I feel numb, sitting in the house alone, staring at the flames in the fireplace. I’m not sure what weighs me down more—the fact that Kai got away, or seeing a man, bleeding, naked, and innocent-looking, where a monster had been.
And not just any man. I recognized him, his red hair, his cheekbones. He’s the one from Grandma Dalia’s photo, the one who was at her funeral. I’m so sorry, Grandma Dalia, I think over and over, as if she’ll hear me, forgive me. I didn’t even know his name. Losing him changed Grandma Dalia forever, made her afraid forever, and I don’t even know his name. Did she hide his picture in the back of the book because she wanted to forget him, or because the image was just another reminder that she’d never be able to?
Did she love him? Did she know he became a…
I close my eyes. Don’t think it. Don’t think it.
I lie down on the couch to settle my churning stomach, though the position does little to stop the nausea or the weight of the afternoon from replaying in my head for hours. Could I have done more? I saw him. Kai saw me; he was right there. Am I angrier at him, or myself? Does one of us not love the other enough to overcome Mora’s spell?
It starts to rain—thick, fat drops that make the world feel even more miserable. I love Kai enough. I always thought he loved me enough. Am I wrong? The prospect is crushing, the weight of years and dreams bearing down on me until I feel I’ll crumble. What if I was wrong all along? He doesn’t love me, not the way I love him. Not completely.
And yet here I am, looking for him, wanting him, needing him.
I jump when I hear the door open and realize it’s nearly eight o’clock—my jeans are still soaked from snow, and I haven’t even taken my shoes off. Ella and Lucas walk in, looking tired. Her hair is wet from the storm, and she’s shivering. And Lucas… Lucas is furious.
“You’re all right?” he asks me, voice gentler than the lines on his face. I nod, and he continues. “Ella’s lawyers came in. It was self-defense; they’re not charging her. Naked in this snow, they figure he was some sort of psychopath.”
“But he wasn’t. He was… what was he, exactly?” I ask.
Lucas stops and drops his coat on an end table. It slides off and onto the floor. “I don’t know. It’s not normally like that.” He pauses and watches as Ella slowly crosses the room, lowering herself into a chair as if she’s in some sort of daze. He swallows hard and shakes his head. “You remember the one I hit with the car? They usually just turn into shadows, and… they’re gone.”
“Not this one,” Ella says thickly. “Apparently.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I say, rising and crossing the room. I sit on the coffee table across from her chair. “Ella, he would have killed—”
“I know,” Ella says, smiling weakly. “Pageant training—I’m collected under pressure.” She laughs a little, but it dies in seconds. “I just wasn’t prepared to see a body. I’m not sorry, and I don’t feel guilty, exactly—he would have killed Lucas, then come for you. I just… I just wasn’t prepared. That’s all.” She reaches forward and takes my hand in hers. I almost wince, her fingers are so cold. “Don’t worry,” she says. “We didn’t tell the cops about you. So… no one’s going to come and take you back to Atlanta. You’re safe here.”
I exhale. I hadn’t really thought of that—a foolish oversight, I now realize—and I’m relieved to hear Ella and Lucas did. “Thank you,” I say. “That sounds stupid, it’s not enough—”
“It’s plenty,” Ella says gently. “Besides, if you’re as much like me as I think, you’d just leave again looking for answers.”
“Though I’m beginning to think there are no answers, to be honest,” Lucas says. He sits on the coffee table beside me and props his elbows on his knees. “Whatever her guards are, they’re not Fenris—and so I don’t think she’s one either.”
“So what is she, then?” I ask.
Lucas shrugs. “Scared. She could have killed me, but I got the impression she was afraid to do so. As if she didn’t want to cause a scene—she just wanted to take your boy and go….” Lucas drifts off, as if he doesn’t want to say something aloud. I keep my eyes on him, hard. He inhales. “The black wolf. I saw him before he changed. It’s Larson Davies.”
Ella’s eyes jump up, horror etched across her face. She shakes her head and grabs the arms of the couch as if they’ll hold her to the earth. “Are you sure?”
