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ROSI
Forget exploring the room.The first thing I saw when I looked up was Cora in my face.
“Was that Austin’s voice I heard? Tell me he’s grabbing a bottle of champagne and coming back to join us.” She peered around my shoulder, and I had to move to catch hold of her before she ran up and down the halls screaming his name.
“Settle down, chica.” I marched her backward into the suite and relaxed when I heard the doors swish shut. “Yes, it was Austin. No, he’s not coming over. Yes, you will meet him next week when we plan the excursion.”
Cora flopped down onto an exceptionally fluffy-looking, white sofa with a long, curved backrest that made it look like a snowy mountain range or perhaps glaciers. “Party pooper.”
Frowning, I took in the rest of the luxurious accommodations. It was all glass and white. Several oversized, high-tech massage pods that resembled white beanbags made me suddenly aware of the tension in my shoulders. Though I’d never tried one, I understood the principle of using electromagnetic fields to read a sitter’s brainwaves and temperature and respond with ideal movement and pressure. Glass end tables, with what I assumed to be faux icicles dripping from their sides, were also interspersed around the room. The icicle theme continued throughout and along the counter and table edges as well as framing the wall-sized window with a spectacular view of the landscape.
“Beautiful isn’t it?” Cora asked as the tundra drew me in like a magnet. Before I knew it, my nose pressed up against the AC glass.
“It’s breathtaking. I can’t believe I’m here. Pinch me. Ow!” I shouldn’t have said it. I knew better from previous experience.
Cora laughed and spun around, making her skirt fly out around her in a rainbow whirl that stood out spectacularly against all the white. “Believe it, baby!”
I couldn’t have stopped the giddy laughter if I’d tried. This was amazing despite the news conference ambush and Austin’s weirdness.
“So I’m thinking we use the old scarf-on-the-door method if one of us has a visitor,” Cora said, pacing the length of the room as I stared out at the glass-like surface of the fjord and the tops of the glaciers rising into the cobalt sky. “I realize there’s no doorknob, but we can stick it between the sliders. I don’t think the sensors will pick it up if it’s thin. Okay, maybe I already tested it.”
A small and sudden motion outside the window caught my eye, and I narrowed my gaze, straining to see into the shadows between the crags of some snow-covered rocks.
“Unless of course Austin is over. In which case, if you don’t mind sharing, I’m okay with a ménage.”
About to chalk it up to a reflection, I relaxed slightly, and it happened again. Something dark, almost like a shadow shifted, changing the shape of the darkness—like a blackness creeping slowly toward the surface of the water.
I didn’t imagine that.
“We just have to set some ground rules ahead of time,” Cora continued behind me as a tiny ripple stirred the water’s mirror-like surface, which was even crazier since I was certain the water was frozen solid.
“Get the binoculars!” I shouted, unwilling to take my eyes off it.
“Well, that’s one ground rule I’m not sure about,” she said.
I waved her off, staring intently at the spot. “No. Now. I saw something. Grab them from my backpack.”
“Oh! On it.”
Ten seconds later she shoved the small black bit of metal into my hand. I slipped it over my eyes and it clung to my face, automatically adjusting the picture of the area where I’d been staring. Cora’s arm brushed against my side as she crammed in next to me to look.
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure yet. But there’s definitely something out there. And it affected the water without actually touching it.”
Cora hummed softly. “Directing energy at a source? Maybe it has telekinesis.”
We might disagree on some things, but Cora was my best friend in part because she believed me without question, when not another soul would. Not even my parents. And for that I trusted her completely, even being open to things I thought previously impossible.
“Or invisibility?” I suggested, excitement bubbling up in my gut like lava. “If it could somehow cloak itself then that would explain a lot about why some of these creatures aren’t easy to spot. That would be quite an evolutionary boon.”
After a full ten minutes of nothing further happening, I reluctantly removed the binoculars and shoved them in my pocket with a sigh.
Cora had given up far earlier and currently meditated cross-legged on a massage pod with her hands positioned in a mudra and her eyes closed. I’d have to make sure to tell her explicitly I did not plan on any threesomes when she came out of it. Otherwise, she’d assume no answer was a yes.
I sprawled across the sofa, staring up at the glass dome of the ceiling into the perfect topaz sky, dotted with the occasional puff as white as the snow below. Apparently, we were on the top floor of the resort, though I’d noticed another inner dome above the central area ringed by the floors. This really was luxury beyond my wildest dreams.
