Cold Spell

cover the lie.

It’s a miracle I don’t fall down immediately in these shoes. Luckily, the snow gives me better traction than the ice, though it still provides an excuse for being somewhat wobbly as I walk toward the hotel lobby. Automatic doors whiz open as I arrive, bathing me in heat. I keep my eyes ahead, on the front desk. The clerk behind the counter is young, with a poorly drawn fairy tattoo peeking out from underneath her sleeve. I smile as I walk over to her.

“I just need a room for the night,” I say, flashing a grin. “When’s checkout?”

“Noon. Let me see if we have anything, though… yep, looks good. Okay, ID, please?”

I make a show over looking in my wallet, frowning. “Huh. I must have left it at the bar last night when I got carded.”

“Sorry, I can’t—”

“I can pay cash,” I say, waving my hand at her as if our whole conversation is silly. “I’m not going back out in that storm. It’s crazy out there.”

The clerk looks at me for a moment, as if she isn’t certain. Her eyes fall from my face to my clothes, down to the red shoes. I can see her assessing me: I’m put together. Polished. Nonthreatening. And I’ve got a handful of bills that it doesn’t look as if I stole. She smiles and nods.

“All right—name?”

“Ginny Reynolds.” I give Lucas and Ella’s surname at the last instant—I don’t think my mom is looking for me, and certainly not in Kentucky, but still. I hand over a hundred dollars for the room and tell the clerk to keep the change. The clerk opens her mouth as if she intends to argue, but it’s purely for show. I can see her reflection in the elevator doors as I walk away; she pockets the entire amount. Just as well. I try not to be pleased with myself, but I can’t help grinning when I get into the elevator. I can’t wait to tell Kai this story someday, a thought I hold tightly in my mind so it doesn’t slip away to the memory of Mora taking his hand, of them running away together. To the thought of a future where Kai doesn’t care about me, much less my stories.

The hotel room is simple and clean, with abstract art on the walls and a white bedspread. I start the coffeemaker and turn the television on to some decorating show, the type of thing that’s better for background noise than entertainment value. The sound of traffic outside is muted by the air conditioner, making the room blissfully peaceful; I lie back on the bed and close my eyes. Only a few hours, I tell myself. Then you’re back to it. I fall asleep.

* * *

Outside the penthouse windows, the storm heightened, turning roads and buildings and trees into a milky- white wonderland. Mora closed her eyes and willed the snow to increase now that they were in for the evening; impressive as her powers were, they couldn’t help her car drive through feet of snow. It was best to find a place to stay, then bury the city in a blizzard, making whatever distance was between her and her pursuer impassable.

Pursuer. Ha. She was a child. Yet Mora was darkly impressed by Ginny, truth be told—she seemed so flimsy, so breakable back in Atlanta. Of course, all mortals looked flimsy to her now. Besides, she wasn’t afraid of Ginny—she was afraid of what might be following Ginny.

Relax, Mora told herself. The Fenris would probably devour Ginny before they could follow her to you. Self-control isn’t their strong point. Still, she worried. After taking so many precautions to keep the Fenris away, it was infuriating to think that a foolish mortal girl might lead them straight to her. She may have underestimated Ginny and her willpower, but she never, ever underestimated the Fenris.

“Shouldn’t we have taken Michael’s body?” Kai asked, his back propped against the headboard on the other side of the bed. Mora sighed, pulled the sheets up around her chest, and glared at Kai for ruining the mood. Larson was sitting in an armchair in front of a room service tray of untouched wine and strawberries. Perhaps I should have spent the evening with him instead, Mora thought, looking his way.

“Mora? Should we go back for his body?” Kai asked again, like a child pestering his parent. He looked over at her, found her hand under the blanket, and clasped it.

“No,” Mora finally answered. “Michael is gone. There’s no point.” Besides, she thought, maybe now I’ll just keep Edward. Typically, six guards was all she could manage—any more and they didn’t love her enough, weren’t devoted. Edward had always been tricky to control; his memories were strong, constantly trying to surge up and reclaim his mind—she never took him out on excursions like this for that reason. The challenge had always been part of his appeal, really.

“How did Larson and Michael learn to change like they did? To become wolves?” Kai asked, sliding down till his hair spilled across the white hotel pillows like blackened vines.

“How did you learn to breathe?” Mora answered. She pulled her hand from Kai’s, reaching onto the nightstand for her jewelry. “It just happens. All my guards can do it.” She met Larson’s eyes as she tilted her chin to put the chain of a sapphire necklace around her neck, and they smiled at each other.

“You make it happen?” Kai asked.

“In a manner of speaking,” Mora said. “I helped them become like me. Men like me become wolves.”

“Does that make them Fenris? The things that killed your sister?” There was caution in Kai’s voice now, fear, even.

“Not quite,” Mora said. “The Fenris are monsters. Horrible things, entirely soulless. But men like you, Kai, you become warriors. My protectors. You become beautiful, so much more beautiful than you’d ever have been as a mortal thing. Talented and fierce and loyal. Perfect.”

This seemed to satiate Kai; he stared at the ceiling, looking pleased. Mora always let her guards think they were her only salvation from the Fenris, and perhaps it was even true sometimes. But she’d escaped the Fenris all on her own the first time, another memory that was always affixed firmly in the forefront of her mind, reminding her she was stronger than them.

Even so, she was a Fenris once, a member of their pack. Back then, Mora couldn’t remember her life as an ocean girl, much less her life as a human. Then one day the boy from her past appeared. It was all by accident, of course, and he was older—almost gray. She hardly noticed the change in his hair color, though, just as he hardly noticed that she was pale, her eyes dark, her face beautiful in a dangerous, smooth way. He ran to her and kissed her the way he used to, and with his lips came the memories, rushing back through her, colliding with one another in her mind. Her life as a human girl, her life as an ocean girl, the realization of what she was now—

Mora closed her eyes and remembered how sweet his touch felt, how she was at home in his arms. She fought a certain memory, though, the one of seeing a ring on his finger, a solid gold band that bound him to another.

“What’s her name?” Mora asked. Her voice was strangled and not her own.

“Celia,” he said. “Her name is Celia. We have five boys and a baby on the way. You were gone. I waited, but you were gone, Madeline.”

Madeline. Her old name, her human name. In the ocean, she’d been Ry; as a human, she’d been Madeline, and now she was…

Now she was nothing.

“I would have waited,” she told him. “I would have waited forever.”

“It’s been twenty-three years,” he said, voice hard now, betrayed. “And you still look… you still look like you’re seventeen.” He seemed to realize this all of a sudden, looking down at his own hands to verify the wrinkles that were just starting to form around his knuckles. “Am I losing my mind? What’s going on?”

“I would have waited,” Mora said, mind reeling. It felt like waking up from a dream, only to find herself in a nightmare. “I loved you. I still love you.”

He choked on words and shook his head. “I love you, too. But I also love someone else now. I have a life. I don’t understand what’s happening, Madeline—”

“My name isn’t Madeline,” she said sharply. “Not anymore.”

She turned and ran. Away from him, away from the Fenris, into the arms of her ghost memories, remnants from her life as Madeline, as Ry. She went to the ocean to see if she could return home