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  “Training?” Issie’s eyebrow lifts up.

  Callie says it for me. “There’s no option, is there? You’ll have to train us to fight.”

  “Not just us. Giselle too,” Paul says. “She’d want in on this, and Andrew and Brad and Tyler and Blake …”

  His list goes on for a while and Devyn starts typing the names into a file. I lean back and close my eyes. Fate feels like it comes spiraling in on me. I want to know where Astley is.

  “Do we start today?” Callie interrupts Paul’s never-ending list of names.

  “Tomorrow,” Nick says. “We’ll start tomorrow afternoon, meet at the Y. They have free gym time at one. Nobody’s ever in there.”

  And so our army begins.

  We’re gathering our things together when Becca explodes into the Grind and runs to me, looking like a frightened cheerleader, not the killing machine she is.

  She grabs me by the arms. “It’s Astley.”

  “What’s happened?” I knew it. I knew something was wrong.

  “They’ve poisoned him.” Her face breaks into tears. “He’s bad, really bad.”

  Running toward the doors, I yank her along with me, demanding, “Where? Where is he?”

  “At the birds’.”

  WEEKLY REPORT: 12/14 TO 12/21

  TROOP/UNIT: Troop J

  ITEMS OF INTEREST TO LOCAL AGENCIES:

  12/16: The Holiday Inn staff reported suspicious activity outside one of their guests’ ground-floor bedrooms. A woman was reportedly standing in the snow, laughing for twenty minutes. Failed to locate upon arrival.

  Becca gives me the lowdown as we rush to the car. She and Amelie had gone to meet Astley in his hotel room. He didn’t answer when they knocked, but they could smell him inside, so they busted down the door and found him, unglamoured and unconscious on the floor.

  “How did you know he was poisoned?” I ask, turning on the truck and yanking my seat belt into position.

  “There was a note.”

  “A note?” I pull out of the parking space way too quickly and swerve on the slushy road. I just want to get to Devyn’s house, get to Astley, find out what happened. Devyn is flying there. I wish I could turn bird and do that. It would be so much faster.

  “Taped to the outside window. It said, Poison is a fitting way for a weak-hearted king to die.”

  “Weak-hearted?”

  She rubs at her eyes and says in a voice choked with venom, “Isla, his mother, always thought he was weak. Too willing to see the good in people, too hesitant to use his power, his authority on his subjects.”

  “So basically, he’s not an evil tyrant.” My foot pushes harder on the gas pedal and part of me wishes it was Isla’s face.

  “Exactly.” Her tone is heavy and she presses her palm against the glass pane of the window like she is trying really hard not to break it.

  The truck skids over the snow-slick road as I turn onto a side street. I ask, “And she’s the one who poisoned him?”

  “The note wasn’t signed but the word choice makes it look that way.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Million-dollar question,” Becca says. “Can’t you drive faster?”

  I do, zooming dangerously over the freezing roads, passing a city plow truck. I think my questions are frustrating her, or maybe it’s my ignorance plus the situation. I don’t know. All I know is that Astley is hurt, really hurt. Maybe Astley is the key to everything somehow.

  “If he dies—” Becca starts.

  “He can’t die,” I blurt.

  “If he dies, you will be our queen.”

  The thought of it makes me cringe. “A queen doesn’t usually rule alone.”

  “Some do. You would.”

  There’s a pause in her voice. “But?”

  “But,” she says, “I think this is part of the plan. Other than a few weres, we are the only ones protecting this town from Frank. If Astley is gone we weaken, especially if you are not strong enough to rule alone. If you are gone, then Astley weakens. It works either way. So, then there is an opening—”

  “For an evil pixie king named Belial, also known as Frank.” I pull into Devyn’s driveway. “Not going to happen.”

  I shut off the truck, fly out, and race up the stairs. Becca rushes right behind me.

  She grabs my arm just as I push open the door. “Promise me.”

  Even though it kills me to hesitate, I take the second required to appease her because that’s what a leader does: she takes care of her people. “I promise. We won’t let him die.”

