A Fistful of Frost

by Rebecca Chastain

  “Did I break the bond?” I asked.

  “How do you feel now?”

  Sad. Lost. Confused. “Fine.”

  “Then the tether’s intact.”

  The iron sitting on my lungs lifted and I took a deep breath. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. If it’d snapped, you’d be unconscious and I’d have felt the backlash of evil.”

  “You say the most comforting things.”

  “Can you still feel him?” Brad asked.

  “No.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  Which meant he still couldn’t track Jamie, either.

  “Should I come back?” I asked.

  “Drop off the dogs, then get back as fast as you can.”

  I drove the rest of the way to the shelter without incident. I’d been there once before, also to drop off a hound-reverted-dog. His name had been Max, and he’d been half starved when we’d parted ways.

  The staff remembered me, and the process of relinquishing the corgis into their care didn’t take long. I explained where I’d found the dogs, and while they readied a kennel, I snapped pictures of the pair, then posted them to the Maidu neighborhood message board. The receptionist assured me she would disseminate pictures of the corgis on lost-and-found sites. In the meantime, they’d have a safe place to stay and food to eat.

  I put off saying good-bye to the dogs as long as possible. Petting their heads, I smothered a fantasy of adopting them myself, or at least fostering them until their owners could be contacted. My life was already crowded with creatures who needed me to care for them, and adding two dogs—real dogs, not pookas who could take dog form—to my hectic life would be irresponsible and unfair to the corgis.

  Before I left, the receptionist pulled me aside to a wall of pictures and tapped on the image of a midsize mutt with glossy black hair and a big doggy grin on his face. A smiling five-year-old girl draped across his back.

  “That’s Max now,” she said.

  “Really?” I stared at the photo, and a trace of optimism lightened my step back to the car.

  I drove back to the office by way of Maidu Park, parking in the same spot I’d used earlier. When no pooka rushed to greet me, I cut the engine and climbed from the car. The rain had slackened and an arctic wind coming off the soccer fields promised the next heavy precipitation would fall in the form of snow. Darkness swallowed the paved trail and turned the ravine into a mesh of shadows. I blinked to Primordium and spun in a slow circle, looking for a Great Dane–shaped pooka, but my hopes didn’t have far to fall when I didn’t spot him.

  17

  Whirled Peas

  I clutched the steering wheel and hugged the slow lane like a first-time driver. Less than two miles separated the park and our new headquarters, and I spent every foot of it expecting another sensory-exploding panic attack. When I arrived without incident, it took another minute to relax my grip and slide out of the car.

  A frosty breeze hit my derriere, stabbing straight through to the skin and reminding me of every wet patch remaining on my jeans. The Civic’s dome light illuminated smears of mud ground into the driver’s seat and floor mats. I checked the back. Despite the towel I’d lain down, the corgis had besmirched the tan seats and door panels with drying mud. To the uninformed eye, it looked like an enormous creature had gotten violently ill in the back of my car.

  “When you’re sliding into first, and you feel something squirt,” I sang under my breath, and popped the trunk. Any other day, the destruction of the interior of my car would have inflamed a foul mood. Today, it barely registered as irritating. I grabbed a clean pair of jeans and long johns from a bag in the trunk, ignoring the identical change of clothes I’d brought for Jamie, and marched toward the office.

  Due to extensive fire and water damage to our previous offices—and, apparently, a shoestring relocation budget—our new headquarters resided in a cramped shotgun retail space squeezed into the crotch of an L-shaped, run-down shopping center. The liquor store two doors down entertained brisk postwork business, and no one looked twice at our grungy, glass-front office lit up in all its lackluster glory. Some of that had to do with our receptionist Sharon, propped behind a podium in front of the door. Drab and stout, she served as the face of the office—one that said, Go away and don’t bother us again. I’d originally assumed she functioned as little more than a gatekeeper to discourage the public from entering our undercover headquarters. More recently, I’d come to suspect she qualified as part of Brad’s security. Deeper in the office, I spotted Rose at a plastic-topped folding table, neat rows of spray bottles lined up in front of her. Across from her sat Sam.

