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When I went suddenly airborne, I yelped, “Hey! I can walk.” I grabbed his shoulder with one hand, the other clutching my phone.
He’d taken two steps, but he stopped to look down at me. “You’ve had it. Adrenaline is probably all that’s keeping you going. I’m scared hypothermia is setting in. Your hands were shaking—then they stopped. That’s bad. Where’d you put those gloves?”
“I forgot. Stuck them in the pockets.” Stretching my neck to see over his shoulder, I stared in the direction of his friend. I didn’t want to leave him alone in the woods. On the wet ground with snow covering him. It seemed so wrong.
And the guilt eating at me should have been my mother’s.
“What about him?” I whispered.
“We can’t move him. It’s a crime scene, which means we don’t want to be out here, anyway. I’ll get the sheriff, come back here—” He broke off, his arms tightening around me almost painfully.
His anguish tore through my heart. “Why don’t I wait by him? The wolves can keep me warm again. You can get the authorities and I could make noise to lead you back.”
The moonlight showed me the slight upward tilt of his mouth. A smile that tried to break through his grief and failed. “I know exactly where he is. Spent most of my life running this forest with Geri and Freak. And Steven.”
I shivered. Took that as a good sign.
He tightened his arms. Heat poured from him. Pain and cold had scrambled my brain, but I could swear something else seeped into me. A hint of relief from the pain in my head, like a sneaky narcotic attached to his warmth.
Nerves zinged with the effort it took to hold in my grief. I’d really hoped we’d been wrong—that Mom hadn’t come here to hurt someone.
Kat and Coral were going to be devastated. Pain washed over me again and I didn’t say anything else. Couldn’t. I still didn’t know for sure. Maybe I’d hallucinated the lavender scent.
He didn’t talk, either, as he carried me to his house. His anger and confusion was so thick I could taste it. I had nothing to offer him, not when I was such a mess myself. We passed through a few more thick stands of trees, crossed a clearing, and once he had to turn and take a new route. I kept my eyes closed throughout most of it, trying hard to conserve what little warmth I had left without sucking all his away.
“My house is up this driveway. It’s just me and my brothers.”
I felt the moonlight on my face before I opened my eyes to see we’d cleared the trees and were now on a gravel road. I turned my head to get my first glimpse of his home. It was hard to make out the exact shape of the house since it was nestled deep into the trees, but I could tell it was two-story and either white or some light tan color. A porch ran the length of the first floor with an old-fashioned white railing. The eight front-facing windows all blazed yellow. Smoke poured from the chimney and television noise blared through the screen door as the front door opened.
Vanir’s shoes made very little sound as he climbed the four steps leading to the porch.
“Wait,” I said, pushing on his chest and wiggling my legs so he’d let me go. He did, keeping his hands on my arms until I could stand. The dizziness was thankfully gone, though the throbbing in my head still blazed strong. My teeth had started chattering again.
Some of the light streaming from the house cut off as a tall body filled the doorway. “Vanir? Did you find Steven?”
Vanir nodded, lips pinched. His grief cut into me so strongly I couldn’t stop the breathy moan that escaped my throat.
The screen door creaked when Vanir pulled it open. “Come on,” he said to me. “We need to get you warm. This is my brother Ari.”
Ari stepped onto the porch and the light fell on his face. He favored Vanir in the shape of his mouth, nose and chin, but he had hair like mine, so dark a brown it was nearly black. He had more of it, though, from what I could tell with it tied back from his face. I wondered if, like my branch of Norse ancestors, his had settled in to mix with the locals. He didn’t look much older than Vanir.
Vanir touched his brother’s arm. “She’s hurt and needs to see Sarah.”
“She?” Ari chuckled and stepped to the side so I could pass. “Only you would find a girl in the woods.”
“Her car’s in the new river.”
“New river?” One black eyebrow lifted high.
“The crazy weather changed things up a bit around here.”
Ari leaned close, his gaze zeroing in on the throbbing part of my head. I was guessing there was a nice, fat lump there now. “Better get her inside,” he murmured.
Vanir held out his hand for me.
I didn’t hesitate, just placed my cold hand in his. This time, it wasn’t my imagination. Comfort flowed along my skin, seeped into my pores.
He tugged on my hand, pulled me toward the front door. “You haven’t told me your name.”
