Pamela grabbed my hand holding the lighter, sparing me from setting my sleeve on fire in the two-inch flame. I jerked away from her, embarrassed and irritated. Squinting, I examined the side of the lighter in the glare of the halogen lights, finding a slider switch to decrease the length of the flame. By the time I looked for the next frost moth, Summer had already dispatched them all.
“Took her long enough,” Summer said, speaking to Pamela as if I didn’t exist. She glanced at Jamie, then away, but not fast enough to hide the telling dilation of her pupils and the hunger I’d witnessed earlier. This time I recognized it.
Would you look at that? Summer is attracted to Jamie. I widened my stance, prepared to tackle the other woman.
“Are you sure it’s safe for her to be out here? For her and us?” Summer asked.
My spine stiffened. I couldn’t stop Summer from being angry with me—maybe I even deserved her hostility—but I drew the line at letting her badmouth me to the inspector. “I got the job done, didn’t I?”
“Madison will be fine,” Pamela said.
“Look at her. One spark and she’d go up.” Summer whipped her hand into my face, snapping her fingers.
I jerked and slapped her hand away, but she’d already danced back. Flushing, I balled my hands into fists.
“She’s not ready for this, any of it,” Summer said, her gesture incorporating the drones in the stadium and Jamie in one sweep. “She should never—”
“Never what, Summer?” Go ahead. Say it so I have a reason to slap you.
The thought jolted through my rage, shattering it. Blinking, I crossed my arms and tried to make sense of my wild emotions.
“She’s a power-grubbing, half-fledged enforcer who’s weaseled—”
“Enough!” Pamela didn’t raise her voice, but her tone cut through Summer’s diatribe as if she had shouted. “That’s the frost moths talking, and you should know better.”
That’s right: The frost moth’s bite stole rationality and patience and similar cool-headed emotions. I hadn’t expected it to affect me so quickly, and my combustible reaction didn’t bode well for the rest of the night. Nor did Summer’s.
She met the inspector’s steely gaze with a hot glare, then spun on her heel and stalked away. Planting her hands on her thighs, she stared at the ground, her long braid hanging over her shoulder. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what she said. Probably just as well.
“That was enlightening,” Pamela said to no one in particular.
“Was Jamie in danger?” I demanded.
“From an atrum creature? You’re asking the wrong question, Madison. A frost moth can’t hurt a pooka, but a pooka who’s not in control of his emotions would be a danger to us all.” She had the gall to look Jamie in the eye when she spoke.
The pooka’s expression flattened. The shifting energies of his soul remained calm, but his eyes held a maturity not usually present. It reminded me that even though he’d risen from the ground only five days ago, he had been incubating for decades, aware of the world above him long before he’d become a part of it.
Then the moment passed, and he was just Jamie again, just my pooka. Mine to protect and guide.
“I see,” I said, because Pamela seemed to be waiting for a response.
“I hope so.”
She turned away, calling to Summer, and I took the moment to squeeze Jamie’s hand. His lips curled in a faint smile that barely formed before dissolving.
“I don’t know what you two have between you, and I don’t care,” Pamela said as Summer rejoined us. “I expect you both to act like professionals, frost moths or no frost moths. Am I clear?”
“Yes, Pamela,” Summer and I said in unison. For the first time since I’d arrived on the high school grounds, I felt like a child again, and I didn’t like it one bit.
“Good. The drones don’t appear to be going anywhere, so let’s take out as many frost moths as we can in the next ten minutes; then we’ll head into the stadium.”
Pamela tasked me with the stragglers around the restroom while she and Summer took on the bulk of the frost moths circling the crowds. When Pamela drew close to the concession stand line, where a handful of frost moths fed, she flared a lux lucis net two feet around her hand, swept it in a wave, and captured three moths at once. Lighter at the ready, she shrank all three in half the time it’d taken me to kill one. She even managed to turn her body so her torso hid the frosty explosion of their deaths from the majority of nearby norms.
