Cold Spell

by Jackson Pearce

  “Kai.” I say his name, refusing to let my voice shake.

  He whirls around and finds me. He smiles; the slow, heinous expression doesn’t fit his face.

  “You keep calling me that,” he says in a playful voice. He doesn’t blink; his eyes are wide and crazed-looking, void of any warmth.

  “It’s your name,” I say. “Do you remember?”

  He shakes his head, as if this delights him. It feels as if my heart is crumbling, becoming ash in my chest.

  “Are you sure?” I ask, and my voice finally breaks. I won’t let tears fall—I can’t, I can’t risk not being able to see—but the sob in my throat won’t be stopped.

  Kai takes a step closer to me, extends his fingers, and then balls his hands into tight fists. “You got away from us,” he says smoothly. “That was clever. You’re clever. What are you doing here?”

  I exhale, forcing my shoulders back. Grip the knife. Say it, just say it, even if your voice cracks. The words jumble in my head before finding their way past my lips.

  “I’m here to kill you.”

  Kai smiles wider. And then he lunges for me.

  I leap backward and spin around the tree trunk. He doubles back the other way, but I expected it; I lash out with the knife, catch his shirt, and slice at it, barely nicking the skin. Just as Flannery promised, he glances down at the wound; I fling myself at him, catching him off balance, and we tumble down together. He punches me in the stomach, hard, and I can’t find my breath, but don’t stop, don’t stop. This might be your only chance. I bring the knife down, dig my knee into his chest, and position the blade over his heart. He goes to swipe it away, and I press down, drawing the tiniest bit of blood.

  Kai’s arms fall back; his eyes find mine, cold and hard and hateful. He twists underneath me; I press the knife down again, grimace as I feel it pop through a layer of skin. Kai tries to swallow a groan, but I hear it anyway. His chest trembles in pain.

  “They’ll kill you,” he whispers at me. “They’ll tear you apart. As soon as she realizes you’re here, she’ll come; my brothers will come. They’ll eat you, one bite at a time, from the inside out.”

  The boy I loved is gone.

  I want to close my eyes, but I can’t—he’d use the moment to get away. I brace myself and slam one hand down over his eyes so I don’t have to look at them. Do it. Make it fast; make it quick. I shift my weight forward so I’ll be able to use my whole body to drive the knife in. The skin on his forehead and cheeks feels so cold underneath my hand.

  One. Two. My eyes wander across his face, trying to memorize the details—I won’t see him again. Ever again. I’m shaking. I have to do this now before he moves, before he sees that he has the upper hand.

  I bring my lips down to Kai’s; they’re so cold they burn mine. Yet behind the fire, they’re familiar. Lips I’ve kissed before. Lips I thought I would spend a lifetime kissing. I want him to wrap him arms around me, holding me tight as if it’s the first time all over again, but of course he doesn’t. So I pretend. Pretend it’s like before, pretend Kai loves me and I love Kai and no matter what either of us becomes or does, where either of us goes, the fact that we love each other will never change. I focus on the fantasy, on Kai’s lips against mine as I inhale, preparing to drive the knife in on the exhale—

  Kai shoves me, hard, sending me flying backward. The knife flies from my hands, and I crash to the ground. Find your footing, get up, quick, find the knife. Kai fumbles away from me, and I frantically search the snow. His back hits a tree; he stops, pulls his hands out of the snow, and stares at them, red and aching from the cold. Finally, his eyes find mine, and when he speaks, his voice is a shaky whisper. “Ginny?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  I stare. Is it a trick?

  “What does three flashes mean? With the flashlight?” I ask hurriedly.

  “I…” Kai shakes his head, squinting. “It means come over.”

  “What did Grandma Dalia call me?”

  “The neighbor child.”

  I inhale, nod. Tears are rising in my eyes, but I blink them back furiously. “What were you playing with, the day we first met?”

  “A Frisbee. Ginny,” he says again as he begins to shiver. I walk over to him, staring—his lips are pink again, but they’re dimming, slowly turning blue once more. His eyes are hardening, his skin paling—

  I grab his hand.

  He jolts upward, the warmth returns. His eyes are shaky and his breath is uneven when he speaks. “What happened to me?”