Vanir rubbed his thumb over my wrist. The fluttering in my gut went wild. I followed as he pulled me through the door into a brightly lit room that made me squint after being in the dark so long. Instant heat nearly sent me to the floor in relief, the smell of wood smoke strong, welcome.
Another man who looked a lot like Ari, but older, sat on a red plaid couch, his cast-clad foot propped on a battered wood coffee table. He looked up when I came in, eyes narrowing.
“Your name?” Vanir prompted.
“Sorry. It’s Raven. Raven Lockwood.”
The brother on the couch sat up; his cast-clad foot hit the floor. Hard. Vanir stopped abruptly and I ran into him before he turned and grabbed my shoulders. “Did you really just say your name is Raven?”
Startled, I didn’t answer at first.
Ari stepped past us and carefully set his brother’s cast back on the scarred surface of the coffee table, which looked like it had been dragged behind a pickup. “So...not only did little brother find himself a girl, but a trickster, too.”
Chapter Four
Despite the promise of more bone-chilling cold, I stepped back toward the door. In my world, magic was reality, so even though I’d never encountered any, mind readers could exist. That was the last thing I needed—for these guys to know how not completely honest I was being.
Vanir glared at Ari. “Don’t mind him—he’s taken one knock too many playing football.”
“What?” Chuckling, Ari plopped onto the couch. “You’ve never heard the stories about the bird? Like the one about the raven who stole the sun?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard them. Didn’t that raven end up sharing the light with the world?” I wasn’t sure it was the same story, but didn’t really care. The cold had reached bone depth at this point and the effort to keep my teeth from clacking loudly made my jaw ache. Crossing my arms, I winced when my freezing, wet clothes made a loud sploshing sound. I looked at Vanir. “Why are you reacting to my name like that? It’s not like you don’t have weird names yourselves.”
He gave me a rueful smile that pursed the lips to one side. “Our mother was Scandinavian. The brother on the couch? He’s the oldest and he got the worst name, Hallur.”
Hallur lifted an eyebrow, but then he shrugged and nodded in agreement.
Vanir grabbed a huge blue towel from a pile of unfolded laundry on a red ottoman in front of the fireplace and handed it to me.
I buried my face in the warm cotton, glad it was a dark color so the blood from my head wouldn’t stain it. The heat felt so good I wanted to jump into that pile of fire-warmed laundry. Then I was happy my face was covered because Vanir took a deep breath and I knew what he was about to tell them.
“Something happened to Steven. I think someone was chasing him—I got distracted when I heard Raven’s car crash, but when I finally caught up to him, it was too late.”
The cast thumped to the floor again. “What do you mean, too late?” Hallur demanded.
“I mean, he’s dead.” Vanir’s voice shook on the last word.
I lowered the towel even though the last thing I wanted was to be in this room and seeing their expressions right now.
Hallur tried pulling himself up. Sweat broke on his face with the effort and I wondered how fresh his break was. He smacked the arm Ari used to push him back down. “Dead? What do you mean, dead? How?”
“I don’t know how, but we need to call Uncle Willy now. I’ll change into dry clothes and take him back there.” Vanir pulled off his wet sweatshirt and threw it onto the brick hearth. He didn’t seem to care that I was watching as he hauled up a clean red towel and wiped his chest. He had those intriguing lines along his ribs, defined abs. But his expression kept my attention. Now that we were out of the cold—temporarily—and not fighting snow, the truth about his friend had to be hitting him hard. He kept his gaze off me, but his grief was there in the cut of his lips, the lift of his eyebrows.
Swallowing the hard lump of sympathy clogging my throat, I forced myself to look down, dismay filling me when I saw the puddle I was making on the floor. I immediately knelt with the towel.
“I’ll get that. Here are some dry clothes you can use.” Vanir stood over me with a pair of black sweatpants and a white long-johns top. He turned back to his brothers. “I tried CPR, didn’t know what else to do.” The raw torment that passed through his eyes brought that lump back into my throat. He was holding off his misery with barely leashed control. “I hated leaving him there, but I had to get her out of the cold.”
Hallur scraped his hand along his jaw. A log in the fireplace crackled loudly as he winced and shifted, a confused frown darkening his tanned face. “Did it look like he fell? Hit his head? Was there blood?”
Vanir shook his head. “He was just lying there, staring at the sky. But I heard him running—I’m sure someone was after him.”
