by Jody Klaire
“It wasn’t an easy time,” she said, staring up at the set of skis hanging from the wood ceiling above us.
I didn’t know what she meant, not really. With Renee, it was hard to know what was her, really her and what was a fake memory from one of her covers. The cheesecake felt pretty real but another flash, I wasn’t so certain about. I wanted to say something to help her. Something that would ease the edginess I could feel.
She rolled her head to the side and her gaze drifted to the window. I hated seeing her look so worn and worried. I knew she’d been out on a protection detail of some sort, that much I could decipher, and judging by the time we’d spent when I was her protectee, it took a load of energy and then some.
“You just need some time with me,” I said, drawing her eyes back to me.
She raised her eyebrows.
“You heard,” I said. “A couple of weeks trying to train me and you’ll have laughed so hard, you’d have forgotten everything.”
Her eyes, much deeper in the yellowy lighting, twinkled. Then they misted, her sadness gushing at me. The flash had been full of pain, fear, desperation and I wanted to erase it from her memory.
“When I was a kid, I got real scared sometimes when I saw stuff.” I took my napkin and started folding it.
Renee watched me and cocked her head. “You must have been terrified.”
“I was,” I said, continuing to fold. “So Nan used to get me making these.” I tucked my finger in the fold to create an arch. “Eagles are a big thing in my family and to be under the shelter of their wings,” I folded the last piece over, “is to be protected by a great white light.”
Renee’s eyes widened as I handed her the little napkin eagle.
“Nan always said that and they remind me of her.” I shrugged as Renee’s eyes misted. “So if you have one of her little creations, she’ll be around to take care of you.”
“Oh, Aeron,” Renee said, her voice raspy. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s a napkin,” I pointed out. “But even a napkin can have wings in the right hands.”
Chapter 4
AS WE SCURRIED back to the car after the most delicious pecan pie I ever tasted, I could feel an odd quiet in the air circling us in the swirling snow. It was a weird sensation like dangling over the pit of a massive pool, suspended in air, hanging, waiting until time caught up.
Everything was so slow, so detached from me as though I were a spectator. I watched my own hands fasten the seat belt. My stomach tickled with tight, nervous pulses. Renee turned the key. A car pulled past.
“I think we should stay put,” I said.
“What?” Renee laughed, not looking at me. “I know it was good food, Aeron, but we have things to do.”
Cold sweat trickled down my back. The windshield wipers thudded back and forth. Renee careful, deliberate, focused as we drove down the street. I couldn’t make out any actual buildings through the thick white, just our headlamps. Nothing beyond. The shops were still there, the faint glow of lights confirmed they were only a few feet away. Yet it felt lonely in the car, like we were cut off from everything.
“It’s not that,” I mumbled, my mouth like a creek bed in summer. “I just . . .” I didn’t really know how to explain it.
Renee leaned forward onto the wheel as she tried to see through the snow. “I’ve driven in worse. If that’s what you’re worried about.”
Was it? I’d liked the snow far better when I was in the institution. Watching it from the comfort of a cell made it look a lot less threatening. Still, the panic settled over me. My stomach gurgled away with tension and the food.
The lights from the café and town disappeared as we rounded the bend. My stomach and resolve seemed to have stayed back there too. My shoulders were so tense that they ached as I gripped my knees. Nothing but the headlamps, nothing beyond the glow. Just us and silent, ominous white getting thicker and thicker.
“Aeron. It’ll be okay.” Renee glanced at me.
“Watch!”
Something bolted out of the trees and right in front of us. Renee swerved. Something crunched under the car. We slammed to a stop. I smacked my knees on the dash. My belt yanking my shoulder.
We sat wide-eyed, staring at the road. Both of us were puffing.
“Flash?” Renee asked, her eyes tracking the wooded area in front of us.
“Yeah.”
Renee turned to me, her eyes wide. “The town is just back there. We can stay with the car or—”
“Town.” My heart was thundering. That feeling, that odd, detached feeling hung over me. The white swirled around us and felt . . . threatening . . . that was the only way I could describe it. The only time I’d felt that surreal stillness was before the twister back in Oppidum and my whole body was wired.
