Frost (10 page)

"I don't know if they serve breakfast here." It was a ridiculous thing to say, but I couldn’t think of anything else.

"Breakfast sandwich." Erik smiled, and it warmed his cool features. "Plus, if you like, I can teach you how to control the cold thing."

I stared at him, hope swelling in my chest. "You mean I won't freeze people anymore?"

"Not if you don't want to. I'll show you. Tomorrow?"

I grimaced, not wanting to give him an answer just yet. I had to think about it. "How did you know I was here anyways? How did you find me?"

Erik's face went grave, and he reached out and tapped my cell phone with one finger. "You might want to turn this off. Better yet, take the battery out. I'm assuming you now have others after you?"

My stomach lurched as I looked down. I felt like kicking myself. Pressing my lips together hard, I flipped the phone over and slid the battery out before shoving it into my pocket. I refused to make eye contact with him, sure he thought I was a moron.

Apparently, I don't watch enough spy movies.

He was obviously trying to gain my trust by showing me the cell phone thing. Technically, he couldn't trace me now if I decided to take the next bus out of town.

"All right," I said slowly. "I'll meet you here tomorrow morning, but I'm not leaving here till you're gone, and we're not leaving this place tomorrow. We stay here. In front of lots of people. And I want to know everything. Everything about this queen and why she wants us, and...and what I am. What I can do."

"Deal." He stood up and placed his palms on the table, leaning in closer.

I forced myself not to flinch back.

"You'll come around eventually, Amora."

"What? What's that?" I asked. Had he just called me some horrible frost giant swear word?

"Your real name."

The bed was uncomfortable, and I had the horrible crawly feeling you get when you're not sure if there are bugs on you or not. But I couldn't have slept if I’d been in the nicest hotel room in the world because a million crazy thoughts were burning holes in my brain.

"Amora." I said it out loud just to roll it off my tongue.

Erik had said that it was a Norse name—no surprise there—and it meant “powerful eagle.” I wasn't sure I'd describe myself that way. I thought "cowering chicken" suited me a lot better.

  I stared at the ceiling, and Erik's face, with his white-blond hair and bright-blue eyes, was sharp in my mind. He was attractive, if somewhat cold.

Ha ha. I’m so funny.

The question was: Could I trust him? Part of me considered leaving, packing my meager belongings, and fleeing the hotel. What if tomorrow’s meeting was a trap?

The TV was comforting background noise, familiar commercials, and reruns. I closed my eyes. My body felt heavy with exhaustion, like I was melting into the mattress. The noise fractured and faded in static bursts as I drifted in and out.

"Tonight...a look into..."

"...news at nine..."

"...six girls missing from a small town..."

I sat up so fast that the room swam in circles. Blinking frantically, I tried to focus on the screen.

The news anchor was a sharply dressed woman with short, brown hair. She spoke rapidly into the camera. On the left side of the screen was a photo of Amy, which melted into Stacey and then Becca. Shock sucked my breath away when my face replaced Alicia’s.

The picture was one Dave had taken a few years ago, back in California. It showed me laughing up at the camera, a checkered picnic blanket underneath me. My face was freckled and tan, my hair three shades darker than it was now. Stunned, I reached up and touched the end of my ponytail.

It hadn't happened as fast as I'd thought. My hair had been slowly growing lighter for the past few years. It had happened so gradually that I hadn’t noticed. And when I glanced at my arm... Well, my skin was ghostly white now, nothing like the tan, freckle-faced girl in the photo. Was it from the move and lack of sun or something else?

The photos vanished, and the news reporter started discussing the case with her co-anchor. I leaned forward on the bed, clasping my knees to my chest, pulse picking up speed.

"...just vanished. They didn't show up at school one morning."

"But it's been two days." The male anchor, a slick-haired man in a black suit, poked at the papers on the desk in front of him with a pencil. "The families still have hope in this case. In fact, some are saying they reported it too soon. That the girls are simply playing hooky. One of the families has hired a private detective, it seems, not content with the police involvement in this case."

The woman looked scornful. "Hooky seems unlikely in this case, Tom. The girls are all very similar in appearance."

The pictures flashed on the screen again, and I studied each girl's face.

Erik had said that they were okay. They were safe in the palace. They were settling in. Were they thinking about their families?

My nails bit into my palms as I clenched my fists.

Dave must be panicking by now. I couldn't stand letting him think I'd been kidnapped. Loki had said that no one could know, but...what the hell did Loki know anyway? He clearly didn’t have my best interests at heart.

Still keeping an ear open for the news, I shuffled to the desk in the corner, rifling through the papers on top. Of course, there were no envelopes, but there was a notepad and a pen, so that would have to do.

The male anchor droned on. "Police say it's too early on to speculate. Most of the girls were last seen Friday night. October first.”

