“Please, Bentley, tell me where…,” I beg.
He pauses, and it’s almost as if there’s another chain yanking him toward me. His face clenches up. It’s like he is being torn between Isla’s wishes and mine.
“Are you okay?” I ask. I cross into the town house again and reach up to him. My fingers graze the fabric sleeve of his suit jacket just as he jerks backward again, backward and away from me.
“Go to Great Hill. There is a meadow, looking toward the Ravine. It will be glamoured, but it is there…” He stumbles back.
I want to stop him, to hold him with me and away from her, but he looks as if having us both need him simultaneously could tear him apart.
He whirls away and topples through the doorway to the room where Isla waits.
“Well, that took you far too long. Where is my cocoa?” she demands.
It isn’t until I am outside in the rain that I realize:
1. Bentley and Isla must be at least a hundred years old.
2. I have no idea what a ghoul is.
3. I have no idea why Astley flipped out like that and left me alone with his mother.
4. I actually have an idea, a clue-a real lead-on how to get to Nick.
I yank out my phone and send a text message to Betty, Devyn, Issie, and Cassidy: Have lead. Met ghoul. Astley missing.
I touch the book. This was totally worth the drama. I resist the urge to kiss it, because basically who knows where it’s been. I sniff at it while a couple staggers by, arms wrapped around each other’s waists, voices high and loud and slurring with booze. The woman keeps singing Adam Sandler’s “Chanukah Song” and laughing hysterically. Once they are past, I bring the book out again. It smells like musty basement and leather but also hope. This is how I will get Nick.
I tuck it carefully into the inside pocket of my jacket and smile up into the rain. I forget to put up the umbrella. I forget about wars and torture and pixies. For a moment I forget about everything except my Nick.
And this moment feels so incredibly good.
U.S. federal agents
U.S. federal agents confirm that they have taken over the investigation into the missing Bedford juveniles.
– NEWS CHANNEL 8
I know that I should be thinking about Astley. I know that I should be worrying about how he allegedly killed some other queen, and how he just left me alone with his psycho mother, and how he seems to be in a pretty emotionally fragile state, to say the least. Okay, yeah, that’s an understatement.
I know all this and yet as I step off the curb and lift up my arm to hail one of those cute yellow cabs that are all over this city, it isn’t Astley that I am thinking about. It’s Nick. I am really one step closer to finding him, thanks to Astley.
A cab pulls up. The driver doesn’t even turn. “Where are you going, miss?”
His accent is so lovely. It isn’t Southern like mine. It isn’t old-school Maine, where all the r ’s turn into yah ’s. It’s from an Arabic-speaking country maybe. Closing my eyes for a second, I let homesickness take over. I miss Charleston and how simple life was there. It was warm. I didn’t know about pixies or weres. My stepdad was alive. There was actual ethnic diversity there. However, there was no Nick, no big good-smelling man with the most beautiful lips and hands in the entire universe.
“Miss?”
The taxi driver’s voice nudges me back into real time.
“Central Park. As close to Great Hill as you can get me,” I say.
My phone vibrates. I pull it out of my pocket as the cab driver zips down the street, turning fast and hard around a corner. I should probably put my seat belt on, but it’s got something slimy on it. I slide across the seat, check the other one, and click it on. Then I read my text message.
Betty has responded: I can’t believe you just left. Get back here soon and no hero crap. Stay safe.
Yep.
A heavy sigh escapes me before I can stop it. It’s so loud that even the taxicab driver notices it.
“You okay back there, miss?” he asks.
“Yep.”
I start to check out the book. It’s heavy for something so small. The old-fashioned font lies heavy against thick paper that feels more like parchment than book paper. All the ink is dark, except for the first page, where it seems to be made out of gold. The light in the cab is not the greatest. I open up my cell phone so the light from the screen illuminates the book’s title page a little bit better.
The letters aren’t just gold; they glitter like pixie dust. The words read: Pixies: The History and Magic Thereof. It looks like calligraphy, only not so full of loops.
I flip to chapter twelve. My phone vibrates again. I ignore it.
Chapter 12
Valhalla
All the air inside me whooshes out as I stare at the word: Valhalla . There’s all this ornate drawing around the border of the page: vines and ivy and trees. My hands shake, I’m so excited. I turn the page and start to read.
It has of late come upon our notice, not without vast hurt to us, that, in a quantity of parts of upper Britain, as well as in the provinces, cities, territories, and regions of Erin, Scot’s Land, Iceland, Normandy, and the New Lands, many pictsies of both sexes, unmindful of their own origins and forsaking the courts to which they owe their allegiance, are unaware of the existence of Valhalla, and even if aware are unsure of the process by which, alive and breathing, they may venture to its lofty lands.
It’s like reading Latin, only worse.
Sigh.
The phone vibrates again. My mother is calling.
I read on.
We therefore, aspiring, as is our obligation, to eliminate all hindrances in which in any way questors are mired in the exercise of their pursuit of the mythical land, and to avert the failure to even begin such a quest, do herein explicate the procedures by which a hero may enter Valhalla prior to his time.
She wasn’t lying. This is really it. I squee, all happy, and punch the ceiling, which makes the taxi guy cranky. I apologize but don’t really pay attention, because Astley’s face forms itself before me, in my imagination, I guess. His eyes glisten, sad and angry at the same time. His lips move: “Zara.”
“What?” I whisper back.
The taxi driver is basically shouting at me. “Miss! We are here. That will be eight fifty.”
“Oh! Right!” I was imagining Astley, just imagining him, which basically means I’m losing it. I tuck the book into my coat pocket, where it’s safe, and yank out my wallet. I give him eleven dollars. It’s been so long since I’ve been in a city that I’m not sure how much I’m supposed to tip.
“Thanks.”
I open up the door and step out onto the wet street. Just standing up hurts me and I hate being so weak-and vulnerable, I realize… I am also vulnerable. The taxi zips away and I am alone. There aren’t even any cars here. There is just me. The cabbie has let me out on West Ninety-Sixth Street, I think, and I head north, crossing over into the park at West One Hundredth Street. Sniffing the air for threats, I head up the hill. There are signs, which is nice. My breath hitches like I’m really out of shape. The rain turns completely to wet snow as I walk. Giant flakes stick to my hair and jacket.
Scurrying noises lurk off to my right, in some bushes just before the crest of the hill. My skin crawls. Rats. The fear of rats is murophobia. The fear of night is noctiphobia. The fear of snow? Chinophobia. I am a pixie. I shouldn’t be afraid of any of these things, but I’ve got to tell you, rats make me squirmy.