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About J. M. Klaire
J. M. Klaire is the paranormal romance pen name for author Jamie Klaire.
Jamie Klaire fell in love with writing, and once she dipped her toes into the paranormal, shifter world, she realized those stories were going to need their own pen name.
If you like J. M. Klaire's style, and also love to read more contemporary tales, or even hot, sexy, cowboy stories, feel free to check out this author's work under the Jamie Klaire name.
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Bearing the Freeze
by Christa Kelley
Chapter 1
Gage Weston leaned against his black Charger, the pump in one hand as his phone started to buzz in his pocket.
Reaching for it, he flipped the lever to keep the pump going and swiped to answer the call.
“Weston.”
“You have an inquiry back at the office, Mr. Weston.”
Gage watched as a couple across the gas station parking lot tried to strap their toddler back into the car. Successful the first time, it seemed, until the child wriggled free and went sprawling toward the blacktop. Gage winced, but the cub’s father was there to scoop him up just in time.
“Patch it through,” he said, wondering why his assistant hadn’t just forwarded him the message to begin with.
“I’m… not sure you’ll want to take this one, Gage.”
Flipping his sunglasses up to the top of his head, Gage massaged the bridge of his nose with two fingers as he watched the couple corral their cub a second time. One sniff of the air told his inner bear they weren’t shifters, but it was hard not to think of all children as cubs.
At least it had been recently. Women might have a biological clock, but Gage’s bear sure seemed to be running on one, too.
“Why wouldn’t I? I already told you I’m not worried about the holidays.”
He and his parents weren’t exactly on speaking terms, and while he liked visiting his sister and her two cubs, whenever the subject of his job came up, he could expect a pretty brutal tongue lashing. Not exactly something that said ‘happy holidays’ to him. He’d much rather help other people enjoy their Christmas than worry about enjoying his own.
Especially since he was pretty sure the one person he could enjoy it with still hated him with every fiber of her being.
“It’s not the time. It’s the place.” She hesitated and the line crackled. Gage waited patiently, yanking the pump free when the numbers stopped moving. “…It’s in Ridgely.”
Gage froze, the pump still in his hand, droplets of gas sliding off the edge and pattering onto the ground. Ridgely, Oregon. He’d grown up there. Made some of his best friends there. Experienced his first shift there.
And he’d made the biggest mistake of his life there.
Was he really ready to go back there? He dealt with ghosts for other people, but never his own. It was some kind of special irony that the man billed The Paranormal Problem-Solver—the guy who had his own TV commercial and drove around the country in a damn nice car—couldn’t seem to fix his own problems.
“Send me the details, and I’ll take a look.”
“You’re sure?”
Gage considered it for a moment. So much of him was fighting against the idea of going back to Ridgely, but his bear was practically banging down the walls of his consciousness, an ear-shattering roar blasting through him as the beast made its opinion known.
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
It wouldn’t hurt to look. If it was just a small problem, he’d pass it up. Let somebody else deal with it. It wasn’t like other people weren’t out doing the same thing he was. Ever since paranormals became a part of every day life, there’d been people who needed help dealing with problems the cops just couldn’t solve. Poltergeists taking over homes. Vampires draining the local cattle population. Shifters locked in a clan war.
It paid good money and it made Gage feel like he was actually doing something meaningful with his life, despite his sister’s insistence that he was exploiting people.
Finally hanging up the pump, he climbed back into his car and clicked the key into the ignition. The radio blared AC/DC and he turned the knob down as far as it would go, waiting for his phone to chirp with the notification of a new email.
Navigating to his inbox, he opened up the email from his assistant and played the attached audio file first.
“Hey Gage, this is Thomas Frasier. Don’t know if you remember me. You and my boy Ben used to be good friends a while ago. Your old man worked at the same plant as me.”
He did remember Tom. He was a nice man; almost like an uncle to him growing up. Best friends with his dad, and Gage had become best friends with Ben. At least up until high school graduation. Then they both went their separate ways and he hadn’t heard from Ben since.
“I’m calling because we’ve got a bit of a problem up here. Now, hear me out, because I know this isn’t going to sound major when I first explain it. But we’ve been having some really severe changes in the weather come winter time.”
Gage arched a brow. Not the usual thing he dealt with, but he kept listening.
“Hell, even the summers are cooler than they should be. Hard to grow good crops. But the winters are… Well, you remember what it was like here. Hardly ever need to salt the roads. Then a few years ago, temperatures started to drop. It was only a few degrees colder at first, but this year it’s dropped below zero some nights, and out of nowhere we’ll get the worst snowstorms this town’s ever seen. Ridgely’s not built to handle that. Everything just sorta stops.”
All right, freak weather events. Weird, and he definitely didn’t remember anything but mild winters in Ridgely, but he still didn’t know what that had to do with anything paranormal.
