Jackson Pearce - Cold Spell

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?”

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 front 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.