She did it all without breaking her stride.
Val was right: Pamela was a badass. She might even be as strong as he had claimed. Summer wasn’t too shabby either, though she had to stop to make each kill.
When Pamela turned to check on me, I jumped and jogged toward the nearest frost moth, Jamie trailing behind me. Creating a lux lucis net proved much easier with practice—and with no one watching.
“Cute,” Jamie said when I proudly displayed the grapefruit-size net I’d made on my first attempt.
“Cute? Way to take the wind out of a girl’s sails.”
He grinned.
Two frost moths spotted Jamie at the same time and coasted in on snowflake wings. I swiped for both, catching one.
The world tilted toward my palm as my brain tried to compensate for the sensation of a foreign body squirming inside my soul. When the moth sank fangs into me, a wave of toasty warmth chased the initial chill. Bringing the lighter to bear, I shrank the moth before it could mess with my emotions. The wings and body decreased to the size of true snowflakes and I pulsed lux lucis through the moth’s atrum body, exploding it.
Ha! Take that, Summer. I might be the newest enforcer on the block, but I learned fast.
“Is it getting hot?” Jamie asked.
I whirled toward the pooka. The second frost moth clung to his forehead like a mutant horn, and the flap of its growing wings blew strands of my hair into my open mouth.
“Shoo! Get away!” I batted my hand at the moth—through the moth. I forgot to form a net. I forgot the moth wasn’t solid and wouldn’t be scared of my flapping arms. I panicked.
Jamie giggled and feathered his fingers along the moth’s wings.
“Scare it off, Jamie. We can’t let it feed on you.”
“I only let it have a few bites. Just nibbles. To warm up. But now I’m hot. I think I should change. I’ve got on too many layers.”
“No! Give me a minute.” I fumbled to create a net, spewing energy and turning my hand into a strobe light in my haste. Both caused Jamie to giggle harder.
“You could help,” I said.
He tilted his head, his whirling eyes peering through a crystalline wing. “You should see the world like this. It’s psychedelic.”
My brain finally kicked in, and I lifted the lighter toward the frost moth. The lure of a pooka’s tasty soul couldn’t compete with the threat of heat, and it fluttered skyward. I was ready when it swooped back for a second feeding, having finally managed a moderate net, and I swiped the moth from the air as Jamie reached for it. The world spun on the fulcrum of my arm, and Jamie and I collided. I closed my eyes, swallowing hard to quell a burst of nausea. The frost moth sank tiny teeth into my forearm, and heat banished fledgling goose bumps.
I opened my eyes, surprised to find myself propped against Jamie, and shifted the trapped moth away from him. Raising my lighter, I— My gloved fingers clutched nothing but air.
Searching the ground, I spotted the slender weapon several feet away. When I took a step toward it, Jamie stumbled with me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders.
“Jamie?”
“I really glad I bonded with you,” he said from too close, his grin sloppy.
“Me too.”
The moth fed. Despite holding my arm stiff in front of me, its large snowflake wings slid icy fingers through my head and shoulders each time it flapped. The alternating heat of the furnace warming inside me and the intense cold of the wings made my head swim.
“Let go, Jamie. I need to get the lighter.” I pumped lux lucis into the moth to slow its growth. It didn’t work. Until I could shrink it, pure lux lucis wouldn’t affect it.
Jamie wobbled on unsteady legs, but I didn’t have time to spare for his aberrant balance issues. Dragging him with me, I staggered toward the lighter.
“No, I’m really, really glad I picked you. You’re, like, the best. You’re nice.”
I twisted to look at Jamie and his goofy grin. What had gotten into him? He had allowed the moth to feed, but he looked happier than ever, not angry.
When I bent to pick up the lighter, Jamie slid off my shoulder and collapsed to the ground beside me, rolling slowly onto his back, his movements hindered by his breathless giggles. I clicked the trigger of the lighter and shoved it at the frost moth, locking my legs so I didn’t land on my butt next to Jamie. The moth quivered in my trap but continued to feed even as its wings shrank.
