Jackson Pearce - Cold Spell

“Wait… here?”

“Yep.”

My hesitation is due to the neighborhood’s entrance: a brick drive, framed by huge gates and a white guardhouse. It’s the sort of place my mother would have sighed at wistfully, perhaps making a comment about how the residents probably don’t appreciate their good fortune. Lucas chuckles as a guard rushes out when he sees the station wagon coming—I can’t exactly blame him. The car doesn’t fit into a neighborhood like this any better than I do. Lucas waves from the passenger seat; the guard looks perplexed but opens the giant metal gates to let us pass.

Houses sit perched on hills, so big they could swallow my entire apartment building. The snow makes them look like they belong on holiday cards; they glow from the inside out in a way the places on Andern Street never could. Lucas guides me along, telling me when to turn. The houses change again—they grow larger, until the lots they’re set on are so vast the houses loom like castles in the distance. Finally—

“Here,” Lucas says. “This is ours.”

It looks like something that belongs in the European countryside, cream-colored and sitting high on a hill. The magnolias that drip with snow along the drive make it hard to see for a moment, but I keep my eyes trained on the spot where it was; when we clear the trees, I can see the balconies on the second story with elaborate iron railings, and arched windows with snow piled along the sills like icing.

“What do you do ?” I ask, amazed. We cross over a stone bridge; the road turns from brick to smooth cobblestone.

“It’s not me,” Lucas says. “It’s my wife.”

I immediately think of those men I’ve seen on TV, the ones who date older, richer women. I wouldn’t have pegged Lucas for one, but I suspect he is when we pull up to the house and it has a half dozen garages.

“Come on,” he says as he opens his door. “Speaking of my wife, she’ll definitely want to meet you.”

I park, grab my things, and climb out of the car. I gaze up at the mansion in wonder before tromping through the snow after Lucas, feeling dwarfed next to it, as if I’m a doll beside a human-sized building. Lucas leads me through the front doors, into a foyer with an enormously high ceiling. Mirrors on either side reflect my soggy complexion a million times back at one another, and everything is gold. Not actually gold, but the gold highlights and cream-colored travertine make the entire room look bathed in warmth, the exact opposite of the world outside.

“This way,” Lucas says, looking a little bemused at my expression. He leads me through a formal dining room that must have twenty chairs at the table, sitting on top of a rug that looks old, but I suspect cost more than the station wagon when it was new.

We finally stop in a kitchen full of stainless steel appliances and sleek, shiny countertops. Lucas rustles under the counter before emerging with a first-aid kit.

It’s warm in here; I take my coat off, becoming increasingly aware of how shabby I look next to all the glossiness. I lean over the kitchen counter while Lucas dabs at the dried blood under his nose with a wet paper towel, then lifts the edge of his shirt to wipe off another cut.

“So, what does your wife do?” I ask when the silence becomes too powerful.

“She inherits money, mostly,” he says. “She’s excellent at it. You should consider it as a career option.”

“Seriously?” I ask. “That’s it?”

“She was also Miss Tennessee,” he says. I raise my eyebrows without meaning to. “I get that a lot,” he says, waving at my expression. “I don’t look like the guy who ends up with the beauty queen. Believe me, I know.”

“Then how did you?” I ask.

Lucas smiles. “I just ended up with her , and she happens to be a beauty queen.”

I nod, the answer’s sweet simplicity making my heart spark a little.

“So, look—I need to soften her to the idea that I attacked a Fenris and wrecked her car doing it. So—”

“Which car?” a female voice says. Lucas wilts in front of me; I whip my head around to the speaker.

Lucas’s wife doesn’t look like a beauty queen, mainly because she’s pretty. Really, genuinely pretty—I’m certain of it, because she’s wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt and, as best I can tell, doesn’t have any makeup on. Yet she still glows, not in the disconcerting way that Mora did, but in a way that makes me simultaneously judge and adore her. She pads across the kitchen, socks on her feet, and tugs the corner of Lucas’s shirt up, revealing the cut he’d just finished tending to.

“The Audi,” he says, trying to hide the wound.

“And you hit a Fenris with it? In this weather? I thought they were only in this area in the summer.”

“So did I,” he says as she frowns and wraps her arm around him. She looks ridiculously curvy next to him, like she’s drawn in circles and he’s drawn in sticks.

“But you’re okay,” she says, and he nods against her, his face ruffling her hair. The way they talk to each other softens the glossiness of the room—makes the space feel less like a castle and more like a home.

“This is Ginny Andersen,” he says, motioning to me when she pulls away. “Ginny, this is my wife, Ella.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Ginny,” Ella says in a practiced but kind way. There’s something a little guarded about Ella—something that makes her look as if she’s giving an interview, the former Miss Tennessee shining through.

“Come on,” Lucas says, walking over to the kitchen table. He and Ella drop into chairs; I stay at the counter, watching. “Have a seat,” he says, motioning to the one beside him. “Tell her what you told me. About the book and… I don’t know. Just tell us what you know.”

I move to take the chair, trying not to think about Grandma Dalia and how she never offered me one, how she tried so hard to keep me locked out, a stranger. And yet here are actual strangers, inviting me in… it makes me blush.

I take a deep breath and start talking. I avoid their eyes, thinking instead about Kai, trying to let words fall from my mouth the way they do when I talk to him—after all, half-truths and nerves won’t help me now. So I tell them everything . About Grandma Dalia, about her warnings, about her fear of the snow. I tell them about Mora and look down when I tell them about Kai, how he changed overnight into a cruel stranger, how he vanished. Then I open the book, skip to the pages about the beasts and show them the sketches of fangs and eyes and claws. Then I reassemble the magazine clippings to form Mora’s face.

When I’m finished, Lucas and Ella are staring—but not with the same guarded disbelief the cop and my mother had. Lucas and Ella simply look scared—which, I realize, is what I wanted all along. If they’re scared, it means I’m right to be. The wind and snow howl at the glass doors leading from the kitchen to the snow-covered deck, threatening us. Ella stares at the clippings, reaches forward, and pushes some of them closer together.

“I’ve never heard of a Snow Queen,” Lucas tells her. “I don’t even understand how she’s the queen of the Fenris if she’s some sort of winter… entity? I never see them even in late September, much less on the rare occasion there’s snow on the ground. And if she’s their queen, is she a Fenris herself?”

“Grandma Dalia always said she was queen, but I don’t know if she is one. She didn’t look like the ones we just saw,” I say. “They look like they’re wearing a human costume, sort of. But she looked… she looked normal.”

“And, just to make sure I’m clear—you think this girl might be the queen of hungry, soulless werewolves, so you decided to chase her down. Do you have a death wish?” Lucas asks, then shakes his head. “Do your parents know you’re doing this?”