“The Third,” she confirms, setting him down. He immediately sits on my foot. The weight is... significant.
“Why would anyone—” Something scrapes against the window. Long. Deliberate. Like fingernails, if fingernails were made of frozen regret. “We must complete the ritual.”
“I’m sorry, we must what now?” She backs up until she hits the desk again, sending more papers sliding into the coffee puddle. Her hands immediately go to reorganizing them even as she talks.
“The treaty between your world and mine requires renewal regularly. On the solstice. With proper preparation and ceremony. Not on a random night by someone who has been drinking...” I sniff, immediately regretting it. The smell makes my sinuses attempt to close in self-defense. “What is that?”
“Sweet Berry Sunset. It was on sale.” She retrieves the cracked bottle, seemingly unbothered by the cold radiating from it.
“It smells like someone dissolved sugar in poor decisions.”
“Yes, well, when your life gets turned upside down by cheating jerks, the list of decisions gets a little questionable.”
Another scrape. Longer. More insistent. The frost on the windows cracks, forming patterns like reaching hands.
“Your personal distress is irrelevant. The shadow creatures gathering outside?—”
“Shadow creatures?” She moves to the window, stumbling over the cat who has decided to walk directly under her feet.
“—are extremely relevant. You opened a door. They can sense it.”
She presses her face against the glass, fogging it with her breath. “Those are just tree branches.”
“Trees do not draw faces.”
As if to prove my point, something drags across the glass, leaving marks in the frost that form a crude smiley face. If smiley faces were designed by things that had only heard descriptionsof human faces third-hand and thought eyes should possibly have teeth.
The woman makes a sound like a stepped-on mouse toy and grabs the nearest weapon, which happens to be the Chronicle. She holds it like a club, which would be more threatening if she weren’t swaying. “What do they want?”
“Entry. Your world possesses things they cannot obtain in mine. Substance. Form. The feeling of existing instead of merely lingering. They want warmth, light, memories that are not frozen.”
Something hits the window hard enough to crack it. The sound echoes through the library like a gunshot. The woman jumps backward, directly into me. I steady her automatically, my hands on her shoulders, and she makes a small sound of surprise.
“Your hands are freezing!”
“I am aware.” But I do not remove them immediately. Her warmth is... pleasant.
Another impact. The crack spreads like a spider web across the window. The shadow creature presses what might be a face against the glass, features shifting like smoke trying to remember what faces should look like.
“We must reinforce the boundary,” I say, guiding her away from the window. “Immediately.”
“How?”
“Salt. Creates a secondary barrier.”
“There’s probably some in the break room. The bottom shelf that no one’s cleaned since the previous century.” She leads the way, weaving slightly, using the wall for support. One hand trails along it, and I notice she’s still organizing—straightening every crooked poster we pass.
The break room is a monument to human apathy. Expired food, a coffee maker that may be sentient and hostile, andindeed, a container of salt that has congealed into a solid mass. She hands it to me, and I have to break it apart with my fingers, ice making it brittle enough to crumble.
“Will this work?”
“It is not ideal. But it will suffice.”
“Oh good, the magic ritual is a salt snob too.” She takes the salt and begins pouring it across the doorway, managing to create what resembles a line if one is generous with the definition. Most of it ends up on her shoes. “So, um, what’s your name?”
“Stenrik.”
“I’m Rianne.” She moves to the next window, tripping over the same warped floorboard twice.
