
“Wait,” I whisper. “Did you see any other guys here?”
He works to move his lips. “No.”
“A boy? The Beardsley boy?”
“They said he was dead.”
Anger knots inside of me, matching the ache of my broken arm. “I am getting you out of here.”
We start down the hall. I think of all the stairs. I think of all the pixies. I do not care.
Noctiphobia
fear of the night
It isn’t easy, but we make it down the hall, down one flight of stairs.
“Where are the pixies?” Jay whispers. “They’ll suck on us. They’ll come.”
“I don’t know. In the back room, I think. It’s okay.”
But then we hear voices, reaching up the final flight of stairs. The voices come from the front hall. My heart pains in my chest. This is not part of my plan. She shouldn’t be here yet. She’s supposed to be here later when everything is over.
“Yes, you got what you want, okay? I’m here.” A woman’s lilting voice says, shaking, trying to be tough, but not quite making it. Why couldn’t she have just told me all this before? Why did she have to lie? Because she wanted to keep me safe, I guess.
“My mom,” I whisper to Jay.
“Your mom is here? Why is your mom here?” Jay totters against the banister.
“To save me.” I pull him closer, trying to keep him upright.
He struggles to understand. “But you’re saving me.”
“I know, it’s okay. Come on.”
We make it halfway down the stairs and I can finally see what’s going on. My mom is standing in the middle of the front hall, right on a large white square of granite. Her arms are crossed in front of her chest. The king stands on the black square next to her. The pixies are lined up on the walls again, surrounding them.
“It looks like a giant chess board,” Jay whispers.
I haul him down another flight of stairs.
“You have no idea how much I’ve missed you,” the king says.
My mother smirks. She does not say anything.
“You’ve made me wait a long time.”
She rolls her eyes. I thought she only rolled her eyes at me. Jay and I make it down another step. Nobody seems to notice.
Finally she says, “Your pixies attacked our daughter.”
“They were renegades. They’ve been dispatched.”
“Yes. By Betty.”
He does this giant melodramatic sigh. “I have dispatched the others.”
“The others?”
“It was quite the conspiracy. You know I lose my power when I don’t have a queen with me. So upstarts who are power hungry take advantage.”
I’m not going to let him get away with this so I yell from the stairs, “You killed Brian Beardsley. Look at Jay. He’s almost dead.”
Everyone turns to look at us, including my mom. Her arms drop.
The pixie king throws his arms out to the sides. “You know I can’t help it.”
“You could just stop!” I yank Jay down another stair, closer to my mother, closer. She looks at me with panicked eyes. I’d like to hug her, even though I’m so mad at her. I’d like her to know that I forgive her, that I understand what she is trying to do. I focus on him, the king.
“It’s in our nature,” he says.
“Then change your nature. You don’t have to torture. You don’t have to kill.”
“Then I would die. Then another pixie, perhaps one more cruel, one less enamored of human peculiarities will take my place.”
“So?”
Both my parents look at me. Jay wobbles. I balance him.
“People die all the time for the greater good. It’s called being a martyr. Plus, you were stalking me, calling me, trying to get me lost in the woods. That is a definite no-no in the Good Father Handbook,” I explain, taking one more step and finally I’m on the flat floor. The pixies hiss like wild animals. They inch closer to me, sniffing the air, smelling Jay’s blood probably, getting hungry, wanting to suck. The king motions for them to move back. They do, but you can tell they don’t want to.
“I wanted you to come to me of your own free will,” he says to me. “I wanted you to want to know your father.”
“Get this straight, getting someone lost and confused is not having them ‘come to you of their own free will.’ Plus, you pretended to be my stepdad, which is just pure evil.”
My mom leaves her white square, coming to put her arm around me. It feels good. “He did what?”
“I was getting desperate,” he explains.
“That’s lame. That’s a lame excuse,” I say, as Jay crumples to the floor. I try to catch him, but I’m too small even though he is light. No pixies even try to break his fall. “And now it’s time for us to go. I don’t suppose you guys have a wheelchair or anything I could put Jay in.”
My mother stiffens next to me. “Zara . . .”
I don’t want to look at her face, but I do. I almost double over, the hole inside of me is so big, so huge. “Mom?”
“What else can I do, Zara?”
“And you’ll just stay here? With him? The torturer?”
She nods, one slow movement of her head. She keeps her hands on my shoulders.
I stomp my foot like a baby. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I know you don’t always believe it, but you are the most important thing in the world to me, and I must keep you safe.” Her eyes sweep over my cast, take in Jay on the floor, and then she kisses my cheek before turning away from me, turning to him. “You’ll let them go. You promise. You’ll let them go and never bother them again if I stay here right now?”
He nods. “I promise.”
“Mom!”
She pulls me to her one last time. “I’m so sorry, Zara. I thought this wasn’t inevitable, but it is. What’s my freedom compared to—”
“He’ll make you a pixie,” I insist. “One of them.”
She doesn’t answer.