Page 71 of Seasonal Fears

And there, beneath the season they’re in and the season that’s coming and the scent of snow and dark, frozen woods that seems to seep from her own pores, she finds it. A lighter winter, bright and breezy, not shallow, exactly, but uncommitted in a way that’s difficult to articulate. That’s her Jack. Her Jack.

It’s easier to touch the Winter without being dragged under by it when she treats it as something outside herself, something that can be argued and negotiated with. Not a friend, not yet, but a partner. She shifts a small amount of control to Winter and steps down on the gas, trusting it to guide her.

In a matter of seconds, the parking lot is empty save for the forgotten roses blowing off into the wind. The attendant will find them when he cleans up in preparation for the next shift, and will wonder what happened to the nice young girl he gave them to, what made her boyfriend throw such a thoughtful gift away.

He won’t notice the blood smeared on the concrete, not even as he sweeps the petals and the broken glass away.

He won’t think of the encounter again, not ever for the rest of his life … but he’ll find the winter winds seem to cut less deeply into his bones, that the chill bothers his arthritis less. He won’t connect those things, and it won’t matter. The winter will.

The winter always remembers.

Harry wakes slowly, vision blurry when he opens his eyes. His head is ringing, and there’s a sharp, coppery taste in his mouth that he guesses must be blood, because nothing else makes any sense at all. He’s sitting on something hard—a chair. He tries to stand, and can’t, because he’s not just sitting, he’s tied down.

Well, that’s a whole new situation.

The room around him is dark, verging on pitch-black. He’s not alone. He can hear someone breathing. Cautiously, he licks his lips, tasting more blood, and croaks, “Hello?”

“Harry.” Jack sounds unaccountably relieved. “You’re awake.”

“For now.” Closing his eyes and going back to sleep sounds like the most appealing thing in the whole world. The room is dark and warm, and even sitting up, sleep would be easy to find. He was having a beautiful dream, of a sunlit meadow filled with flowers and fruiting berry bushes, and no pain. No pain at all. It’s hard not to give in to the urge to go back there.

“Stay awake.” Jack is almost pleading. That’s odd. Jack doesn’t plead. “Harry, we’re in real trouble here.”

“S’Mel here?”

“No, she was inside when they took us, but Harry, I need you to focus. Stay with me, and stay awake, and focus. Can you do that for me?”

Harry considers for a moment. It feels like a lot to ask in his current, somewhat befuddled state. He hadn’t realized how cold he’s been for the last several days. Even the heater hasn’t been enough to counterbalance spending February packed into a car with two avatars of Winter. “I can try,” he says, finally, and it feels like a huge concession.

Jack sighs in audible relief. “Great. Thank you.”

“Wha’ happened?”

“I can’t pick up on the presence of Summer candidates the way I can Winter ones. Apparently, this Summer candidate is a serial killer in training. They whacked you with a bat, then dragged me out of the car before I could run, and stood on my chest until I blacked out.” Her voice turns a little wry. “Not the first time I’ve wished I were a bigger person, but definitely the most recent. If I were your size, I’d have bounced the creep off the pavement a few dozen times for hitting you. Still got all your teeth?”

That’s an alarming question, although Harry’s been playing football long enough that it isn’t the first time he’s been asked that. He runs his tongue around the inside of his mouth, ignoring the taste of copper, and relaxes when the topology is familiar and precisely as it should be. “I do,” he affirms. “Little surprised he didn’t break my jaw, if he hit me hard enough to knock me out, but I’ll take it.”

“The human body is at once ridiculously sturdy and too fragile to function,” says Jack. “Can you move at all?”

Harry considers. Harry tries. Harry fails. “Nope,” he confirms.

“Should have known. I can’t either. This asshole took his time with the knots, which is almost as insulting as it is worrisome. He knew he could be lazy about it. He’s got to come back soon.”

“Does he?” Maybe he won’t. Maybe he’s out trying to catch Mel for his little collection, or woo her to becoming his Winter instead of Harry’s. He’s in for a nasty surprise if he thinks that’s going to work, and Harry allows himself a moment’s pleasant fantasy about a guy with a baseball bat walking up to Melanie and offering to be her new boyfriend.

The fantasy turns a lot less pleasant when she says no and leaves him with only two ways the scene can reasonably play out. Both the man hitting her and her freezing him are awful things to consider, and Harry doesn’t want to. He shakes his head, which only makes it ring harder, and the wave of pain that follows wipes all traces of the daydream away.

His stomach roils. “I think I’m going to be sick,” he announces.

“Please try not to. If you throw up, I’ll throw up, and then we’ll be sitting here in puddles of our own sick, and that won’t make anything better, but it will definitely make everything worse.”

“Things are bad enough that I’m not sure I’d categorize that as making them worse.”

“I know what was on my last sandwich,” says Jack. “Trust me. Worse.”

Harry trusts her, and stops arguing. His eyes are starting to adjust, which means there’s light coming from somewhere, although it’s so diffuse that he can’t say exactly where. There are no visible windows, only plain, seemingly featureless walls. He can’t see even the dark shapes of any other furnishings; he and Jack may well be tied to the only chairs in here.

The light getting suddenly brighter doesn’t really answer his questions about where it’s coming from, only hurts his eyes. He flinches and screws them shut for a moment before cracking them cautiously open.