“Positive,” Lucas says, then turns to me. “And the other was the boy from the photo. Which means…”
I finally allow myself not only to think it, but to say it aloud. “She’s turning boys into wolves. She’ll turn Kai into a wolf.”
It doesn’t sound like my voice—it can’t be my voice. I wouldn’t say something like that, because it couldn’t be true. It couldn’t possibly be true.
“She hasn’t changed him yet, or she’d have used him today. And this means she’s not killing them,” Lucas says encouragingly, though I don’t believe the confidence in his voice. “But… if she’s not a Fenris, what is she?” I ask, voice dull. It’s taking every fiber of my being to not sink into the floor, weighed down with the idea of Kai becoming…
Don’t think about it. Not right now.
“A witch,” Ella suggests.
“I don’t know about witches,” Lucas answers, as if the idea might be a little childish.
“She magically controls the weather. She turns boys into wolves and back again. She keeps them from aging for decades—that red-haired boy should have been ancient. What do you call that?” Ella asks him.
“Fucked up.”
Ella half laughs, with an expression that looks strained. Lucas rises, sits on the arm of the chair, and pulls her head to his chest. I see him shiver against her wet hair, but he doesn’t move away; he lowers his chin and kisses the top of her head. After a long silence, Ella speaks.
“It doesn’t matter what she is. They’re gone. He’s gone.” I look at her, alarmed—not so much at the brutality, but that the words are coming from Ella’s mouth. Romantic, hopeful Ella. Even Lucas looks surprised as she continues. “I’m not saying you should just give up, Ginny. But I looked for my best friend for years. I devoted my life to it. It changed me, it made me hard, it made me bitter. Lucas came along and helped me make sense of myself again but… after all that, I still didn’t get her back.”
“But that’s because she was dead.”
“Exactly. You want to know what Lucas found of Millie? An elbow. That’s it. Monsters don’t give back the things they take, Ella,” she says. “Kai went with her—maybe it’s what he wanted.”
“That’s not like him—”
“I know, I know,” Ella says, shaking her head as if she’s disappointing even herself. “I’m just saying, Ginny, you can’t let the monsters take you, too.” There are tears in the corners of her eyes, and I see she’s gripping Lucas’ hand tightly. I think about the gun, the strength on her face when she shot at the wolf, the fury. How impressive it seemed—and how fleeting. Is that how she lived during the years before she found Lucas? Angry and strong, powerful yet broken?
I’m not sure I can do that.
“Maybe,” I whisper, but as the words leave my lips I think of Kai. Old Kai, Kai who kissed me on the rooftop, Kai who sang songs with me across the courtyard through our open windows. Kai who I love. Kai who I want back.
Kai who walked away from me.
My chest aches as if someone is pressing down on it.
“Come on, Ginny,” Ella says, sniffling as she stands up.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Your jeans are still soaked. They’ll take forever to dry. I can lend you something in the meantime.”
“I brought other clothes,” I say, though it occurs to me that the single change of clothes in my bag is dirty. Based on her reaction to me cooking, I shudder to think at how Ella would respond to me using their washing machine.
“Please,” she says, voice rocky. “I need a distraction. You need a distraction. And sho
pping is a distraction.”
“We’re shopping?”
“Please.”
Ella now looks broken, so I nod. We walk upstairs, through the master bedroom, and into Ella’s closet—it’s enormous, as expected, with track lighting and cedar shelves. She opens up a closet and pulls a few articles of clothing out, laying them over my hands. I can practically see the stress rolling off her, the memory of the man in the snow temporarily masked.
“Okay. Okay,” she says, swallowing hard as if this is a task that requires a lot of focus—and to be honest, it probably does take a degree of concentration to think about dresses instead of shooting a werewolf. “I’ve been meaning to get rid of things. You’re about my size—maybe a little shorter, but you can always get it hemmed,” Ella mumbles, yanking a top off a hanger and studying it.
I frown. “Are you giving me these?” I ask. Ella nods. “Wait, no. I mean… where would I even go in these?” I ask, though I confess, I badly want to try on the lavender dress she’s holding up against herself.