“I should change.” Jamie unwound the scarf from his neck and discarded it on the pavement, then dropped his beanie on top of it.
“Hang on. That’s a bad idea.” Distracted by my own wooziness, I tried to form a logical argument, incredibly proud when I came up with, “You’d freeze.”
“But that bush wants me to pee on it.”
I snorted, then giggled. Picturing the shrub pleading to be urinated on sent me over the edge, and I laughed so hard my knees buckled. Crumpling next to Jamie, I remembered at the last second to keep the lighter away from my arm. Just because I couldn’t see the flame in Primordium didn’t mean it wouldn’t burn me.
Come on, moth, die already. Its wings shrank to saucers, then smaller, and I shoved a hearty wallop of lux lucis through the tiny moth body, exploding it and setting my hand glowing like a flare.
Leaning back, I stowed the lighter in my pocket and wiggled my fingers, admiring the strength of my lux lucis. Jamie pressed his gloved hand to mine, palm to palm, fingers to fingers. It didn’t surprise me that our hands were the same size; I half suspected Jamie had modeled his human dimensions after mine.
Warm affection swelled within me, filling my chest and making it hard to breathe.
“Thank you for picking me, Jamie,” I said.
“You’re the best.”
I bumped his shoulder affectionately, surprised when the motion set off fresh dizziness. Twisting, I scanned my body for frost moths before remembering it had been the netted moth, not a moth’s bite, that had made me dizzy. I examined my palm, but the net had collapsed with the moth’s death. I checked my other palm just to be sure it hadn’t formed a net while I wasn’t looking, and the thought set off a fresh wave of giggles.
“Can I change now?” Jamie asked, unzipping his jacket.
I put a hand on his arm to stop him, catching myself against the pavement with the other when I misjudged and tipped too far. Straightening, I frowned as my befuddled brain made a long-overdue connection: I felt drunk.
Which made no sense, not even when factoring in a frost moth. Experimentally, I performed the Madison Fox Sobriety Test: Planting a hand beside either hip, I shook my head swiftly back and forth like a woman in extreme denial. I tipped into Jamie, dizzy and giddy.
Oh yeah, I was drunk.
Jamie repeated my sobriety test, knocking himself over. Laughing, he straightened and did it again.
Check that: We were drunk.
The effect must have been wearing off, too, because I started to make more connections. Since I’d never seen Jamie behave like this before, it had to be related to the frost moth. Letting it feed on him hadn’t made Jamie angry or out of control; it’d given him a buzz. And somehow, through the bond, his buzz had passed to me.
I grabbed the pooka’s arm to get his attention.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
“Warm. No, hot. Hungry.”
We had fallen near the back side of the bathroom, but plenty of people were in sight, and more than a few watched us. I’d have kept a wary eye on us, too; we probably looked high or crazy. Likely both.
“Do you still need to pee?”
“Yeah!” He scrambled to his hands and knees, his soul fluctuating.
Audience be damned, I tackled him. Looking crazy was better than people witnessing Jamie’s transmogrification into a dog.
Jamie made a strange sound, half bark, half yelp, and we fell in an uncoordinated tangle. His noise and the absurdity of the situation spurred fresh laughter, sapping the strength from my limbs, and I collapsed on top of him. Jamie shook beneath me, his weird sounds worrying until I realized he was laughing too hard to get a full breath. I cobbled together the strength to roll onto my back, and Jamie flopped over next to me on the dirty pavement. Swiping tears from my cheeks, I blinked to clear my vision—and my stomach sank to my toes.
Pamela stood at our feet, arms crossed, expression sour.
6
Led Astray by Good Intentions
My eyes darted to Jamie, and my heart started beating again when I confirmed he was still human.
“What is going on here?” Pamela demanded.