  “Kai,” I say, exhaling, and wrap my arms around him. He feels bony and wrong and broken, but he buries his head against my neck the way he’s always done. His hands find my waist pull me closer, quivering like a sick person.

  “What happened to me?” he asks against my skin.

  “It’s… complicated,” I say. “What do you remember?”

  “I remember Mora,” he says. “I remember… I remember everything, but it feels like a dream. I think it was a dream.”

  “I wish,” I say. I pull off my coat and shove the flashlight into my hoodie pocket, but in the few seconds it takes me to put the coat on him—during which I have to release his palm—I see him start to darken again. I can’t let go, or he’ll go back to…

  Her.

  “Kai,” I say. I rise. “We have to find Mora.”

  “Mora,” he says, blinking hard. “She’s real. It was all real.”

  “Yes. We have to find her because she still has power over you. When I let go—”

  “I know,” Kai says, his voice clearing a little. “When you let go I become hers. It’s like she’s running my body, and I’m falling farther and farther away from it.” He squeezes my hand tightly, steps closer to me, and kisses me on the forehead. He’s still so cold that it makes me shiver. He inhales, finds my eyes. “Are you going to kill her?”

  I look down. “Not unless I have to.”

  “Like you were going to kill me. If you had to.” It’s half a question—would you really have done it, Ginny? Kai looks as if he doesn’t understand how what he’s asking can line up with the girl he knows.

  “If I had to,” I answer in a whisper. “I’d have done it if I had to.” Kai nods and seems to accept this as truth. “Come on. The house I saw earlier—is she in it right now?”

  “Maybe. She probably went to see what we were chasing—” Kai winces and puts his hand to his temple. He blinks hard, groans.

  “What’s happening?” I ask.

  “I just… I feel like two people. I just…” He looks up at me. “Come on.”

  I find Flannery’s knife in the snow and let Kai lead—though he can’t walk well. It’s almost as if he’s walking on broken feet, each step rocky and numb. It’s still snowing, but I’m grateful for it—it hides our tracks a little.

  “How many were there? Like you, I mean. How many boys?” I whisper as we walk.

  “Six,” he says. “Six altogether, I think.” Kai stops suddenly, and I almost crash into him. I glare at him accusingly only to see him lifting a finger, pointing. I look in that direction and through the trees. Mora’s cottage. We’ve come up along the back side, and for the first time I notice there’s no snow on the roof, as if the flakes avoid the shingles.

  “She’s in there right now?” I ask Kai. It’s small, smaller than it looked earlier, and it doesn’t seem like the sort of place someone like Mora would live.

  “I don’t know,” he answers. “It’s not really her house.”

  “I don’t understand what that means,” I say, growing frustrated.

  “I can’t explain it,” he says. “You have to see.”

  I exhale, look at the house, hold Kai’s hand tight. “All right, then. Don’t let go.”

  “I won’t,” Kai says, turning to look at me. The gold in his eyes both soothes and terrifies me—I don’t want it to leave again.

  Together, we slink through the snow along the edge of the cottage, ducking under windowsills. We reach the fron
t door, and suddenly the knife in my hand feels stupid and small against whatever Mora is.

  Kai is the one who reaches forward first, letting his hand run across the doorknob. I hold my breath as he turns it and pushes the door open. The house sighs, as if it needed the air from the outside to blow in. I brace myself for Mora’s eyes, for a wolf, for the cold.

  But there is nothing. The house is dark and perfect, not like it’s abandoned, but like no one has ever lived here. It reminds me of those staged homes, where they bring in furniture that’s flawless and stiff. The door opens to a foyer that splits into two rooms, one with a dining room table with eight place settings, the forks and knives lined up on either side of white plates. The other, a living room with a camelback couch and bookcases with one or two items on each shelf—odd things, like unlit candles, empty jars, and an elaborate ship in a bottle. Ahead, I can see a bedroom. The bed is crisply made with silk linens and fancy pillows, and there’s a notepad sitting beside it, the pen laid carefully across the top.

