Cold Spell

from the ice, is gone. I didn’t want to be running again, didn’t want to be the prey. How many of them are there, watching me? Is Mora with them? Is Kai?

I can’t be still too long; they’ll realize I’ve figured it out. Wait for your moment, Flannery’s voice reminds me. Let them lead; wait till you know where they are. How many of them there are. I fold my arms now, but only so I can swap the knife between hands every few moments, keeping them in the dark as to which hand it’s in.

It’s hard to keep my pace—something alive and screaming in my chest begs me to run, but I keep moving steadily. The haze of sunlight that made it through the clouds earlier is being swallowed by the gray. I’m just over mourning its absence when it starts to snow. Lightly, compared with yesterday, but flakes are falling, spiraling down to my lashes, forcing me to blink them away, my heart stopping for the flicker of a moment that I can’t see.

My feet hurt, my lungs hurt, and my fingers hurt. I feel that I might shatter like glass if I were to fall down. The noises in the trees grow louder, more frequent. Every now and then I can’t stop myself from whirling around, certain I’ll see glowing eyes, but they stay hidden as I start uphill, toward the center of the island.

By the time the ground flattens out I feel beaten, exhausted—the high from my fear is wearing off, and raw emotion is brewing in my chest. I haven’t heard them in a little while; I stop, turn around, and listen carefully. Where are they? It’s snowing harder now, thick enough that I’m wary of the branches waving back and forth above me. I hug my arms to my chest, shiver, and spin around—

And there they are.

Four boys—men? Boys—standing in front of me. Their eyes and chins are sharp, and they’re wearing T- shirts but look comfortable in the cold.

And they’re smiling.

“Are you lost?” one asks. His voice is low, as if it’s coming from the back of his throat and rarely used. Over his right shoulder is a house, cottage-like and made of stone. I can’t tell if it looks abandoned or not—there’s nothing broken about it, but there are no lights. There’s no movement, either, and the flower boxes that line the windows are empty.

“Miss,” another says, and the way he hisses the s makes my skin crawl. This one has blond hair, so blond it’s nearly white, and I realize I recognize him—the opera singer, Larson. If not for the hair, I wouldn’t know him. In the photo I saw, he looked happy. Here he looks hungry, eyes low, cheekbones jutting out as if they were carved.

“I’m looking for someone,” I manage.

“Here?” say the first boy, the one with dark hair. “There’s no one here.”

“A boy,” I say. “I need to see him.”

This seems to throw them a little—their eyes flicker to one another. They say something I don’t understand in the glance.

“Why do you think he’s here?” another one asks. This one is older than the others, but still handsome; the silver in his hair matches the sky.

“He came here with a woman,” I say. Swallow. “He came here with the Snow Queen.”

“The Snow Queen?” Larson says, sounding amused. “She’ll like that title, won’t she, boys?” They rumble in agreement. “We can take you to her.”

“Yes,” I say immediately.

“But she’ll kill you.”

They expect this to shock me, and when it doesn’t, they look at one another again, thrown. They wanted me afraid. I remember the beasts from the car with Lucas, how they licked their lips when I screamed.

“Why is she here?” a new voice asks.

I stop. My knees feel weak; my lungs are melting in my chest.

He walks around the side of the cottage, hands slung in his pockets, and joins the other four. His skin is pale, his eyes black, and he moves with the same still, easy confidence that they do. I should keep my eye on the other four, but I can’t help it. I stare, unsure if the tangle of emotion in my chest is relief or horror.

“Kai,” I finally say, the word slipping out as a whisper.

He meets my eyes and narrows his own. “And who are you?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

I was prepared for him to be a monster; I wasn’t prepared for him to look at me with such icy indifference. His expression is like the other four’s—he doesn’t know me, not the smallest bit. Somewhere, deep in my mind, I expected—no, not expected, wanted—him to see me and remember.

But he’s gone. There’s nothing of my Kai in his eyes, no spark of recognition, much less love.

Can he change into a wolf now? I need to know for sure; I have to know for sure. I need to see him change into a monster.

One of the others is looking from me to Kai, seemingly bored with the entire exchange. That one takes a step closer to me; when I instinctively take one backward, he smiles again.

“So, you’ll be coming with us to see her?” he asks, in a way that tells me the answer he’s hoping for is no. The answer he’s hoping for is pleading, is begging, is fear.

If you don’t have the upper hand, create it.

I take another step back. Their eyebrows lift ever so slightly, a way they don’t think I notice. Another step, and they lean forward, excited. Another, another—

I turn and run.

I hear them shouting, whooping behind me in excitement as I tear down the hill, following the path I came on. Faster, faster, keep moving—are they chasing me yet? I try to listen to know for sure. Yes, yes, they’re crashing along behind me. I can’t outrun them—they know that, and when I glance back, I see they’re hardly even trying. Still human, barely jogging, grinning in a way that makes Flannery’s smile look sweet.

They don’t know, however, that I’m not trying to outrun them.

I wait until I go over the hill, down the slope—just barely out of sight, where the trees are slightly smaller. I hold my breath and slam my body weight into a tree. The cold combined with the impact shoots pain through my bones, but I keep going—I hit another, another. Each time, snow crashes down; the shaking branches incite other branches to fall; powdery snow rises up like dust behind me. I can’t hear the boys anymore over crashing snow and tree limbs—but they can’t see me anymore, either.

I just need one, one good one—yes. I leap for a low-hanging branch. It stirs the tree and sends snow falling to the ground like all the others, but this time I hold on tight, pulling myself up and off the trail. I release and slam forward, falling down a short ravine; I’m bleeding, I think, and my head is foggy, but I grimace and lie still, quiet.

Snow is still falling, but it’s hard to hear the difference between the ruckus I created and five pairs of feet running after me. They’re moving faster now—they realize they’ve lost me. I squeeze my eyes shut as they near my hiding place; if just one looks to the left, he’ll see my red shirt, I’m sure of it.

But no. It works. They pass by the ravine without a second glance, following my old trail—the raccoon trick Lucas told me about. I raise up just in time to see the backs of their heads disappearing. Human heads—they didn’t change. Does that mean Kai can’t yet?

I rise, find my own trail, and follow along behind them, crouching down low in the snow. When we’re back by the frozen lake, they stop and stare out over the ice. They’ve lost my trail; they don’t know what to do. They mill around, something of the wolf in the way they pace back and forth at the lake’s edge.

They spread out along the shore, eyes on the rocky ground, scouring it for any sign of me—I could be circling back around to the shore. The older one in the center, at the mouth of my trail. Larson goes to his left, and Kai to his far left. I step into a thicket of snow, cringing when it comes all the way to my knees. When I look down, I see spots of blood in the white—my knee is bleeding from where I hit the ravine.

I cut along sideways through the woods, slowly, slowly so I don’t make a sound. I finally make it over to the