“Wherever you want,” Ella says. “Do you go to concerts? Or prom, maybe… though prom at my high school sucked. Was it decent at yours?” I look down. I wouldn’t know if prom sucks; Kai and I never went to dances, opting to go bowling or to the movies instead. I don’t like to think about what I’ll do if he doesn’t come back….
“You know,” Ella says, studying me, “you can stay here till the snow clears. Or a little longer, if you need. Lucas keeps watch; he knows when they’re in the area.”
I open my mouth to argue, but the words refuse to leave my throat. Kai walked away; Kai might not love me enough after all. But Ella and Lucas? They want me. They have everything I wanted with Kai. I lost one family when Kai left; how stupid would I be to leave another?
Ella walks across the closet to shelves that contain more shoes than I’ve seen outside a department store. They’re all sorts of colors, with pearls and gems and strange fabrics and sky-high heels.
“These you definitely shouldn’t give me. I don’t wear heels,” I warn her.
“Then you should learn,” Ella says, dropping a pair of cherry leather heels into my arms. “I’ll teach you.”
Ella’s back to dresses, dropping a flowery one over my arms. The flowers are roses, big and red, so similar to the ones on the rooftop garden back home that I’d believe Ella if she told me the fabric was modeled after them. I stare at them and ignore Ella bemoaning how many sundresses she owns. I now have to try very hard to remember the feeling of Kai kissing me, of being in his arms. To remember the feeling of certainty, that we belonged to each other.
“Ginny?” Ella asks, and I raise my eyes to her—when did I start crying? “Oh, Ginny,” Ella says, shoving the clothes out of my hands and pulling me close. I haven’t been hugged this tightly in ages, and it makes me choke on my tears, inhaling Ella’s perfume in big gulps.
“Sorry,” I say. “It’s just the roses on that dress, they reminded me—”
“We’ll trash it. I’ll burn it. Or both—we can cut it up, and we’ve got five fireplaces and a barbeque out back—we’ll burn a piece in each one just for good measure.”
She’s trying to help, so I just nod, agree. But as we collect the clothing she’s giving to me, as I make my way to my bedroom, all I can think about is the fact that the dress isn’t the problem. That even when it’s gone, the roses in my head will remain.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I barely sleep, plagued by a fight for my heart. Staying with Lucas and Ella, being happy, being warm, being home. Or going after Kai, the boy who broke my heart. The boy who walked away into the cold. The boy who not only may never want me again, but might get me killed.
The boy who I love.
The roses in my head aren’t going anywhere—the love I have for Kai isn’t going anywhere, no matter what he’s done, no matter if he still wants me or not. Besides—Grandma Dalia never found her boy, and she became… Grandma Dalia. I don’t want that to happen to me, don’t want to be looking over my shoulder, worrying, scared my entire life. I want to be with Kai. I have to go after him.
It’s a decision I feel strong about until the following morning when I hurry downstairs and see Ella. She’s in the kitchen, pulling out flour, sugar, multicolored salts, fancy oils, an entirely different person than the crying girl I saw last night. There’s a stack of cookbooks on the counter beside her that look brand-new, and she’s wearing a bright pink apron.
“What are you doing?” I ask, still sleepy.
“We’re going to cook things!” she chirps.
“… Why?”
“Because you said you like to cook, and I figured you could teach me!” she says. “I got you an apron. You don’t have to wear it, though. Help me find a recipe?”
I take the pink apron from Ella’s hands. It seems so hurtful, so cruel to crush Ella’s happiness by abruptly telling her I can’t stay. She and Lucas have given me so much; I can give her an afternoon, can’t I? I’m stalling—for fear of Mora, of the cold, of whatever painful uncertainty lies ahead—but it’s hard to be sorry about it when I think of Kai walking away from me. Staying a little longer feels like a way to even the scales between me and Kai, even if I’m the only one measuring.
Ella and I sit down at the kitchen table and begin to flip through the various cookbooks together. Many are signed, or written in another language, or involve ingredients that I’m fairly certain even Ella doesn’t have in the pantry, like milk thistle and grapefruit curd. There’s something soothing about paging through the books, though, looking at perfect photos of even more perfect food.
“What about this?” Ella asks, pointing to a page in a dessert book.
