Unwilling to leave my companions without seeing them to safety, I hesitated at the window. My feet slid under me when I attempted to take a step. I gritted my teeth and launched myself from the window, only to land on the floor with the wind knocked out of me. I wheezed as I reached out for the wall to help myself up.
Freya pushed Erik ahead of her, and slipped on the floor herself, spinning in place for a moment before standing on shaky legs and continuing after him. Erik, meanwhile, could hardly stop himself. I had to slide out of the way as he sailed past me, to safety. I watched him hit the ground below on his tailbone before turning back to Freya, who was gaining momentum as well.
“Come on,” I yelled, then I realized that I’d lost track of the Ice Queen. Was she going to be down on the ice waiting for us?
I glanced aside and flinched at the icy smile I found only a few feet away. The Ice Queen’s eyes glittered in the shadows like diamonds as she set her predatory eyes on me. “You look like perfect bait.”
I could hardly get out a warning as Freya hit the wall hard, the ice not allowing her to slow down. The impact threw me off-balance, and I fell half out of the window. I managed to grab hold of Freya’s leg on my way out and tried to pull her out after me, but she seemed to be anchored on something.
Freya screamed and I looked up to see the Ice Queen’s hand wrapped around Freya’s forearm. Steam rose from where she touched Freya’s skin.
“Freya!” I shouted.
The Ice Queen gritted her teeth and grabbed a handful of Freya’s hair in an attempt to pull her back inside the castle. The hair immediately froze on contact and broke away, brittle as glass.
A flash of yellow flame suddenly entered the periphery of my vision. I tilted my head as Narcissa came to our aid. To avoid the reach of the flames, the Ice Queen released Freya, and together, she and I fell from the window. I hit the ice with a smack that startled the air from my lungs, then found Auggie leaning over me, helping me to my feet. I shivered as I stared at Freya, who clutched her upper right arm with a grimace. A clear handprint could be seen on her skin, like a bruise. But the mark was black and the skin looked dead.
“Frostbite,” Erik said, shaking his head. “We have to … before infection sets in …”
“We have towhat?” Auggie asked, voice rising. “Cut off her arm?”
“She does have three others,” Narcissa said helpfully, cocking her head. “But she’ll be rather uneven. Maybe she can sew on another dead arm and bring it to life.”
I ignored Narcissa to focus on Freya. I touched her face. “Freya? Can you hear me?”
Her teeth were clenched tight, and her face was pinched with pain, but she nodded. Gods, this was all my fault. I should never have accepted Freya’s help in the first place. I should have left Therese and Narcissa in Lexi’s care. Then it would just be me escorting Auggie, like Lucifer had intended.
“We need to get away from here fast anyway,” Erik noted, looking back up at the castle, looming overhead. “She’s not going to quit that easily.”
I looked at Freya, her pinched face. “You have to get us to Lexi, Freya. Can you do that? Even if it takes everything you have, even if you black out, you need to get us to her. She can heal you as soon as you do that.”
Freya cracked open her eyes. “Damn you, Callum.”
I grabbed her head and forced her to look at me. “You’ll do it,” I told her. “Because you have to.”
Freya grunted, either with pain, or as a form of assent. Her face pale, she lifted her three good arms into the air, fingertips sparking to life. She had to compensate for what she would have usually drawn with her fourth arm, doubling back on the runes. But she did it. As soon as the portal opened before us, I breathed a sigh of relief. I tossed a mixture of dodo eggshells and sphinx fur at the entrance, to scramble any attempts by magic users to trace us again. Then we wasted no time stepping through into Lexi’s warm parlor, leaving the Ice Queen, and her terrible powers, behind.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
When I awokethe following morning, it was to the gentle tugging of my hair.
“Leave me alone,” I murmured groggily, swatting at Narcissa. “I’ll feed you in ten minutes.”
This only made the tugging more insistent, and I opened my eyes, ready to issue a sharp rebuke. But rather than staring up into the amused eyes of a black cat who thought the biggest offense in the world was food arriving late, I found a rotting face breathing foul miasma into my hair, as Xander eagerly gummed my scalp.
I may have screamed, but it was a justified reaction to finding a zombie chomping merrily away on one’s body.
“You’re going to scare him,” Therese accused, frowning.
I shoved myself away from Xander and stared at the dead-eyed man, mouth hanging open, drool leaking in thick puddles from his mouth. I was bewildered by the encounter but paused after I’d regained my wits. Did Xander have … pink ribbons in his hair? Each tuft of hair clinging to his head had been carefully tied up so that it looked like he was covered in spikes. He also had … rouge on his cheeks?
“Xander cannot eat your brains,” Therese reminded me. “He’s just being silly. He doesn’t have teeth.”
“Yes, silly,” I said, running a hand down my face. A trickle of liquid ran down onto my forehead and I wrinkled my nose in disgust as I swiped it away. I would need to hold my head in a boiling cauldron for at least ten minutes before I felt clean.
“What is it?” Erik asked, charging into the room with a candlestick he brandished like a weapon. He frowned when he noticed Xander ambling across the room and stepped out of the zombie’s way. Xander walked headfirst into the door frame, then slunk out the door. Erik lifted an eyebrow at me. “I was going to say you screamed loud enough to wake the dead, but it looks like there was no need. The dead was already up and about.”
“Ha-ha,” I said, crossing my arms. I turned to inform Therese, “You could have woken me.”
