Captivate (7 page)

He falls to the ground in a sitting position. I slide off his shoulder, coughing. My hip hits the hard, packed
down snow. We’re a football field away from Yoko. She’s smashed into a huge tree. Her hood is crunched in and wrapped around the trunk. I struggle into a sitting position. My neck doesn’t feel like it wants to support my head. “We have to get the fire out. My car
-”

She explodes. The sound blasts my ears. Before I know what he’s doing, the pixie guy grabs me and pulls me to him. His hands wrap around my head and he twists so his back is facing the car, like he’s protecting us from the impact, which is really nice of him, but I don’t know why he’s taking care of me, why—

“Oh man. Oh…” I can’t even begin to breathe. His jacket is in my mouth. It tastes like wool, bitter and nasty. I struggle to get enough room to look. Orange and black flames leap out of Yoko’s body. The first things I think of? My cell phone. My cell phone is in there. And my iPod. And my homework. And my laptop. My head throbs. Is this normal? Is it normal to think?

“This is why I hate technology!” he half mutters, half shouts. “It is ridiculously dangerous.”

Suddenly my head clears and I am furious-angry. “What? This is not technology’s fault.

This is your fault,” I yell at him. “You were in the road. That’s why I swerved in the first place. You made me crash.”

He scoffs. His nose actually twitches.

“Why were you in the road?” I demand, trying to keep my arm stable. “Were you trying to kill me?”

He doesn’t answer. A little blood is seeping through the gray T-shirt that’s under his open jacket.

I scuttle backward and cringe from the pain. I stop moving and try to control my anger.

“You knocked me out before—in my car—you escaped….”

He plucks a piece of ripped-up seat belt off his leg. I don’t know how it got there.

“You lost consciousness. I availed myself of the opportunity to leave.” He smiles. It’s a wicked smile. Kind but not kind. Handsome but dangerous. Feral almost. I can see why Nick nearly killed him. Nick…..My father’s warning echoes in my ear. Still, I need to call someone—the fire department at least.

“Do you have a cell phone?” I ask.

He gently touches my cheek. Gently? “I do, but I cannot let you use it. Then they will have my number.”

I try not to shrink away. “Please. I’m hurt…”

He seems to think about it and then nods. He does something. “I am blocking the number. I have called 9-1-1.” He then speaks into the phone. “There has been a one-car accident on Route 3 about a mile past the Bedford Convenience Store. The car is on fire.

One person injured. It’s not life threatening.

“There. Done.” He clicks the phone off and stares at me. “You still look faint. Can you manage sitting up?

“Thank you.” I fall back into the snow as he starts to put his arm around me to support me. It gets stuck under my body, really awkwardly. “Sorry.”

“I apologize,” he says at the same time. I didn’t know pixies could actually say they were sorry. He pulls his arm out slowly so it doesn’t hurt me too much.

He seems to listen to the woods. “I am going to have to go in a second, little one. Are you going to be all right by yourself?”

“Little one?” Anger wells up in me again.

“I do not know your name.” He squints down at me. His eyes are a beautiful deep green like the tops of pine trees, but it’s a glamour. It’s not what he really looks like. His eyes are silver like all pixie eyes. The glamour makes him look human. It’s part of the magic.

“I should know your name now that we have both rescued each other.”

I don’t give it to him. I don’t want him to do what my father did and start whispering it at me when I’m in the woods, trying to get me confused. Instead I ask again, “Why were you in the road?”

“I was waiting for you.”

I nod like it makes sense. It doesn’t make sense. “I don’t feel right.”

“You are in shock.” He lightly presses his fingers against my arm. “You are hurt. You are also turning a bit blue.”

“It’s cold.”

He lifts an eyebrow and shifts position, cringing again as he moves. “I do not believe that is why.”

“Are you hurt?” I ask. “Your stomach—”

“Is already healing. I am not a hundred percent yet, but I appreciate you asking and thank you for saving me that day.”

The snow shocks the skin on my bare palm. I study him. He looks so normal. I try to focus on his face, that wind-ruffled blond hair, his eyes. Try to see the pixie under the good looks. “Why were you waiting for me on the road?”

“I want you to lead me to them.”

“To who? The other pixies?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not going to happen,” I say. I take a big breath and my ribs sting with pain.

