Forecast (2 page)

Kat, Raven and I had nicknamed these sessions of prophecy our
rune tempus
because time stopped so we could write the messages out in runes—an old Norse language. That’s why we carried notebooks, why we stashed them all over our house. Things got scary when we had nothing to write with because our norns wanted their messages read and didn’t care how they delivered them.

Kat was missing a few fingerprints because she’d been without a way to write once and her norn had forced her to burn the runes with her fingers. Raven and I were convinced Kat’s norn was just as snarky as Kat.

I sat up, swallowed the acid in my throat and pulled my own purple notebook with attached pen out of my coat pocket. I had no way of knowing when the words would actually come through. Until then, everything around me would be frozen in time. I looked up at the cop. He didn’t breathe, didn’t blink, and his fingers were like granite on the sleeve of my coat.

But then...someone groaned behind me.

My eyes flew open wide and I tried to scramble to my feet, nearly falling again when that grasp on my coat stopped me. I stared toward the noise even as I tried to gently pry the material from the cop’s fingers.

“What the hell was that?” Taran lay flat on the ground, his black coat like a smudge of spilled ink on the bed of snow. He groaned again and fought to sit up with his hands still handcuffed behind him.

I finally got my coat free of the cop’s fingers, and, heedless of the ice patches, I ran to Taran and helped him out of the snow.

When he finally stood, he looked around, his mouth falling open as he took in the cop who’d frozen while he’d been pushing Taran into the car. Then Taran narrowed his eyes at me. “Did you do this?”

I nodded, staring up at him with wide eyes because I couldn’t work through the utter shock of having someone moving and actually aware while in this with me.

“What is this?” He stepped to the side, then blinked when he hit snowflakes hanging in midair.

“My sisters and I call it the
rune tempus
. I don’t really know what it is, but nobody has ever come into this with me. Ever.”

“Into what? A rune what?” He turned around, his mouth falling open as he took in all the suspended snowflakes in the air all around us.

I didn’t blame him for being disoriented. I was used to this, had been going through them since my ninth birthday when Mom had still let my sisters and me go to school. Though...this had been the reason we’d been pulled out. This and the teacher who’d tried to pray the magic demons out of my sister Raven.

I took off my glove, reached out and touched one of the snowflakes. It melted with the heat of my hand and I rubbed my wet fingers together. The rest looked kind of beautiful dangling in midair—like we’d been frozen into a painting. “Don’t worry. All of these people will be fine when time starts back up again.”

“When time starts back up again,” he repeated half under his breath. He flipped his long bangs out of his eyes. He hadn’t had bangs in the picture in the article I’d found about him—the one that had sent me here to see if my mother had gone after him. In that image, his hair had been short and a lot lighter than the sort of dirty blond it was now. “How long does this last?” he asked, turning to stare up at the porch.

“It’s different every time, so I have no way of knowing.” I looked to see the two other boys who stood by his front door—two identical boys with sharp features and red goatees.

A wave of something brushed over me, something dark and ugly. I spun, expecting to see my mother standing there. Lately, just being in the same room with her had felt like this—murky, prickly. As if she’d chucked her somewhat manic personality completely and adopted a darker one that belonged to the serial killer Ted Bundy.

All I saw was Taran staring down at me like maybe
I’d
adopted the serial killer’s personality.

“Hey.” I touched the sleeve of his black jacket. “I’m sorry but I probably don’t have a lot of time to explain what’s going on here, but any second I’m going to start writing stuff. This is going to sound crazy, but I came here looking for you because I think someone is going to try to hurt you.”

“You think?” That barely banked fury bled back into his dark eyes. “Someone
is
out there trying to hurt me. I’m being framed for beating up some kid when I wasn’t anywhere near him. Apparently, two kids now.”

Before I could react, my hands started to tingle and I opened my notebook, got the pen ready. “It’s coming.” I groaned when one hand gripped the pen tight. “This isn’t going to last that long, and I need time to explain why I’m here. With you in jail, I won’t be able protect you.”