  The house is full of noise and the agitated sound of intellectual scientists in crisis mode. I follow the debating voices to Devyn’s bedroom, where they’ve laid Astley out on the twin bed. He’s blue, but a horrifyingly pale blue that’s turning white. His face is puffy and he’s gasping for air. Devyn’s mom stands over him with some sort of breathing tube. My heart stops for a moment, just stops, and breaks as I stare at him.

  “Astley,” I say his name in a whisper.

  Nobody hears. I bolt forward, the pain in my stomach exploding, my own breath twirling around, gasping to get out. I feel what he is feeling.

  “Put the tube in,” I shout. “Get a shot of Benadryl. It’s like asthma. Like shock. Trust me. It will help.”

  Devyn and his parents stop for a moment and then his dad nods and races out of the room. His footsteps thunder down the staircase.

  Devyn says, “A couple months ago, you panicked when Nick had an arrow in him, and called Betty, now you’re giving commands.”

  “Maybe I have changed,” I say, grabbing Astley’s hand. It’s limp in mine. “Someone talk to me.”

  Devyn swallows hard and pushes his glasses up his nose. I wonder why he’s wearing them today. His voice is a worried monotone as he says, “It’s bad.”

  Bad. The word just barely registers. There is no time to let it register.

  “No death. You are not allowed,” I order, and my voice is both frantic and strong. I turn to Becca. “Text Cassidy to come now. Tell Amelie to get the food in his room, anything near where you found his body. His toothbrush. Anything that could enter his mouth. Anything that could be poisoned. Bring it here. Maybe we can isolate what it is and get some kind of antidote. You can do that, right?”

  Devyn’s mom has tiny eyes and they close a little bit as she thinks. They almost disappear. “Possibly, but Zara …”

  Possibly has to be good enough.

  “That will take time,” she says. “We don’t have time.”

  We don’t have time.

  “Becca!” I call for her to come back into the room. “Is there anything I can do? As his queen?”

  She swallows hard, but nods. “You can take half.”

  “Half what?” Devyn barks.

  “His poison. The injury.”

  “How?”

  “You can’t, Zara!” Devyn throws up his hands, most likely in frustration. “Just once could you think something through? Just once, Zara. Do not be the martyr. We need you.”

  I silence him with a look and he clucks, angry, and turns back to Astley, feeling the pulse in his neck.

  “You are entwined. There is a link between you that is stronger than the link between him and the rest of us,” Becca quickly explains. She gets more animated as she talks, excited by the possibility. “If he were not the king, drawing on the health and power of the rest of us, he would already be dead. I have heard that a queen can help.”

  “How?”

  Her emotions ooze out of her. It’s all worry mixed with hope. “It’s not good.”

  “Just tell me, Becca.”

  “It’s like … Where’s Amelie?”

  Devyn’s mom finishes taking blood from Astley’s arm and hands it to Devyn. She says, “We don’t have time to lollygag around. Tell her what it takes.”

  Becca goes flat. “He has to drain you.”

  I flash to what I saw my father’s pixies doing to Jay Dahlberg. They bit him, kissed him,
drained him of his energy somehow. I’m not sure how. I just know it almost killed him.

  “Do you have to bite me or kiss me?” I ask.

  “No, just lay hands on you,” Becca says, “and on the king. The power should transfer. I’ve never done it, though. And it hurts. You should know that it hurts, Zara.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Just do it.” I squeeze onto the bed, close my eyes. “Just do it before I think about it.”

  I grab Astley’s hand in mine. His whole body is burning up, and his skin looks puffy and unnatural. I can feel the life ebbing out of him. Devyn’s parents will never isolate the poison and find an antidote in time. There’s no choice, really. Not for Astley. Not for me. He’s given me so much. It’s the least I can do.

  “I don’t know if he’d want you to do this,” Becca says. She hovers over us and Devyn starts muttering objections too, and I get ready to shush them but his mom does it for me.

  “Zara’s choice, and we don’t have much time,” she says abruptly. “Devyn, take this to your father downstairs. See what’s taking so long with the shot. You. Blond pixie. Get started.”