He puts his hand behind me head. “No deep breaths. I believe you have bruised your ribs.”

We are so close. His face is inches away. I swallow hard. “You have to promise not to hurt my friends. Hurt me if you have to, but leave my friends alone.”

“I shall never hurt you.” His eyes stare into mine for a minute. “I hate to leave you, but you will be all right.”

He sounds so sincere, as if he really wants to help. “Tell me about the Valkyrie,” I press.

My chest burns.

“I shall sometime.”

“No. Now.”

He slips his hand out from the back of my head and then stands up and pats my shoulder like a mom would. He only does this a couple of times before he says, “Your wolf is almost here.”

I cough and then manage, “My wolf? How do you know that?”

“His scent is all over you.” He flinches as if the scent is bad, like cooking broccoli or something. For a second he almost looks sweet and young, like I can see the little boy he used to be. It makes me want to comfort him—almost.

I struggle toward him. One hand goes back into the biting snow for balance. “What do you mean
my
wolf?” My father warned me about this. “He’s not mine. I don’t own him.

People don’t own each other.”

But he’s already gone, the jerk, just melded into the fog. I’m alone on the snowbank.

Yoko is a burning mess. There are sirens in the distance.

He’s put it all together already, I bet. Pixies are like that: cunning and smart. They aren’t perfectly evil, just evil enough. Figures.

“Zara!” Nick’s voice brings me back to reality. It’s a struggle. My eyes open. He stands over me and blocks out the scene. “Oh….oh, baby.”

“I’m okay,” I manage. I reach out my good hand so I can touch him. He looks so warm.

I want his warmth. “I killed Yoko.”

“Are you cold? You’re a little blue.” He reaches down and scoops me against his sweatshirt. I scream from the pain. He loosens his hold right away. “Baby?”

“My arm,” I gasp. “And my chest.”

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I hurt you.” His face is full of shock and worry. There is a piece of pixie dust on it. “I just wanted to hold you.”

“It wasn’t you.”

He gently leans me back on the ground. He whips off his coat, tucks it under my legs, and then plops himself on the snow so I can rest on him. Sirens get closer. The trees sway in the wind. He smells like warmth and Old Spice and a little bit of antiseptic from the hospital.

“I’m so sorry, baby.” He rocks back and forth. “What happened? Did you hit black ice?”

“There was a pixie. The same one—the one I let go.”

He stiffens. “What happened? What did he do to you?” His voice turns positively icy.

“Did he kiss you?”

“Nothing. He was….He was in the middle of the road. I stopped fast and skidded.

There was a tree.” I try to sit up. “I can sit up. It’s just a little achy.”

“Stay there.” Nick surveys me for damage. “Can I open your jacket?”

“Yeah.”

He shifts me around so that I’m pretty much lying across his lap. He unzips my jacket and pulls my running shirt and my Under Armour down from my neck a bit and says,

“You’re bruising. Are those sirens for you? Did you call 9-1-1?”

“He did. My phone’s in there.” I gesture toward Yoko. “So is my laptop and my laptop and—”

“He called? The pixie?” Nick interrupts.

“He saved me. He pulled me out of the car before it caught fire.”

Nick snarls. His back goes rigid and his head whips up. “He did not save you. He made you wreck. He probably only left you because you were too injured to kiss and turn.”

“That’s not true. He wants to know where the pixies are. I think he wants to let them out.”

Nick groans. “This is all my fault.”

I pull myself in closer to him and wrap my good arm around his neck, even though he’s trembling with rage. It pulses through him. I don’t want to argue. I’m too tired to argue.

“It’s not your fault. And it’s fine.”

Nick draws in a ragged breath and I can tell that a tiny bit of tension leaves him. His big hand rests on my neck and he starts kissing my face with these tiny, gentle pecks. At the same time his fingers reach up and stroke my cheek. It feels so good. I feel so safe all of a sudden. But it can’t last, can it? Of course it can’t.

A fire truck peels in next to my car. I notice it doesn’t skid. I am the one who skids in crazy directions because I am the one who does reckless things and then doesn’t fess up.

Firefighters jump out of the truck, hauling hoses. One of them starts down the road toward us.

“Nick, even though I let him go and now all this happened,” I start to explain, “I still don’t regret letting him go. He would have died.”

