Аманда Хокинг - Flutter

The room had hardwood floors, but generally, it had that same nice, generic look that any other hotel would have. They had internet access and a television, and I didn’t know exactly what I had expected. Some sort of run down hunting lodge with only one bathroom in the whole place maybe. But when I peaked out the window at the snow covered dark, based on the cars in the parking lot, it was relatively busy.

“There’s a lot of people here,” I commented.

Letting the shades close, I turned back to Ezra. He had already started to busy himself with unpacking, while I had just dropped my luggage on one of the beds. I had claimed the double bed closer the window, and his was nearer to the bathroom.

“There’s a ski resort,” Ezra explained absently. “I think I’m going to go ahead and take a shower.” He gathered up his change of clothes and toiletries, then looked over at me. “Then we’ll get some rest and have a go at finding Peter tomorrow.”

“Do we really have time to waste?” I tried to ask without accusation. We had left in such a hurry, and I wasn’t sure how imminent the danger to Peter was.

“We have to rest, or I’ll be of no use to Peter.” He shrugged tiredly, as if he couldn’t see any way around it.

Once he’d gone in the bathroom and I heard the familiar sound of the showering running, I changed into my comfy pajama pants and a cotton shirt. They felt tremendous after spending the past twenty hours or so stuck in jeans and a sweater while traveling across the world. Thankfully, in my rush to pack, I had thought to pack pajamas, otherwise it would’ve been incredibly awkward sleeping in my underwear while sharing a room with Ezra.

I had gotten sleep on the plane ride over the ocean, and with the time difference, I would just be getting up back home in Minneapolis. On top of that, Ezra had amped me when he dropped the news to me that we were really chasing after werewolfian vampires, so I didn’t exactly feel like sleeping.

When I pulled out my phone, I was surprised to find that I had a signal (subconsciously I guess I had been thinking that Finland was in the stone ages) and that my charger didn’t work in the outlets. Fortunately, I’d had it shut off the entire travel time, so the battery was fully charged.

Crossing my fingers, I sat down on the bed and hoped he would be awake enough to answer the phone. This had been the longest we’d gone without talking to each other since I’d turned, and it felt very, very strange. Like the chemicals in body were slightly off balanced without him.

“Hello?” Jack sounded almost frantic when he answered the phone. “Alice? Are you okay? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” Irrational tears welled up in my eyes. It was stupid how much I missed him when I’d barely even been gone for a day. “We just got to the hotel. I was just calling to let you know that we got in alright.”

“Good. Good.” Jack was genuinely relieved, but that was tightness in his voice, probably because he missed me and hadn’t wanted me to go in the first place. “How was your flight?”

“I slept through most of it,” I admitted but neglected to tell him the reason for it. He didn’t need to know about my panicked bloodlust in New York. It would just work him up. “This is my first time being out of the Midwest, though, and it sucks. I was in New York City, and I didn’t see any of it. I barely got a glimpse of Helsinki when we were coming in.”

“You’re in Finland?” There was an edge to his voice, and I realized that I might’ve said too much.

“That’s where Peter’s in trouble with vampires?”

“Um…” I shifted on the bed, trying to think of a line to feed him.

“They’re not really vampires, are they? It’s lycan.” He sighed when I didn’t say anything, and then he held the phone away from his mouth. “Mae! Mae!”

“Why are you yelling at Mae?” I asked wearily.

“Because. If she knew that’s what you guys were doing-”

“What?” I interrupted him. “What are you gonna do?”

Jack grumbled something under his breath but didn’t really have a follow-up for that. Even if Mae had known, she would’ve been as happy about as Jack, and she would’ve tried just as hard as to talk Ezra out of going. Most likely, Ezra hadn’t told anybody where we were going for that reason. He had made up his mind, and he didn’t want to waste time fighting about it.

“I should get on a plane right now,” Jack threatened.

“Jack, don’t be silly. Ezra wouldn’t let anything happen to me. I’m just here to try and talk Peter into coming back, not to fight any stupid vampires,” I told him as calmly as I could. If I sounded even slightly freaked out about the lycan, than he would hop on a plane and drag me back with him.

“Peter doesn’t need to come back,” Jack muttered.

“Have you been to Finland?” I quickly changed the subject.

It was pointless to go over the topic of Peter again. The bond between Jack and Peter had been irrevocably severed and arguing with him about it would only make Jack more anxious. I couldn’t make him feel good about me being here, but maybe I could distract him enough where he worried a little less.

“Yeah, once, a few years back,” he said disdainfully. “We went skiing and I was terrible. I broke a snowboard and rolled down the hill like a snowball. It wasn’t that fun. Finland’s not that great. You should just come home.”

“Jack,” I sighed. I had started to smile when I pictured him tumbling down a hill, but it faded when he went back to trying to convince me to leave. “You’re wasting this phone call. My phone’s going to die, and I don’t have a charger. Do you really wanna spend this time arguing with me, when you know you’re not going to change my mind?”

“Yeah, I kind of do,” Jack replied flippantly. “Besides, I’m sure Erza has a charger that’ll work there, and you can use that.”

A few weeks ago, Jack had bought me an iPhone, since I wasn’t on my mother’s cell phone plan anymore. It was the exact same phone that both Ezra and Jack had, so if Ezra had a charger, it would work on mine. I have to be honest - being really rich was kind of awesome.

“Ezra speaks Finnish,” I went on, keeping the subject away from Peter or coming home.

“It’s pretty fancy, although I can’t understand a word of it.”

“Ezra is fluent in like every language known to man, even the dead ones. He thought he was so cool when he watched The Passion of the Christ without subtitles because can he speak Aramaic, but I’m pretty sure that’s the only time that’ll ever come in handy.” He had lightened up, just a tad, and it made me smile.

“Can you speak any other languages?” I had never heard Jack say anything in another language, nor he had he mentioned it.

“Spanish and German,” Jack informed with me an odd sense of pride. “I learned Spanish in high school, and German in college, so I’m not really fluent in either. But I can ask if you speak in English in both languages, and I think that’s the only thing I really need to know.”

“Yeah, that sounds helpful,” I laughed, but my happiness made fresh tears in my eyes. “I miss you, you know?”

“I miss you too,” Jack agreed solemnly. “You can come home, Alice, whenever you want.

No pressure.”

“I know. But I have to help out. It shouldn’t be that long, I don’t think. We’re going out first thing tomorrow. We’ll find Peter, and then come straight home.”

Jack started to say something to me about the Finnish wilderness being more complex than I thought it was, but Ezra came out of the bathroom, distracting me. He had changed into flannel pajama pants and a tee shirt, and his sandy hair was a damp mess. He ruffled his hand through it, then looked at me questioningly.