  I twist around and pull the flashlight out of my hoodie pocket, flick it on, then step inside, balancing the knife and the light in one hand so I don’t have to release Kai. The floorboards creak in protest under my feet, and I cringe, waiting for something to happen…. silence. Another step, another. We pass a table with picture frames on it, and I notice there’s no dust—anywhere. Everything is perfectly polished and glossy. I pause, shine the light on each of the photos, and realize they’re all of Mora.

  But not the Mora I know. They’re of Mora in a wedding dress. Of Mora on a boat in a bikini. Of Mora in front of a backdrop that looks like it belongs at a movie premiere.

  They’re not really of Mora. There’s something wrong about them, and when I lean over to see what, I realize that it’s Mora’s head, but not her body. They’re fakes, all of them—Mora’s face cut out and pasted on top of other girls’ bodies. Pictures of the life Mora thought she would have, not the life she’s living.

  “Look at these,” I say to Kai, forgetting to whisper.

  “That’s what I meant,” Kai answers. “It’s not really her house.”

  I angle the flashlight on one of the largest photos—a black-and-white shot of Mora wearing a long, silver dress with a fancy headpiece, something reminds me of the 1920s. I narrow my eyes—it’s real. It’s her, Mora the way she really is. I inhale, shake my head, and turn back to Kai—

  “She came to kill you,” he says.

  “What—” I begin, but then I realize he isn’t talking to me.

  Kai’s eyes are dark again. Skin a strange bluish gray. And his hand is now heavy in mine, like an ice carving instead of an appendage. A flutter of movement, and Mora steps out from behind him, her slender hand carved around Kai’s other arm.

  “I know,” she says, and smiles at me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Kai pulls his hand from mine; the air that swoops to my skin is warmer than his fingers were. I lower the flashlight’s beam to the floor and stare at Mora.

  “Come to kill me?” Mora asks simply.

  “I want him back,” I answer, because as much as I want to stop her, to end what she does to boys and the girls who love them, what I really want is Kai.

  “I know the feeling,” she answers, almost sympathetically, and steps between Kai and me, dangerously close. She emanates cold, so much that I take a step back to escape it. Mora leans against Kai, who swoops one arm around her and kisses the top of her head tenderly. She takes his hand and walks into the sitting room, as if I’m merely a houseguest to whom she’s giving the grand tour.

  I inhale, turn, and follow. Mora sits down on the couch, Kai beside her; he hardly ever looks away, as if he adores her too much to warrant looking at anything else. Lucas warned me. He warned me Kai would trick me, I think, feeling sick. Mora smiles again and motions toward a swan-arm rocker opposite her, indicating I should sit.

  “I’ll stand,” I say stiffly.

  “You’ll sit,” Mora answers. “My home. My rules. Drop the knife, by the way.”

  I pause and let the knife clatter to the floor, but I keep my grip on the flashlight. This seems to satisfy her; she motions to the chair, and I reluctantly sit down on its edge—not because I’m playing by her rules, but because I haven’t worked out a plan yet and any time is borrowed time. She looks pleased and runs her fingers up and down Kai’s pant leg. I shiver, fiddling with the flashlight switch when my body can’t handle the nerves.

  “I liked you, Ginny. You’re the kind of girl I would have been friends with, once.”

  “I can’t say the same,” I answer curtly. I notice magazines on the coffee table—fashion ones, though they’re strangely dated. Some from the sixties, some from the eighties, some more recent. She catches me looking at them and sharpens her tone, as if she’s embarrassed.

  “Why are you really here?” She takes Kai’s hand again; I look away, though I wish I could meet his eyes for a moment.

  “I’m taking Kai back. You can’t just take people because you want them, Mora.”

  “That’s what happened to me—”

  “I don’t care,” I snap—it’s so quiet in here, like a vacuum except for our voices. “I get it. The Fenris stole you; they stole your life. But that doesn’t mean you can do the same thing to others.”

  “So you know about them,” Mora says quickly, and something akin to fear flashes in her eyes. “Did they follow you?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit.

  She frowns and then leans her head against Kai’s shoulder; he puts an arm around her. “They stole me from my life—took everything from me. But I gained so much more in return. Power you could never understand—power that means I can, in fact, do what I want.” Mora grins.

