Cold Fire: A Paranormal Novel

by Shaye Easton

  At the end of lunch, I’m heading off to my next class when someone grabs my elbow. I turn around.

  “Melissa,” Caden says. He opens his mouth, about to ask the question I know is on his tongue, but it never comes out.

  “I’m fine, Caden,” I tell him. “Just give me time.”

  He’s looking into my eyes, hopelessly trying to read me. But he won’t find anything. Today I am unreadable because there’s nothing to read when you feel hollowed out, a shell of the person you once were. I was never much to begin with—I didn’t have the hobbies, the friends, the interests that most people do, the things that people use to define and categorise themselves, to bring themselves to life. My life was devoted to getting through the day, to moving from city to city to keep my disease from freezing the world around me. There was no time for anything else.

  And now, whatever scraps of identity I did possess have been shredded. I’m a spectre. Caden said it didn’t mean ghost, but that’s how it feels. I’m a ghost, trapped on earth, possessing someone else’s life. Everything I’ve ever done has just been one terrible haunting.

  “Just . . . be safe, okay?” he tells me. “Keep an eye out. Don’t do anything—”

  “Stupid, yeah, I got it.”

  “I was going to say irresponsible.”

  “Because that’s so much better.”

  He has no reply to that. Gotcha, I think dryly. But it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. Stay safe? He told me himself that my disease was going to kill me in a couple of years.

  “I’ll see you around,” I tell him, and head off down the hall. I can feel his eyes burning into my back even after I’ve disappeared into the crowd, even after I’ve rounded corner after corner and slipped into my classroom. In class, I turn around in my seat, expecting him to be behind me. The kid who is behind gives me a What the fuck are you looking at? face. Perfect.

  I haven’t been able to pay attention to a single thing in any of my classes, and this period is no different. Words swirl through the air, blink at me from the whiteboard. They may as well be in a different language.

  I spot Kira and Evan sitting in the second row, both with their heads in their work. As if she can sense me watching her, Kira tucks her short hair behind one ear and looks over her shoulder. Our eyes meet for a brief second and she smiles before returning to her work. And all I can think is, Why now? I’ve been at the school for months, and only now they choose to be kind to me? Where were they all those times people shoved me around in the halls, swiped my books off my desk, graffitied my locker, and shouted insults from across rooms and corridors and courtyards? Why did they never step in?

  At last, Kira had said. The Ice Queen has come down from her castle.

  It’s not like people haven’t tried, Melissa, Lauren told me. You just push everyone away.

  And it dawns on me. It wasn’t that people weren’t ever nice to me; it was that I ignored them when they were. I built myself a prison of ice and then wondered why I never felt the warmth of the sun. It’s my own damn fault.

  ***

  A week later, and things are much the same. I sit with Lauren at lunch and avoid Caden—when he shows, that is—and try to focus exclusively on my classes. But the things Caden said are always there; it’s the gloomy afternoon and they’re the storm in my peripheral vision.

  During my final class, I find myself staring at the clock, tapping the desk in time with the seconds. I don’t know why I suddenly feel so impatient, so desperate to get out of here. I have nothing to look forward to back home.

  And then, ten minutes before the bell is due to ring, something unbelievable happens. I’m staring at the second hand when someone shouts, “Look! Outside, look!”

  Talking stops, heads rise, and there’s a collective gasp.

  Out the window, the dark clouds that have been threatening rain all day have finally opened their floodgates. But it’s not water that falls from the heavens.

  It’s snow.

  Even the teacher is pulled up short, his speech dying on his lips as he stares in awe. This is Corven Lake. It doesn’t snow here.

  At least, it didn’t before me.

  The snow spirals down gently, landing upon the cool earth where it melts into puddles. Everyone has crowded around the windows to watch it, sticking out their hands to feel it on their skin. Behind them, the teacher looks at the clock and sighs. Eight minutes to the bell. I suppose he decides they won’t be getting any more work done today anyway, because he says, “Alright. Everyone gets an early mark.”