  Could this day get any worse?

  Sam and I had history, much of it unpleasant. I’d first encountered him when he’d broken into my car, but I’d recognized a soul worth saving. Teens were more malleable than adults, and he still had time to correct his moral path before it cemented into his personality. I’d tried to scare him straight, cleaning the smut from his soul and warning him against his bad life choices. Unfortunately, Sam had a bit of a kink for being bossed around by a woman, and he’d embraced the habit of stalking me.

  It wasn’t until Niko took notice that I learned I’d unwittingly addicted Sam to my lux lucis infusions. Until the Illuminea could wean him, Brad had stuffed Sam into the role of office intern of our fake bumper sticker company—the front of our CIA operation.

  Sam was part of the reason my energy swap with Alex today had freaked me out. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I addicted Alex to my lux lucis. Plus, I wanted his attraction to me to be genuine.

  The door opened with a broken-bell clank. Normally I added extra cheer to my voice when I greeted Sharon, partially to amuse myself since she never responded in kind and partially because I’d made it my personal goal to win her over. Today I didn’t care.

  “If you see Jamie, scream,” I said.

  Sharon’s dull brown eyes slid to me, then whipped back to the parking lot. Either that was her version of alarm or she hadn’t liked my suggestion of a scream. Anything so animated fell outside her repertoire.

  “My main Madison! Where’ve you been?” Sam swung into my face, and I squinted against the glare off his frizz of red hair.

  While I was grateful my boss had fixed my mistake with Sam, having the teen in the office meant that not only did I run into him more often than before, but I also had to be nice. Worse, Sam had formed a friendship with Jamie, further increasing his presence in my life.

  Or maybe not. Maybe I’d found the silver lining to Jamie running off. Except the trade-off wasn’t worth it, and the thought did nothing to brighten my mood.

  “Why so glum, Maddy?”

  “Don’t ever call me Maddy.” I shoved past him.

  “Sure, sure. No problem. Whoa, did I miss the mud fight?”

  “Brad wants to see you,” Rose said; then she pointed at Sam. “You. Sit. Use your brain. Do you think any woman that filthy is in the mood to chat?”

  “Huh. Rose droppin’ knowledge bombs. What else can you teach me about women?”

  “So very, very much,” she muttered.

  Summer perched at the back table, arms stretched in front of her and her hands flat on the plastic top, her attention fixed on her arms and a scowl etched into her features. In Primordium, a fluid lux lucis net traveled up one arm, down the other, and back again. Either she wanted to show off or she was bored. Probably both. Being forced to wait on me likely hadn’t improved her opinion of me or her mood.

  Too bad.

  I didn’t slow until I reached the unisex bathroom at the back of the office, and I changed in record time. I splashed water on my face and used paper towels to wipe the worst of the mud from my coat, then stalked to Brad’s office, pulling the door shut behind me. It was a token gesture, since the walls of the shoe-box space didn’t meet the ceiling and some sounds would carry into the main office, but at least everyone no longer had a front-row seat to the impending show.r />
  Brad sat back in his chair, one leg crossed over the other, his thick fingers threaded together and locked around his raised knee. No telltale redness marred his neck or face. If he felt the urge to berate me, he disguised it well. Not sure what to make of his silence, I stood with my arms at my sides and tried not to fidget. Brad ran his gaze over my body, the once-over devoid of sexual undertones and strictly an assessment of my soul.

  “Come here.” He stood and gestured for me to walk to the map tacked to the wall.

  I sidled around the folding table and stood next to him. Brad’s head barely cleared my shoulder, and the map had been hung to his height. I slouched to get a better look, the defeated posture feeling appropriate.

  “You were here when the pooka ran off.” He stabbed a pudgy finger at the map over a green rectangle representing Maidu Park. “Where were you when you had your panic attack?”

  I traced the road lines and pointed to Hazel Boulevard near Oak Street. “Here-ish.”

