TWO

Pulling into the parking lot at Harpwell’s Garage, Doug Manning heard his stomach growl. The smell of Chinese food filled his car and he felt immensely grateful that the family that ran the Jade Panda lived above their restaurant, and so had stayed open as the snowfall totals mounted and the wind drove it into drifts. He hadn’t been as lucky finding an open liquor store, but he figured the guys had enough beer to last the night, and if not there were assorted, quarter-full bottles of booze in Timmy’s office.

Most people played it safe, stocked up on essentials at the supermarket and hunkered down for the storm with a movie or board games. Doug’s wife had wanted him to do exactly that, but the guys who worked at the garage had been planning to get together for the Bruins game tonight, and if he had tried to back out because of a little snow—or a lot—he’d never have heard the end of it. So there’d be beer and Chinese and a lot of bitching about their wives. The Bruins were playing in Florida, the lucky bastards, so the storm wouldn’t have any impact on the game.

Doug parked and climbed out of his restored Mustang. Three steps from the car, blinking snowflakes out of his eyes, he slipped and bobbled the huge brown paper bag filled with steaming Chinese food. He clutched the bag, closing his eyes, and when he opened them a second later he was amazed to find himself still standing, bag still safe in his arms.

Heart pounding, he gave a little laugh. Timmy Harpwell paid a decent wage and Doug liked his job, but other than that, Doug and luck didn’t get along very well. There were people, his older brother included, who considered him a fuckup and there were a lot of days he would have agreed. If he’d dumped a hundred and fifty bucks’ worth of Chinese food in the parking lot, he’d have been better off climbing back into the Mustang and heading home to Cherie. The guys would have given him no end of shit. At least with Cherie he knew he could smile and apologize and make her a drink and she’d forgive him eventually. If he listened to her bitch enough, he might even find some makeup sex at the end of the rainbow.

But he hadn’t fucked up this time. No apologies would be necessary.

Careful as hell, he made his way across the snowy lot to the door. No matter how many inches fell, they’d have no problem getting out in the morning. Timmy Harpwell had a plow on his truck; tomorrow he’d be clearing senior citizens’ driveways and making a ton of cash, and that meant his own parking lot would be the first pavement he cleared. Doug might even be home before Cherie woke up in the morning. He could picture her bright orange hair spread across the pillow and imagine sliding in beside her, waking her with a kiss, and had to fight the temptation to just drop off the Chinese food and head home. Timmy Harpwell liked to hold court, and he didn’t employ guys who weren’t interested in kissing the ring now and again.

Half Korean, on his mother’s side, with her black hair and eyes so brown they might as well have been black, Doug had dealt with plenty of racist shit growing up in Coventry, both casual and malicious. Most of the malicious stuff had gone away when he’d topped six feet and two hundred pounds, but the casual, aren’t-we-buddies-just-busting-each-other’s-balls racism would never go away. He’d learned early on that if he wanted to keep working at Harpwell’s, he had to take whatever shit was dished out and try to find some way to give it back. The minute he showed how much it bothered him, or let on that he’d rather spend time with his wife than the boys at the garage, Timmy would stop giving him even part-time work, and he and Cherie couldn’t afford that.

Doug banged in through the door and snow blew in behind him as it whisked shut. The front office was empty so he made a beeline for the back room. There were nine guys sprawled on stained sofas and chairs arranged around the giant TV. Doug had missed half of the second period, but he’d lost a game of rock-paper-scissors with Franco over who would pick up the food. They had both been hired last year and were the two lowest guys on the totem pole, which meant they always got the scut work, but Doug didn’t mind.

“All hail the conquering hero!” he announced as he entered, carrying the huge bag. “And nobody touch my fried dumplings.”

Most of the guys cheered and raised their beers, a couple of them rising to help him sort out the food. Not Timmy Harpwell, though. Sitting there with his carefully sculpted beard scruff and his perfect hair, the boss just snickered, shot a glance at Zack Koines, and shook his head.

“Don’t worry, Dougie,” Timmy said. “Nobody’s gonna touch your little dumplings.”

“I’d like to touch your wife’s dumplings, though,” Koines muttered.

“Oh fuck, Zack, you didn’t just,” Timmy said.

“Oh, I fucking did.”

The guys all laughed and Doug gave a dry chuckle, pretending he hadn’t taken offense, that it was all a big joke. He could feel the grin on his face and knew the guys would read it wrong, would think he was smiling instead of getting ready to tear out Koines’s throat.

