The fire began to spread and Oliver picked up another log, this one fat with a thick layer of bark, and placed it diagonally atop the others. For a moment after he had closed the mesh curtain again he remained there, watching the blaze. Then, finger still holding his place in the book, he stood again and started back toward his chair.
Cold wind raced through the room, trailing chill fingers along the back of his neck. Again Oliver shivered, though this time he noticed it.
“Brrr,” he said, mostly to himself, a smile creeping across his face.
The open window rattled hard in its frame. He glanced over to see that the snow had built up much more than he had realized. One corner of the gap between window and sash was packed with pure white and enough of it had powdered the floor that it was no longer melting.
“Damn.”
Oliver started toward the window. The edge of the Oriental rug was easily six feet from the wall but some of the snow had reached it. He paused to try to brush it away with his shoe but managed only to melt it into the carpet. The window rattled harder, buffeted by the storm. The sound was so loud and abrupt that Oliver jumped a bit and turned to squint in amazement at the snow outside his windows. The night seemed darker than before. The air whipped so hard against the panes of glass now that where it rushed through the opening it howled softly. More snow blew in with every gust.
“Wow,” he whispered to himself as he stood peering out through the glass. Even in the dark, he could see that what had begun as a light snowfall had become nothing short of a full-fledged blizzard. The snow was thick and plentiful, the ground already completely blanketed, and the wind drove it in twisting swirls and waves.
Oliver held the book up against his chest with his left hand, keeping it away from the open window. For a moment he simply enjoyed the storm. Then the glass rattled again, the window seemed to bow inward as though the storm was trying to get in. He reached out to close the window, but enough snow had built up on the sill that it slid only a fraction of an inch before jamming. He brushed as much of it out as he could. Even then, it seemed frozen in place. Awkwardly, finger still holding his place in
The Sea Wolf,
he set both hands upon the top of the window and put his weight into it. The window began to slide down.
A powerful gust slammed against the house, shaking all of the parlor windows, as though in defiance. The open window seized again and he worked hard to force it closed. The storm raged outside, buffeting the walls. The wind that passed through the narrow gap remaining between window and sash fairly shrieked.
The wooden frame shook and a long crack appeared in the glass, stretching a tendril from one side of the window to the other. Oliver cursed under his breath and let the book fall from his hand.
The Sea Wolf
struck the damp floor on its spine and something in its binding tore. Oliver barely noticed that he had dropped it, never mind that he had lost his page.
Swearing again, he struggled to close the window, worried that at any moment the glass might splinter further, even shatter. It would not close that final inch, however, and his fingers were numb with the frigid air, the whipping snow. It seemed impossible that it could be so cold.
Oliver paused, suddenly certain that he was not alone in the room. Friedle or Collette, perhaps . . . someone had heard the banging and come to investigate. But no . . . the presence he felt was not within the room, but without.
He narrowed his gaze and for just that moment, twisting with the currents and eddies of the wind, he saw a figure dancing in the storm, eyes like diamonds staring in at him, from a face with features carved of ice. All the air went out of Oliver then, as though his lungs expelled his final breath.
The wind drove in through that narrow opening with the force of a sliver of hurricane. The crack in the glass spread no farther, but the storm blew in so hard that it knocked Oliver backward. He stumbled, slipped upon the melting snow, and fell sprawling onto the Oriental rug.
Snow poured through the opening in the window and swirled and eddied about the parlor as though there were no difference between outside and inside. The storm had knocked, and now it had come in, uninvited. In a steady stream the blizzard slid through the inch-high gap between window and sash and raced around the room. Cold and damp, it slapped against his reading lamp and the bulb exploded, casting the room in darkness save for the light from the fire, which guttered weakly, only the iron mesh curtain keeping it from being doused completely.
Oliver gasped, sucked icy air into his lungs. His eyes were wide as he gazed about the room. He was too cold for this to be a dream, and his stomach hurt from the gust of solid air that had knocked him down. Splayed there on the carpet, he felt a sense of wonder but it was tainted by a primal fear that welled up from somewhere deep within him.
The storm began to churn and then to spin more tightly at the center of the parlor. The fire surrendered and went out, smoke sifting from dead embers and being sucked into the white ice whirlwind that knocked knickknacks off the coffee table and twisted up the rug beneath its feet.
Oh,
Oliver thought.
Oh, shit. What the fuck am I still doing here?
It was as though the frozen wind had numbed his mind as well as his body. No longer. He scrambled to his feet and ran across the parlor, bent to one side to fight the wind. His cocoa mug slid off a side table and shattered on the floor.
As he ran for the door, a gust of wind rushed past him, nearly knocking him over again, and blew it shut.
Oliver stood unmoving in the middle of the parlor, staring at the door. There had been purpose behind that wind. He was not alone. The storm was here, but it was more than just a storm.
He turned slowly. The vortex in front of the dark fireplace was changing, taking shape. Through the snow churning within that whirlwind, Oliver could see a figure, the same as he thought he had seen outside moments ago. A man, or so it seemed, made from ice, his body all perilously sharp edges, dagger fingers, and hair that swung and tinkled musically like a crystal chandelier.
Its eyes gleamed pale blue and with every twist of the vortex, every swing of its arms, it stared directly at him. At first Oliver had thought it was dancing but now he saw that it was carried by the snow, the storm.
“God, please, no,” Oliver whispered, shaking his head. “What the hell
are
you?”
The vortex slowed and then stopped.
The snow fell to the floor, blanketing the wood and carpet and furniture.
