Page 78 of Seasonal Fears

Matthew makes a face at being referred to as “something terrible,” looking unimpressed. He keeps glancing back at the garage, apparently waiting for his sister to emerge. Harry suspects he’ll be waiting for a long, long time. He can still feel the Summer bubbling in his veins, effervescent as a bottle of champagne, and it’s a relief when Melanie doesn’t recoil from him. She feels less cold than she did before, fitting warmly and comfortably in his arms, the same way she always has, where she belongs.

They’re back to balance. They’re back to being equal. That’s a wonderful thing, if an oddly painful one, because it means they’ve both lost their connection to the world as they’ve always known it. This is their reality now. There’s no going back.

And even that thought hurts a little, because it drives home the fact that until the garage, he could have gone back. All he’d ever needed to do was find it in himself to leave her, and he could have gone back to the bright sunlit world he’d always believed was going to be his one day. Melanie had been lost from the beginning, but he … he had chosen to lose his way.

There’s a difference. Much as he didn’t want there to be, there’s a difference.

He pushes Melanie out to arm’s length, looking at her gravely, letting her look at him. She gasps at the sight of his face, before raising her hand to gingerly graze his cheek with the tips of her fingers.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmurs, Matthew now fully forgotten. He takes a small, inappropriate thrill at that, at the realization that he’s the only boy she sees in the world, even when the other option is also Summer-tied, and would balance the cold growing in her veins just as well as he can. “He hurt you.”

She turns to Matthew now, and the boy doesn’t look very pleased to be remembered, as Melanie’s eyes narrow and her skin grows colder under Harry’s hands. “He shouldn’t have hurt you.”

“No, he shouldn’t have,” says Harry, snapping her attention back to him. “But most of the damage is from his sister, Misty. She’s an alchemist.”

“Alchemist?” Melanie keeps her eyes on Matthew, her skin getting even colder. “Like my father?”

“A less refined one, I think; your dad never attacked me with flesh-eating smoke.” He’d looked like he might want to a few times, but Harry’s willing to chalk that up to being the parent of a sick girl faced with the reality of her first boyfriend. Disliking Harry may have been the only normal thing Roland Cosgrove ever did. “She’s been working with him to help him target other candidates. Which reminds me.”

He pulls away from Melanie, only regretting the motion a little, and turns toward Matthew. The other Summer candidate has shed his ridiculous apron somewhere between the garage and here, presumably inside the house if he had to go there to deal with the trash cans, and his hands are empty. He doesn’t have a weapon right now.

He also doesn’t have as much of the Summer in his veins as Harry does. The seasons are a push-and-pull situation until one of them claims the crown, and with Harry holding this much of the season they share, there isn’t a lot left for Matthew. That’s a good thing. Harry’s never been one of the football players who think it’s funny to pick on people smaller than they are, has always been more interested in taking care of people than threatening them, but he straightens and cracks his neck, making himself look as imposing as possible, before he takes a step toward Matthew. The guy is decently built, and could probably hold his own in a fight, but he’s not enormous, and he doesn’t have the shoulders of a football player. Harry’s pretty sure he can take him in a fair fight, and with the Summer this out of balance, the fight isn’t currently fair.

Matthew shies back, but doesn’t run. “What did you do to my sister?” he demands, still trying to sound like he has the upper hand here, like this is exactly what he wanted to happen.

“Same thing you did,” says Harry. “Left her alone with two pissed-off attendants, and figured she could take care of herself. That was after she threw her bitey smoke at me. I didn’t appreciate that part.”

Behind him, Melanie gasps, the sound short and sharp and cut off by her hand clapping over her mouth, flesh striking flesh in crisp punctuation. She sounds surprised, not distressed, and so Harry doesn’t turn as he continues to advance.

“It seems like doing the same things you did is the way to go,” he says. “I want to hear you refute your claim to the crown, and I want to hear it now.”

A door opens and closes. He hopes it’s the door to the garage, and not the door to the house. Matthew and Misty are young enough that their parents probably still think of them as innocent children, although in his experience, innocent children don’t have murder rooms in the garage. The thought of a couple of six-year-olds hanging that much plastic sheeting is almost enough to make him crack a smile.

That, and the fact that their murder room isn’t really there anymore. Melting it probably destroyed any forensic evidence the pair had missed, but they’ll still have to explain the mess.

Matthew looks at him, false bravado in his eyes, and shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I won’t renounce my claim to the crown, and you can’t make me.”

“My dude, I don’t think you understand how thin the ice you’re standing on right now really is,” says Harry.

They’re not standing on any ice at all, of course: they’re standing on the dead February grass of a muddy lawn. Harry takes that as a good thing. If Melanie gets upset enough, the grass will probably start icing over, and then they’ll have to deal with her having another descent into Winter. He understands now, how easy it would be for her to fall. He can see it so clearly it hurts, because his own season is a bright string pulling him into the future, promising him the world if only he’ll take it into his heart and hold it close, and burn, and burn, and burn. He wasn’t built for this, only born to it, and it’s still hard to resist. For her, freezing must already be an addiction.

“I have to mean it if I renounce,” says Matthew. “I hoped fear for your life would be enough to make you mean it, to make you give up the crown, but either you’ve killed my little sister or you haven’t. If she’s dead, I have to avenge her. If she’s not dead, all renouncing does is leave me defenseless with a little sister who already wants to take me apart. So if I renounce, I’m dead.”

“That’s basically the choice you offered me,” says Harry, as footsteps approach across the lawn. Behind him, Melanie squeals, and he hears Jack laughing as the two girls presumably embrace. The other set of footsteps continues to approach, until Jenny is standing beside him. He glances over, taking note of the lack of blood on the other man. “She dead?”

“Unconscious,” says Jenny. “I hit her as hard as I could, and she fell down, but she’s still breathing.”

“Good.” Harry returns his attention to Matthew. “Renounce.”

“No.” Matthew’s smile is cold. Harry realizes what he’s about to do a bare heartbeat before he does it, pulling in a great breath of air and shouting, “Mom! There are people on the lawn! I think they hurt Misty!”

A dog barks in the distance. All the lights come on in the house, and there’s a clatter from inside before the door bangs open. Harry swears and runs for the car, trusting the others to follow. They do, and as the four of them fling themselves into their seats, Melanie not yet questioning why Jenny is with them, the back door bangs open and a man who looks a lot like Matthew charges out, shotgun in hands.

Harry hits the gas and they’re away, shooting down the street as fast as his increasingly taxed engine can manage. Matthew is still standing on the lawn, still a candidate, but as he’s about to have to explain the garage and his unconscious sister to his parents, he’s unlikely to be much of a problem.

Harry hopes.

And Harry drives.