“Protect me? You’re no bigger than my ten-year-old cousin.” He laughed. “Promise you’ll stick around for when I get out. They can’t keep me long—not without more proof.” He looked around again. “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

His smile, when he’d laughed, had made me feel a little spacey again. It was such a beautiful smile—it softened features that seemed more comfortable scrunched up in anger. There were grooves on either side of his mouth when it was stretched wide. Dimples were sexy. I smiled back and this time, he caught his breath.

He took a step closer to me. “You’re older than I thought. About my age, right? Seventeen?”

“Eighteen.”

“Oh yeah,” he breathed, cocking an eyebrow. “An
older
woman. My night is looking up.”

I blushed, but my norn got impatient then. My hand went stiff and in the next moment, she forced the pen to the paper. It seemed to take forever because she had me going over each line several times—as if she wanted to emphasize the importance of this message. Either that or she was yelling. My hand grew tired but I couldn’t pull it away, couldn’t make this stop. I hated that Taran was watching me like this, but I could do nothing.

When the runes were finally done, I stared at them in confusion.

Taran suddenly growled, twisting his arms and shoulders as if he was trying to pry the handcuffs loose. “Hold that up so I can see it better. I know those shapes. You’re writing in runes. Why?”

I ignored his question, too confused over the words my always-cryptic norn had given me. “Valkyries shadow,” I read. Valkyries were female warriors, judges. The ones who took the bravest dead warriors from battles and carried them back to Valhalla. They supposedly swooped down on flying horses. I looked up into the sky, around suspended snowflakes, half expecting to see creepy, shadowy horses with shrieking women on their backs. “I don’t understand.”

Taran went still. “You write in runes about Valkyries. You can stop time...and you show up at my house as I’m getting carted off to the station.” The last word came hard through gritted teeth as he narrowed his eyes. “Are you a part of this?”

“This what?”

“Are you in with whoever is trying to frame me for the beatings? How are you getting my hammer? And from the evidence room? Did you use this rune temp-thing?” His voice got louder with each word. “You can’t be big enough to be hurting them, though. Stark is huge...” He trailed off, muttering as he glared. “Why hit Jimmy? He’s a nice guy.”

“I didn’t. I don’t know who Jimmy is. Or Stark. I came here because I think you’re in danger and—” I broke off because my heart felt like it was about to leap from my chest. I took a deep breath to calm myself, looked around, because I could have sworn it felt as though we weren’t the only ones aware here. And the feeling was familiar—old familiar—though I couldn’t remember from when exactly.

But nothing moved. Not the snow, not the wind through leaves clinging desperately to trees. It was just the two of us. When I focused on him again, none of the anger had left his face, but at least he’d stopped yelling. “Listen, you recognized the runes, so maybe you have some knowledge of what’s happening to the world right now with this snow and—”

This time he interrupted. “Snow? I don’t care about some freak snowstorm. Jimmy’s a friend and someone hurt him. I’m in handcuffs here.” He twisted to the side so I could see his hands. “Handcuffs.”

“But the snow is important because of Ragnarok.”

His features went momentarily slack, his dimples disappearing as his mouth fell open. “Seriously?” He actually stepped back from me. “I can’t believe you just said that.” He turned and looked up at the still boys on the porch.

But before I could explain more, the huge tree behind him began to melt. I usually had more time. “Gods. Not yet!”

Taran’s eyes rolled back in his head and he swayed and let out the most pitiful moan. “Not that spinning thing again. Come on, rainbow girl, give me a break.” He groaned. “I’m gonna regret eating all that pizza.”

I didn’t think, just stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him tight. “Close your eyes. It helps.”

He groaned. “Nothing would help this.”

“Just hold on to me.”

“I can’t.”

That’s right, he was handcuffed. “Close your eyes. You don’t want to be looking out there as it gets faster.”

He shuddered against me, and I held him so tight he probably couldn’t breathe. But then, he bent to bury his face in my neck. I didn’t blame him for the fear. The
rune tempus
sucked.
It just plain did
. I briefly had the crazy wish that my scarf wasn’t there so I could feel his skin on my throat, but then I lost my train of thought completely as the world spun faster and faster.

He grunted and I squeezed him harder, probably cutting off his circulation, but wanting him to feel grounded and not ready to fly off into that scary, black abyss.

