Page 87 of Seasonal Fears

Aven has no such moralistic qualms. Everything is a curiosity to her, and she views the world with a child’s innocently malicious curiosity, doing as she pleases, indulging her own desires.

And now she’s bored, and he’s probably going to die.

They’ve been following the trail of her frigid sister and her sister’s Summer boy all the way along the coast, tracing the seemingly endless miles of the California highway system, the labyrinth calling them ever southward, a pulsing beacon on the horizon that seems to pain Aven even as she insists that they keep driving down I-5 rather than cutting toward the call. Trevor wants to see Harry dead, wants to see his high school rival introduced to Aven’s art and reminded of his proper place in the universe, but he wants to reach the labyrinth even more. He thinks this must be what it’s like to be a salmon, endlessly called from the ocean to the spawning grounds where they were born, returning home only to make more salmon and die.

He wants to live. With Aven in the passenger seat, crunching her way through a bag of potato chips with no consideration at all for crumbs, and no interest in closing her mouth as she chews, it seems less and less likely that he’s going to get what he wants.

She tenses, and so does he, an automatic response to her showing interest in something he can’t see. “There,” she says, finger stabbing toward an offramp so small that he hadn’t taken any notice of it. “Go there.”

He doesn’t turn the wheel fast enough, and so she turns her head, slanting a glare in his direction. “I said turn,” she says, voice growing sharper.

Trevor still wants to live. He turns.

Traffic is light enough that only a few horns blare as he cuts across three lanes to reach the exit, pulling onto a narrow rural road. Aven sits up straighter and drops her bag of chips, scattering crumbs across the footwell. She doesn’t seem to notice. Her eyes are narrowed, scanning the scenery around them.

Finally, she says, “There,” and points again, directing him toward a gravel parking lot that looks like the sort of place hitchhikers go to die. Trevor swallows, hard.

“Have I displeased you, my lady?” he asks, voice sounding strangled and formal and almost like it belongs to someone else. “Are you … Is this where you…” He can’t finish the sentence. Uttering the words “kill me” would make them real, and real things are more likely to occur.

He always knew this was a possibility. He just thought he’d have more time.

“No,” says Aven, impatiently. “Shut up. Go there.”

Trevor shuts up, and Trevor goes there.

There’s another car already parked on the gravel, a sheriff’s department patrol car, black and white and tan, the lights on top old-fashioned and exposed. No stealth here; this isn’t an ambush predator but a proud hunter, designed to pacify through its mere presence.

A man stands nearby, dressed in a deputy’s uniform, looking faintly lost as he gazes dully at the car. The windows are clouded over. Trevor blinks, and realizes that they’re not clouded, they’re frozen, iced over from the inside. The air conditioner must have exploded. That, or—

He hasn’t stopped the car yet. He’s still rolling when Aven kicks open her door and flings herself into the gravel parking lot, and for one delirious moment he thinks about punching the gas and driving off without her. It would be easy.

He still can’t do it. He’s hers at this point, her Corn Jenny, and he can no more abandon her in this middle-of-nowhere parking lot than he could abandon his own arm. In his effort not to belong to anyone else, he’s become her creature, completely, and so he parks the car while she’s running toward the motionless deputy, running like she’s never wanted to do anything else in her life.

Trevor can almost admire the efficiency of her run. She moves like a lion in final approach toward its prey, and by the time the deputy hears her feet pounding the gravel and turns, it’s already too late for him. Aven is slamming into him, grabbing his shoulders. Trevor hurries toward them. He wants to hear what she says.

“Where is she?” she demands. The deputy looks baffled, and Aven snarls, “My sister. Where is my sister?”

“The other Winter,” he says, comprehension dawning. Then he tries to pull away, and can’t, as Aven tightens her grip. “Miss, it’s a felony to assault an officer of the law, and—”

“What’s a felony?” asks Aven, with such innocent confusion that the deputy stops, blinking, and seems to recognize the trouble he’s in for the first time.

This is not a good place to be. They’re in the middle of nowhere. Trevor glances around. This location was well chosen by whoever chose it originally.

No one’s going to hear the screaming.

The deputy has realized how much danger he’s in. He makes one more attempt to pull away, then says, “The other Winter killed Charles and then she got back in her car and hightailed it out of here. I don’t know where they were going.”

“East,” says Aven. “They’re going east. Charles was your Winter?”

The deputy nods.

Aven returns the gesture, expression dripping feigned sympathy. “And now he’s gone, and you don’t have any purpose anymore, do you, little Jack?”

The deputy blanches. “I have a family.”

“So do I. And you let her leave.” Her smile is terrible. It belongs on some phantom of the deep sea, not on the face of a pretty teenage girl with cheese dust on her fingers. Trevor shivers, glad that it’s not aimed at him. “But don’t worry. You won’t be without purpose for very long.”

Trevor’s assumption about the area is proven true when Aven gets to work.