Instead he laughed a bit louder.

“If that junkie Filipino hooker hadn’t shown up at your front door,” Doug said, “maybe you’d still have a wife of your own to go home to. Shit, your wife might even have let you stay if the hooker hadn’t been so fucking ugly. She musta taken one look at that bitch and thought, ‘You’d rather fuck this than me?’ No wonder she—”

“Doug!” Timmy Harpwell snapped.

“What? We’re all fucking jokers here, right?” Doug said, throwing his arms wide, gesturing to the others. “Just having a few beers, busting each other’s balls. Zack goes on twenty-four/seven about how much he wants to bang my wife, but he’s just kidding, right? It’s a big joke, I know. I just thought it might be funny to put it all in perspective.”

“Jesus,” Franco whispered.

Doug glanced around, but none of the guys would meet his gaze. None of them except Timmy and Koines, both of whom were staring at him.

Koines started for him but Timmy halted him with a gesture, then turned back to Doug.

“You’re fired,” the boss said. “Get the fuck out.”

Heart slamming in his chest, fists clenching and unclenching, Doug laughed again. “Are you kidding me? For that? We’re always busting each other’s—”

“Don’t,” Timmy said. “Let’s not pretend.”

Fury made Doug shake but he knew there was no argument to be made, and if he went after Koines he’d only end up out in the lot, bleeding in the snow. So he threw up his hands.

“Fine. You win. But your management style sucks, man.” He turned and started for the table where he’d set the bag of Chinese food.

“Leave it,” Timmy said.

“I put my twenty bucks in. My food’s in there.”

Timmy stared at him but said nothing. None of the guys dared to speak up for him.

Stomach growling, Doug gave a slow nod, then turned and headed back out into the front office. As he reached the door he heard Koines call out behind him.

“Asshole,” the son of a bitch said. “And you’re a shitty mechanic, too.”

Doug pushed open the door and stepped out into the storm, the wind and snow crashing into him. His skin felt so hot that he imagined he could feel the snow steaming as it touched him.

Cherie, he thought.

But he couldn’t go home to her now. Couldn’t bear to tell her he’d lost his job. He fished his keys out of his pocket and headed for the Mustang, hoping that the Jade Panda would still be open and he could silence his growling belly with some food, then drown it in whiskey.

He started up the Mustang and hit the gas, roaring out of the lot, tires slushing through inches of snow.

Fucking storm. Fucking Koines, he thought. But he knew what Cherie would say: Your stupid mouth.

*   *   *

TJ Farrelly packed away his guitar in the hard-shell case he had been using since the age of fourteen. His parents had wanted him to use a soft case, a canvas thing that he could wear like a backpack, but in his mind those were for hippies who had to hitchhike from one gig to the next. The hard-shell case was old-fashioned, but he couldn’t help feeling that a proper musician—someone who loved his guitar—wouldn’t treat it like a backpack full of dirty shirts and spare socks. He did have a backpack, in which he carried a selection of harmonicas and the neck gear that went with them, but his guitar was precious to him. Its tone might as well have been the sound of his own voice.

“Wow,” Ella said from across the restaurant. “TJ, come have a look at this.”

He snapped the guitar case closed and glanced over at her. She stood at the front door of the restaurant, the door open just a crack. Snowflakes danced in past her, wind rustling her hair, and a pang of regret hit him hard. Ella hadn’t even turned around to look at him, but still she was beautiful. They had been friendly for ages, but tonight—sitting around talking as, one by one, the rest of the staff finished prepping for the next day and headed out into the storm—TJ had felt a connection to Ella that he could not explain.

They had sat together while the logs burned down in the fireplace; he strummed and sang a few songs, faltering in the middle and jumping to some other tune. He could play in front of crowds and he could play for himself, but when The Vault’s cook had gone out the door and left them intimately alone, he’d felt self-conscious about playing just for her. His fingers jumped around on the neck of the guitar, the pick sweeping the strings, and he’d moved from song to song like some ADHD kid who couldn’t just leave the radio on one station.

“It’s pretty bad out there, huh?” he asked as he moved across the restaurant toward her.

Ella didn’t turn around. “It’s crazy. We must be getting three inches an hour.”

The wind howled through the narrow opening of the door. TJ saw the door judder in her grasp. He went to join her and she let the wind force the door open wider. The two of them stood there looking out at the street together.

“You weren’t kidding,” he said.