“We were, ah . . .” I fumbled for an explanation, my thoughts log-jammed behind a wall of inappropriate amusement and alarm. “A frost moth . . . I killed it, but not before it had a tiny snack on Jamie.”
“I see.” Her tone should have frozen me to the pavement.
“I need to pee,” Jamie said.
“Right. Okay. See that sign of the person with straight legs. That’s the men’s restroom. Don’t go in the one with the person wearing the triangular cape. That’s the women’s restroom.” I was babbling, but it was better than looking at Pamela. After scrambling to my feet, I helped Jamie to his, then sent him on his way with a nudge to his back.
“You are dangerously close to your pooka, and too lenient,” Pamela said the moment he scampered out of earshot. “Form a net over your heart.”
I straightened from brushing grit off my jeans, trying not to show my dismay. “You want to do another purity test? Here?” Glancing around, I saw we were essentially alone, the few nearby people preoccupied with each other and their phones.
“Now.”
It took four tries before I formed a net over my heart, and the moment I did, Pamela shoved her hands into it. I locked my knees, flinching with each pulse of the inspector’s lux lucis sifting through me. After an unbearable thirteen seconds, she snapped her hands free of my net and clapped them.
“You’re clean. For now. But you’re on a slippery slope. As far as I can tell, you haven’t a thimble of control over the pooka. If you keep to your current course, you’ll lose him, and you’ll lose yourself right along with him.”
“I’m doing my best—”
“You’re floundering.”
The truth silenced me. I understood my responsibility to Jamie—to teach him to be solidly good, purely lux lucis—but reaching that goal was akin to driving blindfolded. I didn’t know which route or actions led toward my goal and which led to disaster. The only thing I’d decided on was not to rush.
“The pooka is part of why the triumvirate chose me for this assignment. I once worked a region alongside a bonded enforcer.”
“You did?” Surprise added volume to my voice.
“I was an enforcer at the time and was transferred to the territory to assist while the resident enforcer brought his pooka in line. I spent a lot of time with those two, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that you’re doing everything wrong.”
I swallowed my knee-jerk denial.
“You need to be much firmer with your pooka. They respond to authority, not coddling. If you don’t take charge, that pooka is going to go dark, and he’ll drag you down with him. The only way he’s going to learn what’s right is if you train him.”
“That’s what I’m doing.” I checked the restroom, thankful Jamie wasn’t close enough to hear this.
“It looked to me like you were rolling around, playing hanky-panky with him.”
Hanky-panky?
With Jamie? Gross. “That’s not at all—”
“And what are you calling that spectacle with the imps?”
“I took care of them.”
“That’s right: You took care of the imps. You, not him. He should be protecting you, not buddying up to evil creatures. More to the point, he should never use atrum. If unexercised, his atrum will atrophy, just as the more he uses lux lucis, the stronger his good side will become. Ultimately, that’s the only way to change him into a creature of good. But that will happen only if you set him on the proper course—starting with no longer allowing him to use atrum.” Pamela placed a hand on each of my shoulders, her expression earnest. “I’m worried for you, Madison. I don’t want you or the pooka to turn to atrum. I’ve seen it happen, and it’s not pretty.”
She released me, studying my face. “You’re making a mistake, seeing him as human. Jamie is not like you or me. He doesn’t need a peer or a friend. He needs you to lead, to command. From where I’m standing, it looks like he’s calling the shots. That’s a recipe for disaster.”
I swallowed hard. Pamela was wrong: I didn’t see Jamie as a human; he was so much more, including a friend. Despite all the warnings I’d been given about not getting too close to him, in less than a week Jamie had wormed his way into my heart. I’d sworn I wouldn’t let it affect the way I interacted with him, but of course it had. Dismay hollowed my stomach at the realization I might be wrecking Jamie’s chance to evolve into a good pooka.
“So I need to be stricter?”
“Set rules and boundaries. He’s too powerful to run as wild as he does.”
A Fistful of Frost Page 7