  Grabbing a ruler from the desk, Brad laid it atop the map so it measured the distance between the park and my finger as the crow flies. “That’s a little over three and a half miles away.”

  “That’s the length of the tether?” Three and a half miles? What was the point of a tether at all? It wasn’t as if I could influence Jamie from that far away even if we had been getting along.

  Brad didn’t answer my question. “The shelter is here. That’s another”—he shifted the ruler to take a new measurement—“three miles.”

  “So the tether stretched? It’s almost seven miles long now?”

  “Not likely. I don’t think it’s even three miles long. I’ve talked with other enforcers who were linked to pookas. Their tethers were never more than a mile, tops.”

  “But . . . it has to be, because this is where I had my panic attack.” I jabbed the map for emphasis.

  “How fast were you going?”

  “When? During the panic attack?”

  “And after.”

  “I don’t know. Forty-five? Sixty?”

  “So the only way the pooka could have kept up was if he could fly,” Brad said, his tone leading. He’d already thought this through.

  “But Jamie can’t—”

  “Jamie has a fourth form. One with wings.”

  “Hang on. He’s never mentioned another form. If he can turn into a bird, why—”

  “Not a bird. His fourth form probably doesn’t have a lux lucis equivalent.”

  It took a moment for me to process his words. “Are you saying he has a purely evil form? But he’s not pure atrum. He’s still split.” He had to be. I couldn’t have already lost him.

  “A dog is traditionally a lux lucis creature, but he had no trouble taking the form of a Great Dane. It’s likely whatever shape he’s in, it’s atrum based, which would explain why he hid it from you before now.”

  I stared at the map and the distance I’d traveled, and I couldn’t come up with another explanation that made sense. For Jamie to have stayed close, even within three miles of me, he would have had to be moving as fast as I’d been driving. Unless he’d hitchhiked with another driver both ways—highly unlikely—he had to have flown. On top of that, whatever his winged form, it flew faster than the average bird.

  I stumbled to a folding chair and collapsed.

  “Jamie can fly.”

  “Jamie can fly,” Brad agreed.

  “What sort of form am I looking for?”

  Brad shrugged. “It’s a guessing game. No one can predict any form a pooka will take. There’s never been a pooka who could take the shape of a Great Dane before, or a mammoth.”

  “What does this mean for me? For us?”

  Brad resumed his seat and rolled his chair up to the desk. “It means you’re less likely to have another panic attack.”

  “But if Jamie can fly, how am I supposed to find him?” My question came out close to a wail, and I rocked back in my seat, gripping the plastic beneath my butt to ground myself.

  “The bond works both ways. He will come back to you. As long as the link isn’t severed, he’ll always come back.”

  “When?”

  “Hopefully soon.” Brad ran a hand over his balding scalp, and for the first time I recognized his calm as a facade. “We’re overdue for something to go right.”

  “Lestari is back,” I blurted out. “I saw her today in the park. She’s got a ragtag group of warriors with her. I actually came across them when they were mid-battle with another clan—the tenth battle she’s fought since she returned, she said. Fortunately, she agreed to peace talks.”

  “Peace talks?” Brad sputtered. “She initiated peace talks?”

  “Well, it was my idea—”

  “Your idea! You involved yourself in a prajurit land war?!” His voice escalated to a roar that rattled the flimsy door. A familiar squiggly vein pulsed at his temple.

  “Not personally,” I reassured him. “I only said you’d approve.”

  He tensed, his face darkening from pink past magenta to purple. If his breathing hadn’t been as audible as an enraged bull, I would have worried he was about to pass out. The table creaked, caught in the claws of his hands.

  “We need the prajurit’s help,” I continued. “And Lestari looked in bad shape. I thought—”

  “You thought you’d set me up to mediate a prajurit land war?” Spittle flew from his mouth.

  “I don’t think so?” In the face of his rage, my words came out a question.

  “What exactly did you say?”

  “That they should stop fighting, especially since the territory was already Lestari’s.”

  Brad dropped his head into his hands with a choking sound.

  “And I told Lestari you’d approve of peace talks. It was her idea for you to host them.”

