Page 82 of A Killing Cold

“I don’t know. But I don’t want to freak everyone out or get her in trouble if she’s like—ditching work somewhere,” Trevor says. He swallows. “Can you help me look for her?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“Because if you rat us out, no one’s going to believe you,” he says with a shrug.

Olena isn’t back. There was a fucking storm last night and Olena isn’t back. But I’m not about to go off on my own.

“Trevor,” I start to say, and then I glance toward the hall. Nick hasn’t disappeared into the dining room. He’s only retreated a ways, and Magnus is with him, the two of them exchanging quiet words as Nick’s gaze fixes on me. Cold fear floods me at the look in his eyes.

I’m not safe here.

“Fine. Suit yourself,” Trevor says, and starts to leave.

“Wait,” I say quickly. “I’ll come with you.” Better out there with him than in here with them. Trevor may be an asshole, but he’s one of the few people I’m completely certain isn’t involved.

They’d never trust him enough.

We walk out together. Trevor holds the door open for me, a show of chivalry that feels more like mockery. I glance once behind myself and see Nick and Magnus still watching us. I pick up my pace, following Trevor out toward the trees.

“She should have come straight back here,” Trevor says.

“What’s the fastest way to Dragonfly?” I ask. He points, but lets me take the lead, forcing me to put him at my back. My nerves prickle, on high alert. Trevor was a toddler when his father died. And he’s clearly not invested in protecting the family’s good name. That doesn’t mean he’s not a potential threat.

“Your family seems to have gotten over your little stunt pretty fast,” I say, mostly to get him talking, make it easier to track his position when I can’t see him.

“There will be consequences,” he says in a gruff imitation of his grandfather. “Like it matters. They don’t even have control over my trust fund anymore, so they can’t keep dangling that over my head.”

“Oh, thank goodness for that,” I say, and can’t restrain myself from rolling my eyes.

“I’m a spoiled little brat, I know,” he says, and I can hear the grin.

“Don’t you have any loftier ambitions for your life? Or are you just here for a good time, not a long time?” I ask, not bothering to keep the disdain from the words.

He actually falls silent for a moment, our footsteps keeping up the conversation for us. “Do you know whatanhedoniameans?”

“It’s an inability to feel pleasure or joy,” I say. I’ve always thought the word was oddly lovely, for such a depressing thing.

“I think maybe I was born with it,” he says. “Can’t remember feeling happy. And if the best I can aim for is not quite as fucking terrible, what’s the point in trying at all?”

“Are you telling me this because it’s true, or because you want me to feel sorry for you?” I say, turning to look at him.

He stares at me a beat. And then the corners of his mouth hook up, one crooked tooth showing. “You could fix me.”

I start to turn back around, about to tell him to go fuck himself when something catches my eye. Everything in the woods is gray and white, the occasional green of pine needles prickling through. And in the midst of it all, a brief flicker of red.

Red—like a cardinal in the snow, but I haven’t seen any of them here, and then my mind fills with other things.Red scarf. I turn my head back toward it, but the contours of the landscape have hidden it from me if it was there at all. Still, I take a step in the direction where I think it was, and then—yes, a spot of red. Not blood red; brighter than that. The red of the coat I’m wearing now, and I take another step, and another.

“Theo?” Trevor says.

Vance warned me it wasn’t safe to walk out here in the dark at night. There are places that drop off suddenly, depressions and gullies. Easy to trip. Twist an ankle. Break a leg.

She lies at the bottom of a steep depression, face down. One hand is out in front of her, resting on top of the snow; the other is twisted under her body. Her dark hair spills out, the white wool cap lost. Snow has fallen thickly, covering her shoulders, covering the blood that pooled beside her head, but it’s seeped up, making a pattern of pink across the snow like creeping mildew.

“Theo, what—” Trevor says, and then he’s caught up to me. He makes a garbled sound of horror, lurching. “Ohfuck.”

I ignore him, scrambling down the short slope toward her. I grab her shoulder, forgetting everything I know about stabilizing the neck, securing the airway, just frantic to get her turned over, certain she’s suffocating—

Her eyes are open. Her skin has a bluish cast, and she’s dead, she’s been dead for hours, there was nothing I could do, and the first thing I feel, the very first thing, is a wash of relief, a release to know that I cannot save her and so I am spared the agony of trying, and I know that for the rest of my life I will remember that moment and be ashamed. And just as quickly, the feeling is gone. It collapses into sorrow, into horror and confusion.

---