“That looks complicated,” I say.
“But do we have all the stuff for it?” She looks over her shoulder at the counter.
“Probably,” I say. It’s a recipe for something called Chocolate Blackout Cake. Baking was never my thing, really, and this one involves a lot of steps for something I’m pretty sure we could make out of a box. Ella is persuasive, though, and twenty minutes later she’s whisking eggs and oil together while I try to figure out if I can substitute some sort of fancy imported cocoa powder for melted chocolate chips.
“So I was wondering,” Ella says, “do you know how to ride a horse?”
“I live in Atlanta,” I say. “Shortage of horses there, except the ones pulling carriages.”
“Because I’ve got four—they aren’t stabled here, but it’s close. We could go ride them while the cake cooks.”
“It only cooks for thirty-five minutes,” I remind her, smiling.
“Is that all? Why aren’t I making these all the time?” she says, whisking so hard that some of the mixture spills out of the bowl. “Well, maybe when we’re done, then. Or tomorrow. Though I was thinking we could go book shopping tomorrow.”
“That sounds fun,” I say, sliding a butter knife across the top of a measuring cup full of cocoa—I figure we’ll just add a little more butter to make up for the substitution. Ella grins and helps me load everything into the mixer.
The cake turns out lopsided, and we’re terrible at sprinkling the garnish around the edges like the picture. Ella is delighted, though, and insists on calling Lucas in to show him.
“We made it!” she says, whisking the top off the cake stand.
“I’m impressed,” Lucas says, kissing her on the cheek. “I mean, you have three degrees, but… a cake…”
“Oh, shut up,” she says. “I’m excited.”
“Clearly,” he jokes, and kisses her again, pulling her close so that her hip bumps his. We eat cake for lunch, so much that by four o’clock, all three of us are lying on our backs on the various couches in their “theater room.”
“Is the ice better today?” I say offhandedly. I can’t stall forever, but I want to ease Ella in to the idea of me leaving.
“Yes,” Lucas says; I see Ella turn her head to him and glare, though I don’t think she knows I catch it.
“I should…” I inhale. “I should go, then. Before Mora and Kai get too far ahead of me.” I speak quickly, as if I’m ripping off a Band-Aid.
“But we’re supposed to go horseback riding tomorrow,” Ella says quickly.
“Yeah, but I can’t….”
“She’s a witch monster thing,” Ella says. “Look, here’s what I’m thinking: We’ll call Lucas’s brother Silas. We’ll pay him and his girlfriend to go run Mora down—they do it all the time.”
“With Fenris, they do it all the time,” Lucas says. “I don’t think they even know about the Snow Queen. And I haven’t been able to get in touch with him anyhow.”
“Okay, but still. They kill werewolves. It’s what they do. And he always calls back eventually.”
“And what if Kai is a wolf by then?” I say quietly. Ella goes silent, and Lucas sighs loudly. “Ella, I can’t just… stay here. I…” I’m almost afraid to say it, especially after yesterday, but I force the sentence out. “I love him.”
“I know you love him. But you dying won’t bring him back. It’ll just mean he’s still a monster, and you’re gone,” she says. “Come on. Just let us call them. And we’ll have a great time tomorrow. Besides—if you don’t stay, I’ll eat the rest of the cake myself.”
“I’ll help,” Lucas says. Ella smiles, but it doesn’t look real—it looks trained, like something she’d give a pageant judge. It looks desperate.
“And besides, Ginny, now that I know I can cook without burning the house down, I want to know how to make something other than chocolate cake. You know what I love? Quiche. Do you know how to make that?” Ella says brightly, sniffling back the last bits of her sadness.
“Sure,” I say, fighting to keep my voice from breaking. I roll over to look at the scar on my hand. “We’ll do one for lunch tomorrow.”
It stops snowing at four in the morning. I know, because I’m still awake, staring at the clock. I feel delirious, drunk with imagined scenes where I punch Mora in her perfect teeth and pull Kai away from her—scenes cut with images of me and Ella horseback riding. Lucas and me driving around town. The three of us sitting at a dinner table together. They want me. I want them. I want this place. I want everything to be simple and beautiful and warm.
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