Yes, Phoebe is alive, but I’ll have to move fast if I want to keep her that way.
It’s dark in here.Smells like wet dog.Or that could just be the two of us.My eyes acclimate enough that I make out an old couch and footstool, a fireplace, a rag rug, and what looks like a dry sink and a woodstove for cooking.I even see cabinets and a table.
I glance up as I head to the sofa.Only a few specks of pale daylight are peeking through the old cedar roof, but snowflakes are making their way down to us.
I only hope the structure holds under the weight of this snowfall.
I untangle Phoebe from the sleeves of my coveralls and lay her on the couch.I run back out into the blizzard, allowing myself no more than twenty seconds to grab her clothes and some emergency supplies from the trunk locker and saddlebag.And then I run right back in.
I slam the door shut and shove a wooden chair up under the doorknob.Seems I did a fairly good job of busting the locking mechanism.
Phoebe’s eyes are half open, but she’s disoriented.That’s okay.Disoriented isn’t unconscious or dead, so I’ll take it.
But holy shit.If it’s ten below outside, it’s a balmy zero in here.This is nowhere near habitable.
I rip off my clothes.
Phoebe’s eyes widen.
CHAPTER 16
Phoebe
I can’t feel my body.
I can’t move.My brain is a black screen of nothing.
I might be dead.Dead might feel like this—no longer attached to anything in the world, the body I used to live in.Lost.Floating.
Can’t breathe.
It’s dark.Or have I gone blind?I have no idea where I am or how I got here.
Maybe I’m nowhere at all, because I’m dead.
I hear stomping.Rustling of fabric.Breathing.But I can’t get my head to move.I can’t follow the sound.
A vision flashes in my mind.Memory.Or dream.
Snow.Wind.Water.
Something grabs me, drags me, sends me flying through the air.
Unseen force, an angel taking me to heaven.
My brain grays out again.I can’t remember what I was just thinking.
Something makes a crinkling sound on top of me.
Foil?
There’s foil on the other side?
It takes everything I’ve got, but I move my eyes and track left, toward the noise.
In the dimness, I see a bare body.
I’d recognize that body anywhere.
