Cold Spell

CHAPTER TWELVE

I barely sleep, plagued by a fight for my heart. Staying with Lucas and Ella, being happy, being warm, being home. Or going after Kai, the boy who broke my heart. The boy who walked away into the cold. The boy who not only may never want me again, but might get me killed.

The boy who I love.

The roses in my head aren’t going anywhere—the love I have for Kai isn’t going anywhere, no matter what he’s done, no matter if he still wants me or not. Besides—Grandma Dalia never found her boy, and she became… Grandma Dalia. I don’t want that to happen to me, don’t want to be looking over my shoulder, worrying, scared my entire life. I want to be with Kai. I have to go after him.

It’s a decision I feel strong about until the following morning when I hurry downstairs and see Ella. She’s in the kitchen, pulling out flour, sugar, multicolored salts, fancy oils, an entirely different person than the crying girl I saw last night. There’s a stack of cookbooks on the counter beside her that look brand-new, and she’s wearing a bright pink apron.

“What are you doing?” I ask, still sleepy.

“We’re going to cook things!” she chirps.

“… Why?”

“Because you said you like to cook, and I figured you could teach me!” she says. “I got you an apron. You don’t have to wear it, though. Help me find a recipe?”

I take the pink apron from Ella’s hands. It seems so hurtful, so cruel to crush Ella’s happiness by abruptly telling her I can’t stay. She and Lucas have given me so much; I can give her an afternoon, can’t I? I’m stalling—for fear of Mora, of the cold, of whatever painful uncertainty lies ahead—but it’s hard to be sorry about it when I think of Kai walking away from me. Staying a little longer feels like a way to even the scales between me and Kai, even if I’m the only one measuring.

Ella and I sit down at the kitchen table and begin to flip through the various cookbooks together. Many are signed, or written in another language, or involve ingredients that I’m fairly certain even Ella doesn’t have in the pantry, like milk thistle and grapefruit curd. There’s something soothing about paging through the books, though, looking at perfect photos of even more perfect food.

“What about this?” Ella asks, pointing to a page in a dessert book.

“That looks complicated,” I say.

“But do we have all the stuff for it?” She looks over her shoulder at the counter.

“Probably,” I say. It’s a recipe for something called Chocolate Blackout Cake. Baking was never my thing, really, and this one involves a lot of steps for something I’m pretty sure we could make out of a box. Ella is persuasive, though, and twenty minutes later she’s whisking eggs and oil together while I try to figure out if I can substitute some sort of fancy imported cocoa powder for melted chocolate chips.

“So I was wondering,” Ella says, “do you know how to ride a horse?”

“I live in Atlanta,” I say. “Shortage of horses there, except the ones pulling carriages.”

“Because I’ve got four—they aren’t stabled here, but it’s close. We could go ride them while the cake cooks.”

“It only cooks for thirty-five minutes,” I remind her, smiling.

“Is that all? Why aren’t I making these all the time?” she says, whisking so hard that some of the mixture spills out of the bowl. “Well, maybe when we’re done, then. Or tomorrow. Though I was thinking we could go book shopping tomorrow.”

“That sounds fun,” I say, sliding a butter knife across the top of a measuring cup full of cocoa—I figure we’ll just add a little more butter to make up for the substitution. Ella grins and helps me load everything into the mixer.

The cake turns out lopsided, and we’re terrible at sprinkling the garnish around the edges like the picture. Ella is delighted, though, and insists on calling Lucas in to show him.

“We made it!” she says, whisking the top off the cake stand.

“I’m impressed,” Lucas says, kissing her on the cheek. “I mean, you have three degrees, but… a cake…”

“Oh, shut up,” she says. “I’m excited.”

“Clearly,” he jokes, and kisses her again, pulling her close so that her hip bumps his. We eat cake for lunch, so much that by four o’clock, all three of us are lying on our backs on the various couches in their “theater room.”

“Is the ice better today?” I say offhandedly. I can’t stall forever, but I want to ease Ella in to the idea of me leaving.

“Yes,” Lucas says; I see Ella turn her head to him and glare, though I don’t think she knows I catch it.

“I should…” I inhale. “I should go, then. Before Mora and Kai get too far ahead of me.” I speak quickly, as if I’m ripping off a Band-Aid.

“But we’re supposed to go horseback riding tomorrow,” Ella says quickly.

“Yeah, but I can’t….”

“She’s a witch monster thing,” Ella says. “Look, here’s what I’m thinking: We’ll call Lucas’s brother Silas. We’ll pay him and his girlfriend to go run Mora down—they do it all the time.”

“With Fenris, they do it all the time,” Lucas says. “I don’t think they even know about the Snow Queen. And I haven’t been able to get in touch with him anyhow.”

“Okay, but still. They kill werewolves. It’s what they do. And he always calls back eventually.”

“And what if Kai is a wolf by then?” I say quietly. Ella goes silent, and Lucas sighs loudly. “Ella, I can’t just… stay here. I…” I’m almost afraid to say it, especially after yesterday, but I force the sentence out. “I love him.”

