Fire & Frost

by Meljean Brook

  The tech guy was youngish, and if you looked hard, you could see a hint of Bradley Cooper behind those glasses. He scanned for every known malware and spyware, but all he could come up with was “ratty power levels.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t download anything weird from the Internet?” he asked with a playful twinkle in his eyes. He was thinking porn, she guessed. Hoping porn.

  She knew what he saw—a girl with hair just a little too wild and a shirt just a little too sexy for rural Minnesota.

  “Cross my heart!” She smiled. “Though, I did get an old floppy disc converted recently.”

  He watched her a beat too long. “A floppy? Like a three-and-a-half-inch? Or are you talking five-and-quarter-inch?”

  “Five-and-quarter,” she said. “Some lab in California transferred it onto a CD for me, but it turned out to be a lot of nothing.” She mumbled something about researching family history.

  “Nothing you get off an old floppy is going to take over your machine or interface wirelessly. They didn’t have wireless back then. That was the Pong era. I mean, Pong.” He typed more commands. The laptop whirred. “This’ll take a bit.” He sat back and smiled again. He really wasn’t so bad. If she didn’t feel so freaked out about this mystery, she’d think about doing him. She’d strut to the door and flip over the “Back in 30 minutes” sign and say something daring. It might even take the edge off of all the weirdness.

  And she loved to see the grateful amazement on a guy’s face when he realized she’d do him right then and there. A man’s grateful amazement always gave her a lift, made her feel complete.

  Like she was enough.

  Pathetic, maybe, but what the hell, it felt good! Even when the amazement lasted only a moment, it still made her feel so good. When a man’s lips were on her neck, his hands warming her skin, at those moments she really was enough. More than enough; she was everything in the world. Guys were fabulous like that, how easy it was to thrill them.

  She dragged her finger along the metal counter edge, feeling his eyes on her breasts.

  Having fun, enjoying guys, being daring—that was something of hers. Her brilliant, athletic sisters could keep their work-a-holic ways, their high-achievement lives. She had pleasure and fun.

  “You’re into family history, huh?”

  “Not really,” she confessed. “It was actually just…being nosy.”

  He raised his brows, like she was a naughty girl—a familiar game. “Nosy?” Guys like this often started off with exciting sternness, but they rarely took charge, even when she practically commanded it; they always seemed to want her in the lead, playing the seductress.

  “Sort of.”

  His energy intensified. “Sort of?”

  Yeah, he knew what kind of girl she was. Men had a Spidey sense about that.

  She straightened a counter display, feeling wistful, suddenly. “I had this great aunt who left me all her worldly possessions, including her house. The floppy was under one of the computers in her dusty old computer room, and I thought it might contain memoirs or something. I mean, she left me everything. So awesome. I wanted to know about her.”

  “I never heard of that happening in real life. The great aunt bit.” Again he smiled. Again she was tempted.

  “Apparently I met her when I was a baby, but I don’t remember it. She got cut off from the whole family.”

  “Harsh.” Just then the machine beeped. The guy typed in more commands.

  Great Aunt Veronica had been shunned by the Gordon family for “dabbling in the dark arts and cavorting with strange men,” as her mother had put it when Alix showed her the letter from Veronica’s estate. “She wouldn’t tone it down, and we didn’t want you children exposed to all that devilry, so we cut it off with her.”

  Alix would’ve laughed at her mother’s use of the word devilry if she hadn’t felt so very angry that this poor elderly woman had been cut off from the family. And she lived just two hours away from Minneapolis! Apparently, Aunt Veronica lived with a man friend who’d died a day after she did. So sad. It steamed Alix to no end to think that she knew nothing about Aunt Veronica, and that she hadn’t gotten the chance to meet her and get to know her. Friends and relatives cared for each other and helped each other no matter what. Alix would’ve helped her.

  Instead, this unknown aunt had helped Alix.

  She’d given her a chance to escape from her mistakes. To start over.

  The guy tapped a few buttons and sat back. “So nothing? On the floppy?”

