The woman upstairs was not a proper witch, one with magic in her blood. She was working on it from scratch, with grit, determination, and a staggering amount of magicalaccidents. The number of talking mice and singing ants he’d seen since moving in was enough to put on a children’s movie extravaganza. He didn’t even want to think about the day everyone in the building walked and talked backwards—although most of them didn’t seem to notice anything was amiss.
Brax tossed the empty whiskey bottle from his hand as he went to the cubby-sized kitchen, going back to search his fridge in the vain hope that more blood bags had suddenly appeared. He was no warmer. He was out of blood, having burned through everything he had, heating it up in the microwave and downing it to stay any sort of warm.
Vamps are cool to the touch even in the best of weather. Frostbite wouldn’t kill him. Hypothermia wouldn’t kill him. However, extended time in freezing weather could hurt him plenty, and healing from such damage was long and painful, not to mention disgusting. It would also require tons of human blood, and oh, yeah, he wasn’t going to have any of that any time soon.
He made a snap decision. He was leaving this apartment before whatever the witch upstairs had done could trickle down to him.
Another freak gust of wind zipped through his apartment, knocking over empty plastic quart jars stained sticky red.
“All right. Wind and ice inside? That’s never a good sign. Not gonna find me here, a Brax-icicle,” he grumbled, hugging his coat around him more tightly and clutching his car keys in numb fingers.
“UGH.” PENNY SAT UPand looked at her phone with bleary eyes. Four in the afternoon, Christmas Eve. She was supposed to go visit her parents, who lived just outside of the epicenter of little Pine Ridge, in a nice split-level off the highway. If shekept going down the road from her parents’ house, she’d reach the big arena where the Lumberjacks played. She wasn’t a fan of the minor league hockey team, hadn’t been since the time when she was a kid and saw the monster on the ice—and dozens more in the crowd. She’d freaked. Her parents hadn’t believed her, of course. She found out later that most humans couldn’t see what she was seeing. The more she persisted, the closer they got to putting her in some kind of mental institution—which they did later, anyway—so she’d stopped talking and made it her mission to get the hell away from this town. Other towns didn’t have a monster problem—or at least, not like this.
“Mom?” Penny put a hand to her head. No. Not Mom. Mom and Dad didn’t live with her. She moved out—unfortunately, into town, near the campus of NYU at Pine Ridge, because that was the college her parents could pay for, and that was the rent she could afford.
Why am I calling for Mom? Why is my head on fire?
Why is myhandon fire?Penny pulled her palm away to actually look at it.
“Nope. No flames. No fire. Not frying, fricaseeing, flaming—fever!” All the f words finally narrowed down to the one she needed to describe the problem. She felt like she was on fire, and the fire was inside, and that was a fever! That must be why she’d had to lie down and felt so sick.
Her eyes widened when she stumbled into the wall of her basement apartment. Her thermostat read ninety. She cranked it down.
It didn’t budge. The reading didn’t go any higher than ninety. She bet if it had gone up to 100 or 200, the needle wouldstillbe jammed all the way to the right.
In a daze, she shed her pajama bottom and sweatshirt top that she’d napped in. Walking around the apartment in panties and a tank top, she texted her mom.
Penny: Mom, I’m sick. Fever. Seeing if it breaks, and then I’ll be over.
Mom: Stay home tonight and rest. Get all better. You don’t want to give Daddy anything. Sleep, fluids, fever reducers, and stay warm. Don’t go out. It’s frigid outside.
Penny had to concentrate hard to make that make sense, and then was barely able to remember that her father had just had a kidney stone operation and her mother was being extra protective. Christmas would be small this year, just her parents, her brothers, and her. If she could get better.
“Cold water. Tylenol.”
Stay warm? Got that covered.
But when Penny turned on the tap in the kitchen, she knew that something about this screwy supernatural town had made her sick and delirious. Steam blew out instead of water. She had no windows, but the walls were hot. They were slick and damp, like the inside of an unairconditioned classroom on the hottest day of June.
I bet you it has something to do with that vampire next door...
I have to get out of here.
She slipped on the old pink canvas shoes she wore for running quick errands, like taking out the trash or getting the mail out of the lobby. Some little part of her fever-soaked brain told her that she should not go outside in just underwear and a tank top, that it was too cold for such things, but she ignored it.
Mom said don’t go out. It’s cold. Frigid.
Iwantto be cold. Need to be cold. If I’m not cold soon, I think I’ll die. Literally melt. Like that snowman in the song.
BRAX CURSED OUT ANYancient deities he’d ever played cards with. They were all sore losers. He was convinced they’d put him in Marietta’s path. They’d probably also been working against him and liquidated his assets (not that he’d ever been much good at saving money—it’s hard to do when you don’t work and find it difficult to keep a job if you happen to stumble into one). But this was the last straw. He could barely live with whatever curse sent him to this dinky little town where friendly monsters watched you like hawks and made it clear they’d kill their own kind if that one was “evil.” Butno onetouched his beautiful black El Camino.
Until his hand connected with the key, and the battery clicked once and died.
How does one beat up gods that are probably all hanging out in the Forgotten Realm? Something to do with Ley Lines, he was sure, and this town sat on top of three of them, a broody hen hatching monsters and a mix of malevolent and benevolent energy. He breathed out—not that he needed to—and his breath iced over the windshield.
He was going for malevolence right now.
“I’m going to eat that incompetent little witch upstairs, Mr. Minegold and the good neighbor policy be damned,” he hissed and ran blindly towards the building, painfully aware that wherever his boots touched sprouted sheets of ice.
