Court of Frost and Embers (The Pair Bond Chronicles Book 1)

by Leeann M. Shane

  “Come on.” She wrapped her arm through mine and led me through the bodies and down the line of cars for the same minivan that had dropped her off that morning.

  She yanked open the sliding door and poked her head in. “Mom, this is Emmie. Can we give her a ride home, so she doesn’t have to walk in the rain?”

  Misty’s mother had kind wide eyes and a blunt blonde bob. “Of course, sweetie. It’s nice to meet you, Emmie. I’m Doris.” She waved between the seats at me.

  “It’s nice to meet you, too. And thanks.”

  “Sit with me in the back.” Misty went straight for the backseats and I followed.

  The door remained open and a few seconds later, the same blonde from that morning came bounding into the car. She took one look at me and her mouth twisted into a mean smile and she closed the van door, sitting back.

  “Look, Mom, Misty finally made a friend that we can actually see.”

  “Samantha,” her mother warned. “Leave your sister alone.”

  Samantha took her phone out. “Gladly.”

  Misty looked out of the window. She was physically different to her sister in every way. Her hair was more honey brown than blonde. Her face was sweeter and her heart the same. I often regretted being an only child, but not then.

  I patted Misty on her leg in an act of solidarity.

  She gave me a shy smile and then her mother asked me where I lived. I rattled the address off by memory. 5743 Curvington Road, Port Inlet, Washington. I didn’t memorize the address because I wanted to keep the knowledge handy; from the moment I found out I was going to live with Granny Londa, it felt so much like a bad dream. I always had a hard time forgetting bad dreams.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I told Misty, crawling out of the van and waving at her mother once we’d arrived.

  Misty waved back. “See-you at school tomorrow.”

  “See-you.” I waited until her mom made a U-turn at the end of the street and drove away to make my way up the driveway.

  There was only one other house on our street. It was too far within the trees and down the road to see it. Surrounding Granny Londa’s house and the opposite road was nothing but forest, a sea of evergreen. Endless rows of trees and mist and dark places. Even now, the sun had already started to set beyond the gray, sodden clouds, and nighttime existed there more than anywhere else.

  I didn’t want to go inside. I didn’t want to go into a house that wasn’t mine, and wade through the loneliness that was mine. I felt this stupid pressure on my chest and didn’t mind the rain splattering on my face; the rain hid my tears.

  When I finally made it inside, Granny was awake on the couch. She glanced over her shoulder at me, blinking in surprise. “Where have you been all day?”

  “School,” I mumbled, taking my shoes off and putting them in the cubby.

  She tapped her cigarette off on the end of her ashtray and returned to her TV. “I forgot that started today.”

  “Mhm.” I went straight for the phone in the kitchen, aching beyond ache that I could call my mother. But I couldn’t. That wasn’t an option. That wasn’t my life anymore. And it wasn’t hers. I hung the phone up and opened the fridge instead. There wasn’t anyone left to answer the phone. I imagined it ringing and ringing… forever… because there was no one on the other end anymore.

  “I’m hungry,” she called, coughing for a second before she continued. “Make yourself useful and make dinner.”

  I quickly wiped my tears off on my sleeve and then I took a deep breath and sucked my emotions down. Deep, deep down, where bad choices lingered, and memories haunted. And then I made dinner. The joke was on Granny Londa. I enjoyed cooking. I liked taking ten separate ingredients and combining them to make one perfect meal.

  So maybe Shepherd’s pie wasn’t fit for a queen, it was still good, and Granny Londa had two helpings and not one bad thing to say. She didn’t have anything good to say and she didn’t invite me to eat with her, but beggars can’t be choosers. Or in my case, eating in my room by myself was better than eating outside in the rain. Even though I could still hear it pattering insistently against the roof.

  I spread my syllabi out on my bedroom floor and organized them for each class, making a list of the supplies I had to purchase myself. I needed a way to earn some money on my own. Asking my grandmother wasn’t an option. I put my things away and then took a shower, taking the time to myself to hide under the hot stream of water.