  “Weird symbols,” she said. “My friend thought it was some kind of old code.”

  “And she had a dusty old computer room…” He tilted his head, lips quirked. “You know, those old computers are getting valuable. I could take a look at them. I would be happy to come over.”

  In fact, there was a lot of 1970s and 80s-era hardware in the basement, including mini supercomputers, as her friend Karen had called them, all hooked together in a circle. Somebody had taken a sledgehammer to them at some point and smashed them all up. They wouldn’t be worth anything.

  But it wasn’t really computers that they were discussing now.

  She thought about it a little, how that blast of attention would feel. The gratitude, the excitement, the dare of it all. But she had a mystery to solve. “Nah, sorry,” she said. “It’s impossible. But thanks.”

  He nodded, understanding her meaning, and turned back to the computer, hitting a few buttons. “Your laptop’s clean,” he said officiously. “Twenty bucks. Want me to turn it off?”

  She nodded, wondering how long he’d been done.

  He powered down and shut the lid. “I hate to say this, but do you think someone might’ve come into your home and messed with your machine directly?”

  Gulp. She hadn’t even considered that. Surely Lindy would’ve barked. “No way,” she said, handing over the check.

  The guy raised his eyebrows. “Hold on, you’re out on KE past Malcolmsberg? Is this that brick house on the bluff?”

  She nodded.

  “The witch house? We’re talking about the witch house here? Dark witch of evil manor? That was your aunt?!“

  Outrage heated her face. “Seriously, what year is it? This whole place shuns a poor old woman on the grounds of being a witch? Just because she was eccentric and into non-traditional things, it doesn’t mean she was evil.”

  “Is it evil to bring back the dead? Your aunt could do that. She could make things appear out of thin air. My dad saw it firsthand as a kid. And he’s not one to tell tales.”

  “If a kid said it, it must be true,” she snapped.

  “You ask anyone. Plumes of smoke. Crows—”

  “I asked you for computer advice, not mystical advice.” She gathered up her purse and computer.

  “All I’m saying is that if something’s unexplained out there…” the guy raised his eyebrows, as if no more needed to be said on the subject.

  She left in a huff, feeling new sympathy for her aunt. Alix knew firsthand what it felt like to be the object of everyone’s asshole opinions.

  True, she’d found some pretty crazy things cleaning out the house. Aunt Veronica was definitely into some occult stuff. Was there anything to it? Alix believed in karma. And in ghosts. Why not magic? The world was full of unexplained things. Was it possible something magical was going on?

  The idea excited her.

  On the way back home she got ahold of Karen on the phone.

  “You pack a bag right now and drive to Minneapolis,” Karen instructed from her convention hotel room. Karen had a big-gun job these days with a tech firm. “Some freak has invaded your online privacy, trespassed on your porch, and left you a gift that says look what I can do.“

  “Is it some freak?” Alix asked, watching Lindy’s ears flap in the rushing air from the open window. “There was no spyware on my computer. And, seriously, in 24 hours, can somebody hack a site, make elaborate graphic design changes to the images, manufacture a stunning copy of
a ruby necklace, and get it onto my porch?” She was starting to warm to the magic idea. Her heart raced.

  “What are you saying?”

  “Think about it—we know Aunt Veronica was into black magic in some way, all those crazy books, and her jewelry tastes, those symbols we scrubbed off the basement floor. What if she was really onto something?”

  “You think it’s magic?”

  “If it defies explanation…” Alix said.

  “Then that just means you look harder. Jumping to a magical explanation—”

  “I’m not jumping to it. I’m going to run a scientific test. I’m going to repeat exactly what I did with the necklace with something different, and use my web cam to record the whole thing. And then we’ll see.”

  “Stop. Think it through. You could be dealing with somebody dangerous.”

  “I am thinking it through. Sure, maybe it’s a bauble-leaving freak, I’m not ruling that out. But maybe, just maybe, I could discover something mind-blowingly awesome. The guy at the computer store asked if I’d downloaded anything suspicious. Well, I did. Remember when I got that old floppy converted? All that crazy code? What if it did something to my computer?”