“I know you love him. But you dying won’t bring him back. It’ll just mean he’s still a monster, and you’re gone,” she says. “Come on. Just let us call them. And we’ll have a great time tomorrow. Besides—if you don’t stay, I’ll eat the rest of the cake myself.”

“I’ll help,” Lucas says. Ella smiles, but it doesn’t look real—it looks trained, like something she’d give a pageant judge. It looks desperate.

“And besides, Ginny, now that I know I can cook without burning the house down, I want to know how to make something other than chocolate cake. You know what I love? Quiche. Do you know how to make that?” Ella says brightly, sniffling back the last bits of her sadness.

“Sure,” I say, fighting to keep my voice from breaking. I roll over to look at the scar on my hand. “We’ll do one for lunch tomorrow.”

It stops snowing at four in the morning. I know, because I’m still awake, staring at the clock. I feel delirious, drunk with imagined scenes where I punch Mora in her perfect teeth and pull Kai away from her—scenes cut with images of me and Ella horseback riding. Lucas and me driving around town. The three of us sitting at a dinner table together. They want me. I want them. I want this place. I want everything to be simple and beautiful and warm.

I want to stay so badly that for a moment, it feels as if my limbs don’t work anymore—as if they’re too heavy for me to lift, far too heavy for me to even consider something like getting up and walking. I squeeze my eyes shut. Kai. You’re all he has. You’re the only one who will fight for him, really fight for him.

Even though a future with Ella and Lucas is beautiful, one where Kai and I are the ones making quiche together is far more so. I can’t stay.

I heave myself to standing and proceed to creep around in the darkness, throwing my clothes into a bag. It won’t zip up; I finally pull out the red heels Ella gave me and tuck them under my arm. My bedroom door creaks open, the sound echoing through the darkened house. I ease down the stairs, inhaling the scent of cleaner and perfume that permeates this place. I try not to think of what Ella will do or say when she realizes I’m gone.

I bang my hip on the kitchen corner and curse under my breath. My phone is dead, so I turn on the little television on the kitchen wall and immediately lower the volume. After a few clicks I find a weather report and wait for the map to come up. Snow in southern Kentucky—record temperatures expected. That’s where I’ll go.

“You’re leaving?”

I cry out and spin around, flinging my hair into my face. It’s Lucas, standing in the doorway wearing a white T-shirt and sweatpants His hair is rumpled—he was asleep. I catch my breath, blinking back tears of surprise. Lucas is perfectly still, waiting; finally, I nod in answer to his question. I’m trembling a little, both from being startled and worrying that he’s going to stop me. Lucas inhales and looks at the floor for a moment.

“Are you sure you want to get even more involved in this?”

“If it were Ella, would you go after her?”

“Absolutely,” he says without hesitation. “Give us a few hours to take care of things and we’ll come with you.” He turns to go upstairs—

“No,” I say, louder than I intended. Lucas looks back at me, something like hurt in his eyes. “It’s not that I don’t want you to come,” I say quickly. “It’s that I can’t let you.”

“Is this some sort of ‘I have to face her on my own’ delusion? Because I’m happy to inform you just how bullshit that is.”

“No,” I answer. “You and Ella are a family. You’re happy. You’re together. You’re…” I pause, looking down. “You’re everything I want for Kai and me. So I can’t let you come with me and risk your lives. You said the first night we met—I’ve got a death wish doing this.”

Lucas looks thrown. He shakes his head. “But we can’t just let you go. Ella’s definitely not going to let you go. She’s seen what wolves do to people.”

I inhale. “Don’t wake her up. Say I snuck out in the night.”

“She’ll see through that lie in a heartbeat.”

“But I’ll be gone,” I say quietly. “Please, Lucas. I already might lose Kai. I wouldn’t be able to handle losing you guys, too.”

Lucas stares. He wants to call for Ella, wants to let her rush down and persuade me to stay. But finally he sighs and holds up a finger. “Wait just a minute?” Lucas turns and I hear him go back upstairs. I let my bag slouch off my shoulder while the weatherman continues to talk about Kentucky in the background. The channel has changed to some sort of countdown of the country’s worst snowstorms when Lucas returns clutching something. He walks over to me, still a little bleary-eyed, and gestures for my hand. I open my palm; Lucas drops a money clip packed tight with bills into it. I’ve never had so much money in my life; my eyes widen.

“I had the back window of your car fixed yesterday, but still—don’t sleep in your car again,” he says, smiling a little. “Stick to the highways—people ask fewer questions. And when you find them again, Ginny,” he says, shaking his head, “don’t fight her. She’s stronger and faster and a fucking snow witch. Just take Kai and run.”

“What if I have to fight her?” I ask seriously.

He shakes his head, then swallows. “Don’t say that. Ella’s going to be mad enough at me when I let her know you’re good as dead.”

Lucas’s words make my throat feel swollen; my stomach feels tilted. I nod, though, trying not to think about them. I think about Ella instead, what she told me—that right now, I can do everything. I tuck the fold of money into my coat swiftly, meet Lucas’s eyes for a long time, and then turn. He shuts the door behind me as I stumble out into the snow.