As everything jerked to a stop, I realized I’d royally screwed up. We should have moved back to where we’d been before. To the others—the cops and the kids on the porch—we had been in two different places then in the space of a blink, Taran and I were embracing in the middle of the yard.

“Well, crap,” I muttered as the cop behind me yelled.

Chapter Two

“I’m really sorry about this. I’ll be back.” I said all this in Taran’s ear just as the policeman pulled us apart.

I didn’t hesitate. I jerked my coat from his hand and ran. After years of trying to explain how we moved in the blink of an eye, what the runes were all about—even after having one employer set up a hidden camera to try and catch me—my sisters and I had learned it was better to take off.

I chose the opposite direction of my car so the cops wouldn’t think it was mine and take down the license plate. At least I hoped they didn’t. They didn’t have reason to—all I’d done was pop from one place to another in the blink of an eye—but who knew how they’d look at my presence there while Taran was suspected of assault. I had all the right paperwork and insurance on the Neon, but if a cop got too curious and began digging, it was possible he’d find out some of my papers were bogus. My sister Raven worked at a diner and had the best boss. Daddy Mac had helped us once he’d learned we’d been raised off the grid—that our mother, believing future warriors were out there trying to kill us, had kept us on the move and in hiding most of our lives.

“Stop,” one of the cops yelled. I looked over my shoulder to find him running after me.

I didn’t listen, just pumped my legs harder and prayed to whatever gods might be listening that I didn’t hit more ice and fall. At this speed, that would hurt. A lot.

My harsh breaths pulled in so much cold air, my lungs ached, but I kept going. I turned the corner and saw that several houses didn’t have fences, so I chose the last one and ducked into the backyard. I ran to a gate in another backyard and opened it to run through. After darting through that yard, I tried to climb the fence but couldn’t get a good grip with all the snow.

With harsh, panicky sobs tearing up my now-sore throat, I turned in a circle, realizing they could easily follow my footprints in the snow, so hiding was out. I wished I’d pulled my bag out of the car because a spell right about now would help, but the adrenaline rushing through me like crazy kind of made rational thought impossible. I couldn’t remember one spell that would help me in this situation.

Unlike my sisters, I’d inherited a little of my mother’s magic in addition to the one Raven, Kat and I shared. Ours was a magic called seidr—a gift from our unknown Norse father. We’d studied everything we could get our hands on about it, but this particular magic didn’t have one easy sort of definition. It covered everything from visions to healing...to driving people mad. I believed ours was the sort that called on spirits. Spirits that lived inside us.

But I had some of my mom’s talent as an Earth witch, as well. Not a lot of it, but I hoped that with practice, I’d be good at it.

Without my bag, I was out of luck out here, though.

So I hurried down the side yard and fumbled with the catch on the gate before finally getting it open. Racing out into the front lawn, I looked right and left and spotted two sets of footprints in front of the next house. I ran along those until I caught another set and followed them. By the time I reached the end of the street, I clued in to the fact nobody was following me. Either I’d lost them or they’d decided taking Taran to jail was more important than figuring out how I got Taran away from them. I squatted behind a group of Florida variegata bushes that still had pink flowers on them because yesterday morning it had been summer. Ice coated each petal, making the flowers look like the glass ones I’d seen at the mall.

Shivering, I listened for a car in case the cops were curious enough to drive up and down a few neighborhood streets looking for me. I huddled there, hoping the people in the house behind me didn’t spot me and wished I’d learned a spell for warmth. The cold seeping past my clothes was burrowing though my skin and into bone at this point. The constant, deep throb scared me. I had to get to my car, but I was terrified to go back.

I don’t know how long I huddled there, miserable and quaking with cold, but I finally braved the walk to my car. I shook like crazy while trying to wipe all the snow off it before I got inside and moved it. I parked in a convenience store outside Taran’s neighborhood, and pulled my favorite fuzzy throw blanket from the backseat. It took forever for the heaters to start blowing hot air...or lukewarm air. But even that bit of heat was so welcome, I felt as if I’d jumped into a sauna.

The theme from
Jaws
rang in my pocket. My gloves were still crusty and cold, so I pulled them off, dropped them on the floorboard and answered the phone.

“Eat any helpless seals today, Kat?” I said into it. Okay, I chattered into it because my teeth wouldn’t stop clacking.

