A Fistful of Frost

by Rebecca Chastain

  “See, I’m clean,” I said before Pamela could speak. “I know I haven’t exactly impressed you, but I’m not evil and I’m not going to allow myself to be changed.”

  “You’re right, you haven’t done anything to impress me.”

  I winced.

  She strode to her car, double-parked behind mine, but turned back to face me before getting in. “This whole region is one false move from falling into complete chaos,” she said, “and you’re a weak link. You don’t even recognize help when you see it.”

  Was she referring to herself? Did she think her repeated tests were helpful? They only emphasized her lack of conviction in my abilities and my character. Or did she believe her insults were beneficial? Was this her tough-love approach?

  A blast of cold wind hit my face, making my eyes water, but I refused to blink and allow a tear to escape. I couldn’t stomach the thought of the inspector thinking she’d made me cry.

  21

  The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

  I flung myself into the driver’s seat and cranked over the engine, slapping the dials to turn off the heater when it blasted cold air in my face.

  If only Pamela’s opinion didn’t matter. If only Jamie would come back to me. If only Jamie hadn’t revealed his horrid prophecy. If only I’d never taken this job.

  “If only I’d never been born,” I said out loud, using a wail not employed since my teenage years. The absurdity of my words broke the downward spiral of my thoughts. I backed out of my spot and did my best to leave my self-pity behind.

  Twenty minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot at the Folsom Lake public beach. My route had included several miles-long stints at sixty miles per hour, and I hadn’t felt the pull of the tether between me and Jamie once. I blinked to Primordium and scanned the skies, finding nothing but darkness and swarms of frost moths above me. Wherever the pooka was, he remained close, but he wasn’t revealing himself.

  Midday on this arctic Tuesday, the only company I had on the beach were a few bundled people and their Labradors. No slurry-souled Great Danes frolicked along the waterline or traipsed through the trees as I stomped up and down the rocky beach, killing frost moths that had congregated in the icy breezes off the lake.

  Over an hour later, chilled to my bones, I folded my stiff body back into the Civic and blasted the heater on high. Driving across town to Roseville’s jail should have taken less than half an hour, but due to holiday traffic, I sat in the car for a solid forty-five minutes, which gave my body time to thaw and my stomach time to wake up. Detouring to Whole Foods, I grabbed a premade sandwich and some overpriced snack bars. If Jamie had been with me, the bill would have been three times as high.

  See, it’s a good thing I’m alone today, I told myself.

  Yeah, right.

  As I predicted, all the evil Jamie and I had cleaned up four days ago had been replaced. The police station and jail collected too many people making bad decisions for it to stay clean long. Swaths of grimy atrum oozed down the main stairs and along the sidewalk in front of the station, even more in front of the jail. Plenty probably lurked inside, but since crawling along the floors of the station or jail lobby would likely get me arrested for suspicious behavior, I concentrated my efforts outside. When I could no longer feel my toes, I returned to my car. A ten-minute drive led to another lackluster neighborhood and a batch of vervet to be eliminated, then back to my car for a fifteen-minute drive to a park plagued by imps and frost moths.

  Methodically, I checked off the locations Brad had texted me, zigzagging across Roseville to clean my region one city block at a time. For once, I was experiencing the life of a normal enforcer, performing spot-check cleanups rather than dashing from one overwhelming problem to the next. Maybe it would have been satisfying if it hadn’t been an illusion, because this time my overwhelming problem chased me, maintaining his distance without testing the limits of our tether. An even larger, more disastrous problem—the elusive tyv and her drone cohorts—loomed closer with every passing minute as the sun sank toward the horizon. Meanwhile, our big plan consisted of me puttering around my region, putting miles on my car and torturing my body in the freezing temperatures all in the hopes that it would tire Jamie and maybe, possibly, hopefully—fingers crossed—help us with the tyv tonight. What a joke.

  I should have fixed the rift between me and Jamie last night. Or at the mall. How many different ways could I bungle this?