“Folks around here are starting to think there’s something behind it. Or someone. I don’t know how much you remember of the old Ice Witch stories, but they’re blaming it on her, and I’m starting to think there’s something to it. Every storm comes down from the mountains. Never anyplace else. And I swear I can hear her wailing late at night. It’s the creepiest damn thing…”
Gage remembered those stories. Old wives’ tales, passed down from when Ridgely used to be a community of trappers. They were meant to keep kids out of the forest and the caves; nothing more. But he’d personally gone through every inch of those forests as a kid. If there’d been a witch there, he would have found her.
“Anyway, I know it’s a lot to ask, but if you happen to be in the area, we’d really appreciate some help. I don’t know what else to do. If the winters keep up like this, there isn’t going to be anyone living or working in Ridgely in a few years.”
Tom left his contact information, and the message shut off shortly after that. Gage sighed, looking down at the phone. The last thing he wanted was to go back to Ridgely, no matter how hard his bear was riding him. But the holiday season was always pretty lean. People put their troubles behind them and tended to wait to call him until after their wallets recovered from Christmas spending.
And while Gage himself wasn’t exactly going to be living on the streets anytime soon, it was nice to have a constant flow of work, just in case. The bear living inside of him pushed him to save, to prepare. Mostly for the family he was never going to have, but still. The habit was well ingrained in him by that point, and he had a hefty savings he always liked to add to.
Thumbing through the pictures, he was a little surprised at what he saw. Familiar places like the corner drug store that had once been an old time pharmacy and soda shop, or the little book store that had been a livery, or the grocery store that had… well, always been a grocery store, just more of an open market back when the town was first founded, well before Gage was even born.
But instead of seeing the twinkling Christmas lights, pine wreaths, big red and white glitter bomb candy canes hanging
up all over the place, all he could see was snow. It piled against the outside of the buildings, on window sills, straining against roofs, shoveled only out of the entryway, and even then there was a fine dust of snow.
A part of him thought Tom might have been exaggerating, but he’d definitely never seen a winter like this when he’d lived there.
Pulling up his assistant’s contact info, he texted her quickly.
I’ll take the job. Let him know I’ll be up there in a few days.
That would give him an opportunity to finish anything he still needed to do here and still leave enough time to drive up there from California. It also gave him a chance to try and figure out what the hell he was going to do if he ran into her.
His Lily.
Gage sighed, dragging his hand over his face as he listened to the car idle softly, the sound keeping up with the rumble of his bear.
She’s probably moved on. Best to get that through your head now.
Yanking the car out of park, he sped away from the gas station and tried not to think about everything he’d done wrong and everything he’d lost in Ridgely.
* * *
Lily Tisdale was reaching the end of her rope.
In fact, she was pretty sure she’d reached it weeks ago. Now she was just clinging to the frayed bits that could break at any moment, sending her hurtling into the abyss.
Normally she might have found the image was a little dramatic, but that was before she’d gained the ability to bring an unprecedented winter down on the town she’d called home for all of her life.
It started innocently enough. Barely noticeable, and hardly disruptive. Three years ago, she’d been working at the clinic when one of her patients complained that her hands were abnormally cold. That was it. The tiniest symptom that could have been linked to anything.
She’d never suspected it was the result of a spell gone wrong. A spell she’d cast many years ago when she was stupid and young and hopelessly in love with a man who didn’t love her back.
Over the years, she’d found herself needing more blankets during the winter. Her electric bill was astronomical, and even with central heating, she’d had to get a space heater and occasionally start up her fireplace. Still, she’d give anything to go back to those days. Back when her mistakes were only punishing her.
Now, she was a walking natural disaster. A blight on Ridgely. Two years ago, flurries had turned into a blizzard strong enough to bring the entire town to a standstill. They’d had to rent heavy equipment from a town almost a hundred miles away just to make the roads passable. But it was only a three day hang-up, and Lily had been selfish, not wanting to leave her family home, still thinking she could find a way to fix it.
This year, she hadn’t been given a choice. Wherever she was, fierce winds ripped through the atmosphere. Grey clouds opened up, spitting freezing rain that piled into thick slush and eventually dense snow, blocking in homes and businesses alike. Power was knocked out, including power to the one stoplight in town. When the roads were passable, they were slick with ice, and she’d seen at least one accident caused by it.
She’d made a choice back in November. Instead of spending Thanksgiving at home, cooking the tiny hen she usually fixed for herself, she packed up and headed out to her uncle’s abandoned hunting lodge in the mountains. It wasn’t the coziest place, but it was far enough away from town that most of the terrible weather stayed concentrated at the higher altitudes.
It was a solution, even if it was like applying a band-aid to a gaping head wound. At least the town wasn’t in danger anymore, but unfortunately it didn’t do much to help her situation.
Cold skin and a complexion that made her look like she was camped out on death’s doorstep were one thing, but over time, the spell had slowed her heart. Now it beat dangerously slow, and there were times when she had to hold her breath and wait until she heard the soft thump, just to convince herself she was still alive.