  I crawled into bed early that night, but I didn’t immediately sleep. The rain picked up steam, blasting the side of the house and keeping me awake until well after ten. And when I did sleep, I didn’t dream pleasant things. I dreamed of a cute boy falling over the edge of the world, and every single time I was an inch too far away to catch him, a second too late to save him. I blamed Misty for telling me the story.

  I had Maxell Heathestone in my head now and he was messing with me.

  In the morning, I lay and listen to the rain pattering on the rooftop. I could see my breath in my room. I blew it out in front of me, wondering if it were safe to sleep when it was so cold. I tossed my covers aside and cringed when my feet touched the cold wooden floors. The cold felt like it was everywhere, most of all in me. I brushed my teeth and waited a full five minutes for the water to warm enough to use.

  The cat was asleep atop his rug when I came out dressed for school. He was curled into a tight, orange ball. He didn’t even stir when I descended the stairs. Granny must’ve been in her room because the living room was bare and when I touched the TV, it wasn’t warm to the touch.

  I made a big pot of oatmeal, adding brown sugar, cinnamon, and what was left of the milk. The refrigerator was inching on bare. I wasn’t sure how to navigate the grocery shopping. Asking for food felt like asking for too much. I ate my stomach full, leaving half the pot for Granny. I wrote her a note and left it beside the coffee pot. It was sure to get some use. I was pretty sure Granny Londa’s blood was half caffeine, and that was why she had a hard time sleeping. I could be wrong, though. I didn’t know what truly kept her up at night.

  Before I left for school, I dug around in the small closet beside the door. I coughed up dust but in the end found what I was looking for. The red umbrella kept me relatively dry on my walk to school. There were far more cars in the drop-off line than there had been yesterday. No one wanted to walk in the rain. At least I wasn’t the only one. There were a number of raincoats and umbrellas on campus.

  Once inside, I hung it on my backpack and did my best to blend in. Like a crack in an otherwise unimpressive wall—I barely made a fuss at all. I was glad to see Misty, less glad for P.E., but glad once more for lunch time. She was just as chatty as normal, but more so about a book she was reading about a magical boy with a killer crooked smile and the lucky girl who’d fallen in love with him.

  “Have you ever been in love?” she asked me, chewing on the end of her apple slice with her contemplative eyes aimed on me.

  I shook my head. “Have you?”

  Her eyes flitted over my shoulder so fast I could have imagined it because they were back on mine before I could even fully discern the movement. “No. Not really,” she sighed. “Is it love if the other person doesn’t even know you exist?” Again, her eyes moved to their intended target.

  That time I was able to locate the subject. “Does love have to be reciprocated for it to be true?” I asked, contemplating that between bites of my pizza.

  She tore her eyes from Daxon Heathestone. He sat alone, in the same spot, as empty and haunted as he’d been the day before. Both brothers had the same silhouette, but they didn’t look anything alike in the sense of presence. Of course, I didn’t know Maxell personally, and for all I knew he was a jerky jock and not the bigger than life boy he seemed to be now. His brother wasn’t bigger than life right now. It looked like his life had been snuffed out.

  “I don’t know,” she huffed, changing the subject. “Want to hang out after school? Sam’s been so mean and bitchy late
ly. I think she’s depressed. I can’t take it anymore. Mom’s busy with her Etsy business and my dad moved in with his new girlfriend, so I never see a lot of him.” Sadness weighed down her usually uplifted features.

  It was too much information to process in one sitting. I didn’t want to process her sadness. Both of her parents were still here, and yet she missed them. I understood that, and I also understood what it was like without them. Daxon and I were similar in that sense.

  I swallowed and considered the perils of going home. Of the impending loneliness broken up only by cooking dinner and having conversations with a haughty cat who may or may not talk back to me. “Um, yeah, sure.”

  Her eyes brightened. “Really? Awesome! You can catch a ride home with us, and my mom will drop you off.”

  “I’ll walk home.”

