Page 77 of Seasonal Fears

It’s always Summer where the Summer King stands. He doesn’t hold blizzards or the fear of frost, but he has to be Melanie’s equal or he can’t be her opposing force, and that means he has something, especially here and now, during the coronation, when he’s finally accepted a Corn Jenny of his own. The season he harbors is complete within him for the first time, and while it’s weak this time of year, it still exists.

Matthew didn’t know what he was risking when he treated his Corn Jenny poorly. He’ll have to tell Mel to be nice to Jack, although he doesn’t think there’s much risk that she won’t be. She’s been following the girl’s advice and giving in to her demands since they met.

Harry raises his hands toward the ceiling, fingers bloody as they emerge from the cloud of seething smoke, and brings them down hard, as if he were spiking a football. And the summer, unseasonable and impossible as it is, follows his hands, follows the hands of the Summer, and crashes down into the room in a burning wave of heat and dazzling sunlight. Jenny yelps, surprise and delight. Jack’s sound of surprise is much less delighted, much more shocked, like a small child who’s just put her hand down flat on the surface of a burning stove.

Misty shrieks, short and sharp and quickly cut off, presumably because she’s clapped her hand over her mouth. And the smoke screams from all of its hundreds and thousands of mouths, every one of them wailing in brief, eerie harmony before the blazing light shining from Harry burns them away. In less than a handful of seconds, the smoke is gone, and the room is empty again, save for the three of them.

The plastic is melting from the walls. It was designed to keep blood splatter from getting on the paint, not to withstand a sudden blast from the undiluted power of the sun. Misty, shying away from the melting sheet of vinyl that was meant to protect her from her own horror, looks like she has the world’s worst sunburn. Her eyes are wide and horrified, and for a moment, Harry thinks she’s staring straight at him. Then she moans, and he realizes she can’t see anything at all.

He’ll think about the ethics of flashblinding someone who just tried to kill him later. Right now, he has better things to worry about. He whirls toward Jack and Jenny, suddenly afraid that he’s damaged Melanie’s attendant by manifesting the Summer in the room with her.

She’s clinging to Jenny’s waist, again seeming like her actual age for once, her face pressed against the man’s stomach. They must have been like that while Harry was wrapped in the smoke. There’s no way they had time to move.

Jenny looks just like he did before the explosion, skin darker than Harry’s but not burnt or damaged in any way. He meets Harry’s eyes and smiles a crooked smile, clearly able to see the other man.

So at least the Summer attendant is undamaged. Harry crosses the room quickly. He can’t forget Misty saying that Matthew was flirting with Melanie. He wants to run out of here more than almost anything. He knows now that his own success or failure will hinge largely on having a supportive attendant; whatever they normally do for their Seasons, it’s far more essential now that the coronation is in process. He needs Jenny. He needs to win. He needs Melanie to win, and that means she needs Jack.

Jack pushes herself away from Jenny and turns to face him. She isn’t burned. That’s the first thing he sees, and it’s such a relief that he almost sits back down on the chair behind him, which is thankfully not on fire or anything else ridiculous like that.

“Well?” she demands. “Why are you still just standing here like a big dork? Go get our girl!”

“Watch for the alchemist, she’s still standing,” he advises.

Jack’s smile is feral. If Misty tries anything, she’s not going to enjoy the consequences.

That was the last thing Harry needed to do to feel like he could leave them. He turns toward the melting sheet of vinyl between him and Misty, breaking into a run from a standing start. They do this at drills all the time. If she doesn’t get out of the way, she’s going to get hurt, and right now, he doesn’t care. She hurt him. He’s bleeding from countless tiny tears in his skin, the bitemarks not having blown away with the smoke. The top layer of blood has dried on his skin and clothing, thanks to the Summer, but that didn’t heal his wounds.

A running football player sounds something like a charging rhino. Misty can’t see him, but she can hear him just fine; she steps aside at the last moment, leaving him to race harmlessly past. He doesn’t pause. Jack and Jenny can take care of her, and she was planning to take him apart, so he’s not too concerned about her.

As he suspected, the little plastic-wrapped murder room was constructed inside a freestanding garage. On the other side of the sheeting is a band of empty space, about three feet wide, cluttered with a few yard tools and cardboard boxes, but otherwise clear. He wonders how hard it was for Matthew and his sister to convince their parents they needed full ownership of the garage, to let them clear out whatever debris the place had accumulated in favor of their own projects. He can’t imagine their parents know the kids were using the place to construct a murder room; if they did, he’s in even more trouble than he thinks he is, because the family that takes apart tourists together runs a horrifying abattoir of terrors together.

The door to the outside is unlocked. He slams through it as hard and fast as he can, racing into the scrubby-grassed yard. Moonlight bathes the lawn, catches glints off the windows of the low-slung ranch-style house that the garage is actually detached from, reflects off the hood of the car in the porch, and off the much newer, cleaner, more familiar car pulled up to the curb.

Melanie is standing outside the driver’s side door, an expression of sheer, unquestionable fury on her face. She looks barely short of committing murder. Matthew is between Harry and the car, hands in his pockets, looking utterly and profoundly relaxed.

Harry can’t imagine the other man didn’t feel him calling the Summer. He can believe Melanie didn’t—he didn’t feel her calling the Winter back in the motel, and their seasons are opposed enough that he doesn’t think there’s anything strange about that—but if he can call that much Summer that close to another candidate and not have it register, this system is more self-contained than it has any good reason to be. He skids to a stop, muddy ground squelching under his feet.

“Hey, asshole,” he calls, voice low enough not to wake the people in the house, but certainly loud enough to be heard. Melanie turns toward him, her anger melting away in the face of first relief, then horror as she sees the blood all over him.

“Harry!” she cries, and breaks to run around the car.

Which is when Matthew finally moves. Not toward Harry, no; Harry might as well not be here at all. He moves to intercept Melanie as she runs, putting himself firmly between the two and grabbing her by the shoulders, jerking her to a stop.

He’s almost the same height she is, built sturdily enough that he’s able to pull her to a halt. Melanie struggles against his grip, trying to break free, and he digs his fingers in deeper, keeping her from going anywhere.

“I told you,” he says, voice low. “Your little boyfriend renounced his claim to the crown. He can’t help you now.”

“I did no such thing,” says Harry, advancing toward them. “I refused to renounce my crown, because like hell is some two-bit suburban asshole going to convince me to give up on my girlfriend and our quest.”

“This two-bit suburban asshole is better equipped to win this than you are,” says Matthew, still holding on to Melanie. “I have more assets than you do. I have a Corn Jenny. I have an alchemist. You have nothing to offer her.”

“You had a Corn Jenny,” says Harry. “And there’s a good chance you had an alchemist, by this point, since I left her alone in there with both our attendants and they’re pretty cheesed off.”

“Misty?” says Matthew, finally sounding uncertain. Melanie breaks loose from his grasp and runs to Harry, who opens his arms to receive her as she flings herself into them. He gathers her tight, reveling in the familiar rose-soap scent of her, now underscored, as it always seems to be, by the scent of snow.

“Oh, Harry,” she half-moans. “I came out of the store and you were gone, you were gone and there was blood on the ground and Jack was gone and I was so afraid something terrible had happened to you—”

“I’m fine,” says Harry.