“Coral, really. You still have that creepy music as my ringtone?”

“It f-fits.”

“What just happened? I’m stuck in traffic with the dumbest drivers in the world, can’t see for all the snow attacking the world, and I just got sick, then scared. Like
really
scared. Were you running and having a
rune tempus
at the same time?”

My sisters and I had a strange connection and could sometimes feel quick things from each other. It sucked. So much. Especially when Kat had cramps. Hers were brutal and sometimes I wondered if she’d learned to project the pain on purpose. “I was running from the cops,” I finally answered.

“What?” she yelled into the phone. “Cops? Why cops? What’s going on down there?”

I winced and jerked the phone from my ear while she continued to yell. “Hey,” I said when she took a breath. “Calm down. I’m okay. I got away, and they didn’t have a reason to chase me. They were kind of startled by the
rune tempus
, though.”

“Crap. You had one in front of cops? Running was better than trying to explain. What was the message?”

“Valkyries shadow.”

She repeated it a couple of times. “I have no idea what that means. You’d think that with Ragnarok happening and all that, our leeches would try to be a little less cryptic. I suppose a Valkyrie makes a shadow just like anything else. But yours means she was making shadows right then, right? Did you see anything? A woman flying around on a horse? Or did you have one of your visions?”

“No, thank gods.”

She blew out a loud breath. “This could be about Valkyries making shadow puppets for all we know.

“Katriel?”

“Yeah?” She sounded wary. It wasn’t often I used her full first name.

“I think with everything that’s going on right now, this is about something more than shadow puppets, don’t you? I’m going home to look through the books.”

“You’re probably right. So you’re okay now?”

“Yeah, just freezing. My car heater can’t keep up with this cold.”

She sighed loudly. “We told you not to pick that car. You saw the person selling it. There’s no way that unwashed perv ever took it in for a tune-up.”

“I liked the orange.” I shivered and pulled the blanket higher around my chin. “Gotta go, Kat. I still have to get home and if the drive is anything like this morning, it’ll take over an hour.”

“Call me later so I know you’re okay.”

I sighed, annoyance creeping in to fight the cold. Technically, I was older than Kat. Raven was born first, then me, but both my sisters acted protective toward me. It was as if they thought I was the soft mushy center of an Oreo that had to be protected by their two hard chocolate shells. Determination to prove them wrong made me tighten my frozen fingers on the wheel and the phone. “You be careful. You’re the one out on unfamiliar roads, not me.”

“Yeah, but I’m expecting to protect some kind of nature hippie. You’re looking for Thor, and if he’s anything like we’ve read, he could be a big, moody pain in the butt. Just call me anyway.”

After agreeing, I turned off the phone and set it in the passenger seat. I should have told her that I’d found him, but then I’d have to explain his getting arrested. Taran hadn’t been all that big, but he had the moody part down. Of course, I’d be moody if someone was slapping handcuffs on me, too.

Kat’s bossiness had been getting on my nerves for years. Her attitude toward our norns bordered on ridiculous. Why be so pissed about something we couldn’t change? All three of us had always been wary of the beings—I mean, who wouldn’t be a little scared about something living in your body?—but her outright hate made me wonder if her
rune tempus
was harder than mine and Raven’s. Kat could be stingy with her personal details, but she was also the only one of us to have had her fingers burned getting out a message.

As I pulled my little car back onto the slick road and joined the slow, slow traffic, I thought of the changes I’d decided to make in my life. I wanted to be stronger, not as quick to tears, not so...soft. I’d spent my life as the peacemaker—between my sisters, between them and my mother—and somewhere in there I’d made them see me as someone they needed to baby. No more. I would stand up to my mother if she showed and stand between her and Taran. Not as a peacemaker this time, but as a protector.

* * *

When I woke up in the empty house the next morning, I shivered under my blue comforter and blinked at a stain on the blue-and-white-striped wallpaper in the room I shared with my sisters. We lived in a small house, but to us, it was like living in a mansion—so, so much better than the flimsy canvas tents we’d spent most of our lives in. The best part was the bathroom down the hall. Not a community-shared, campground bathroom where you had to wear flip-flops in the shower and hope some stranger hadn’t eaten chili the night before, but a real bathroom with a bathtub and a lock on the door.

