Paranormalcy 2
by Kiersten White
Evie is having a love-hate relationship with being in a normal school while Lend is away at college. While falling asleep during her English class, an office aide comes to pull her out of class, saying that her aunt is there for her. Evie meets Raquel in the office and they leave. Raquel has been sending messages to her through David, but Evie didn’t get them. Looking at the sky, Evie notices a strange cloud that wraps around her before flying off.
Evie sucks some of the soul from the cloud creature and it drops her. She falls into the woods, able to use the trees to slow herself down before hitting the ground. She finds her way to Lend and David’s house (she now lives with Arianna) where David and Raquel are waiting for her. Neither knows what the air-elemental creature is, but guess that it is a sylph. Raquel suggests they ask Cresseda, but David admits that she hasn’t surfaced since Lend left for college. She offers to have the IPCA researchers look into it before telling Evie they need her help.
Raquel explains the changes IPCA has gone through to become more paranormal friendly. She also describes the problems they have been having since Vivian took out a lot of employees. She promises that Evie can pick and choose assignments and won’t have to deal with fairies. Lend arrives and the offer is extended to him as well. Evie asks Lend to talk because he doesn’t want either of them to agree. However, Evie doesn’t know how long she has left and feels like she is not doing anything significant. They argue as a fairy door opens.
A boy around Evie and Lend’s age comes out of the door. Lend is about to hit him with an iron skillet when Evie stops him. She doesn’t see anything paranormal about him. Raquel comes into the room and introduces him as Jack, a talented human boy. She explains that this is how she can guarantee Evie won’t have to work with fairies. He opens a door and they leave. Lend gives Evie a normal weekend and at the end, asks her not to work for IPCA. She doesn’t commit to anything. Back home while watching TV with Arianna, she weighs the pros and cons of the job offer.
The next weekend, Lend wakes Evie up so they can spend two days together. As they walk through town, Lend stops to give her a heart necklace made of iron. Shortly after, he gets a call from a class teammate who has lost all of their work. lend has to rush back to college and Evie tries to be supportive. Back home, Evie goes to her room. Someone is there waiting for her and she screams.
Jack appears because he was looking for an address Raquel gave him. However, if he doesn’t know what the place looks like, it is harder for him to find. He leaves saying he will pick Evie up later. She hasn’t decided to work for IPCA again and states that. he leaves. After a nap, Evie gets called into work at the diner that she and Arianna live above. While taking out the trash, a fairy door appears. She expects Jack, but it isn’t him.
Evie agrees to walk with Reth rather than going straight back into the filthy diner. He tries to convince her to go with him back to the seelie court, saying she will be happy when she becomes what she is supposed to become. She almost gets drawn in, but the necklace Lend gave her helps fend Reth off and bring her back to her senses. she goes to sleep and is happy Vivian is in her dream.
Evie has been dreaming of Vivian since she took the souls from her “older sister.” She tells Vivian about how she is happy to have a normal life, but messes being special. Vivian wishes she had known she had options. When Evie wakes up, she decides that she is going to email Raquel.
While talking on the phone with Lend, Evie realizes that she is late for gym class. the teacher, Miss Lynn, already isn’t happy with her and docks points for the day. while getting ready, Jack shows up to give her a communicator. He draws the attention of the other girls, who flirt with him. Miss Lynn comes in to check on them and catches Jack. he gets away from her and starts running with the teacher chasing him. Even though Jack denied knowing Evie, she knows she will be blamed.
Evie talks to Raquel about her issues with Jack and Raquel says she will talk to him. Evie lays down her conditions for working with IPCA (she chooses assignments and gets a credit card). Raquel accepts and tells her that her first mission is that night at the center. Raquel hangs up before she can protest. Evie doesn’t want to go back to that graveyard. As soon as she decides not to go, a hand reaches out from the wall and drags her into darkness.
Jack leads Evie through the fairy paths to the center, wondering why she has never tried to figure them out. He seems to go by feeling and opens a door to the Center. They are greeted by people screaming, appearing crazy because nothing is chasing them. Raquel comes along and Jack leaves. She takes Evie to Central Processing (where Alisha’s aquarium was) to deal with a poltergeist. while wallowing in grief over her friend, the poltergeist says it has been waiting for her.
Evie recognizes vampire Steve as the ghost. She asks him why he would want to haunt a place he hated, stuck there for eternity. He decides she is right and vanishes. Wandering the halls, Evie finds her old room, but decides she is done with it and everything it contains. Jack shows up, then Raquel, just before a fairy door opens. Evie and Jack both think the fairy is after them and Jack runs. Raquel pulls out an iron baton and forces the fairy to leave. She tells Evie she will need to stay at the Center overnight and Evie feels like she agreed to be trapped again.
Just making it back in time for school on Monday, Arianna is mad at Evie for running off. Later as gym is about to start, Evie is sent to the office for a family emergency. Lend is there disguised as his dad. He was worried because Evie didn’t contact him for a few days. She decides to keep her secrets as they spend some time together in the woods. As he drives her back to school, she realizes the solution to her problem with Lend being immortal.