  “He remembered when I touched him. He’ll never really be yours. None of them are,” I say, whispering. I can see my breath now—it’s getting colder in here, though Kai and Mora don’t seem to notice. I shiver without meaning to and squeeze the flashlight in my left hand, causing the beam to flick on and off.

  “No one is ever really ours,” Mora says, tilting her head as if considering her words. “But he’s more mine than he ever was yours. You’re a silly little girl, Ginny. I admit I underestimated you—I didn’t think you’d keep coming for him. But that doesn’t change the fact that you don’t deserve him—you don’t appreciate what he is.” It’s getting colder, colder, colder. Mora stands up, pushes her shoulders back, and walks toward me slowly. My hands are a strange purplish blue, and it hurts to keep my eyes open. I struggle to breathe and realize I’ve stopped shivering. No. No. Don’t give in. I look down at the knife on the floor, reach for it—

  Mora grabs my wrist, her skin so cold it burns like fire. I cry out, but Mora holds on, laughing so loud the sound echoes throughout the house. “Come on, Ginny. Really?”

  I crumble, hating myself—but the pain is too much. It rushes through me like lightning that freezes my bones, my blood. The room is growing even colder, and Mora’s fingers feel stuck to my wrist. I shake, I can’t stop; it’s a cold and a hurt I haven’t known before, one that seems impossible and heavy on me. I squeeze the flashlight in my free hand, or at least, I try to—but my fingers feel as if they’re shattering, and for a moment I’m not even sure I’m holding it anymore.

  And suddenly, it begins to get warmer. I exhale in relief—it’s a strange sort of warmth, after all that cold, one that seems to start somewhere near my chest and build out until it burns around my neck and wrists. I glance down at my hand and see I’m still blinking the flashlight nervously, automatically. The skin is blue, the movement sharp and robotic. Mora steps closer to me, lightens her grip on my wrist—though she’s still holding tight enough for me to know I can’t escape.

  “It’s a lie,” Mora says delicately, right by my ear. Am I sweating? I shake my hair to the side, trying to cool my neck. “Right before you die from the cold, your body lies to you. Tells you you’re warm. Has mercy on you.” Kai shifts behind her.
I flash the light again as my lungs tighten, refusing to allow another breath. One flash, two, three. One, two three.

  One. Two. Three.

  Come over.

  “No one will take everything from me,” Mora whispers. “Not you. Not the Fenris. Not anyone. Not ever again. I’m the one with the power now.”

  The flashlight catches Kai’s eyes. Black—but there’s gold. Gold flickering among the darkness.

  My response is a whisper, the air hard and sharp in my throat. “But I’m going to win.”

  Come over.

  Kai dives forward.

  When Kai slams into me, it feels as if I’m made of glass and breaking into a million pieces. I fall to the floor, knocking over the rocker and a small table. He shoves Mora to the side, grabs my wrist; his touch feels like fire. Mora screams something. I can’t focus, but I see her on the floor, see Kai yanking something off the bookshelf—the model ship—and bringing it down hard on her head. But then I’m falling asleep into the warm world, but we’re moving, and I can feel Kai’s skin on mine, still hear Mora screaming at me as I drift down into—

  I’m awake. My eyes spring open, and I realize Kai is carrying me, sprinting, panting as we run. Suddenly it’s warm—not warm, really, but not the dead cold from inside the house. I grab Kai’s neck, pull myself up to see behind him. Mora’s house is disappearing in the distance, but there’s movement on the trail—something’s behind us, and Kai can’t run fast enough while he carries me. I twist and struggle until Kai lets my feet down. They feel like cinder blocks, heavy and dead, but I force them along. Kai keeps his hand on mine as we race forward.

  A tree whips at my face, drawing blood. How far is the lake, how far is the lake? I trip and slide down an embankment, but Kai grabs my hand and yanks me up. I can see the smooth, pearl glow of the lake ahead, the path out of her world—

  Something growls behind us, and I dare to glance back. Wolves, five of them, with sharp teeth and angry eyes. They dart in and out of the trees, well-practiced on the terrain. So close, so close—I heard a crunch as one leaps over a snowdrift and lands near me, but it doesn’t have me; they haven’t caught us yet.