Page 84 of Seasonal Fears

“Mel’s literally made of snow,” says Jack, and Melanie laughs, and Harry starts the engine, and they’re back on the road, one more segment in a long chain of short journeys all adding up to one seemingly endless one.

It’s not fair, not really, that the attendants can feel the nearness of other candidates while Harry and Melanie can’t. The attendants aren’t risking their lives, after all: they don’t have to kill each other for the sake of a crown, and what little they draw from their associated seasons is apparently small enough that the seasons can sustain them all—hundreds of Jack Frosts and Corn Jennies all around the world, supporting and bolstering their candidates, waiting for another coronation to begin. They don’t need to wear a crown or win a competition to stay as they are, they only need to serve when called upon. If Harry and Mel win, their Jack and Jenny will get some additional power from their ascension, but will remain essentially the same. They’re risking nothing. They lose nothing if their candidates fail.

But somehow, they’re the only ones who can feel the chill in the air when a potential Winter is nearby, or the balm-warm whisper of the wind when a potential Summer moves nearby, unless the candidates are right up on top of each other. Jenny had been helping Matthew sniff out his targets; he’d be willing to do the same for Harry, if Harry weren’t so insistent on avoiding unnecessary confrontation. Jack hasn’t even bothered to offer. Mel’s already too close to toppling over the edge and into the abyss of the Winter, and if she falls while still uncrowned, she could be lost forever. “Let them kill each other and we’ll still beat them all to the labyrinth” was Jack’s only comment, as she ordered them once more to get off the highway, to allow some hopeful aspirant with stars in their eyes and blood on their hands to go zipping by, off to their own inevitable confrontation and possible destruction. “All that matters to us is gaining ground.”

As much ground as possible, one truck stop and gas station and greasy spoon and cheap motel after another. Harry checks the papers every time they stop, but there has yet to be any mention of two missing teens from Portland, or of a sick girl abducted by her desperate boyfriend. Jenny still has a phone, which he takes out frequently, and finds no mention of any disappearances he can connect to the two of them.

Deaths, yes. Plenty of those, and some odd enough that he assumes they chart the movement of the other candidates; they have to be stitched to the seasons by thin chains of wind and time, invisible and unbreakable, their victims becoming apparent to the rest of the world only once enough time had passed to let the veil of nonchalant non-existence blow away. Some of them had apparently been lying in their rooms or in the back lots of shopping malls or whatnot for days before anyone happened to stumble across them, and the final touch of the seasons was that no one thought this was odd in the slightest. One of the deaths he found was in Portland, a childless man named Roland Cosgrove, found sliced to pieces in the basement of his home.

Because the article claimed Roland had no children, Jenny didn’t connect him with Melanie, anxiously scanning the paper for any mention of her father setting the wolves on her trail. And because the seasons were shielding her, the article was clear about his childlessness: no question of a daughter, teen or otherwise, or any runaways whatsoever. Jenny put his phone down and focused on his lunch, dismissing the man’s death as one more oddity that might or might not be tethered to the seasons in any way. When they left that diner, they did so still blissfully ignorant of what Aven had done, of the fact that no one else would be coming looking for Mel. She and her sister were alone in the world now, even if Mel didn’t know it yet.

Sometimes, all ignorance can protect you from is the fear.

Lunch in San Diego is as pleasant as promised, the sharp bite of queso, the sting of peppers, the perfect tenderness of homemade tortillas. Melanie has a white girl’s suburban palate and drinks glass after glass of water, panting, while the others laugh at her in giddy delight, as relaxed and unified as any group of teens on a road trip. Nothing about them is remarkable or suspicious. This is San Diego; pretty people come here to vacation all the time, and no one spares them a second glance, save to worry that Melanie may burn bright as a lobster when they hit the beach.

Barely an hour after stopping, they’re back in the car, heading for the border that will carry them into Arizona. This leg of their journey is ending.

Harry keeps his attention on the road as he drives, focusing on the long, straight line of it, the familiarity of it all. They’ve been in California for long enough that this feels normal, despite how different it is from the green hills and tree-lined highways of home. The west coast of North America contains virtually every microclimate the world has to offer, and he feels like he’s driven through them all by this point. As long as the tires hold out, he’ll keep on going.

The signs say it’s less than sixty miles to Arizona, where they’ll fully commit to the great eastward turn which will carry them toward the labyrinth in truth. Up until this point, they’ve been running along a single track: they could go back, if they wanted to make themselves targets for all the candidates who haven’t turned inland yet, if he was ready to let Mel go. But they’re not going to do that. They’re going to keep on going.

They’re going to win.

Harry is smiling at that when Jenny’s hand clamps down on his shoulder, so hard it hurts,. Harry looks up at the reflection of the backseat in the rearview mirror, eyes wide. “What is it?” he asks.

“Winter candidate coming up close behind us,” says Jenny. He twists to look out the back window of the car as Melanie jerks upright in surprise and concern.

“We’re in a moving car,” she says. “They can’t do anything to us.”

And that’s when the sheriff’s patrol car behind them puts its flashers on. They blare red and blue, sending strange shadows dancing through the car. Harry looks frantically around. There’s no one else the car could be targeting.

“We’re going the speed limit,” he says, tone anxious.

“You have to pull over,” says Jack.

“Or we could run,” says Jenny.

“This is a Prius,” says Harry. “We’d never outrun them.” He puts on his blinkers, begins drifting toward the shoulder of the road, the police car matching him the whole way.

Jack is all but hyperventilating by the time the car comes to a halt. “Winter candidate right here,” she says. “It’s the officer. It has to be.”

The patrol car has pulled up behind them, the officer getting out and walking along the shoulder toward the driver’s side window. There’s someone in the passenger seat. A man, not in uniform, an anxious expression on his face. Harry barely spares him a glance, focused as he is on the approaching officer. How are they supposed to fight a man in full uniform in the middle of the day, by the side of the highway? It’s not possible. If they try, they’re going to wind up on the evening news, and not as heroes. Even with the shielding of the seasons to keep them out of sight, this will have to attract attention.

The officer reaches the car and gestures for Harry to roll his window down. “Do you know why I pulled you over?” he asks, without preamble.

“No, officer,” says Harry, as meekly as he can manage with anger clawing at his throat. They were so close! They were going to be out of California by nightfall, on their way across the country to Alabama and the labyrinth, to the next step in this strange journey into madness! They almost got away!

But they didn’t. The officer pulls his sunglasses down his nose, looking over them into the car—not at Harry. No, Harry might as well not be there at all for all the attention the officer pays him in that moment, focusing his attention entirely on Melanie, with her bone-white skin and her anxious glacial eyes. He looks at her like he’s seeing something other than a person, something beyond a teenage girl, and Harry wants to punch him right in the middle of his faintly sunburnt face.

“I’m going to need you to come with me,” says the officer, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “It won’t be very far.”

“He’s taking us to a secondary location,” hisses Jack. “Don’t let him.”

Harry only nods, voice a dry, dead thing in his mouth, unable even to swallow. Jack looks like she’s going to throw up. Melanie is fixed and frozen, a girl carved out of ice, eyes fixed on the officer as he turns and walks back to his car.

A moment later, the lights start up again, flashing bright, as the officer pulls off the shoulder and drives around to the front of them. Harry turns the key in the ignition and hits the gas, easing back onto the road, following the officer away.

“That’s pretty clearly the Winter candidate,” says Jack. “He’s got his Jack Frost riding with him; that’s how they found us. It’s not a bad way to go about things. Pull people over, then convince them to follow you someplace where you can finish them off. No telling how many candidates he’s killed already.”