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I glanced at her. “Was this before . . .”
She nodded. “Yeah, before the accident.”
Peyton bit her lip. “I don’t know what to do now. If I contact him, I know my mother will be upset. I think she really hates him. She won’t stop me from seeing him, but she won’t support me, either. He hurt her pretty badly, I guess.”
“Give her a little time; maybe she’ll come around.” I let out a long breath. “Meanwhile, let’s get started early. It will help both of us to keep busy.”
We headed into the back parlor and finished tidying up. Our sign had arrived via UPS the day before and I stared at it—it was ready to set up in front of the house, by the road.
“This makes it real, you know.” I glanced up at her. “Think we should take out an ad?”
She shrugged. “Why not? We don’t have overhead costs in terms of rent since we’re using your house and the mortgage is long paid. I can easily come up with a couple hundred for a spot in the New Forest Times.”
I nodded. “Me, too. Okay, let’s do it. What should we say?”
After about half an hour, we’d pounded out a classified ad to go in the local paper and phoned it in. I handed Peyton a check and she used her credit card to place the order. I picked up the sign and a hammer.
“Let’s go hang our shingles.”
The sign was like one of those FOR SALE signs, but instead of advertising a house for sale, it read, WIND CHARMS—MAGICAL NOTIONS & SPELLS, and below that, MYSTICAL EYE INVESTIGATIONS. I carried it out the front door, Peyton following, and we stopped by the mailbox at the side of the road.
“Here we go.” I gave her a crooked smile. “It’s not like we’re going to have a hundred people on our doorstep the minute we put this up but you know, it feels so very official, doesn’t it?”
She nodded, a glint in her eye. “Yeah . . . who knows where this will lead for both of us?”
As she held the sign, I pounded it into the ground, first scooping away a good foot of snow to reach the dirt. As we finished and stood back, I realized that in some weird altaverse I’d been hoping that a throng of people would descend on us, but for the moment, we were alone, standing in the snow. I brushed back my hair and glanced up at the sky.
The clouds were rushing by, white cotton mixed with gray haze, and always the ever-present silver sheen that accompanied snowstorms. They were billowing by in the stiff breeze and the temperature was steadily falling. I turned, slowly, staring down the street, across the road, at the woods.
Everywhere, a silver and blue wasteland. The Ice Queen held the world in her grasp, and she was steadily squeezing tighter as her magical storms passed through. We were up to a good four feet of snow in parts of the yard. Drifts were higher. In Seattle, they were reporting the coldest winter in recorded history, with fifteen inches to two feet depending on how far out the neighborhoods were.
And in that moment, I knew. “She could do it.”
“Who could do what?” Peyton glanced around, then at me.
“Myst. She could bring on another ice age. I can feel it in the wind—I can feel the shifting of currents and the cooling gusts racing around the world. She’s sent her people into all corners of the northern lands. And they all carry her magic.”
“Ragnarök.”
I glanced at her. “Not quite. That’s the twilight of the gods. This could be the twilight of the mortals. And this will be ice, not water.”
“Stopping her won’t be easy.” Peyton stared at her feet. “When she held me captive . . . Heather and I were put into the same cell and Myst came to me. She was so beautiful . . .” Her voice drifted off. “I couldn’t believe how beautiful she was. But so cold, and so . . . inhuman.”
I nodded. “She has no more humanity in her than a rock.”
“Yeah. She was so aloof. It wasn’t as though she cared, one way or another. We were just . . . objects. She made us get down on our knees—or her guards did. And then she walked up and said, ‘One of you will walk out of here alive. One of you will join my court. It’s up to the two of you, which one.’ And then . . . and then Heather stood up and faced her and said, ‘Take me. Let Peyton go.’ Myst shrugged and motioned to her guards and said, ‘As you wish.’ And then she just turned and left. The guards threw me across the room. As I slammed into the wall, they forced Heather to leave with them.”
I hung my head. We hadn’t heard about this before, though we had some inkling of what had happened.
“Heather saved me—at least for the time being. If you hadn’t rescued me, I doubt I’d still be alive. I owe your aunt—I owe you everything.” Peyton reached out and brushed her hand across my cheek. “Whatever you need me to do, however you need me to back you up, you’ve got it.”
I felt shaky. So much had gone wrong. To have someone on our side, clearly, ready to take up the battle flag without complaint, meant so much. “Thank you,” I whispered. “I’ve been feeling so mired. And after last night . . .” I told her what had happened with Crawl and Lannan and Grieve.
“I’ll help you get the antidote. Whatever you decide, I’m in on. Just tell me what to do. I’m your soldier.” She gave me a buck up smile and, throwing her arm around my shoulders, turned me toward the house. “It’s cold. Let’s go in before we catch our death.”
By afternoon, we both had our first customers—Peyton had a tarot reading walk-in, and I was talking to Dorthea, a local woman who was frightened because her neighbor had been one of the ones killed in the theater incident. She wanted a protection charm to wear, and one to put in her house.
Dorthea looked like she didn’t have much money—she was dressed in a faded housedress, and her eyes had a look of hunger in them. New Forest had its share of povertystricken individuals, and this woman fit the bill.
