FROST BEGAN TO CREEP UP THE WALLS.
Transfixed, I watched lines of frost lace their way across the stone of the north tower’s records room. The pattern swept up from the floor, covering the wall, even icing the ceiling with something flaky and white. A few small, silvery crystals of snow hung in the air.
It was all delicate and ethereal—and completely unnatural. The room’s chill cut deeper than my skin, down to my marrow. If only I hadn’t been alone. If somebody else could have been there to see it, I might have been able to believe it was real. I might have been able to believe I was safe.
The ice crackled so loudly, I jumped. As I watched, my eyes wide and breath coming in thin, quick gasps, the frost etching its way across the window obscured the view of the night sky outside, blocking the moonlight, but somehow I could still see. The room possessed its own light now. All the many lines of frost on the window broke this way and that, not at random but in an eerie pattern, creating a recognizable shape.
A face.
The frost man stared back at me. His dark, angry eyes were so detailed that it seemed as though he were looking back at me. The face in the frost was the most vivid image I’d ever seen.
Then the cold stabbed into my heart as I realized: He really was looking back at me.
Once, I hadn’t believed in ghosts—