  Immediately there’s cheering. People abandon their windows and rush for the door, too excited to stop for their books.

  “You can thank the snow,” the teacher says, quieter, astonished. And when his eyes turn to me, still seated at my desk, I can hear the words he isn’t speaking.

  You can thank her.

  I can’t stay here. I get up, grabbing my books. Kira taps my desk on the way out the door. “Come on,” she says, smiling widely. “You’re gonna miss it.”

  Unlikely, I think as I follow her out, down the hall. My steps are slow and lethargic. There’s no rush. I’ve been through this a million times. Once the snow arrives, it doesn’t leave until I do.

  I round the corner and find the nearest exit. I can see everyone through the doorway, spinning around, heads back, hands in the air. Dumping my books in the hall, I step out into the snow.

  It’s a flurry of excitement. There’s people everywhere, spinning across the grounds, shouting into the air. And I’m forgotten.

  And maybe I should be happy about the fact that my disease has brought something other than pain. But I know how this goes—I’ve watched it unfold again and again. It may be all big smiles and bright voices now, but soon the snow will become a nuisance. It’ll coat the town, drip from the trees, turn the grass into mush. Then it’ll grow heavy. It’ll become blizzards and icy roads and people trapped in their homes because there’s three feet of snow packed against their doors.

  Every new place I move to, every new home, is a new story.

  And this is how the story ends.

  My hair is full of snow. It melts into the shoulders and sleeves of my uniform. But when I extend a hand, it just stays there. It doesn’t melt. It doesn’t lose its shape. My freezing skin keeps it perfectly preserved. I wipe it all off.

  When I look back up, the ghost is standing across the street, a grey apparition blurring with the snow falling around it. The cold washes over me and I freeze. I’m a statue, frozen to the core. It’s watching me.

  Go away, I tell it. It’s standing a fair distance away, but I can still see its dark, bottomless eyes. I stare them down. Leave me alone.

  But it doesn’t leave, and neither does the cold. The ghost starts across the street, taking strides that don’t quite line up with how fast it moves. I don’t move. I can’t move.

  And then the bell rings, a screeching toll that mixes with the thumping of my heart. It snaps me out of my stupor, enough to let me fling a look back at the school. Somehow I’ve walked halfway to the front gate, but I don’t remember moving.

  I turn back around but the cold is gone. And the ghost is gone with it, almost as if it were never there.

  ***

  The next several days—wet, windy, Caden-less—I carry around the gut feeling that Caden was wrong. The ghost was never here for him. It’s always been here for me.

  And sure, it only showed up after I met Caden. But if everything he has told me is true, then I am living in the eye of a storm, and all sides are drawing in tighter around me. Spectres and ghosts. Overwalkers and underwalkers. I am being converged on, and suddenly I recognise that it isn’t my disease I’ve been running from my whole life—it’s been them: this world of paranormal abilities and rivalling bloodlines and prophecies. Someday soon, this whole preternatural storm is going to blow right over my head and engulf me. This ghost is merely the first dark cloud to touch my horizon.

  On Wednesday, when Caden finally de
cides to show, I ambush him on his way to first period.

  “It’s after me,” I say. Around us, the hallways are growing more and more deserted with every second as students slip into classrooms. But still, I keep my voice low.

  He blinks, the overhead fluorescents casting harsh shadows in the hollows of his eyes. “What is?”

  “The ghost. You were wrong. It’s not here for you.”

  A flicker of surprise passes over his face and flits away, knocked aside with a sigh. “I told you to be safe, not paranoid.”

  “Caden, it makes sense!” I whisper-yell. “First I run into the ghost. Then I’m chased by a man with flaming eyes—”

  “A pyrokinetic.”

  “And then,” I continue, ignoring him, “I’m attacked in my home. They know who I am, Caden, and they know where I am. I know you’ve been trying to keep my identity hidden, but they already know. They’ve always known.”