  Becca’s face hovers over mine. Her hair flops onto my cheek. “I’m so sorry, Zara. Try to focus on Astley. Look at him, maybe, or something.”

  Turning my head, I do. He is so beautiful even when he’s blue and his teeth are pointy. It’s like all the good of him shines out even when he looks like a monster, bless his heart. I can’t lose him. The world needs him so much.

  “You will be okay,” I tell him. “We’ll make you okay and we’ll go to that manor-house place and run through the gardens and bark back at the seals. I promise. You will not die like this.”

  I grab his hand more tightly and Becca whispers, “Try not to scream.”

  I wake up in Devyn’s room in the bed next to Astley. Looking across him, I can see that the light through the window means it’s morning and it’s still snowing. Scanning the room quickly, I suppress a moan. It feels like I’ve had the flu. Every muscle aches. My head throbs. My throat seems to have closed up, parched and broken. I vaguely remember last night, how it felt like I was dying. Nightmare images of demons and teeth, of the life being yanked out of me until I felt like I was just a husk of skin with nothing underneath. I can still hear the echoes of my own screams that zing around in my memory like flies trapped in a glass jar. I try to shake it all away.

  Cassidy’s sleeping in a chair in the corner of the room. Her hand is clutching something, probably a crystal. Her braids dangle limply. Beyond her, Amelie and Becca pace the hallway. Devyn’s snoring on the floor right below me. His laptop is flipped open and upside down on his stomach. Everyone looks like hell, especially Astley.

  Propping myself up on an elbow, I tuck the sweat-caked strands of hair behind my ear and get a better look at my king. His chest moves up and down in a normal breathing pattern. I place my non-weight-bearing hand on his skin. It’s warm, but not boiling hot anymore. The puffiness has faded away. His chin seems more pointy and his jawline seems sharper than I remember.

  “He will be okay,” Cassidy whispers from across the room.

  I don’t turn to look at her. “You’re awake?”

  “Barely.” There’s a sound of her stretching, of her vertebrae shifting into shape.

  My hand moves from Astley’s chest to his face. His skin is shiny from when he was feverish. His hair is mussed and sticking up everywhere. Even in sleep, he seems tense. There’s a line in between his eyebrows, like he’s thinking about horrible things.

  Groaning as she stands up, Cassidy joins me. She is obviously trying really hard not to topple over. She doesn’t look much better than Astley, really.

  “Are you sure he’ll be okay?” I ask. “Will you be okay?”

  “It was very touch and go,” Cass says. “But your energy saved him, and Devyn’s mom isolated part of the poison. She treated both of you. You’ve bounced back more quickly, obviously. They had been developing a poison themselves, so that helped.”

  “And your magic helped.” I state the obvious. Cassidy is part elf. She doesn’t know how much or even really how her magic works. It’s all trial and error, but it involves chanting and crystals and the elements. It also drains her energy. The bigger the magic, the worse she feels.

  “A little bit.” Her voice is so tired, and her face is too. Circles make themselves at home beneath her eyes and she looks like she’s lost about twenty pounds.

  “I worry about you, Cass.”

  She helps me sit up, stepping over Devyn to do so. “We all worry about each other. That’s what friends do.”

  Later, I’m alone with Astley. I sit on the edge of the bed and then swing my legs up next to him. He looks so small, and he’s normally so far from small.

  Astley’s eyes flutter open but he seems tired, and he can’t quite focus. His eyes are silver. His skin is a sickly blue still, but better than yesterday. I touch his face.

  “You will be okay,” I whisper. “We will be okay.”

  His lips move but no sound comes out. Instead, he moves his hand and I grab it. Our fingers interlock.

  “We will be strong together,” I promise.

  YAHOO! ANSWERS

  Trey D

  In the event of a pixie apocalypse?

  So allegedly there’s like a pixie invasion in my town and we’re having this meet-up to learn how to fight them. So, um, yeah … any pointers or ARE WE DOOMED?

  BEST ANSWER - CHOSEN BY VOTERS

  Trap the little things in jars like fireflies. Totally worked for Peter Pan and Wendy. Also, lay off the bath salts.