“And that would be a bad thing?” Nick snaps. He tilts his head back for a second and closes his eyes before he speaks again, and this time his voice is much milder. “You are too kind for your own good, Zara. You’ve got to learn to not be nice.” He kisses my forehead to take the sting of his words away. “Especially to pixies. Deal?”

I nod, but I can’t promise it. I can’t say “Deal.” Instead, I say, “I’ll stop being nice when you stop taking chances.”

He shakes his head but we both know that I mean it and we both know that neither of us is going to back down, at least not anytime soon.

Grandma Betty slams out of the ambulance and power strides across the snow, speaking into her radio and hauling her
EMT
bag. Only a flicker in her eye betrays any emotion.

She is all business. There are no hugs from her right now. She leans toward me, hovers over my face, and checks my eyes. “Pupils look good.”

I open my mouth to speak.

She silences me with a finger. The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes crease even deeper. “Tell me your name.”

“Zara.”

“What state are you in?”

“Maine. Or consciousness?”

“Funny. Nice sarcasm, miss. Although you have learned from the best.” She starts to smile and then gets professional again. “Were you thrown?”

I don’t understand.

“From the vehicle,” she explains. “Were you thrown?”

“No”

Her eyes narrow the way they do when she’s trying to figure things out. The wind whips her gray hair straight above her head. “How’d you get all the way over here, then?”

“I—I”

I must take too long, because she interrupts me. “Did you move her, Nick?”

Nick shakes his head gently, I guess so he doesn’t hurt me too much. “I wasn’t here when it happened. She was tinked.”

Betty nods really quickly and switches gears. “Where’s it hurt?”

“My arm. The one I broke. My chest. My head and neck. It’s not too bad, though,” I explain as Betty directs the other
EMT
, this tall guy, Keith, who has movie-star hair and a very bad chin. They get a gurney-bed thing out.

“We’re going to move her,” Betty tells Nick.

“Excuse me. I am not ‗her’. And I’m right here. And I can walk,” I complain, struggling to get up. “No.” Betty slaps a big, ugly neck collar on me.

“I didn’t break my neck,” I insist as they lift me up. “I’m not taking any chances,” she states. Her boots clomp down in the snow, hard and no-nonsense.

Nick gives me a sympathetic glance. He almost looks like he’s going to laugh. I twitch my nose at him, which makes him smile.

“Can I go in the ambulance with her?” he asks.

Betty thinks about it for a second.

“I can walk,” I say again. “People are staring at me.”

“Firefighters are not people. Firefighters are professionals, and it is their job to stare.

Yes, you can come, Nick,” Betty says just as Issie and Devyn pull up. Issie flies out of the car and rushes toward us.

“Oh man, Zara! Did the pixies do this?” Is blurts out.

Keith’s head whips up and his mouth drops open. He stares at her. Pixies?”

“The rock group,” Betty covers. “Zara listens to music far too loud. The Pixies are one of the old alternative groups from the 1980’s.”

“Very retro,” Is says, trying to cover up. “Very old school. But hip. Yeah. Zara’s hip.

Oh man, Zara, did you break your hip?”

Nick’s hand lands on Issie’s shoulder. “Is, take a deep breath.”

“Deep breath?”

“Inhale and exhale,” Nick says calmly.

Some firefighters start yelling. There’s a heavy knocking sound by Yoko’s remains and then the clanking of metal hitting metal, the whirling of water through hoses. Nick shifts his weight and keeps talking to Issie like nothing else is happening. “And maybe take a step back so they can get Zara in the ambulance.”

“She’s going in the ambulance!” Issie exclaims. She reaches out and grabs my hand.

“We’ll follow you the whole way. We’ll be right behind you. Do
not
worry. Okay? No worrying.”

“Breathe, Issie. I’m okay.” I smile and squeeze her hand for a second before I let go.

“No hips broken. No massive concussions.”

“Thank God for small miracles,” Betty mutters as they lift me into the back. She slides in next to me. Everything is tight space and instruments, drawers full of medicine and needles, just enough supplies to keep people alive and stabilized until they get to a hospital. Nick hauls himself inside too. He bens his head so he can fit.

The moment Keith gets into the driver’s seat Betty mumbles so only I can hear, “You are going to tell me exactly what happened, right?”