The winter man stood, chin proudly lifted, and cast a cold, cruel eye upon Oliver. Then he staggered, icy tread heavy upon the floor, and his sharp features changed. Pale blue eyes narrowed with pain and exhaustion, and Oliver saw that there was a chink taken out of his left side, like someone had chipped away a large sliver of ice.
“Help me,” the winter man whispered, in a voice like the gusting wind.
Then he fell hard, jagged features scoring the wooden floor. He lay half on the wood and half on the carpet. Where his wound was, water dripped onto the Oriental rug. Mind in a frantic tumult, Oliver stared at that spot and wondered if the winter man was melting.
Or bleeding.
CHAPTER 2
Y
ou have got to be fucking kidding me.”
Oliver took a step closer to the figure that had collapsed on the parlor floor. Fragments of shattered lightbulb crunched beneath his shoes. The wind had died, the windows no longer rattled, but he could not tear his gaze from the still form of the winter man to spare a glance out the window. Snow or not, it seemed clear that the real storm had not been driven by nature but by the being who lay at Oliver’s feet. A wet spot spread on the rug around the winter man as though he were bleeding out, dying right there.
But it was melting ice, not blood. And this thing could not die, for it could not possibly be alive. Things like this did not exist. They did not whisk through barely open windows, dancing on snowflakes. This kind of shit just did not happen in real life.
The winter man twitched.
Oliver held his breath, afraid to move for fear that he would draw its attention.
Help me,
it had said. Even if Oliver knew how to do that, he doubted he would have the courage to try. After several moments, when the intruder had not moved again, Oliver let himself take the tiniest of breaths. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the room, only a faint glow from the embers of the extinguished fire providing any light at all. Still, he could see that the snow in the room was melting.
He risked a look at the parlor door— the door that had been slammed shut by the will of the storm itself. His mind backtracked to the loud rattling of the windows, the explosion of the lightbulb and scattering of knickknacks onto the floor, the muffled thud of his own fall, and at last the slamming of that door. Where was everyone? Had no one in the house heard all of that noise or were they simply assuming his pre-wedding jitters had driven him into some sort of tantrum?
Collette.
Where was Collette? Certainly she had not yet gone to sleep. In his mind he pictured the bedroom his sister still slept in when she visited their parents. All of the family’s rooms were on the north side of the house and Oliver realized that it was entirely possible that, with their doors closed, neither his father nor his sister would have heard the sounds of discord from below.
His gaze ticked back toward the dim form of the winter man.
Good,
he thought.
They’re safer if they stay where they are.
Though the embers grew dimmer in the fireplace and the darkness gathered closer around him, Oliver took a step nearer the fallen man. If man was indeed what he was. He seemed almost transparent in the gloom of that room and he stirred not at all; not even to breathe.
A light gust shook the windows. With a sharp intake of breath, Oliver snapped his head up to gaze at the cracked glass and beyond. The snow was still falling heavily, though the wind had lessened considerably. Still, every bit of bluster against the windows was likely to make him jump.
Oliver turned his attention back to the figure on the floor.
The winter man was staring at him.
The last of the embers began to die and the room faded to black. Oliver felt as though he himself were frozen, swallowed by the cold blackness of that room— that room that had only moments before been his one retreat in his father’s house. Quickly he shuffled backward several steps, trying to re-create the shape of the room, the placement of the furniture in his head. The love seat and chairs, the Gaudí floor lamp, the plants, the bookcases. He closed his eyes and took a steadying breath.
But inside his head he could still see those pale blue eyes staring at him in the glow of the fire’s last embers.
“Oh, Jesus,” Oliver whispered.
Something scraped the wood floor and Oliver snapped inside. He rushed for the parlor door, feet sliding in the melting slush beneath him, fearful that at any moment he would bark his shins on some forgotten table and fall over. He held his hands out in front of him and in seconds they struck the door; he jammed the index finger of his right hand and hissed in pain as he grabbed the knob and pulled the door open.
Dim light flooded in from the hall.
“Wait,” a voice called from behind him. “Please.”
His
voice. The voice of the winter man. It was stronger now, or at least it seemed so, as though he spoke just beside Oliver or the air carried his words like snowflakes.
“Help me,” he said again.
Oliver paused on the threshold. Slowly, he forced himself to turn around. The light from the hall cut a swath across the parlor and in that light he could see the winter man clearly. He was on his knees on the carpet, one clawed, frozen hand upon the wound at his side, the other supporting him as he struggled to rise.
“I ask for little enough,” the winter man said, wincing with pain as he stood, icicle hair clinking together like wind chimes. “Safe passage from this house and to the ocean—”
“The— the ocean?” Oliver stammered, heart beating wildly. He was torn between the desire to flee and the plea of this proud being. Torn between terror and wonder yet again.
“It is Borderland,” the winter man said. Then he shook his head impatiently, annoyed— though with himself or his host, Oliver could not determine. “If you will help, it must be now. I barely escaped the Falconer and dare not tarry.”
Safe passage. Falconer. Borderland.
With the pressure of the winter man’s urgency, Oliver could not interpret any of it save the idea that this intruder wanted to get out of the house and to the ocean without anyone else seeing him.
Icy brows knit in consternation.
“Please.”
“Okay, okay, just wait. Just wait a second,” Oliver said.
Father and Collette were in their rooms. It was late enough that Friedle had probably retired to the carriage house by now. Oliver shook his head, blew out a long breath, trying to collect his thoughts.