  1 hour ago

  60% 2 Votes

  I feel much better after a shower, and Astley is up and walking around. I get ready and head over to Issie’s house so we can carpool to the training. We’re late because Issie is taking for-freaking-ever to find appropriate “pixie war training” clothes. Issie deals with horrible situations by ignoring them. Instead of focusing on Astley’s poisoning, she’s focusing on clothes. It’s a weird survival method, but it seems to work well for her because she’s … um … surviving.

  “I need something both war appropriate and cute,” she explains as we finally get in the car. “Do you think this works?”

  She’s wearing yoga pants and a red T-shirt that they were selling at the Gap a while ago when it was cool to care about world hunger and things like that. She zips up her coat and adjusts her rainbow-striped hat. I’m wearing my favorite black running pants and an old rock band T-shirt.

  As we drive to the YMCA, Issie babbles on about Devyn, her mom’s new insistence that hairspray is an effective weapon against mass murderers, and how any of us will pass any of our advanced placement exams at the end of the year since school is so insane. Once we get there, she parks and I haul the box of How to Survive a Pixie Attack manuals out of the back of her car. Now that I’m pixie it’s easier to carry things.

  As we get out of the car, she squinches up her nose, tucks her hair behind her ear. There’s a loose blue thread on her rainbow hat, sort of unraveling. It dangles and hangs out with her hair.

  I tuck it into her hat. But as soon as we walk up the cement curb, the little blue thread has fallen out of her hat again, dangling there, homeless, as we walk in and veer to the left. The gym is on one side of the main hallway of the Y, set off by a big admission desk. The front-desk lady says, “Joining the fun?”

  On the other side is a hallway to the weight room and the locker rooms. Issie grabs the door handle to the gym and stops.

  “Holy—” she starts and then breaks off.

  I peek around her to see what it is, ready to drop the box in case there are pixies or something awful and dangerous inside. I stagger back too. “Issie …”

  “I know!”

  “There are so many people here.” I’m shaking. I can actually feel myself shaking.

  “I know!”

  “Is there a basketball game we didn’t know about?” I ask.

  “Okay.
Fact check. The people aren’t in the bleachers. There are no bouncing balls. No refs. No cheerleaders. No smell of popcorn. I think they are here for us.”

  For us. I swallow hard. “Okay. Okay. This is a good thing. Repeat after me: this is a good thing.”

  “This is a good thing,” Issie whispers.

  “The whole entire freaking world knowing that there are pixies is a good thing,” I say, trying to convince myself. I stare up at the empty basketball hoops. The nets dangle off of little orange rims, waiting for the balls, waiting for the action. I toughen up and say to both Is and myself, “We can handle this.”

  “We totally can.” She looks stunned, though.

  I scan the crowd. “Is Nick coming?”

  “I think so.”

  “Okay. We can do this.” I stride into the room like I have done this a million times, like I’m not worried about Astley, like I’m a leader. I hold up the box. “Hey! People! Everybody! Let’s get started!”

  People stop talking except for Austin, who basically never stops talking. Everyone starts heading toward me. They are tall, short, skinny, not so skinny, and regular. They are younger and slightly older, but mostly all in high school, I think. Some have pimples. Some have glasses. Some look a little confused. Some look a little scared. And some, like Jay and Callie, look angry and determined. Jay nods at me. I nod back.

  Cassidy grabs the box from me and smiles. It’s a serious smile, but still a smile. I smile back. It’s so good to see her here, so good that she is on our side. She’s wearing a tracksuit that looks pure vintage 1970s, all orange and cotton. With her multiple braids she looks kind of Rastafarian, like she might start singing reggae or something. Maybe she’s trying out a new identity. I can understand that.

  I take one of the manuals out. “We’ve got some handbooks, but not enough, so you’ll have to share!”

  People hustle forward and grab the handbooks out of the box. Some people even say thank you, which is kind of astonishing. Anne Kat looks up at me. She clutches her manual to her chest. She’s wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. Her hands shake.