“I just have to get our bags out of the trunk.” She leaned into the back seat and grabbed our coats. “Come on.”
That sense of stillness, of dangling, of waiting grew heavier as we got out. Like the clickety-clackety wind up of a roller coaster as you neared the top. Renee was preoccupied with getting our supplies from the trunk as I looked around at the roadside. Icy cold. Pure drifting white. Dark silhouettes of the trees on the side that sloped down the mountain. On the other side was a solid wall of rock. The snowfall got heavier. Threatening. Icy. Cold.
I didn’t get why I felt that way. I tried to shake it off, tried to concentrate on Renee but I couldn’t.
“Here’s yours.” Renee handed me my bag.
I looked up at the sheer face of stone. The winding, climbing, suspended click, clack, click.
“Stupid thing is stuck. I have—” Renee yelped.
I reached out. I just missed Renee’s outstretched hand as she stumbled and fell backward onto her butt.
“If only CIG could see me now,” she muttered. Then she half-laughed, half-sobbed. I could see pain and fear rippling around her as tears spilled over down her cheeks.
She sat there laughing and crying all at the same time. I dropped to my knees beside her, remembering that once she had helped me when I’d reacted in the same way.
All the while the building . . . something . . . wound up and up.
“Just take in deep breaths. It’ll be okay. I’m here, okay.” I wrapped her up in a hug as the biting cold snapped at my fingertips. “I got you.”
“You must think I’ve lost it,” she murmured into my shoulder.
“I know better,” I answered, glancing out at the wall of white all around us. I had to figure out how I could get her back into the car or to the town before we froze to death. “You told me once that you had scars just like me. I’m guessing something rubbed them raw.”
Renee clung to me, which gave me all the answer I needed.
“You ain’t on your own no more,” I said, ignoring the pounding in my chest. Panic rippled up and down my arms. “I can pack a punch when I need to.”
“You’re just a big ball of mush.”
The teasing made me smile and her sobs calmed. I started to pull her to her feet but a howling gust of wind nearly smacked me over. I looked up.
Click, clack, click . . . at the summit . . . And freefall.
My body primed with so much adrenaline that I must have squeezed Renee in my angst.
“What?” She asked. “What’s wrong.”
Thunder, deafening, crashing, rolling, crushing, bursting, faster, faster, down and down, building, building, building . . .
“Move!”
I hauled Renee up into my arms. She squealed but I burst into a run. My feet unsteady. The clumps of white thick, wet, cold. I pushed harder. My head light. Round the corner was safety. But it looked so much further.
“Aeron, what’s wrong.”
My sole focus was on fleeing. The flashes pounded through me.
Rumble, thunder, rolling, crushing, crashing, cracking, faster, faster.
“Aeron.” Renee struggled in my arms, trying to get me to let her go. I held on. Followed what road I could
see. The surface like glass underneath the blanketed cover.
“Can’t . . . trust me . . .” I panted. My heart hammered. My legs screamed with the effort. My knees smacked the hard ground each time I slid. She searched my face as I pushed on in desperation. She wanted an answer and it came in a monstrous rumble.
“Oh, God,” Renee said, eyes wide. “We have to move.” She wriggled free of my grasp and started to sprint, clutching my hand as she did so.
The thunder grew, its deafening roar building, animals’ warning calls filled the air. We ran. Heart thumping. Legs pumping. Lungs screaming. Run. Run. Run.
We rounded the bend as a mighty crash rattled through my entire body. I rammed Renee to the ground. I covered her up as best I could as a mass of white burst over the rock face and plummeted down the mountain. The avalanche close enough that its devastating wave took out the trees only a couple of feet away from where we lay in a panting heap.
My ears were still ringing as the rumble grew fainter, the run continuing on its path. My throat felt like someone was trying to strangle me. I was wheezing so hard I felt like I’d pass out at any minute.