Evie decides that she doesn’t have to tell Lend about his immortality because he will age himself in accordance with living a normal human life. Arianna offers a shopping peace treaty, but Evie makes up a study excuse because she has an IPCA mission. When Jack comes to pick her up, she quickly finds out her iron necklace prevents her from using the fairy paths. She takes it off and goes with Jack. She asks about the mission and he tells her there isn’t one. They are going to have fun.
Jack takes Evie to see a unicorn, which ends up being a disgusting creature that loves virgins. Evie gets a little insight into Jack’s life He has lived in the fairy realms his whole life. he has eaten fairy food and therefore cannot eat normal food. Evie asks him to take her home so that she isn’t late for work. they joke around about how wonderful the job is and when they return, Lend is waiting for Evie.
Evie tries to explain the situation to Lend. He is too mad to talk it through just then and starts heading out of the apartment. Evie follows and they find her tree nymph boss talking with Reth. He leaves, but they are suspicious. At David’s weekly meeting, they discuss what is going on around town. Evie sees a fairy walking down the street and hides until it passes. She points out to David and Arianna that there have been a lot of unusual paranormals at the diner. David makes it a point to talk to Nona.
Jack comes to get Evie so that she can identify a village of trolls and free their slaves. However, when Jack opens the door and Evie steps out, she plunges into water. A horseman tries to drown her, but she escapes. They continue on to the village and look around. Evie eventually sees a girl with a tail.
They follow the troll to be sure they have them, but end up getting cornered by a group instead. Evie gets away, but Jack is trapped. She goes back for him and gets caught. He uses a fairy door to disappear. The trolls take Evie to a house and refuse to let her go because they think she is killing their children.
The trolls explain they have paid for everything they have and don’t keep any human servants. They can only have children every so often, so they want Evie to get rid of the vampire that is taking them. Evie agrees to help. They send a large troll with her, but Evie knows the vampire will be able to smell him even if they can’t see him. She finds the vampire.
The vampire tries to send Evie away, but his mind tricks don’t work on her. He tries to bite her and she punches him. They sit together at an impasse. he explains that he only feeds on supernaturals because he remembers what it was like to be human. He says that she doesn’t smell completely human and that gives her the incentive she needs to take him in. However, since he drinks paranormal blood, he is much stronger than a regular vampire.
Evie is able to get away, but ends up running down an alley with a dead end. She tells herself that she will only take his soul if necessary and warns him to get away. he sees the change in her and starts running. Jack hits him with a baseball bat and they are able to put a tracker on him (which Evie doesn’t have access to activate). When IPCA people (one of which is a werewolf) comes along to take him away, Evie says the trolls didn’t have any humans and have already moved along. She takes comfort in Jack for a minute before he takes her home.
Evie refuses to debrief at the Center, so Raquel agrees to meet her at a coffee shop outside of town. They are glad to be back in each other’s lives, but Raquel has to leave urgently when her communicator goes off. Evie goes home to wait for Lend and falls asleep. he wakes her up and she tells him all about her latest mission and why she agreed to work with IPCA again. He says he can deal with it if she stops lying. She agrees, but still can’t get up the courage to tell him he is immortal.
Evie is anxious about submitting her application to Georgetown (where Lend goes to college). She and Lend try to relax, but hear an argument downstairs. They go into the kitchen to see Raquel trying to get information from David about the paranormals that are slipping away from IPCA. Arianna calls Evie to let her know Jack is at the apartment. She lets Lend know that she has to get rid of the intruder and then work at the diner. They make plans for a date later that night.
Arianna is curious about Jack, but Evie still hasn’t told her roommate about her new job. She introduces him as a friend and promises him a raincheck on going to see a Kraken. She goes down to the diner where she sees Nona and the cook, Grnlllll talking quietly to an orange lizard in Nona’s hand. When they realize Evie is there, they hide it and send her home. The weekend ends and Evie goes back to school. She is working really hard to keep her grades up so that she can get into Georgetown with Lend. However, her job with IPCA has already interfered with her history grade.
Halloween rolls around and Arianna makes Evie a Daphne (Scooby Doo) Costume. Evie tries to get her roommate to go out with her and Lend, but the vampire can tell that Evie still isn’t comfortable around her. After handing out candy at David’s house, Lend takes Evie disco bowling. They are about to enter a costume contest when Carlee calls to thank Evie for sending Jack to her party.
Lend drops Evie off at the cemetery because Carlee’s party has moved there. He leaves for college and Evie goes to find Jack. The kids start up a game of hide-and-seek. Jack goes out to the woods and Evie follows. She scolds him for going through her room to find the invitation. He offers to take her to a party in New York. Evie declines and decides to go home when the uber vampire shows up.
Evie weighs her options with Jack behind her. Uber-vamp says he was grabbed from behind and brought there from his cell. Carlee wanders along and the vampire uses her as leverage. He hypnotizes her to him. Evie tries to remind him of what happened last time, but he wants to taste her blood. He throws Carlee at Jack and tackles Evie, getting his teeth into her neck. Not seeing any other options, Evie starts to suck his soul. Before she can finish, Lend comes to the rescue and gets Uber-vamp off of her, punching him repeatedly in the face.