  She was too excited to argue. She launched into a heavily detailed plan for our evening together, and I couldn’t help finding her more on the comical side than I cared to admit. She was so animated and nice, the kind of person you never had to watch your back around. She was a pleasant side-effect of Port Inlet. So far, the only one, and even though getting to know someone wasn’t in my plans, I couldn’t back out after I’d already agreed to go.

  For the rest of the school day, I managed to uphold my end of the bargain. I didn’t talk to anyone and everyone seemed happy enough to reciprocate. It was a mutual choice between my peers and I to exist in a mountain of solitude. Logically, I knew making friends would make the aching pit of loneliness in my chest less vicious, but it would also make things harder when I did leave.

  I’d learned my lessons all too well putting my happiness and emotions into other’s hands. I wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. Loving people gave them the power to break your heart. Even good people did it. Even people who you were positive loved you back.

  I wondered if that was the moment we became lost. Loving someone. If feeling something bigger than yourself made you lose yourself.

  If so, I added another rule to my list. In all caps and blacked out so even from outer space I’d see the warning.

  DO NOT FALL IN LOVE.

  Feeling better after shouting my unspoken rule at the top of my deflated lungs in my too-loud head, I headed out front after the last bell rang for the day. Unsurprisingly, it was raining. I stood out front awkwardly, not sure how long it would take Misty to find me.

  I regretted agreeing to hang out the moment a horn honked, and I spotted Misty waving overenthusiastically from the ajar side van door.

  “Emmie! Over here!”

  Samantha traipsed past me, shaking her head at her sister and popping her gum. “You’d better hurry up. The dweeb will kill your social status if anyone knows you hang out with her.”

  I ignored Samantha because one, she walked upright—barely—and two, I didn’t like anyone, but I knew enough to know I could like Misty. On the sole fact that she was nothing like her bully of a sister. It made me wonder what a boy like Maxell saw in a girl like her. I mean besides her obvious physical beauty. I wasn’t in a forgiving mood and could easily attest that to their relationship. Boys were visual creatures, shallow in the truest sense of the word.

  But the picture I’d seen of him didn’t make me feel that way. Maxell didn’t look empty. He was so alive—he looked like he lived for everyone all at once. A bigger than life personality. Maybe Samantha had one buried underneath her thorns.

  I smiled with forced politeness at her before I crawled in the back and then said hello to Doris.

  “It’s so nice of you to join us tonight,” she said. “We’re having tacos for dinner. I hope that’s okay?”

  I was hit with a pang of longing at her motherly concern. “Tacos sound great, thanks.”

  “She makes her own guacamole,” Misty said proudly.

  Samantha smirked at her phone. “Your world is so small, nerd.”

  Joke’s on her. I loved guacamole. I engaged Misty in a riveting conversation about the specific preparation of said guacamole to stick it to her sister, but mostly because it seemed like the nice thing to do. Mostly. By the time we got to Misty’s place, I had a full rundown of ingredients and a secret on how to get the avocadoes out without mushing them up. I catalogued it to memory under random recipes & surefire ways to annoy Samantha.

  She ran from the van before Doris could even put it in park, running up the driveway for the front door. Misty’s house was a one-story made out of warm brick, in a neighborhood full of houses lining the street, with mountains in the distance and a park a block over. It all looked so normal. A place where families came to last.

  Not disintegrate.

  “My room’s this way,” Misty supplied, taking off down her picture-lined hallway for a room just off the corner.

  Once inside, she closed the door behind her and turned to me, a huge grin lifting her face. “I have Harry Potter on audio CD. Want to binge listen while we pig out on snacks before dinner?”

  I nearly fainted. “Misty, you’re going to make this whole quiet loner thing I’m striving for really hard when you say stuff like that to me.”

  She giggled, pointing toward a desk. “Stereo’s over there. Put book one in and I’ll be right back.”

  Her room was the stuff made of dreams. Books toppled over each other; her bed was barely visible with the mountain of hardcovers stacked up on the side of it like a sort of staircase. I dropped my backpack near the door and went over to her stereo, finding the row of audio CD’s laid out in order from series and then color coded and then from shortest to tallest. I picked book one and popped it into the CD player and before I knew it, Misty was back, and the mystical world whisked us away.