But time was running out. She could feel it. It was harder and harder to do things, and she guessed she wouldn’t survive the rest of the winter if it kept up. The thought terrified her, striking deep into her soul. She’d never been one to sit back and let someone else take charge; she very much believed in solving her own problems. But in this, she’d been practically paralyzed for over a week.
And all because of a spell cast by a heartbroken girl who just didn’t want to feel pain anymore.
Fortunately, better sense had taken over, and though she was reluctant to do it, she found herself driving down the mountain, braving the deadly conditions she was very much bringing with her, bound for Ridgely with only one thing on her mind.
In her old family home, tucked away in her parents’ bedroom, was a thick spellbook. Made of cured leather and stretched parchment, it contained spells and antidotes going back over a hundred years. If there was anything that could save her, it would be in that spellbook.
While the trip to town wasn’t especially long—about a half hour under usual conditions—she had to practically crawl in her old Buick. The wipers were set as high as they could go, and still sleet piled onto her windshield. Her tread was thick, her tires prepped thoroughly, and still she slid every now and again. And though she’d just had her hi-beams replaced with brighter bulbs before her trip up to the mountain, there were times when she just couldn’t see in front of her.
The storm followed her straight into Ridgely, and she drove with a bit less caution, hoping to speed up the endeavor and cause less damage. The entire town was already blanketed with a thick layer of snow, and from the blinking yellow stoplight, she could tell the power had gone out recently, or was perhaps still out.
There wasn’t a soul to be found as she turned onto her old road, pulling into the drive. Snow crunched beneath her tires, and she knew she was taking her chances in hoping she’d be able to pull the thing out again, but she left it running as she made her way up the steps, considering how to approach the door.
It was a strange thing to think about, but it had become a necessity recently. As soon as she put her hand up to the handle, crystals of ice formed on the wood surface, sticking into the locking mechanism and making it impossible for her to proceed. It surprised her, to say the least. That didn’t happen in her car or her uncle’s cabin, thank god. But then, she hadn’t cast a warding spell on either of those places. It was likely reacting to her magic.
With a sigh, she pulled out a blanket from the trunk of her car, wrapped it around her hand, and busted open a window. Glass frosted over and shattered, and she put the blanket over the shards of it, pulling herself through as the wind howled.
The tip of an exposed shard snagged her leg and she hissed as it ripped through her pants and scraped against her skin. Warmth trickled down her calf, a stark contrast from how cold her skin was now, but she ignored it, pulling the blanket off the window and making her way upstairs.
Her parents bedroom, still so neat and tidy and kept up just like it had been when they were alive, made her breath catch in her throat. Her relationship with her parents was complicated, to say the least. They’d encouraged her to hide what she was, as their family had suffered through a long line of persecution. But they’d loved her, and she’d loved them. She could honestly say she needed them now, more than ever.
But they weren’t here. Lily was on her own, and she just had to to suck it up and do what needed to be done.
Making her way to the bedside table, she wrapped the blanket around her hands and tugged open the bottom drawer. The thick spellbook sat there, practically taking up the whole space. It was a plain thing, if noticeably old. And yet it was the key to her salvation; the key to ending this spell—this curse—once and for all.
Wrapping it up in the blanket, she gasped as she heard the splintering of ice. One look revealed the leather was frozen solid.
“No, no, no,” she pleaded desperately.
Just touching the spellbook was evidently increasing the strength of her magic, which meant th
e blanket wasn’t enough of a buffer. And with the pages quickly freezing together, she had no idea how she was going to thaw such a delicate book so she could actually read it.
But she was going to have to face that problem back in the lodge. She could hear sleet slicing against the walls, some of it likely coming in through the window she’d broken. If she didn’t get out of Ridgely soon, the whole town would be swallowed by snow.
Lily headed downstairs and tossed the spellbook out through the window where it landed with a soft thud on the snow-covered grass. She lifted herself out next, and brought the spellbook over to her still-running car, putting it in the passenger’s seat.
Cranking the heat, she turned the vents toward the book, hoping that would help dry it some until she could figure out a plan. Looking down at the spellbook, she wondered if its effect amplified her magic even when she wasn’t touching it. If that was the case, she was going to have a hell of a time getting back to the lodge.
“Please don’t freeze, please don’t freeze, please don’t freeze,” she whispered as she put her hands on the wheel.
Thankfully her magic decided to cooperate for once, and she was able to throw the car into reverse. She let out a heavy sigh, fatigue beginning to set into her bones. Even just that limited amount of activity had drained her, and she could scarcely feel her heart beating.
Soon she wasn’t even going to be able to move without feeling as if she’d run a marathon. But Lily was determined. Her hands gripped fiercely around the wheel, and she did her best to navigate through the worsening snowstorm.
Surprisingly, when she made it to the stop sign at the edge of town, there was still someone driving. Not a local, clearly, because no one in Ridgely owned a car that nice. She watched it pull into the corner store parking lot, watched Tom amble out of the building, shielding himself against the freezing wind. A soft smile touched her lips. Tom had always been nice to her growing up. She’d been friends with his son a long time ago.
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