The snow blanketed everything, save in places where the wind had scoured it nearly to the pavement, creating huge drifts that crested like ocean waves in the middle of the street. Whatever work the plows had done the storm had undone. From the looks of things, it had been a while since anyone had even attempted to clear the road. There were tracks that cut through it, though. Someone in a truck had gone past in the last half hour or so and not gotten stuck. But Ella drove a Camry.

“You going to be okay getting home?” he asked. “I’ve got my Jeep. I could drive you.”

She turned to him and TJ became abruptly aware of how close they were standing. Only a few inches separated them. Ella shivered as a fresh gust buffeted them and more snow danced across the threshold of The Vault. Outside, the storm raged, but here they were just on the edge of shelter, somehow daring and yet still protected.

“I’ve been thinking I might just sleep here. In my office. I’ve got a blanket in there and some cushions. If I try to go home I might get stuck, but even if I make it, I’ve got to worry about getting back here in the morning.”

TJ might have told her she couldn’t be sure she would even open tomorrow, that the storm looked fierce enough that the whole region was likely to shut down for the day. But her lips glistened in the light above the restaurant’s doorway and her eyes were a bright, burnished copper.

A snowflake landed on the lashes of her left eye and he couldn’t breathe.

They leaned in, but she paused, glancing down and away. “You need to go. It keeps up like this, even that old Jeep won’t get you home.”

“Ella, I—”

“You told your mother you’d be there.”

TJ smiled, hanging his head in defeat. But only for a second.

“Something’s going on here,” he said, gazing at her until she had to look up and meet his eyes. “This is one of those moments … I can feel it.”

“You can feel it?” she said, cocking her head.

He struggled for a second, not knowing how to continue. Then he reached up and brushed away a stray lock of hair that hung across her eyes and she shivered again, their gazes locked.

“I don’t play a lot of the songs I’ve written. I guess I’m a little afraid to share them. But you know my song ‘Stars Fall’?”

She nodded. “I love that song.”

“One night in high school I slept over my friend Willie’s house. Me and Willie and another friend, Aaron, had spent the day together, and it had been a great day. Maybe the greatest day, back then. Willie wanted us to stay over, to take sleeping bags and steal beer from the fridge in the garage and go and camp in the woods by Kenoza Lake. I got permission but after Aaron called home he said his mother wouldn’t let him sleep over. We all knew he was lying.”

“He didn’t want to camp out or he didn’t want to drink?” Ella asked, letting the door swing closed, the two of them even more intimate now, just inside with the storm screaming beyond the door.

TJ shrugged. “Maybe both. Thing is, that night cemented something for me and Willie. We didn’t see a bear or meet a bunch of girls or find secret treasure or anything. But we lay out all night by the lake and watched the stars. We talked all night about our families and about girls and about the future. I can still remember it vividly, but that’s because it felt vivid, even then. After that night, Willie and I were inseparable.”

“Were?” Ella asked.

A familiar grief ignited within him. “Iraq. He didn’t come home.”

“I’m sorry.”

For a moment, TJ said nothing. Then he reached out and took her hand, meeting her gaze again. “Things were never the same with Aaron after that night. He was still our friend, but he hadn’t been there, y’know?”

Ella let out a breath and gave a tiny nod. “I think I do.”

“I don’t want to be Aaron,” he said.

“What…” she said, laughing softly. “What about your mother?”

“The drifts are so bad out there, I’m not even sure the Jeep could make it,” TJ said. “I’ll call her and explain. She’ll understand.”

Ella smiled. “Let me rebuild the fire, then. And you’d better get that guitar out again.”

TJ grinned and bent toward her, hesitated for a second, and then brushed his lips across hers. No need to rush. They had all night.

Ella locked the door to keep the storm at bay.

Later, as she poked at the logs in the fireplace and the wood began to blaze with light and heat, he played “Falling Slowly” by the Frames, the one Ella was always asking for.

And the power went out.

*   *   *

Martha Farrelly loved her son, but sometimes it frustrated her that he treated her like an old lady. Sure, she’d been a late bloomer as a mother—she’d been forty-five when she gave birth to TJ—but she thought she was in excellent shape for a woman of seventy-one. She did yoga, went to the gym three times a week, and knew her way around a computer just as well as her son did, though that wasn’t saying much.