“Okay?” I managed, dragging myself to my knees.
Renee’s wide eyes met mine as she rolled over. “Some sensing.”
“Nan,” I said, thinking back to the blustery warning.
We knelt there, our chests heaving. Our breath puffing out smoky clouds.
Renee sat staring at me. “Go Nan.”
We turned and stared at the mound of snow behind us. Renee punched my arm. “What do you think you were doing shielding me from the snow?”
I rubbed my arm, blinking in the direction of where we had been in the car only moments before. “I’m bigger than you. It made sense.”
I turned to look at her. The smile in her eyes contradicted her folded arms. “Lilia would have been so pleased that I got her heir squashed.”
“We’re fine.” I shivered. I felt like someone was trying to shake my skin from my bones. Renee wasn’t fairing a lot better and her skin looked as though someone had sculpted her out of milk.
“Town,” she managed through her chattering teeth.
I nodded and we picked ourselves up. We followed what road we could see back toward the welcoming lights. I hadn’t ever been so happy to see civilization before. We stumbled our way down the icy sidewalk. The café was thankfully still open and the second we stepped inside looking like human icebergs, the waitress came dashing over to us.
“What happened?” she asked and without giving us time to answer turned to a man sitting on a barstool. “Earl. Get some hot chocolate, towels, the kit.”
He nodded and hurried into a back room.
“What happened?” she asked again, fussing over a cut on Renee’s eyebrow.
“We got caught in an avalanche,” Renee answered.
The woman’s eyes widened. “Oh, no.” She pulled us over to a corner, ushered us to sit down, and set two cups of hot chocolate in front of us.
I gripped mine just to get some feeling back in my stinging paws. The cuts and scrapes from slamming into the ground at full tilt were starting to make themselves known.
“Drink up,” the woman urged. “Drink . . . Wrap these around you.” She threw us the towels. “Once you’re warmed. Earl and I will drop you at the cabin. No buts, you’ll stay there till you’re recovered.”
For the second time in one evening, the woman had stunned me into gawping at her.
Thankfully, Renee took over. “Are you sure? Our car is . . . well . . . gone and I’ll need to tell someone.”
“Of course. I’m Martha and this is Earl, my husband. We own holiday cabins but there are a couple free.” She smiled at us, making me feel like Nan was shining in her eyes. “You can stay as long as you need.”
“I’m Serena,” Renee answered. “Doctor Serena Llys and this is . . . Aeron.”
I met her eyes, thanking her for not lumbering me with another name. I would end up tying myself in knots.
“We work in Serenity Hills back in Missouri,” she continued. “You heard of it?”
Martha shook her head and Renee’s aura pulsed with relief.
“On our way to a conference . . . I am the keynote speaker . . . I really should try and let someone know.”
“Sheriff McKinley will be in his office first thing,” Martha answered. “Till then there’s nothing to be done but warming and sleeping.”
I looked at Renee. I knew that sounded appealing to me. I hoped she would feel the same.
“Thank you,” Renee said.
I felt a gush of relief whoosh out of my mouth at her words. Thank heavens.
“You’re welcome.” Martha smiled and tapped the front of her clean apron.
Even the motif of the crossed hammer and ski was spotless. I didn’t get how, as she’d been buzzing around all evening. I’d noticed earlier she cooked too but nope, it was immaculate. She beamed at me with twinkling pale blue eyes, crinkled at the corners like she laughed freely. A deep frown line was etched in her forehead like she laughed in spite of the challenges that had been thrown at her. I couldn’t help gawp at her. She was so much like Nan in her energy. A matriarch, a real textbook mom who knew how to darn a sock or bake a pie. Dumb as it was, just being around Martha made me feel secure and like I didn’t have to have all the answers.
I guessed she knew I needed her reassurance as she squeezed my arm. “You’re safe here, honey. Some pie will cheer you right up.”
