Excerpt
Captivate by Carrie Jones

 

I have the emotional maturity of a two-year-old. I know this! I know, but it doesn’t make me stop trying to escape my grandmother and friends and their pity eyes and Nick’s eyes… the eyes I suddenly can’t read.

So, I run as best I can through the sloshy snow and mud. My feet take me far enough into the woods so that I don’t hear cars any more. I don’t hear anything. No wind blows through the high up branches of the spruce and pine trees. Their thin, pale brown trunks don’t creak with the weight of snow and ice. No birds sing. No squirrels chitter and squeak and make all those noises that squirrels make.
           
Nothing.
           
No noise.
           
Nothing.
           
That is not normal. I sniff in through my nose and smell. It’s just wet wood and old pine needles. Olfactophobia is the fear of odors. Odor fears get more specific, though. Bromidrosiphobia is the fear of personal odor. You know, body odor. Luckily, I don’t have that. There is no name that I know of for the fear of a lack of odor. There is no name that I know of for the fear of lack of sound. The fear of sound itself is Acousticophobia.
           
Why are there no names for the fear of the absence of things? Why is there no name for the absence of humanity? Because that is my fear, right here, right now. I am worried that I am losing my humanity.

I’ve seen what happens then. Jay Dahlberg was tortured and bled and bitten when I found him in an upstairs bedroom at my father’s pixie mansion home.  Jay doesn’t remember any of it. I do. I remember his body shaking as I tried to help him down the long flight of marble stairs. I remember the smell of his fear permeating everything.
           
Pixies did that.
           
I can’t be one of them.
           
I can’t.

I force the images out of my head and stand here, leaning against a tree for about a half an hour, just trying to understand why I ran away, but truth is there’s not much to understand: I don’t want to face that I’m turning blue.
           
My footprints show the way back to the parking lot, to the ambulance, to reality. I walk, staring at those dark footprints indented in the snow. Then it happens:  spiders creeping on my skin where no spiders are. And something else: an ache. I fold over in half. My hand presses into my stomach.
           
“Even your moans are lovely,” says a voice. It is male, deep, husky but with melody, like a country singer. I recognize it. “I should not be surprised.”
           
The feelings intensify. The snow impressions blur. I use a tree trunk to help me stand up straight.  My throat closes, almost trapping my words. “Oh wow, not you again.”
           
“You sound panicked.”
           
Trees surround me. Half-gone snow. Everything dull and white and gray-brown, gray-green. No place for a voice.  I say as toughly as I can, “I wouldn’t be panicked if you weren’t hiding.”
           
“What form would you prefer?”
           
What form? It takes me a second. Pixie or human? That’s what he means. I sway towards the tree. My hand slips down the rough edges of the trunk. “Human.”

“Human it is.” Hands grab me, steady me up. I jerk back, but they are surprisingly gentle. He doesn’t smile as I turn to see his face. He just stands there, letting me inspect him. He’s tall with a wide forehead and dark blonde hair that’s cut short. His green eyes are deeply set beneath that forehead. His lips are wide and rugged like the rest of him. His hands have huge knuckles like he’s a boxer or arthritic or hits walls. He looks like he did when he pulled me out of the car, but stronger, taller somehow. He must be completely healed. He looks my age and he looks good, like the guy in high school that everyone, even the teachers, fall in love with.
           
I shake him off, step back, press into the tree. “You’re the other king, aren’t you?”
           
“The king, really, since your father is not doing so well currently.”
           
“You figured that out?” I manage to say. I look for weapons. A tree branch? Could I break off a tree branch? But do I need a weapon? He saved me before. I stall for time, try to think. “You figured out who I am?”

He sighs, brisk rubs his hands over his hair and changes the topic. “It is so cold  here in Maine. Your poor father stuck with this territory. He must have annoyed someone. ”
           
He makes a face like the entire state is distasteful.
           
“You could always leave,” I suggest.
           
I look both ways. It would take me about three minutes to run back to the parking lot, but what then? He’d catch me.
           
“I would catch you,” he says, exactly mimicking my internal words.
           
“Reading thoughts?”
           
“Guessing.”
           
My teeth chatter.
           
“See?” he says. “You despise it here as well. I have done my research. You are a southern girl, right? Charleston. Mint juleps. Lazy, hot days on the veranda. Now you are stuck here eating bagels with all those people.”
           
“I choose to be here.”
           
He lifts an eyebrow. It’s a slow, calculated lift. His voice matches it. “I do not believe that. You are here because you have to be. Just as I am.”

I meet his eyes. They are deep and almost mesmerizing. Did I say deep before? Yeah, right. That’s not it. They have pull to them, like currents, like Velcro or something, totally captivating, like when you see a convertible flipped over on the high way and there are body bags and you don’t want to look but you look because you can’t look, because you can’t NOT look, because you are just riveted and…
           
Stop. Just stop.