The only reason she’d asked him to stay over tonight was that she was worried about getting out of the driveway in the morning. She had a man who plowed her little patch of pavement, but after even a moderate snowfall he tended to take his time, clearing the way for his bigger customers first. In a blizzard like this, there was no telling when he would show up, and Martha had a lot on her agenda for tomorrow, starting with her favorite yoga class at seven A.M. If the plowman didn’t show up, she wanted TJ there to dig her out, but he thought she was afraid of the storm.

Silly boy, she thought. At her age, there wasn’t much that frightened her. Certainly not a snowstorm, no matter how many inches might fall. Her refrigerator and cabinets were full and she didn’t eat much anyway. If she ended up snowed in for a few days, it would just give her a chance to do some reading.

When he’d called to say that he had gotten held up at the restaurant and the roads were looking ugly, she’d been a little perturbed, but any worry over missing her morning yoga session was outweighed by the unusual hesitancy in his voice. As uncommon as it was, she knew that quaver all too well—how could she not, after raising him? He’d met a girl. Yoga or no yoga, Martha was not about to stand in the way of her son getting himself a new girlfriend. One of these days, she hoped to have grandchildren.

He was a good man, her TJ. Called her every few days even when his work kept him busy and never forgot her birthday or missed taking her to brunch on Mother’s Day. He didn’t visit often, but Martha didn’t mind that so much; she had a life of her own, and she understood in a way that a lot of her friends never seemed to. They were always complaining about their children and grandchildren not making enough time for them, somehow forgetting that they had raised those children to go off and have good lives of their own, to raise good children and to do good for others. She and TJ had dinner together every three or four weeks and once in a while they met up for a movie, and those times were lovely, but she never wanted him to see her as needy … as an old lady who needed someone to take care of her.

“Old, my bony ass,” she muttered to herself, and then chuckled. If she was muttering to herself about her behind being bony, she might be on the elderly side after all. But she didn’t have to like it, and she didn’t intend to surrender to it, either.

The fellow doing the weather this week on channel 5 had sounded so ominous talking about this storm that it had made her a little nervous. The regular guy, Harvey something, was on vacation—and he’d sure picked the right week to be away—and Martha would have felt more confident in the forecast if he had been doing the predicting. Regardless, the storm was shaping up to be just as nasty as advertised.

Martha sat in the soft, floral-upholstered reclining chair in her living room, flipping TV channels with her remote. The dance show she liked had ended at ten o’clock and she’d spent three-quarters of an hour dissatisfied with everything else she found, watching bits and pieces of half-a-dozen different movies and snippets of reality shows that tried to lure her in. She felt a certain horrific fascination with those shows but could not bring herself to sit through an entire episode. She felt sure that if she ever did, her humanity and intelligence would be lost forever. A bit melodramatic, she knew, but still somehow true.

Irritated, she changed the channel again, searching for anything that didn’t seem vapid. Not that she would be awake much longer—she would doubtless fall asleep in the chair the way she did nearly every night—but she wasn’t ready to succumb to sleep just yet.

When she clicked over to a Clint Eastwood movie she gave the remote a breather. Eastwood was just about the only legitimate old-time movie star left on the planet and she had always liked looking at him. Even as he aged he was still interesting to watch.

Within minutes, her eyelids grew heavy and her head slowly lolled to one side. Half aware, Martha shifted to get more comfortable, listening to Eastwood’s throaty growl.

The phone jerked her awake. It jangled a tinny melody that she preferred to an old-fashioned ring—usually. This late at night it was intrusive and much too cheerful. Frowning, Martha rose and hurried as best she could into the kitchen, thinking it must be TJ, checking up on her, but by the time she picked it up, there was nothing on the other end. Hitting the ‘Flash’ button several times, she could not raise a dial tone. The storm had knocked out the telephone line.

She’d gotten off her chair for nothing.

Standing in the kitchen, she thought about going up to bed rather than falling asleep in front of the TV. Instead, she wetted her lips with her tongue and went to the cabinet in search of the bag of Oreos she kept for just such moments. She imagined the cookies behind a special display case marked IN CASE OF EMERGENCY BREAK GLASS and smiled.

She made herself a cup of tea, nibbling on a couple of cookies as the water came to a boil, then letting the bag steep in the hot water long enough to make the tea nice and strong. As she fished out another Oreo, a knock came at her front door. Martha jumped, startled by the sound, then glanced with a frown at the clock on the microwave. It was 10:51 P.M. What could this possibly be about?