  Frustration swamped my melancholy, and the hairpin turn of my emotions fueled my irritation. I’d always thought of myself as easygoing and optimistic, but with the damn bond toying with my emotions, all I wanted to do was snap at the world and then curl up under the covers and cry. I didn’t even trust my fatigue after I realized remaining in any location for longer than fifteen minutes made me feel more rested, even if I spent the whole time running around. That had to be the bond dictating what was best for Jamie. But what about his needs that weren’t so easily translated through our metaphysical link? Was he getting enough to eat? He had the metabolism of a human-size hummingbird, which meant he required five times the amount of food I ate in a normal day. Where was he getting his nourishment today? What if he became too worn out to keep up with me the next time I drove off? What would happen to him? To me?

  To combat my exhaustion, I stopped at a local convenience store for a soda and chocolate. The soda slid down my throat in an acidic rush, frothing back up in painful belches that burned the back of my nose. Stuffing the chocolate after it made me want to cry. My skin squeezed too tight on my body and my brain churned through anger and anxiety in nauseating loops, until I began to hope my gray matter would overheat and melt out my ears.

  If that had been the extent of the day’s tortures, it would have been agony enough to last a month, but Pamela piled on her own torments. Every hour, no matter where I was or what I was doing, the inspector tracked me down and shoved her hands into my soul. Each time, she arrived prepared to find me corrupt, cuff me, and take me away. I could read it in her tense body language and increasingly closed expression—and in the insulting flicker of surprise each time she confirmed my purity. It took longer and longer for my soul to resettle after each test, and by three in the afternoon, the mere sight of Pamela spiked my blood pressure and set off anticipatory curdling sensations in my soul. It was almost enough to make me wish I’d been corrupted just so I could lash out and put a stop to the tests.

  Almost.

  The one bright spot in the day was a text from the receptionist at the dog shelter. The corgis’ owners had seen my notification on their neighborhood message board and had rushed to retrieve them. The text included a picture of a happy couple, each with a corgi straining to lick their faces. It should have made me smile. It only made me miss Jamie and want to strangle him, which fit right in with the rest of my jumbled, contrary emotions.

  I crawled home a little after four, with the sun less than an inch from the horizon. If our plan today had worked, I’d be rushing off in a half hour to hunt a powerful tyv and her bevy of drones. If it hadn’t, tonight would be another fruitless endeavor full of hostility and suspicion. Either way, I planned on squeezing in a twenty-minute nap before whichever miserable ordeal fate assigned to me, and if Jamie also used the time to get some rest, so be it.

  My parents stood on my doorstep, waiting for me. Both were bundled to their chins in thick coats, backs to me and the harsh wind rushing through the breezeway. Crap. I’d forgotten about Mom’s earlier call. Tugging my phone from my pocket, I saw the tiny flashing light indicating a text I’d missed. I considered creeping back down the stairs and calling them from my car to cancel their visit. I could sneak up to my apartment after they left and get a few minutes’ rest . . . but only as long as I was okay with accepting the Horrible Daughter of the Year award.

  “Hey, Mom, Dad,” I called, stomping up the last flight of stairs. “Have you been waiting long?”

  They both swung toward me, smiling to see m
e, and guilt twisted tighter in my gut.

  “We just got here,” Dad said, setting down two bulging canvas bags to wrap me in a hug. I did my best not to sag against him. When I hugged Mom, I had to bend to wrap my arms around her shorter frame.

  “That’s quite a necklace,” Mom said.

  I lifted a hand to the soul breaker. It’d become as much a part of me as Val on my hip and the knife in the horizontal sheath across my lower back. Had either of them felt the knife during our hugs? What about the palmquell in my front pocket? I didn’t have much practice keeping secrets from my parents, and I hated that interactions with them now felt like walking a tightrope of lies.

  “I’m trying something new,” I said. “What do you think?”

  “It’s . . . big,” Mom said.

  “Looks Turkish,” Dad said. “Not sure that’s the right outfit for it.”

  Fashion advice from a man wearing a jacket emblazoned with a giant Union Pacific logo across the back—I’d reached a new low. Biting my tongue, I fished my keys from my purse.