  “Oh my god,” Karen said.

  “What?”

  “A magical computer? Is that where you’re going with this?”

  “What were my aunt’s two main hobbies? Witchy stuff and computers. It’s exciting! Think through this with me, Karen. I mean, what if it’s real? It would be beyond winning the lottery. We could literally have anything we wanted. But first we’ll do this test. What should I order for it? We should think of something really challenging for the next task.”

  Are you ready for more? Mr. Real is available now. Then turn the page for a peek at Meljean Brook’s upcoming paranormal novella…

  Frozen: An Excerpt

  FROZEN

  Available June 2013

  For a year and a half, Olivia Martin has tried to forget Erik Gulbrandr, the glacial man who’d scorched her mouth with a single kiss. But when Olivia finds herself snowbound with Erik on the winter solstice, she discovers that the man who set her body aflame is cursed by abominable needs — and a desire that might destroy them both…

  THIS COULDN’T BE THE RIGHT DRIVEWAY. I pulled my Jeep onto the shoulder and checked the rearview mirror. No one was coming up the snowy road behind me. I hadn’t spotted another car since leaving the main highway; the only evidence that anyone ever came this way were the tire tracks leading into a few private drives. I’d expected Erik Gulbrandr’s driveway to look the same, but although my GPS navigator told me to turn right, I didn’t see a paved lane. Only a thick blanket of snow.

  I didn’t doubt that the lane lay under the snow, however. The GPS might have miscalculated the route—it wouldn’t have been the first time the device steered me in the wrong direction—but I couldn’t mistake the wide, winding path cutting through the stand of pines that stretched east toward the mountains.

  Great. Of all the driveways along this road, the one I needed was the only one that hadn’t been plowed.

  I studied the lane and considered my options. The snow was about two feet deep—probably less beneath the shelter of the pine branches. Could my Jeep make it?

  Maybe. My rig regularly handled rough terrain. Before starting up this road I’d put the transmission in four-wheel drive and locked traction chains around the tires. But it would only take one drift to bog me down, and I didn’t want to risk getting stuck—especially for Erik Gulbrandr. Though he was one of the partners at the engineering firm where I worked, I avoided him whenever possible. This detour hadn’t been my idea; I’d only come as a favor to the senior partner—Erik’s father—after he’d discovered that I planned on visiting my parents’ home for the holidays.

  Erik will sign the papers and you’ll be back on the road within ten minutes, John Gulbrandr had told me. All in all, it’ll only take you an hour out of your way.

  I’d agreed to do it because taking the papers allowed me to leave work at noon instead of waiting for the end of the day, giving me an early jump on my week-long vacation. Now it looked like I’d have to take another hour’s detour after Christmas. I’d be driving this way again on my way back home. Hopefully Erik would hire someone to plow his lane before then.

  I pushed in the clutch and shifted into first gear, then stopped. Crap. I had no idea what documents were in the manila envelope on my passenger seat, or how important they were. But Gulbrandr had also asked me to send them express as soon as I could get to a mail drop, so he probably wouldn’t appreciate them sitting around my parents’ house for a week. Maybe he’d prefer that I leave the papers somewhere local so that Erik could pick them up.

  With a sigh, I dug my phone from my bag. One bar. Out here in the middle of Nowhere, Colorado, I was surprised to get any reception at all.

  Gulbrandr answered on the second ring. I could easily picture him at his desk, a big man with dark hair liberally salted by gray, wearing an engineer’s unofficial uniform of a chambray button-down shirt and tan trousers.

  “John Gulbrandr here.”

  My boss didn’t waste time on pleasantries. He was nice enough, I supposed, but all business—and that suited me perfectly. I’ve never been good as socializing, but I’ve always been damn good at my job.

  “It’s Olivia Martin, Mr. Gulbrandr. I’ve just arrived—”

  “Is my boy giving you trouble?”

  “No.” Did he expect trouble? I only expected Erik to freeze me with his glacial stare and politely show me the door. “I haven’t seen him yet. The drive hasn’t been plowed, and I can’t make it up to the house.”

