Page 172 of Veil of Blood and Bone

“When Mom pulled Isa, whenever it came up for her, it meant everything was blocked.”

She fumbles for my hand and linked our fingers together with the rune between us. It’s being trapped in place, powerless to act until the ice melts.

Because when we look up, the ice is the least of our problems.

When we look up, the form in the snow has bent down beside the car, its face carved from hollowed terrors and evil dreams you drag with you into tomorrow.

And it’s smiling at me.

I’ll never get the image of the wickedly grinning face from my memory.

It will replay in my nightmares until I’m old and gray, if I make it. I’ve got doubts as its grin stretches, skin pulling tight over sharp bone.

The temperature drops further, mine and Audra’s chattering teeth an unsteady rhythm. She shakes with it, uncontrolled, freezing to death the closer the figure gets.

It presses a hand to the window and icicles drip from its nails.

This close, the figure is clear, skin jagged and cutting, made from shards of glass. Pure white eyes meet mine, and his incisors match his talons.

The cold steals our words and our breath and leaves only fear behind.

My limbs refuse to move. My fingers latch onto the bag, around my knee.

Audra exhales long and faint, and even the wind can’t disguise our identical awful convulsion.

Frost gnaws at our bones the same way this thing will if it gets inside the car. A tremor shakes through me from head to toe.

“Helene.” My name on her lips is a whisper.

The creature leans closer, and I manage to crack the frost along my knuckles to grab Audra. “Get in the back. Now. Go, go.”

There has to be a way out of the car and past the snow The stupid malfunctioning beater still has roll-up windows, for fuck’s sake. I’ll shove them down and burrow out of the snow myself.

Plan A forms half-finished and flimsy in my head. Audra can’t move quickly. Her legs refuse to bend correctly on a good day.

Now, her body is leaden and heavy, frozen stiff.

What is the creature waiting for? Why hasn’t it broken in and attacked us yet?

I grab the back of Audra’s coat and haul her out of her seat. She winces, flinching against the discomfort in her joints, making an effort to pull herself up.

“Hurry, hurry,” I push.

Her eyes are black, panicked. “I’m trying.”

Strain pulls her skin tight. I’ll berate myself later for the pain I’ve caused by throwing her around this way. I send a silent prayer out into the universe and help fold her legs up to her chest until she drops. The clutter of the backseat cradles her in detritus as I scramble to follow.

The sense of eyes on my spine deepens.

My fingers, tipped in blue, press against the side of the door and the rippled plastic covered in frosted filigree.

“Helene, it’s not going to work. The doors won’t open. We can’t—” Audra tries again.

Breathing hard, I tug on the handle, the mechanism sliding but the door refuses to give. It’s frozen shut. Solid.

“No, no, come on.”

I fumble to roll the windows down but it won’t circle. The door holds tight, on the left and the right. Trapping us.