  “How are you doing, sweetie?” Mom asked.

  “Good.”

  “You look tired,” Dad said.

  “Gee, thanks, Dad.”

  “He’s not being mean, Madison. You do look tired,” Mom said.

  “Yeah, well, it’s been a long day.” My tone said all too clearly that it would have been better if they hadn’t come over. My face likely backed the statement up, because hurt flashed across Mom’s expression. Guilt corkscrewed my irritation into a sharp knot.

  Teeth clenched, I turned and fumbled to unlock the door with fingers stiff from cold.

  “What’s with the book?” Dad asked.

  “It’s the latest fashion. Very popular in New York.”

  “Really?” Dad asked. “Maybe I should get myself one of those straps. It looks handy.”

  “Oscar, she’s teasing. That’s her Christmas notebook.”

  Right. That’s how I’d explained Val to Mom last time she’d seen him. I would have to come up with a new excuse once Christmas passed.

  “So if I get my hands on it, I’ll know what I’m getting for Christmas?” Dad asked.

  My mom slapped his hand away from Val. The dead bolt finally twisted open, and I held the door open with the best smile I could muster. We hustled into the warm apartment and shed our shoes and coats in the tiny entryway, jostling each other. I draped everyone’s coats across the short half wall between the dining room and front room, fighting down an irrational impulse to shove my parents aside to get some breathing room.

  Mr. Bond sprang from the recliner and rushed to greet everyone, his dark tail raised high. After twining through my parents’ legs and sniffing toes, he stuck his head in the nearest bag, then tried to dive in with his whole body, but the handle thwarted him.

  “Where’s the newest addition to the family?” Mom asked.

  For a foggy moment, I thought she meant Jamie, and my stomach performed an acrobatic twist of apprehension, surprise, and dread.

  “Uh . . .”

  Dame Zilla crept out from behind the large Howea palm near the sliding glass door, her blue eyes wide and her tail low.

  “Oh, look at her, Oscar! She’s so tiny!”

  I witnessed the precise moment Mom and Dad fell in love with Dame Zilla. Mom squatted, and that was all the kitten needed to know she was welcome. Her entire body language changed, and she trotted to my mom, head and tail high. Dad bent to scratch her head, and she revved her extraordinarily loud purr to full throttle. My parents melted.

  I sidled around them, doing my best not to fixate on the recliner, and scooped up Mr. Bond, carrying him to the middle of the front room and away from whatever lay inside the bag. He mewled pathetically and raced for the bag the moment I let him go. I sank to the carpet, sitting cross-legged. The position ground the tracker against my bruised ankle, but it also hid it from sight. If explaining the knife would be difficult, the anklet would be impossible.

  I tugged my sweater down to cover the knife, removed my phone from my back pocket, and settled Val on my lap. If I hoped to pull off normal with my parents, I needed to stay sharp. Stifling an unwelcome yawn, I ran a mental check of my life, trying to anticipate any questions my parents might have.

  “You look ready to keel over,” Dad said, taking a seat in the recliner.

  “Keep the compliments coming.” Good to know I looked as bad as I felt.

  “Are you sure you’re only tired?” Mom asked.

  Someone pounded up the stairs outside the apartment, and I froze. If that was Pamela here to test my soul, I didn’t think I could make myself answer the door—which would probably be as hard to explain to my parents as having a coworker show up just to touch my chest.

  No, the chest touching would be the more difficult explanation.

  And what if it was Jamie?

  The footsteps fell silent, but I didn’t breathe until the jangle of keys and slam of the door across the landing reverberated through my apartment.

  “Madison?” Mom prompted.

  “Uh.” What was the question? Oh, right, they wanted a rationale for my haggard appearance. When in doubt, try honesty. “Work has been stressful. There’s been a lot to, uh, learn lately, and I guess I’m just distracted.”

  Both cats were attempting to claw through the canvas bags now, and I latched on to the diversion.

  “What’s in the bags?”

