Ashes and Ice (19 page)

I shake the chest. It used to have spare blankets in it, but now I hear things shuffling inside like books or papers or small boxes. I try prying the lid open. It doesn’t budge.

The keyhole is scratched. I run my fingertips over the grooves slowly.

Dad’s face flashes in my head.

I stumble back.

What the hell?

“Hey Mom?” I peek out my door and call downstairs. She takes a moment to respond—I know it is just a few seconds, but it feels like years. “Yeah, hon?”

“Do you have the key to Dad’s old chest?”

I was alive once, alive with memories, memories with this old man, memories that made me traceable. Thousands of questions replace the thousands of lost memories. “Who is searching for me? Why? What do they want? Who are you? Who am I? When—”

“We don’t have time for so many questions.”

“Why not?”

“Did you see Alathea’s shop?”

“I—yes, I did.” I breathe in, remembering the ash in the air, the heat pressing in.

“They know you are here. They sense you.”

“But—Alathea…”

“Is dead. And I will be damned if all our work, the lives cut short, and the loss of all you knew will be for nothing.” He stands up abruptly. “You have to leave. Now.”

His desperation stirs something inside me. “Will they hurt you?”

He doesn’t answer at first. I don’t shift my weight. I stare at him, waiting.

“If they do, Jade, and because of it, you stay safe, I will feel honored to bear the pain.”

“You can’t—”

“If they do and you are hurt as well, then all of this is for nothing.”

I feel so confused and frustrated. “But I don’t even know what all of this is, and I won’t if anything happens to you.”

“You will get the answers you need. Now is not the time to be reckless.”

I won’t be reckless. I can’t. But, what about that other part of me? The dark, cold one that reaches into me and pulls someone else forward, muffles my thoughts with wicked ones? “I have bad thoughts sometimes. I think, I think I have done bad things.”

“I know.” He looks at me. “You have to fight the cold one inside you, block out the ice. If you don’t, I cannot save you. If you don’t, I will have failed.”

“I don’t know how! I am trying, but it comes so quickly.”

“You figured it out once, Jade. You will figure it out again.”

“But—”

“Leave.”

“But I—”

“Leave. Now.”

I feel the wind blow from the corners of the room, pushing me backwards, pushing me out, pushing me away.

“What am I?” I scream over the howling air.

“You could or kill us all or save us. But the cold darkness inside you is getting stronger. I see her in your eyes. And that—scares me.”

Another whoosh of air pummels me and I ram into the door. The door opens and I spill out.

“But I still love you, My Jade-eyed child.” And with that, the wind is gone, and I am sitting in a puddle in a dank, secluded alley staring at a brick wall with no door at all.

I feel faint. Everything feels so unreal, as if it’s all one fine piece of thread that could so easily be severed. The alley chokes me. I fumble to my feet, bracing myself against the wall. Pushing on the brick, banging on it, screaming for my door to come back and for it to open.

But it doesn’t. I drag my feet as I stumble out of the alley. As I do, I smell rot in the air and when I look behind me back into the dead-end alley, I see a body sprawled on the ground.

At first, I want to run, run far away. But I hear the body whimper, whimper in pain.

I run toward it and fall to my knees beside her.

She’s gasping, the blood gurgling out the base of her neck. I swallow back the bile climbing up my throat.

“Sh, sh, sh…” I whisper to her, grabbing her hands in mind. “Please, we will get you help. I will get you help.” I start to stagger to my feet to call out, but the dying girl’s hands drag me back down. A boiling heat cascades over me and I am only inches away from the girl’s face. She’s not choking anymore. She’s still and glassy eyed. I can smell the blood on her skin.

“
Improbus essssss
.” The words ooze out of her mouth and I flinch away. I stumble backwards and shake my head, violently. I didn’t do this. I didn’t. I couldn’t have. I want to scream out in anguish. I want to vomit. I want to make this girl whole again.

But when I look at the blood on my hands, cold slithers into me. And the blood is lovely. I stand up taller and stare at the dead girl.

A hunger growls in my belly, a lust trickling up my veins. I want to lean in and lick my fingertips, to taste the salty blood on my tongue.

Don’t let the cold dark win.
The old man’s voice whispers. I jerk my hand away from my face and use the wall to brace myself to my feet.

Part of me wants to stay in this alley and part of me wants to run. Every step takes all my effort, every step my hunger grows, but I keep walking away, hoping I will have the strength to not turn back.

“Oh yes, I didn’t think much of it at the time. But around dawn when I got here to start unloading my paintings, I remember looking up and seeing some woman walking out of the alley with red all down her arms. I just thought it was paint, you see, so I didn’t think anything of it. But, I bet it was blood.”

“What did this woman look like?”

“I didn’t see her from the front. She was walking away.”

“Walking away?”

“Yeah, she was walking away… slowly even. She wore a flannel shirt, grey sweatpants, and had black hair.”

He looks defeated then. “That’s all I know, Ma’am.”

