Page 83 of Seasonal Fears

“Huh,” says the man. “Interesting. Well, like I said, you’re not getting any help here. You need to get out of Berkeley, because we don’t want you. We’re sitting this one out.”

Aven shakes her head. “Let us through that gate and we’ll see who needs help,” she suggests.

“You mean you’re going to commit violence against me? Is that the only song you know how to sing? My sister’s all music, no lyrics, and even she has more songs than that.” He takes another sip of his coffee. “Begone with you, Summer girl, and think about what you’ve done.”

“You can’t make me leave,” snarls Aven.

“Oh, can’t I?” The man raises his free hand and snaps his fingers, and there is no man, there never was a man, they’re parked in front of an empty lot, construction signs posted around the chain link fence, only bare scrub on the other side. There’s no summer, no strawberries, no multicolored porch with women standing atop it gossiping and sipping lemonade. None of that ever existed at all.

In fact, none of this happened in the first place. Trevor shivers like he’s trying to shake off a spiderweb or veil of unwanted smoke. Aven, next to him, does much the same. She’s radiating heat, feeling like she’s on the cusp of summoning the Summer.

“Why did we stop here?” she asks, turning glacial blue eyes in his direction, already slightly narrowed. Her temper’s up, and she’s ready to share it with someone.

Best to find another candidate, then, for her to focus her ire upon. “I don’t know,” says Trevor. He turns, then, and points, stabbing a finger deeper into the East Bay. “But I think there’s another Summer candidate that way, if you want to find out…?”

And Aven smiles.

Arizona

CALENDAR SEASON: FEBRUARY 18TH, 2017: WINTER, LAST QUARTER OF THE WORM MOON.

California is a lot bigger than it looks on the map. It just goes on and on and on for hundreds of miles of farmland and empty space and rolling hills still brown and blasted in the fading winter sunlight, although they sometimes blaze with startling green. Driving through the California hills as winter fades toward spring is an education in the fact that sometimes the calendar and the cosmos disagree, because there’s no way the winter holds sway here. There are daffodils by the side of the road. Daffodils. That’s a springtime flower if Harry’s ever seen one.

The second time he points them out, Jack waits for Melanie to head into the truck stop bathroom before she puts a chilly hand on his arm and tells him to cut it out.

“The seasons aren’t a precise science,” she says. “That’s how Mel’s predecessor was able to keep yours in abeyance for so long. Every time the world began to thaw, he ran for Australia, where winter was just getting started, and he didn’t come back until the world began to thaw again. You’re stronger right now than you should be, and she’s weaker, and I’d be willing to lay odds that those weirdoes in Berkeley did that on purpose.”

Harry blinks. “Come again?”

“You’re natural and she’s not,” she says. “She’s more likely to fall too deep than you are. This keeps you in Summer territory, and means if she starts to fall, you’re beautifully positioned to grab her and yank her back before she gets lost.”

“Matthew was planning to head east immediately,” says Jenny. He’s been speaking up more and more, his voice gaining confidence as he figures out that the rules are different with these people. Harry frowns, and Jenny explains: “He knew the summer would be strongest along the west coast, and so he was banking on the other Summer candidates staying on the coast as long as they possibly could. Inland, the winter’s stronger, but he had his sister, and he had a lot more skill at talking people into going against their own best interests than he bothered showing to you.”

Harry blinks. “So you’re saying that because the Summer is strongest here, the Doctrine of Ethos told us to stay in it for Melanie’s sake, and every other Summer candidate has been heading inland to weaken the competition?”

“Probably not every other,” says Jack. He can’t decide whether her tone is meant to be reassuring or not. Probably not: both the attendants have gotten less reassuring since this leg of the road trip began, recognizing that things are getting serious. If they’re moving toward the labyrinth, the other candidates will be doing the same. It’s only a matter of time before they converge, and if they haven’t thinned their own ranks enough by that point, Harry and Mel will have to fight.

He’s not sure he can kill again, not even to save his own life. But can he do it to save Melanie’s life? That’s the question he can’t answer until he has to. He doesn’t think either answer is going to make him happy. Either he makes himself a murderer or he fails her.

There’s no winning.

“Some of the Summer candidates are probably hugging the coast as long as possible,” says Jack. “And any other Winter candidates who started here are likely to be following much the same route we are. If we’re lucky, we’re not going to run into any of them.”

The convenience store door bangs as Melanie emerges, a paper sack in her arms and the white stick of a Tootsie Pop protruding from her mouth at a jaunty angle. She waves to the car, bouncing onto her toes before she trots in their direction, and the wave of fondness that washes over Harry is almost strong enough to pull him into its undertow and sweep him out to sea. His answer is drowning in that wave, and he’s drowning with it. He always has been.

Yes, he’d kill if he had to, to keep her safe, and since the only way he knows of keeping her safe is staying with her, if the other candidates find them, he’ll kill for her. Hopefully, he’ll be able to forgive her if it comes to that. He doesn’t really know. He doesn’t think anyone could know.

Melanie opens the passenger-side door and drops back into the car, pulling the lollipop out of her mouth and waving it like a magic wand before she begins producing chips and candy bars and microwave burritos from her bag, distributing them appropriately. “They didn’t have any plain M&Ms,” she says, to Jenny, apologetically. “What kind of gas station doesn’t have plain M&Ms?”

“The kind where someone else bought them all already,” says Jenny, and accepts his bag of Doritos without complaint. “This is fine. This gets me to lunch.”

“Which we’re having in San Diego,” says Jack. “Good Mexican food for a change. Salsa that actually knows what a pepper looks like, dirty rice that’s actually dirty.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” says Harry.

“White boy,” says Jenny, with far more fondness than he would have shown at the start of their road trip. Days on days in the car—moving more slowly than they would have been if Jack and Jenny hadn’t been ordering them off the highway and onto surface streets every time they thought they detected a candidate—had been guaranteed to result in either friendship or eternal enmity, and thankfully, they were all getting along.

“Yes,” agrees Harry. “But Mel’s whiter.”