  He steps back, and his mask of personas drops to the shiny vinyl floor. The real Caden Coleridge fills in the gaps left behind. But his unsettling yet captivating demeanour has lost its edge, softened with resignation. “Yes, I know that,” he says, his revelation falling from his mouth like a stone, falling flat, falling hard, and cracking through the swirl of my thoughts.

  “You do?”

  “Of course. I can put two and two together. The important thing is that the ghost doesn’t figure out who I am.”

  “So this whole time you’ve been lying to me. You knew it was here for me and not you.”

  He shrugs. “I didn’t want to freak you out.”

  I take a deep breath, struggling to keep my simmering anger contained. “You know,” I say finally, straining to keep my voice calm, “sometimes I find myself thinking you’re actually decent company to keep. And then you go and say stuff like that and fuck it all up.”

  “What’s wrong with what I said?” and it really is confusion, genuine confusion, pinching his eyebrows together.

  I’m not sure if it makes me more or less angry. “I’m not a child to be coddled!”

  “Well, technically—”

  “So help me Lord, if you quote the legal age right now—”

  “—you’re not eighteen yet so—ouch!”

  I whack him with my pencil case. “I warned you.”

  “Melissa, it was never about coddling you. We just couldn’t risk scaring you off.”

  “We?”

  “Overwalkers,” he replies nonchalantly, a beat too slow.

  I raise an eyebrow. “You’re not telling me something.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “I never said you were lying. I said you’re not telling me something. There’s a difference.”

  He looks away, running a hand through his hair. “Goddammit,” he mutters, “I’m gonna get in so much shit for this.”

  “And so you should.”

  “Come on.” He leads me into an empty classroom and closes the door behind us. Then, one by one, he draws all of the blinds shut.

  “Is that really necessary?”

  The day is already dark with clouds, so with all the blinds drawn, the room is close to pitch black. The only light leaks in through the square porthole in the door. I stumble forward, banging my thigh against the corner of a desk. Meanwhile, Caden slips between them like his eyes are equipped with night vision, eventually stopping before me.

  “It is,” he replies, and the light from the hallway is reflected in his dark eyes. “You never know when someone could be watching.”

  “Now you sound paranoid.”

  “It’s important I limit the amount of times we’re seen together.”

  “Why?”

  “I already explained that,” he answers dismissively.

  “You don’t want them to know who you are, sure. But why?”

  “Because it’s part of the job description.”

  I blink at him. “The what?”

  “Overwalkers have a ruling body,” he explains. “It’s called the Ring. They have laws, just like any human government, and they keep all overwalkers in line, and safe, through representatives. These representatives are called Summoners. My father is one of them, so is Rand.”

  “What does any of this have to do with you?”

  “I’m a Summoner too, Melissa.” If the conversation was darkness, then these words are bright sparks of light, disorienting me. “And you’re my current assignment.”

  I shake my head. “No,” I say. “You’re bullshitting. You’re making this up!”

  “Come on, don’t be simple. Some guy you’ve never seen before starts watching you, starts talking to you? What did you think this was, Melissa?”

  “I don’t know,” I snap. I hadn’t meant for it to come out that way, but now that it has there’s no stopping my anger from expanding, first past my skin, then out into the air. I feel it consume the room. I throw up both hands. “I don’t know!”

  “You were my objective.”

  I just press my lips together and stare, blinking to keep the emotion from my eyes, nails biting the flesh of my palms.

  “My orders were simple,” he continues coldly. “Gauge your ability to process fantastical truths and your method of processing them. Keep my mouth shut about the things you don’t know until I’m given the go ahead. Keep my distance and my identity a secret. Channel all my energy into keeping you away from advancing underwalkers. Protect you—”

  “Protect me?” I nearly laugh. “Where were you when I was attacked in my home and nearly strangled to death? When I smashed a window in science and got sliced and diced by glass? News flash, ghost boy, you don’t protect me for shit. I protect myself.”