The TV flickers off. “Can you believe that people can be so terrible?” Mom says.

I don’t answer her.

“So where’s Jade? She left early last night.”

“Mom, I don’t want to talk about it.”

She looks at me. “What happened?”

“Nothing, Mom. Jade and I aren’t going to—be hanging out anymore.”

“What did you do?”

“Me?” I scoff, “I didn’t do anything!”

“Well, what happened? Did you get all jealous about that boy who came over?”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You are going to fix this, Connor. That girl is the best thing to ever happen to you and you know it. Now go on over to her house. If you want an excuse just ask for your daddy’s shirt back.”

“Mom, I—” I stop, Dad’s shirt? I remember the fabric whipping out in violent flaps. A resolve settles over me. “Yeah, Mom. I’ll go get Dad’s shirt.”

Nanan opens the door. Her dress is splotched with flour. She beams at me. Nanan is one of those women who doesn’t hide their emotions. If she hates you, she’ll pull out her broom and chase you away from her yard. If she loves you—even if she hasn’t known you for long—she’ll do whatever you need to keep you standing. She’s taken in runaways before, but Nanan usually settles them in with the church within a short time. But Nanan seems cozy with Jade here and shows no urgency to see her leave. I wonder what she would do if I told her the girl living in her attic was a monster. I want to tell her, I want to warn her. But with the way Nanan looks at Jade and the way she looks at me whenever she sees me with Jade, I doubt anything I say would taint Nanan’s affection for her new child.

“You come callin’ on my Jade?” Nanan lets me in. I nod. “Ya know boy, someday here soon I’m gonna be askin’ you bout yo’ intentions with my girl.” She smacks my shoulder and tells me to knock on Jade’s door. “She’s been out like a light all mornin’. Maybe you can wake her up.” I make my way up to Jade’s room. I don’t knock and her door is unlocked.

Jade is in a heap on the bed under a pile of covers.

I walk over to her and strip the covers off in one quick motion. Jade startles awake and curls into a fetal position.

I grab her wrist. “We need to talk, Jade.”

“Ow, stop it!”

I stare at her.

Lazy eyes blink at me. “Oh, Connor, Connor—I…”

I let go of her, still staring at her shirt.

Her own eyes shift down and she snaps her head back to me, her eyes wide. “No Connor… No. Connor, it isn’t what you think!”

I’m out the door before she can stand up, running out of the house.

Her shirt, my dad’s flannel shirt, is stained with blood.

Connor…

I turn into the front room and skid to a stop, breathless.

Not Connor. My surge of energy dies and I feel weak and wilting.

“Hey, princess.” Dominic smirks and then looks me up and down. “You look like shit.”

“I—I wasn’t asking for your commentary.” Every word feels labored as I breathe out through the sweltering heat and breathe it back in.

Immmmppprrroooobussssessssssssss
. The voices pummel the inside of my brain. It feels like the heat is melting me down.

I fall to my knees, gasping.

“Jade!” Dom steps into the house and the air shifts, changes. I am too dazed to recognize how. Delirium is clawing its way inside me.

Nanan’s shouting something, but I can’t make out the words. Her words can’t compete with the ones in my head. Arms lift me up right before I black out.

“She’s waking up.”

“Well, boy, I see that. I’m old. Not blind.”

I’m nestled against something hard and cool. I mold my body to it, burrowing my forehead against it. There is no more heat crashing. No more voices taunting. I sigh in relief.

A low, rumbling chuckle vibrates under my cheek. A very familiar sound. I stiffen and close my fingers grasping the t-shirt beneath them. “See, princess. I knew you would warm up to me.”

I jolt upright.

Nanan sits on a chair close in front of the couch and Dominic…and I, I am on Dominic’s lap.

I scoot off him. “What—what happened? What are you doing here?”

“Be nice, Jade. This fella came in and helped me get you inside. Looks like you got heat exhaustion which doesn’t make a lick a sense cuz you been in yo’ room for the past day and a half.”

“I was sick?”

“Yeah, you were boiling up. You just needed to cool off a bit.” Dom smiled.

He smiles too much.

I see the impression on the couch where I sat. So very, very close to him. “How long was I out?”

“Oh darlin’ you were out only a few minutes.”

A few minutes? How could I go from collapsing from voices and heat to being completely comfortable with cool and silence?

“But we were still worried about you.” I look at Dom and am surprised to see his face plastered with something close to concern, close to vulnerability.

“Absolutely. But between Dominic and me, we got you fixed up all right.” Nanan handed me a glass of water. “Now I know this boy came over to see you, so I’ll be off and let y’all talk. You be sure to say thank you, Jade. Lord knows I couldn’t have dragged you on this couch with these old bones.”

Nanan moves to leave and I want to grasp at her to stay.

I feel Dom’s stare and the couch shifts as he edges closer to me. I put my hand out to keep him from getting too close. “Thanks for helping Nanan,” I say, feeling the rise and fall of his chest under my palm. “But I think you better go.”