“But who...and in this weather? Hell, most of the town has shut down. People are hibernating—they put off opening the school. We got the call tonight.” He shut his eyes. “I don’t believe this. Steven was only seventeen.”
Ari abruptly stood and strode past me to open the closet next to the front door, his lips pinched. He pulled out a thick coat, grabbed two flashlights and handed one to Vanir. Hallur picked up the cell phone next to him and started dialing.
“Call Sarah, too.” Vanir set the flashlight on the coffee table and pulled a blue sweatshirt from the pile of clothes. “Raven needs her head checked.”
I cleared my throat and carefully did not look at any of them too long. I didn’t really think they could read my mind, but I knew I couldn’t keep the guilt off my face. My mother might have done this played liked a jammed track in my mind. “I don’t need a doctor. If it would be okay, can I borrow these clothes and maybe have someone drive me to—” I broke off. To where? I had no money, nothing. Everything was in my car.
Vanir tucked a strand of hair behind his ear in a gesture that should have looked feminine, yet didn’t. He still held his sweatshirt bunched in his hand. “Bet your purse or wallet is somewhere in the river. You can stay here. We’ll try to get your stuff tomorrow.”
Ari stood by the door, expression grim. “Take me to Steven, Vanir.”
“No.” All our attention snapped back to the oldest brother when he barked out the order. One word and everything came to a stop. “Wait for the sheriff before you go back.” He pointed to Vanir. “I want to talk to you. Alone.”
He started pushing himself to his feet and his grimace, sweaty face and relatively clean cast told me the break was new. I stood, clutched the towel. “Please. Stay. I’ll go change.” I lifted an eyebrow at Vanir. My hands shook with cold again and I wanted the wet stuff off. But I also desperately needed a couple of minutes to myself, away from prying eyes. I was swallowing back so many emotions—fear, worry, shock...not to mention the squirm-inducing embarrassment of being completely helpless here without my money, clothes and car—they all had my stomach cramping.
He tilted his head to get me to follow, placed his hand on my lower back as I passed. Again, I felt that strange comfort seep from his touch and I raised startled, wide eyes to him only to find his narrowing at me.
The slight drop in temperature when we reached the hall started up my shivering again. Warmth seeped slowly from Vanir’s hand before he reached into the bathroom to flip on the light. He held the door open.
“Do you want to take a shower?” he asked.
I did, but not here. Not in this strange house full of men. “Just the dry clothes will be enough. Thanks.”
I locked the door behind him with my cold, shaking fingers before all my pent-up emotion rushed to the surface. I sagged over the black counter, my knuckles hurting with the effort it took to hang on to the edge. Eyes closed, I fought off panic.
Summer snow.
Mom’s hexing spell.
Murder.
I couldn’t stop the acid as it rushed up my throat. I turned, saw the lid was already up on the toilet and fell to my knees as I lost the peanut butter sandwich I’d eaten in my car earlier.
Resting there a moment, I worked to get myself under control, taking deep breaths, gagging on my own nasty saliva. I needed more than a few stolen moments alone in a bathroom so badly. I flushed the toilet, lurched back to the sink and hoped they wouldn’t mind that I opened a drawer and borrowed some toothpaste. I was not going out there with vomit breath.
I spat, ran water in the sink and lifted my gaze to the mirror. Despite the new scratches on my skin, I looked like me. Same narrow face, same gray eyes, same short, black hair. But everything, everything, felt different. Nothing about my life would ever be the same again and Mom...
The norn moved in my chest and instead of the usual shift or stretch, this felt like a swoop. I choked and the room started a slow spin around me. The white walls and black countertop smeared and lengthened, turning to zebra stripes. Still nauseated, I closed my eyes, flattened my palm over my stomach.
And then I realized what was happening and my wide, freaked-out gray eyes showed in the melting mirror.
“Oh, gods!” I whispered. “Not now, not here!”
I don’t know which gods I sent the plea to—which one was responsible for this stupid curse, which one had put this...this being inside me, but he or she didn’t listen. Never listened.
Everything spun faster and faster, until the bathroom’s stark color scheme became one swirling mass of spirals. It was like being in the center of a target sign. I didn’t have the strength for this. Not now. A loud sob escaped my throat, my face jerking toward Vanir’s voice as he pounded on the bathroom door.
That couldn’t be right. Alone, my sisters and I always went into our rune tempus alone!