  “Gifts, of course.” Mom shooed the cats out of the way, eliciting complaints from Mr. Bond. She pulled out a bag of treats and a catnip mouse for Mr. Bond “so he won’t be jealous of his new sister getting too much attention”—she knew my fat cat well. She tossed the mouse, and Mr. Bond thundered across the front room and threw his body atop the tiny toy. While he was preoccupied, she hid the treats on the kitchen counter.

  Dame Zilla got her own bag of kitten treats, her own mouse, and a cardboard scratching pad, which she promptly tore into, much to my parents’ delight.

  “You sounded so glum on the phone that we decided to bring a few things to cheer you up, too,” Mom said. She turned so Dad couldn’t see her face and gave me a funny look. “Your dad insisted on this magnificent souvenir.”

  She lifted a ceramic monstrosity free from the canvas bag. Longer than her hand and four inches tall, the bright yellow Union Pacific engine sat atop a pair of glossy black rails obscured by two white arcs of glittering snow parting in front of the engine like crests of water in front of a cruise ship. It was hideous, and my smile only grew wider when Dad chimed in.

  “I got one for myself, too. You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced the power of a locomotive surging through Mother Nature, the throb of the engine pulsing beneath your feet, the crisp mountain air filling your lungs. The exhilaration can’t be matched.”

  “Mmm, yes, the surging and throbbing and pulsing was exhilarating,” Mom said, her expression innocent except for the laughter dancing in her eyes.

  “Imagine how much better it’d be from the engine, not stuck in the passenger car,” Dad continued, missing Mom’s teasing completely. “I need to figure out how to talk my way up there next time.”

  “I also snagged us each a copy of Ilona Andrews’s newest book,” Mom said, raising her voice to interrupt Dad’s musings.

  I snatched the book from her hands, wondering when I’d get the time to read it.

  “And a Johnny Cash CD, because I couldn’t help myself,” Mom said. The album cover showed a young Cash, his hair styled into an impressive voluminous comb-back. In his twenties, decades after the style had passed, Dad had cultivated Cash’s ’50s look, which was when Mom fell in love with him. I wasn’t sure if she’d fallen for Dad because he’d had a passing resemblance to Johnny, or if she’d come to love the singer because of Dad. These days, Dad’s wiry gray hair tended to go any which direction in what we teasingly deemed his Albert Einstein style.

  Mr. Bond tired of his mouse and investigated everyone’s shoes, settling atop Dad’s sn
eaker and sticking his head deep into its depths. Dame Zilla scaled the kitty tree, then bounced down and tore into the kitchen. Mr. Bond perked up and trotted after her, only to be ambushed when she burst around the corner, paws splayed, claws out. Mr. Bond administered three slaps to the top of her head, almost too fast to follow. She stumbled back, then jumped around him, swiped his tail, and kept running.

  My parents laughed and I joined in, enjoying the chance to share the moment with someone. This sliver of normalcy felt like heaven. The jittery sense of doom that had ridden my shoulders all day faded with each passing moment in my parents’ company, and the loosening of tension emphasized how tightly I’d been wound. The disjointed sensation of being a stranger in my own body disappeared, and I was just me, Madison, daughter of two wonderful people, mother of two adorable cats.

  I walled off all thoughts of Jamie and sank into the happy moment.

  “I don’t remember you having so many plants,” Mom said, twisting to take in the greenery lining the dining and living room.

  I’d forgotten that she and Dad hadn’t seen my place since I’d become an enforcer.

  “I read an article about using plants to purify your home, but I think I might have gone overboard.” The half-truth came easily and seemed to appease Mom’s curiosity.

  We listened to Dad wax about the pleasures of trains for another few minutes before Mom took pity on me and bundled him up. I saw them off with promises to send more pictures of Dame Zilla soon.

  The quietness of the apartment enveloped me after the door closed behind them, and I flopped into the recliner, closed my eyes, and listened to the hum of the appliances and the muted sounds of my neighboring apartment dwellers.

  My phone chimed. I cracked open one eye and used my toes to pull it to me. In a Herculean effort, I bent forward and retrieved it, opening the message app to Bridget’s picture. Her text was short and to the point.