  “Damn it. Hold on, then. I’ll call him on the other extension. He can meet you at your car.”

  Silence filled the line. I waited, hoping that I wouldn’t lose my connection. Hoping that this little detour wouldn’t end up taking much longer than one hour.

  From the corner of my eye, I detected a flash of movement within the trees. I peered through the passenger window, searching for another glimpse. Whatever it had been was already out of sight. A deer, probably. Too big to be a rabbit, and nothing else in these woods would move that fast. I was sorry to have missed it, but the view through the window was pretty enough to make up for my slow reaction. The craggy peaks of the mountains in the distance created a stunning backdrop to the forest. Alongside the road, pine branches hung low, weighed down with heavy snow that seemed to glow in the soft light of the afternoon sun. Only an hour of daylight remained—and the shadows between the trees were growing deeper. What the hell was Gulbrandr doing on the other line? Surely he’d had enough time to tell his son to get his ass down to the road.

  Unless I hadn’t heard anything because I’d lost reception.

  I pulled the phone away from my ear and glanced at the screen. Still connected. The call time counted away the increasing minutes. When I put it back against my ear, Gulbrandr was talking.

  “—can’t get through. The lines must be down and I can’t reach him on his cell. Do you have a pair of winter boots and a coat with you?”

  “Yes.” Of course I did. What did that have to do with anything?

  “It’s only a quarter mile up to the house,” Gulbrandr said.

  Oh, for Pete’s sake. He wanted me to hike there through the snow? Really? “Can’t I swing by on my way back to Denver next week?”

  “Our accountants want those papers filed by the end of the year. And we’re cutting it close as it is, what with the closures and delays over the holidays.”

  Maybe the firm shouldn’t have waited until the twentieth of December to file them, then. But I held my tongue. Obviously, it would have to be done.

  “All right. I’ll head on out.”

  “I appreciate it. You’re a good woman to have around, Martin.” A pause followed. He must have realized how close that comment came to condescension, especially considering that he’d sent me on an errand that didn’t fall under my job description. He qu
ickly amended, “You do good work.”

  I know I did—but I wasn’t usually a messenger girl. I said goodbye, then tossed my phone onto the passenger seat in a little snit. I wasn’t mad at him, not really. The quarter-mile walk didn’t bother me. But the way I’d pictured this going had just been shot to crap. I’d intended to drive up to Erik’s house, coolly knock on his front door, and maintain a disinterested expression as he signed the papers. Then, ten minutes later, I’d drive away.

  And in that ten-minute period, I was determined not to remember how Erik had once kissed me like a man starving for my taste—then told me he’d made a mistake.

  There was no chance that our encounter would last only ten minutes now. He’d insist on walking me back to my Jeep, with icy silence between us. And instead of knocking coolly on the door, I’d show up looking like a crazy mountain woman coming in out of the cold.

  Goddammit.

  I killed the Jeep’s engine and reached into the backseat for my boots. Did I have them? Of course I had them. A million things could go wrong while driving snowy roads in winter, so in addition to boots, a coat, and the long johns in my suitcase, I also had a sleeping bag, a week’s worth of dehydrated meals, a few jugs of water, and air-activated hand and foot warmers.

  I liked to make plans. When events didn’t go according to plan, then I liked to be prepared for anything else.

  In my seat, I toed off the ankle boots I’d worn to the office and switched them for a knee-high pair, tucking my jeans into the insulated interior and lacing them up. An orange down-filled vest topped the navy cable-knit sweater I already wore. Outside, the temperature hovered only a few degrees below freezing, so I didn’t bother to zip my coat. I tugged a shearling hat down over my ears and pulled on my wool gloves, then glanced into my bag. Spare set of keys, check. A whistle if I became lost. Pepper spray, in case I ran across a cougar or a bear out of hibernation—or worse, a man I didn’t know. I threw in extra hand warmers, then the manila envelope addressed to Erik. Slinging the bag over my shoulder, I made certain the Jeep was far enough off the road, then locked the doors.