Raquel eventually shows up, unsure how the Uber-vamp got out and his tracker failed. She checks Evie’s neck wound before Lend takes his girlfriend home. Vivian comes to her in her dreams and Evie tries to blame the fairies for everything, including her own guilt. Vivian admits that her actions were mostly fueled by selfishness. Evie wakes up and someone is watching her.
Arianna tells Evie about how she ran away from home to find herself, but all she found was Felix (her sire). She got scared of him and went home, but he followed and killed her. She woke up in a morgue and went with him. When he lured a victim for them to bite, Arianna killed him. She explains that she hates her existence and sometimes watches Evie sleep because she misses human things.
David shows up at the diner to check up on Evie. He tells her and Lend how worried he and Raquel are. Evie points out her fairy theory, but David points out that Jack let her out into the water she was attacked in. They are interrupted by Grnlllll shooing off a paranormal that is staring at Evie. Tired of it all, she goes to confront Nona about it. Nona says that Evie is safe with her, but Evie is suspicious because Nona was talking to a bowl of water when she barged in. David points out that Nona can’t lie. He and Lend try to convince Evie that she is safe.
Evie has been waiting two weeks for a response from Georgetown. She has Carlee rush her home from school to an empty mailbox. Raquel gets a hold of her on the communicator asking about a vampire job. Evie accepts and Jack picks her up. they arrive at a carnival and Evie is not subtle about taking the vamp down with her taser. As soon as the transport fairies take him away, Evie demands to go home. There is a small letter on her bed that appears to be a rejection from Georgetown.
Jack reads the rejection letter when Evie asks him to and she breaks down crying. He takes her into the fairy tunnels and kisses her to stop her wailing. She is furious and he is unimpressed. He shows her a door and how to feel them out. He says they are going on an adventure in the fairy realms.
They land on the shore of a silver lake with a red sky. Jack quickly pulls Evie into his room so that he can eat and grab supplies. He shifts them back onto the shore where there is now a large boat and a procession of unseelie fairies, including the queen. Jack lights two Molotov cocktails, throwing one at the ship, and advising Evie to throw hers, which lights up the lake. Jack says they need to run.
Jack and Evie get some distance before he convinces her that the fairies deserve what they did (and more). They run in Fehl, who threatens to present Evie to the Queen. Evie wants to drain her, but remembers the fairy’s full name. She tells Fehl to stop and she can’t move. Reth shows up and seems disappointed in the two of them. jack takes Evie back to his room and Reth follows.
They try to get away from Reth, but he points out that he can always find Evie. Since he is there and offering information, Evie decides to listen to him. He takes them to a NASCAR race and says they are going to meet her father.
Reth leads the way to a specialty section where Melinthros (Lin) is getting drunk on pop. He hasn’t even realized that his daughter has been missing for years, let alone that Reth brought her to him. Reth hoped her father (who was banned from the fairy realms) would explain, but realizes he will have to.
Evie was created as less than a moral as an assignment to Lin from the Seelie queen. He mated with a female human who most likely wasted away from fairy withdraw after Lin no longer needed her. Reth doesn’t know why she has the ability to control the gates. He wants to take her home so they can live together forever. He asks using her real name, Neamh. She is not a fairy, so she doesn’t have to obey. However, she gives her father a named command to return to the fairy world and never come back. She leaves with Jack after threatening to kill Reth if she ever sees him again.
Lend is waiting in Evie’s room when Jack takes her home. He is furious that he was worried about her being hurt when she was just off with Jack. He is also mad that she didn’t tell him about the rejection letter. She explains that they don’t have a future together because he is immortal. She breaks it off and leaves with Jack while Lend watches and doesn’t try to stop her.
Jack takes Evie to find Vivian. They go to the center and Jack tells Raquel that Evie is missing. They snoop in Raquel’s office until they find out she is in an iron containment wing. When they leave her room, Uber-vamp tries to hold her attention. Jack takes Evie into the fairy realms and goes to find her food (real food, not fairy food). Fehl attacks and Evie is tempted to kill her. She realizes that she doesn’t want the fairy’s soul in her, so she sends her away with a named command. Jack says they are going to make sure fairies don’t hurt anyone ever again.
He takes her to the only door in the tunnels that leads to the fairy realms. He wants her to open a gate to hell so that they unsuspectingly walk in. When she refuses to damn them, Jack is furious. He has spent his whole life planning this and several months manipulating her. He leaves her in her own hell: alone in the darkness of the tunnels.
Evie starts to panic. She thinks she can find the door into the fairy realms, but is afraid she will accidentally open a gate. She lies down and decides that she will die thinking of her loved ones. She feels a sensation and follows it until she ends up in Lend’s arms.
Evie explains what happened. Arianna asks why she didn’t call on her father, which makes her feel stupid for a moment. Lend asks her to go for a walk. They decide to be together for whatever amount of time they can.