Hurriedly discarding the used tea bag, she left her cup sitting on the counter, steam rising into the chilly air, and headed back through the living room to the front door. She knotted her eyebrows and peered at the darkened windows. Snow had accumulated on the screens and made little piles on the sills just beyond the glass. She tried to imagine who might be out and have reason to knock so late, and then she halted, five steps from the door, thinking about downed power lines and ruptured gas mains. Could there be some kind of evacuation?

The knock came again, and she thought of the phone call. Exhaling, laughing at her nervousness, she realized the only logical answer: TJ must have tried to call to check on her and then when the line went dead he’d come out into this crazy storm, worried about her.

“You know,” she said as she unlocked the door and then pulled it inward, snow flying in her face, “I really can take care of myself.”

But, in truth, she could not.

And it was not her son at the door.

*   *   *

Cherie Manning was pissed. The power had been out for over an hour, and the way the storm had been slamming the house, she knew it would not be coming back before morning—and maybe not for a while after that. One of the trees in the backyard had already fallen over, a huge branch smashing against the cellar bulkhead. Another few feet and it might have shattered windows or even the wall.

“And where the hell is Doug?” she said into her cell phone. “Out drinking with the rest of the grease monkeys.”

Curled up on the sofa with a thick blanket, talking with her best friend, Angela, she watched the way the candlelight played across the glass of the windows. She knew there were drafts in the little house she and Doug had bought in the fall, thinking it was time to start a family, but the way the flames flickered, it seemed like something was open somewhere.

“Did you call him?” Angela asked.

Cherie rolled her eyes. She didn’t want to be a bitch, but sometimes Angela could be so dense.

“Five times. He’s not picking up.”

“Come on, Cherie. You know how guys are. He’s drinking with his buddies and watching the game. He probably left his phone in his jacket or something. Or he’s not getting reception because of the storm. I tried you twice before I could even get a call through. Cell service is all screwed up tonight.”

“Maybe,” Cherie allowed.

“You know Doug’s not half as bad as some of these guys,” Angela went on. “At least you know he’s not with some hooker—”

“Do I?” Cherie said.

“Oh, please! Yes, you do! He might not always have the most common sense but the big doofus loves you and that’s got to count for something.”

Cherie smiled and shifted under her blanket, watching the candles flicker, thinking of times she and Doug had lit candles even when there wasn’t a blackout.

“It does,” she admitted. “It counts for a lot. I just don’t like being home alone in the dark. And I wish he’d stand up to Timmy Harpwell. The guy is such an—”

“Asshole,” Angela chimed in.

“I was going to say ‘idiot,’ but ‘asshole’ works for me.”

They both laughed. Cherie had been feeling sorry for herself, home alone in the storm. She wished now that when Doug had told her he would be out late, she had asked Angela to come over. But, of course, absurdly petite as she was—the girl still had the same body she’d had at twelve—she might have just blown away.

Barks erupted from beneath the coffee table and she jumped, heart hammering in her chest. Her little terrier bolted from beneath the table in a blur of reddish gold fur, yipping his head off.

“Oh, you little prick!” Cherie said, one hand over her chest, feeling the rapid thunder of her racing heart as she caught her breath.

“What’s going on?” Angela asked.

“Brady’s having a fit.”

The dog stood in front of the front door, barking and sniffing. He turned to look at her and then erupted in another round of lunatic barks, edging closer to the door.

“What’s he barking at?” Angela asked.

“No idea,” Cherie said, throwing back the blanket and sitting up.

She wore an old, faded green Coventry High T-shirt and plaid flannel pajama pants. Her red hair up in a ponytail and no makeup at all, she was not prepared for visitors, so she prayed that this wasn’t Doug bringing one of the guys home from the garage. She could see it now, one of his buddies too drunk to drive in the blizzard, ending up sleeping on her sofa.

“Ange, honey, let me go. I think this might be Doug.”

“If it’s not, call me back. I’m bored.”

“At least you still have power,” Cherie said, walking to the door. “I’ll talk to you later.”

They said their good nights and Cherie ended the call. Brady kept barking, his nails scritch-scratching against the small rectangle of tiles by the front door. Cherie unlocked the door and opened it, hugging herself against the frigid air that swept in. Even the streetlights were out, but she could see there was no car in the driveway or on the street in front of the house.

Barking, Brady darted past her legs and squeezed out through the six-inch gap she’d opened.

“Dammit,” Cherie snapped. “Come back here, you spaz!”

