Page 143 of My Undead Love Life

Mad looked up, scanning the whiteout.

My stomach dropped. “We’re lost?”

“No,” Mad said immediately.

Keith didn’t answer as quickly.

Oxi noticed. “That was not a comforting delay.”

“We’re not lost,” Keith said. “We’re…displaced.”

Luck stared at him. “That is such a fancy way to say lost.”

“It means we know roughly where we are.”

Mad folded the map with stiff fingers. “We correct west.”

Oxi looked west, and so did I. A darker line in the distance that could’ve been trees, a fence, a building, or my brain was just inventing shapes.

“We need shelter before we correct anything,” Keith said.

Mad gave one short nod. “Fine. Ten minutes west. If we don’t see anything, we make an igloo or something to catch a break and reassess.”

Luck blinked. “Will that even work?”

“An igloo attempt is better than dying in the open,” Mad said.

“If it works.”

Oxi glanced at him. “You’re unusually pessimistic today.”

“I’m usually delightfully optimistic. Today, I’m frostbitten pessimistic.” Luck scowled.

Keith looked at his leg again. “Can you keep going?”

Luck’s jaw tightened. “Yeah,” he said. “I can keep going.”

Keith didn’t look convinced, and neither did Mad. But Luck started walking before anyone could challenge him.

So, we moved west. Ten minutes became fifteen. Then, fifteen became twenty. I stopped counting time after that. I wondered what Mom, Dad, and Tori would do if I came home…No. When I came home.

Keith’s thumb brushed over mine again, but the touch felt distant through the numbness. “Stay with me.”

“I am.”

“Your steps are dragging.”

“I’m sorry.” I winced.

Oxi appeared at my other side, his shoulder bumping mine lightly. “You okay?”

“As good as I can be.”

A shape finally appeared ahead. At first, I thought it was another tree or maybe a bush. The storm shifted, and green flashed through the white…on the ground.

I blinked hard. That couldn’t be right. I looked again, squinting against snow that needled my eyes.

There was something ahead.