  “Keeping my distance is protecting you. It’s protecting all of us.”

  “How?!”

  “If the underwalkers discover who I am, if they realise we’ve brought you on board, they could start a war. They could start the war.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Melissa, the way you grew up, separated from all this—you’re like treasure in international waters. You never became an underwalker or an overwalker. You’re the only spectre in history to be born without a side to stand on. Which means you’re up for grabs. If you’re really the girl from the prophecy—and both sides seem to think you are—then you won’t just be the one to end the war. You’ll be the one to start it.”

  I’m shaking my head, unable to believe him. “I don’t understand.”

  “Think about it. At the moment, you’re an impartial third. The overwalkers want to recruit you because of who you are. The underwalkers would happily do the same, or take you out of play if that doesn’t work out. But if they can’t do either—if we get to you first—they’ll use that as an excuse to retaliate. The Ring’s entire strategy was to bring you on board without their knowledge, because if that fails, if they realise we got to you first…” he swallows. “They’ll use you as an excuse to start a war.”

  The silence is thick between us as his words sink in. Everything he’s said swirls through my brain, but before I can come to terms with all of it, my anger takes over. Their strategy was to bring me on board. Like I’m an object that can be taken and fought over. Like I’m a treasure in international waters. He was a familiar face, a trusted ally when I had none. And all I’ve ever been to him is a task.

  “I told you. We’re not friends,” Caden says, reading me like a book. “I straight up told you. You’re just the job.”

  I know it—on some level, I’ve always known it—but still, it’s like a slap to the face. “Yes, I think you’ve made that pretty clear,” I reply, and my voice is cold and jagged as ice. “And I take great pleasure in knowing you failed, because the absolute last thing I ever want is to join you and your Ring.”

  “Melissa, please, before you—”

  He reaches out with a hand that I slap away. I’m pretty sure I burn him but I don’t care. I’m looking at him, and it’s as if I’ve been looking at a ghost this entire time. The C
aden Coleridge I know isn’t real, not even underneath all the personas. He never was.

  Neither are you, a voice reminds me. Melissa Croft is a lie.

  I shove it down into the depths of my mind.

  “Leave me alone,” I growl and leave him in the dark.

  Chapter Seventeen

  In the dream, I’m back at the spot from my vision—the same road, the same van parked out front, the same complex with a camouflaged side door. It’s the same man as well, dressed in his black suit, stepping out of the door, walking down the lane. The lane is buried in snow but Black Suit moves through it with ease.

  “What news do you have for me?”

  Newman, with his burnt face, approaches from the van. “She didn’t go for it. We missed our chance.”

  “Then what is she doing here?”

  They both turn in my direction, eyes fixed on me curiously like I’m an oddity in a gallery. Newman tilts his head to one side and frowns.

  “Don’t tell me you thought we couldn’t see you?” Black Suit says. They start taking steps toward me, like predators cornering their prey. I back up.

  “We’ve got you now,” Newman says, smiling, his melted face contorting hideously. “You can’t escape us.”

  “No,” I say, aiming for a scream, but emitting only a whimper. “Leave me alone.”

  “Pick,” Newman snaps, except now he’s Caden, tall and dark-eyed, smiling wickedly. “Choose.”

  “I won’t do it!” My back hits the wall of the complex. I’m trapped.

  Black Suit steps up to me. “There are no overwalkers,” he says, voice low and smooth. “It’s just us.”

  And the two of them step closer, their shadows falling over me, and I’m engulfed in darkness.

  ***

  Saturday morning, I’m walking down the stairs for breakfast when I hear voices coming from the dining room. Two of them are male. Immediately, my mind jumps to outlandish conclusions, and I picture Black Suit sitting at the dining table, convincing my parents to give me up. I stop mid-step, my entire body freezing up.