"They seem to have disappeared almost within an hour of one another, which has, of course, led to some speculation about a pact of some kind. Either to run away together or something far more grim"

"Right, Jan. It's hard not to draw comparisons to something like the 2012 suicides, where a number of teen girls went missing and were found later in the Scugog river."

Pen hovering over the paper, I hesitated.

God, that was grim. We'd been gone two days and they had decided we'd jumped off a bridge? Okay, I definitely needed to tell Dave.

All the speculation was going to kill him if I didn't let him know I was safe. Of course, there was no way he would believe me if I wrote what had actually happened. I had to keep it simple. With a shaking hand, I gripped the pen more tightly and wrote.

Dave, I’m safe. So are the other girls. We can’t say where we’ve gone. Please don’t look for us. It’s complicated.

I’ll contact you again later and let you know I’m still okay. I’m sorry.

Love Megan
.

"Police have made an appeal for the public’s help. If you've seen anything or know something about any of the missing girls, please call the number on the screen."

The note was crude at best, and he'd probably be hurt and furious that I was letting him dangle with so little information. But there was no explaining what had actually happened. It was this or nothing at all. This had to be better than thinking I was dead.

I folded the note and put it in my pocket. Maybe I would ask the woman downstairs for an envelope. She might even give me a stamp. She seemed nice.

Thankfully, the news had switched over to something a little less bleak as Jan and her coworker discussed GMOs, so I tipped back onto the bed and shut my eyes. I’d go downstairs and mail it in a minute. But I was so tired. I'd just rest my eyes for a few seconds.

I shifted, rolling around to get comfortable on the hard bed. My last lucid thought was more of an emotion, a feeling of deep sadness and betrayal coupled with the image of Loki's face.             

~ * ~

Ice cracks under our feet as our army—two thousand strong—march toward the fiery realm of Muspelheim.

Birds fly from the trees, and the wild caribou clear the path before us.

Even the wildlife fear the jotun army.

My fist is tight on my sword, my smile savage. The words of my queen are still warm in my breast. 

"My daughter, you make me proud. Continue to do so today. Take them while they are engaged in their foolish revelry. Overturn their tables. Spill their extravagant feasts to the floor. Bring me the head of their king and their women and children for slaves."

I remember the firm touch of her hand on my shoulder, the iron strength in her pale arms as she spoke.

“Fight for me, Amora.”

I bolted upright, my thin nightgown clinging to my back. The darkness was unfamiliar, and it took me a moment to remember I wasn't in bed at home. I was in a seedy motel room, being chased by mythological beings—giants, things that shouldn't exist. And, if ruining my entire life hadn’t been enough, they were invading my dreams every night.

And…Amora. She’d said that name in my dream. What the hell did that mean?

My entire body shook. I curled my knees up to my chest, huddling miserably in the center of the bed. Tears burned the backs of my eyes, and I finally gave in to the inevitable, pressing my forehead to my knees, shoulders shaking as I sobbed.

Who was this queen invading my dreams, and what did it mean? It couldn’t be the same queen Erik had talked about. It felt like I was going insane.

I shivered and uncurled, stretching my legs. Somehow, I was sweaty and cold at the same time. Shuffling to the bathroom, I hit the light switch, and squinted at the sudden onslaught of light. Right now, having a hot shower and collecting myself was the priority. I would deal with all of this tomorrow.

Maybe Erik could explain. Maybe he'd be able to tell me why I became some kind of sword-wielding nutcase every time I closed my eyes. And why this strange, cold woman haunted every dream.

I stripped the sticky nightgown off as fast as I could, moving for the shower. A flash of movement in the mirror caught my attention and I stopped, pulse fluttering.

The woman in the mirror wasn't me. Couldn't have been me. She had all the same features: tall and lean, with small breasts that had been the subject of many frustrating bathing suit shopping trips, long legs with knees that were just a little bit knock-kneed, a scar near my left hip from when I'd run full tilt into a glass coffee table. She had a pointed chin and a too-thin bottom lip—but that’s where the resemblances ended. Her eyes were the wrong color. Pale blue.

Like Erik's eyes
, a sensible little voice in my head said.

The eyes weren’t the only disturbing thing the mirror showed me though. My hair was now several shades lighter than it had been that morning. There was no getting around it. I wasn't blond anymore. My hair was
white
.

I let out a wheezing gasp and sagged forward, bracing myself on the counter top. It had to be my tired eyes playing tricks on me. I shut my eyes tight, grasping the edge of the sink.

Snap out of it.

A crackling sound made me jerk upright, staring down at my hands, and cold sweat broke out on my forehead. The bathroom sink was encased in a thick sheet of ice, and the wooden cabinet beneath it was covered in thin, white frost. I couldn't keep doing this.

Sooner or later, I was going to hurt someone again.