We watched Martha hurry away and I tried to shake off the sickly, weak feeling that was now drenching me with sweat. I hated visions. I hated flashes. I weren’t too keen on snow right now either. Pie sounded perfect to fix that.
Renee bit her lip, at least that’s what I thought until I saw it bleeding.
“Did I hurt you?”
“Aeron, you just saved my life . . . again. A couple of scratches are the least of my worries.” She lifted shaking fingers to the cut on her forehead. “Doesn’t really help to think what would have happened if you hadn’t—”
“No,” I said to stop her before she went down that road. She’d told me back in Oppidum how her father and her brother had died out on a mountain in bad weather. “Don’t do that.” I squeezed her shoulder once more. “If it wasn’t for you. Who knows what would have happened to me. We’re a team, right?”
She nodded, her jaw still trembling. “Right.”
“Good ’cause if you ain’t in the mood to finish your pie, I’m more than willing to pitch in.”
Renee shook her head, the glimmer of a smile on the corners of her lips. “You and that stomach of yours, Lorelei. You and that stomach.”
Chapter 5
THE LOG HOME that Martha and Earl drove us to was nestled back into the tall snow-covered trees and looked, pretty much, like one of those pictures you see on Christmas cards. Even in the darkness, I could see enough to tell that to stay here would cost the kind of money that only rich people had. Then I remembered that now, of course, I was one of them. The thought made me chuckle out loud as we clomped up the thick wooden steps onto the porch and Renee raised a grazed eyebrow at me.
“Nothin’,” I said with a shrug.
“Still not used to Ivy League, huh?”
Her words took me back for a second as Martha bickered with Earl about which key was the right one.
“How . . . ?”
Renee’s eyes twinkled. The moonlight danced in them as it peeked from behind the clouds.
I couldn’t help but smile. “Serves me right for fixing your head, huh?”
Her skin had a milky glow. Blue light washed everything with a silver shine. The trees twinkled like they had lights on them. I almost felt the need to capture the moment somehow or maybe play it on my violin. I could hear the strains of Moonlight Sonata in my mind then wondered if she could hear it too the way her eyes twinkled at me.
“I could pretend that,” Renee said, one corner of her mouth curling in a grin.
“B
ut?” I had no idea why I was whispering or why the music seemed to be filling my head.
Martha and Earl finally opened the door. They continued their marital debate as we followed them into the darkness.
Renee turned and cocked her head. I was still looking at her for an answer as we stood in the doorway.
The dim moonshine illuminated her, making her almost shimmer. Renee was one of those women whose beauty shone from within her. Not in a flashy way, but a quiet, gentle pulse. She always inspired me and somehow, in the doorway, I felt the itch to compose something just for her. Maybe I’d smacked my head on the snow. Maybe I’d been locked up in the CIG base too long, I didn’t know. Good thing she was used to me gawping at her.
She leaned into me and nudged my shoulder with hers. “You were mumbling out loud.”
The lights blinked to life as Earl fired up the generator. We were standing in the sitting area. Pictures of lakes and mountains were on most of the walls. Some kind of furry rug thing sprawled out under the clump of wood for a coffee table situated in front of the biggest fireplace that I’d ever seen. My eyes drifted over the open plan space—a homey-looking kitchen with lots of shiny silver equipment separated from the sitting area by a breakfast bar. To the right behind a fancy dining table and a grand piano were a huge set of floor-to-ceiling windows. I couldn’t see nothing beyond them now but they were like a work of art all by themselves.
“Great blackbear in a box!”
“Look over there then,” Renee whispered as Martha and Earl started to fill the huge fridge with goodies from their bags. I followed Renee’s directions and let out a wheezed breath as I saw the half wall separating the small gym, a study area, and I was pretty sure from the lettering on the door at the back that there was a sauna there, or maybe a shower. I squinted to try and read the letters. No, I was pretty sure it said sauna.
“Mezzanine,” Renee stated. “A home away from home for you.”
The floating staircase up to the next level drew my eye and I had to stop my feet from following. All it needed was a waterwheel attached to the side and Renee would be right.