Normally, I only heard my heart pounding like a base drum in my head, my blood rushing through my veins, pumping life around my eardrums. Coral described it once as being inside a seashell. It was hell on earth. I was never more aware of the fragility of life than in the beginning and end of my rune tempus. And the worst part? The helplessness. The complete inability to resist whatever power overtook me and made me write, or carve...or burn.
Vanir grunted outside the door and must have slumped against it because it rattled hard.
Exhausted, I collapsed to the floor.
The spinning shuttered to a halt. In here nothing looked different. But out there, the McConnells would be living statues, men frozen in time along with the rest of the world. The first time this had happened to me, I’d been standing at a chalkboard when the green had suddenly looked like it had turned soft, melting into goo before sweeping to the side. I’d clutched the chalk tray with frantic fingers and held on throughout. When it stopped, I’d turned to find all the other kids in class staring, locked into place. They’d looked dead. All I remember after that was whimpering, crawling under the teacher’s desk, and the hellacious fight later when Mom caught that teacher digging her sharp fingernails into my shoulders while shaking me in the hallway.
It was why Mom homeschooled us after that. If one of us went into the rune tempus and moved before we came out, others would only see me or one of my sisters blink from one spot to another. The world stopped only for the sister who went into it. Mom had never hidden the fact we carried norn souls from us, but even she hadn’t known about this weird time-stopping thing that forced us to write prophetic runes. Kat’s showed the future, Coral’s the present and mine, which came from the oldest of the norn sisters, shared the past. Mine was pretty much useless. It explained a few things sometimes, but mostly showed me things I couldn’t change.
That day in school, I’d revealed my teacher’s past affair with the principal. She wouldn’t have known it if Kat hadn’t marched into the class and read the Norse runes out loud.
Groaning, I blinked away the awful memory and moved my hand, encountering fuzz. I stared, confused by the blur of black fluff in front of my eyes before wrinkling my nose at a sudden tickle. I sneezed. When the world came back into focus, I realized I was lying on my side, on a thick, black bath rug. I never knew how much time I’d get—I didn’t control this, she did. And she wasn’t patient. So I grabbed the brass cabinet knob. I opened the door and used it for leverage.
“Please don’t break, please don’t break,” I murmured before grasping the lip of the counter and pulling myself to my feet. I reached into my back pocket for my notebook with its attached short pen. That’s when I remembered. I’d set it on the seat next to me.
In. My. Car.
Thick fear tightened my chest. My heart pounded hard. Visions of my rune-filled, purple notebook floating down that river went through my head right before the burning in my hands started.
“No.” Fingers tingling, I yanked open the drawer and pawed through the contents. A pen and paper in the bathroom would be the norm at my home—we stashed them everywhere—but most people didn’t think of a bathroom for writing. There was a packet of razors but no shaving cream, which would have worked. There were nail clippers, extra toothbrushes, and I frowned in confusion at the huge pack of batteries. None of this would help me. The sting in my fingers grew worse, so I grabbed the toothpaste again. It would work. The rune tempus stopped for nothing, and if I didn’t have something to write with, it would make me burn the symbols into the wall behind me. With my fingers. It had happened that way for Kat once. She had no fingerprints on two fingers now.
Hands shaking, I twisted off the lid and squirted a huge glob on the counter. I swooped up some onto my finger and held it to the mirror just as my muscles went rigid and she took over my body. I hated this, hated the acrid resentment that tasted like rust on my tongue, hated the loss of control...hated the constant fear that one day she’d just decide to keep me. My back snapped straight, my legs locked so hard my knees made a loud cracking sound. I stood inflexible and unable to function on my own. Every fiber of my being was under her control as I watched her raise my toothpaste-covered fingers to the mirror.
This was why Mom had yanked us from school.
The reason we got fired from more jobs than I could count.
The reason Coral was fragile, Kat always pissed.
The reason I was afraid to date.
My hand moved of its own volition and I became the messenger. The passenger. The witness.
The freaking tool.
The toothpaste oozed down the mirror, but the norn wanted the runes completely legible. My hand shook with exhaustion, yet it went down for more paste, then up to draw. Down, then up to fill in the symbols more, over and over until tears streaked down my cheeks. She couldn’t control those and I couldn’t stop them—they were the only sort of release I could get during this. I was finishing the last symbol when there was a thud against the bathroom door. It flew open and slammed into the wall.