  Brad collapsed forward and banged his forehead against his desk. I eased back in my chair, contemplating how quickly I could vacate the office. I’d seen Brad yell and rant and pace before, but I’d never rendered him speechless.

  “The CIA’s policy is to let prajurit police prajurit for a reason,” he said in an eerily calm voice, addressing the floor. “Do you know why?”

  “Because the prajurit are our allies?”

  His head lifted, and he skewered me with a look that sealed my lips. Right. I should have realized the question had been rhetorical.

  “Because peace talks can take decades to resolve,” he said, his voice rising as he straightened. “The CIA steps in only in times of extreme need. No, don’t.” He lifted a hand to quiet my response. “I’m not using the phrase lightly. A sjel tyv does not qualify as an extreme need. It doesn’t even come close.”

  “Oh.”

  Brad tipped his head to address the stained ceiling tiles. “Decades. I’ll be retired and still mediating. I’ll be dead and still mediating.” He sighed and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he pinned me with a fiery glare. “What were you thinking?” he boomed.

  “It might not take that long. Lestari already agreed to some territory in the park . . .” I trailed off, staring at Brad’s hands. He’d raised them, possibly unconsciously, and squeezed them as if ringing moisture from the air between us. Or as if ringing my neck.

  “What did you promise her?” he whispered.

  “I’m not sure I really promised her any—” I took another look at Brad’s expression, then babbled, “There’s an oak in Maidu Park. She claimed everything within one thousand wing beats of it. I figured—”

  “You figured you’d sabotage negotiations before they even began?” Brad leapt to his feet and planted his hands on the table, leaning toward me. The flimsy surface bowed and wobbled, spilling files to the floor. He didn’t seem to notice. “Juicy frutti on my patootie! I’ll look like I’m playing favorites! You’ve set negotiations back a year, and we haven’t even begun.”

  I tried to squeeze out I’m sorry, but my throat had constricted too tight to make a sound.

  Brad jabbed a finger i
n my face. “Out. Out! Now!”

  I popped to my feet, knocking my chair over. I started to right it, thought better of it, and shoved the chair aside with my foot so I could open the door.

  “Um, where am I supposed to go?” I asked.

  “Fiddyment. Ask Summer. Now get out of my sight before I—”

  I jumped through the doorway and pulled the door shut between us.

  Summer and Sam stared with identical wide-eyed expressions.

  “Ooooh, someone’s in trouble,” Sam taunted, but very quietly.

  I bent to retrieve my filthy pants from where I’d dropped them outside Brad’s office. “I’m ready whenever you are,” I told Summer.

  She snorted and stood.

  I detoured to a stack of supply boxes and rummaged for duct tape. Sam helped me cut strips and use them to patch the sleeves of my ruined coat.

  “Where’s the pooka?” Summer asked.

  “Around.”

  “What’s a pooka?” Sam asked.

  “A confidential account,” I said, even though I knew better than to feed Sam’s conspiracy theory that our office served as a front to a top-secret organization. It did, but no one would ever confirm as much to a norm, let alone to the troublesome teen.

  Summer gave my soul an insultingly obvious examination. “You lost control.”

  “No.” I hadn’t lost control. Control was something I’d never had. I’d lost something more precious: Jamie’s trust.

  Rose paced outside the office, stomping as far as the thrift store beyond the Indian restaurant next door, then back. With her formfitting blazer flaring open to display her ample chest wrapped in an eye-popping teal top, she attracted a fair share of attention from the patrons of the liquor store.

  The moment I stepped outside, she marched up to me. “Good going. I think you broke Brad.”

  “She’s a walking disaster,” Summer said.

  “Stuff it.” I’d had a crappy day, and I couldn’t stomach dealing with Summer’s attitude on top of it.

  “Both of you, grow up, bottle that crap up, and ship out,” Rose said in a shockingly harsh tone. “The illustrious inspector allotted me two hours to do a day’s worth of work here after trotting me around as her personal lapdog lie detector. I don’t need you two pissing in my emotional pool. Shoo.”