I hated waking in the house alone, though. I’d never before been separated this long from my sisters, and though it was nice not to hear Kat griping about our clothes encroaching on her third of the tiny closet, I’d like any noise over this backdrop of pattering snow.

Shivering as I turned onto my back, I noticed my breath fogging in the air. It was so much colder in here than when I’d gone to bed last night. I scurried from the bed, grabbed Raven’s heavy terry cloth robe off the hook by the door and was shoving my arms through the sleeves when I caught sight of the blank alarm clock. I flipped the light switch and got nothing. The power being out explained the cold.

It took four pairs of socks for my feet to feel halfway warm.

Guess the years of camping would pay off.

Yawning, I shuffled into the garage to dig inside the boxes of camping gear we’d stored. I pulled out a heavy-duty sleeping bag and a propane tank for the two-burner camping stove we had propped against one wall. We had a small awning on the back porch, so I set the stove up there—just out of the snow. I started water boiling for tea and ran back inside, though it didn’t feel all that much warmer.

I wanted plain black tea and cinnamon bark this morning. Maybe a little dried orange peel. I dug one of my tea balls from the drawer and glanced out the small window. We had a star fruit tree in the backyard and the shock of sudden cold added to the weight of the snow had bent the branches and caused the young fruit to fall. I could only imagine the bed of yellow under the snow, but some had recently dropped, their yellow shapes like sad, abandoned ornaments.

I left the water to boil and hurried back to my room. I put on my warmest red sweater over a thermal shirt with a pair of blue jeans, one size too big because I’d pulled my favorite over-the-knee black socks on under them. All three colors offered protection from magic.

When my tea was done, I carried it into the tiny sunroom where Mom and I grew herbs and flowers. Shivering, I sipped it while trying to see what clippings my mother might have taken. This room was what had finally made her agree to rent a house less than a year ago. Growing more of our own herbs helped with spells. I set my mug of tea on the counter and avoided looking at my shredded, dying solstice orange snapdragons on the floor. They were my favorite flowers and I’d been growing those for years. My mother had taken garden shears to them.

The only reason she would have done that was to keep me from using them. They detected spells.

But snapdragons weren’t my only source of magic. I knelt on the floor and opened the cabinet where we kept extra dirt and fertilizer. I’d stored a few jars behind the bags. They weren’t hidden exactly, but Mom would always use the easiest bag of dirt, so I left an open one out at all times.

I pulled out the saltpeter and the cinchona bark. I’d bought the latter off the internet, so who knew if it was potent, but loading up on protection couldn’t hurt. I planned to melt the saltpeter in water and sprinkle it around Taran’s house. I’d put down dill, as well.

Something crashed on the back porch and I dropped one of the jars. It caught the edge of the cabinet bottom, so it shattered all around my legs. I was stretching toward the broom and dustpan when there was another crash on the back porch, then another against the window. I turned, wincing when glass sliced into my palm. Then I saw what was making the noises, and I forgot the glass as I scrambled to my feet and out of the back door.

Birds. What looked like hundreds, no, maybe thousands of birds in a wall of black in the sky. Black dots littered the backyard I’d been afraid to go into for a while because of the recent snake infestation.

A bird fell by my head and I screamed and threw up my arms as more fell around me. They came faster and faster and just as I turned to go back inside, my norn decided to take over.

“No,” I yelled. “Not now!”

But she never listened. She shifted inside me, then threw the world into a spin. The birds and the snow began to swirl in a garish pattern of black and white. I knelt on the porch, the cut on my palm keeping my attention until the slam of nausea threatened to knock me over. Squeezing my eyes closed, I curled in on myself to ride it out.

Once the world settled, I realized I didn’t have my notebook on me. I stood and turned to go into the house, then stopped, stunned by what I saw. These weren’t crows, as I’d thought. They were bigger, the beaks more hooked. They were ravens—birds I’d never seen in Florida before. They hung suspended all around me, frozen with morbid masks of wide eyes and open beaks, bodies shimmering from the ice that had formed on their unprepared bodies. Feathers with tiny icicles. I had to close my eyes.