But there was no stopping the little dog. Brady rocketed down the steps and into the snow. It was so deep that he was practically lost, jumping and barking and spinning in circles as the wind swept brutally across the yard.

“Shit,” she whispered. “Brady, please, come on! Get inside!”

For a moment she held out hope, but the dog just kept barking. She sighed, getting more irritated by the moment, and slipped her feet into the boots she’d kicked off by the door earlier in the day. Still clutching her cell phone, she stepped out into the storm, realizing immediately that it had been a mistake to come out—even for a minute—without a jacket.

The cold bit into her alabaster skin and her teeth chattered.

“Come on, baby,” she said, descending the few steps to reach the dog.

It seemed like at least a foot had fallen already and she winced as the driving snow pelted her face. The cold sank its teeth into her, digging all the way down to her bones. Cherie started across the lawn, boots sinking deeply into the heavy, wet snow. The wind struck her so hard that she staggered, trying to keep her balance, and as it whipped past her ears she almost thought she could hear a voice, a hushed whisper.

Brady paused his barking, cocking his head, ears at attention. He seemed to be staring at her as he took a snow-shuffling step backward. Flakes had built up on his snout and now the wind drove against the little dog hard enough to ruffle his fur.

The wind whispered to her again and this time Cherie turned, eyes narrowed against the storm. In the blinding whiteness she could make out the warm lights inside her house, and that just pissed her off more. She spun on the dog, took a step toward him, and Brady erupted into a fresh round of barking. Cherie knew all his tones, just as a mother knows the difference in cries of hunger or panic or pain in her infant, but these were new to her, a plaintive, frantic barking that tugged at her heartstrings. If not for the storm she would have wanted to grab the dog up and snuggle with him, give him comfort. Right now, she just wanted to kick his ass.

“That’s it!” she said, slogging toward him, turning her face away from the stinging brutality of the storm.

The dog barked fiercely, backing up, trying to elude her. When she was nearly upon him, he turned to try to run, but could not move quickly in the deepening snow, and Cherie snatched him into her arms.

“Come on, you little shit,” she cooed lovingly, pressing his small body against her chest. “Let’s get in.…”

The whisper came again, carried on the wind, a low susurrus that insinuated itself into her ears like the soft, chuffing laughter of mischievous children playing hide-and-seek. This time she heard it more clearly and she strained to listen, thinking there must be words in that whisper, that someone must be nearby. Perhaps lost or injured in the storm.

“Hello?” she called, turning toward the bushes that ran along the front of the house. The storm stole her voice away, carrying it off to be a whisper in someone else’s ear, and her bright orange hair blew across her eyes.

Screw it, she thought, turning into the gale and slogging back to the front stairs. Somehow she had come a good twenty feet from the door without realizing it. Snow had begun to rime the fabric of her clothes and to cling to her cheeks and eyelashes.

Just as she reached the steps, Brady began to whine and tremble and then at last to growl. Cherie glanced round, wondering if he’d heard the whisper, too, and while she was turned away the dog twisted in her grasp and gave her a vicious bite to the hand, his teeth breaking the skin and digging in. Crying out in pain, she let go and the dog dropped to the snow, tumbled and righted himself, and then ran off into the storm so quickly that it was almost as if he had vanished.

In shock, she stood there and stared at the place where he had disappeared into the blizzard, wondering what she was supposed to do now. The temptation to just leave him out there was great, but if anything happened to him, she would never forgive herself.

“Son of a bitch.”

She had to go in and warm up, put on some layers and a winter coat, hat, and gloves. But first she had to see to her hand, which was throbbing, the bite wound burning. For a long moment she could only stare at the punctures where Brady’s teeth had torn her flesh, and then her gaze tracked down to the sprinkle of her blood dripping into the snow, the crimson splashes quickly being whited out again.

How did I get here? she thought. How did I get to this night, home alone?

Sighing, she held her injured hand against her shirt and turned to mount the steps. As she did, she realized that the wind had mostly died, as if the storm held its breath … or as if something stood between her and the worst of the gale.

It whispered and it took hold of her throat with long, frozen talons. Another yanked her hair and her head snapped backward. In the sky she saw more of them, falling from the sky with the ice and snow, driven by the wind. They twisted and slunk through the storm, turning the wind to their favor.

Frigid fingers cut deeper than Brady’s teeth.

As they lifted her and she felt her feet leave the ground, one unlaced boot slipping off and tumbling into the snow, Cherie began to cry.

Her tears turned to ice on her cheeks.