  We were half-way through and almost on disk four when the door burst open, the light turned on—the golden twinkle lights she had on her ceiling created the most perfect backdrop to daydream in the dark—and the illusion was shattered.

  “It’s almost nine,” Doris announced. “Curfew’s steadily approaching. Can I give you a ride home, Emmie?”

  Misty and I glanced at each other, blinking the way one does when they wake up from reading. Reality stunk, that was for sure.

  “Sorry, Mom. We lost track of time.”

  “Uh, no, that’s okay,” I answered her mother at the same time.

  “Is your grandmother coming to pick you up?” she asked, giving me that pinch of concern adults had been giving me ever since I became alone. That look said she knew the truth, even if I denied it.

  It aggravated me. I ground my teeth together and nodded, bending to put my shoes back on. “Yeah, she’ll be here in a few minutes.” Maybe lying was wrong, but in the face of appearing like one of Peter Pan’s lost children, I’d take the moral hit.

  “Great, well, I sure am glad you came over. You’re welcome anytime.”

  I released some of the tension in my jaw and gave her a small smile. “Thank you.”

  She nodded and pointed at her daughter. “In bed by ten.”

  “Ten,” Misty promised, and her mother left into the hall. “I’ll walk you out.”

  I grabbed my backpack and followed her out. In the hall, however, she paused, making me run into her back.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She held her hand up, her head turned to the left. “Do you hear that?”

  I listened. I heard a voice speaking fast and hushed. It sounded muffled, as if it were coming through a door.

  “Is that Samantha?” Misty frowned, venturing into the hall. She pressed her ear to a door a few down from hers, her eyes focused.

  I frowned at her. “She’s probably on the phone,” I whispered.

  “No, someone’s talking back to her. It sounds like she has a boy in her room.” She straightened, glaring at the hallway. “She’s lucky I’m not a snitch. Let’s go.”

  Thankfully, it wasn’t raining when we stepped out onto her porch. It was however freezing. Our breath fogged out in front of us and a shiver shook through me.

  �
�Is it always this cold?” My teeth chattered.

  “It’s not that cold,” she said, frowning.

  She must be used to the freezing temperatures.

  The street was dark, and the sky was inky; nighttime was so fast and deep in Port Inlet. Without the lights from a bustling inner city, every star seemed to be visible in the sky. They twinkled overhead like diamonds catching the moon.

  “You should let my mom drop you off,” Misty insisted, eyeing the dark road with wide eyes.

  I brushed her concern off. “I’ll be fine.”

  I was down her driveway when she called me back.

  “Emmie?”

  I looked over my shoulder. “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for hanging out with me. I know I’m not popular and I’m not cool—”

  I cut her off by continuing to the sidewalk. “See-you at school tomorrow.”

  I’d never been cool anyway.

  I didn’t realize how completely dark it was outside until I got on North Crystal Road. It cut through the town, the only road that led everywhere. Hop on it, and you’d eventually find your way. The downside was the lack of streetlights and people.

  It didn’t take me long to realize I wasn’t alone.

  Call it intuition. Call it self-preservation. Tingles of fear tiptoed down my spine. I tried to shake the feeling off. I stopped near a road sign and looked around, the quiet so quiet it was almost loud. I didn’t see anyone. It could be an animal. Or a serial killer just waiting for a target.

  I regretted not taking that ride home.

  “Who’s out there?” I called, my wobbly voice carrying over the dark road.

  What did I expect? For the serial killer to jump out and list his full name, social security number, and address?

  I strained my ears. I didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary. But I felt it.

  The way one would when there’s a wild animal tucked in the trees, waiting to pounce and turn me into lasagna meat.

  I took an uneasy breath and did the only thing I could do. I kept on walking. Faster, though. I cursed my lack of physical prowess. In an attempt to comfort myself, I decided to turn around abruptly. It was fast. But the man following me was faster.