A Fistful of Frost

by Rebecca Chastain

  Summer crossed her arms. “You can’t bulldoze your way through everything, Madison. This takes finesse. Cut back on the amount of energy and try again.”

  Restricting the lux lucis in my hand, I nudged it toward the sky. A tiny fountain erupted from my palm, spewing bright white light a few inches into the air before the lux lucis fell back into my soul. The droplets tingled upon reentry. I repeated the move on purpose, because I hadn’t known it was possible. I’d always directed lux lucis at or into something, never into empty air.

  “You’re pushing too hard,” Summer said.

  I shook out my hand and tried again, refining my control. My soul bulged—

  “Do you think Madison Fox is capable of handling her region at its temporarily inflated size?”

  My concentration shattered, and the energy in my hand snapped back into place, my palm flaring bright. Summer and I both turned to hear Niko’s answer.

  Did Pamela get sadistic pleasure out of potentially driving wedges into people’s relationships? Why else did she demand our candid assessments of each other when the recipients of our opinions were within hearing range? I hadn’t appreciated it when I’d been interrogated, and I didn’t appreciate it from my position in the audience either.

  I appreciated it even less when Niko took his time responding.

  It’s an easy question. Come on, Niko. Can I handle my region or not?

  “Yes,” Niko finally said.

  “Truth.”

  “Do you think Madison’s lack of experience presents a drain on your time or resources?”

  Wow. Way to pull your punches, Pamela.

  “No.”

  “Truth.”

  I wished Niko would elaborate. If he told the inspector I was an exceptional enforcer, it’d go a long way toward meeting Brad’s goal of impressing Pamela. Of course, if I were an exceptional enforcer, I wouldn’t need to rely on Niko’s praise to influence Pamela’s opinion.

  “Why do you think you didn’t know Isabel was spreading evil?” Pamela asked.

  The rumble of a car driving by drowned out his response. Summer blinked and refocused on me.

  “Concentrate,” she ordered, as if she hadn’t been eavesdropping, too.

  Sparing her a glare, I gave the lux lucis in my hand another push, not too hard, finding the balance. It reminded me of learning how to blow a bubble in gum, ferreting out the amount of pressure I could exert before it ripped. An infinitesimal gap lifted between the outline of my soul and my hand. Air wafted through it, tangible and startling, and my soul snapped back to my body.

  Summer gasped, and I looked up with a grin, half expecting praise, only to follow her wide-eyed gaze to Jamie. The pooka balanced a net the size of a beach ball on his right palm. Atrum and lux lucis swirled across the surface like a black-and-white rainbow on the outside of a soap bubble; then the atrum slid down the sides, leaving a net of solid lux lucis.

  “Show-off,” I said, more for Summer’s benefit than Jamie’s. I’d seen him cast a much larger net of atrum before, though at the time I hadn’t known the correct terminology. He’d used it to sully a teacup Yorkie, turning her into the world’s smallest hound. I’d convinced Jamie to eradicate the atrum he’d forced on the dog, which he’d done with equal ease.

  Beaming at me, Jamie brought his left hand up to cup the bulging lux lucis between his palms. When he pulled his hands apart, a separate net wreathed each palm, one black, one white.

  “Now you’re just trying to make me look bad,” I said, watching Summer backpedal in my periphery. “Any tips?”

  Jamie shrugged. “It’s like starting to shift but stopping partway.”

  “Since I’ve only got the one form, that’s not terribly helpful.”

  “Maybe relax?”

  Jamie spread his arms wide and inflated his nets until they touched. The amount of atrum contained in the far one would be enough to seriously harm Summer or me, yet he didn’t show any strain. I should have been alarmed, but I knew Jamie was just playing around.

  Summer stumbled against the bumper behind her, the pop of plastic loud in the silence. All conversation in the other group had ceased, and Niko loomed in front of Brad and Rose, Pamela right beside him, both locked on Jamie with equal intensity. The optivus aegis probably had a dozen weapons hidden on his person and the reflexes to use them against the pooka before I could intervene. Who knew what Pamela could do.

  “Can you put those away? They make it hard to concentrate.” I heard the strain in my voice and cleared my throat.

  Jamie reined in his soul, unaware of his audience. “Your first try wasn’t completely pathetic,” he said.

  “Thank you. That’s very gracious.” Sarcasm helped steady me. I lifted my palm for another attempt at a normal-size net, monitoring Pamela and Niko through my lashes. I couldn’t cobble together my concentration until their conversation resumed.

  Summer remained as far away from us as the cars allowed.

  I coaxed a net into existence, this one the size of a tangerine. Pleased, I drew my hand to my face and examined the gap between my skin and the dome of my soul. It wasn’t empty, like I had expected. Lux lucis swirled inside the bubble like a metaphysical snow globe.

  Rose’s stiletto boots clacked like castanets across the pavement, pulling my attention from my soul gazing. She yanked open her car door and jumped in. The door hadn’t closed behind her before the engine turned over and she backed out, pulling her seat belt on as she drove away.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked Brad as he, Niko, and Pamela rejoined us.

  “She’s had a long day,” Brad said.

  Pamela pointed to my hand, where a tiny net still bulged from my palm. “Now do that over your heart.”

  I fumbled through a half dozen attempts, clumsy under the scrutiny of Niko, Brad, and Pamela, keenly aware of the gap between my actions and the desired goal of impressing her. Only Jamie appeared uninterested. He rummaged through the bag in the backseat of the Civic, pulling out a granola bar and opening it with a crinkle. Perversely, his distracting sounds helped me forget about Pamela and Niko judging me. My soul swelled a few inches above my breastbone.

  “Hold it.” Pamela stepped into my personal space and placed her hands on my chest.

  I barely had time to brace for the intrusion of a stranger’s palms on the upper swell of my breasts, let alone the greater intimacy of her touching my soul, before her hands slid inside my net. Dizziness spiraled through my chest at her there/not-there touch. Clinging to the net, I focused on Pamela’s stern mouth, her subtle crow’s-feet, her pencil-darkened brows, and fought against the urge to jerk clear of her touch.

  Then Pamela pulsed lux lucis through her hands, and my awareness imploded, following the path of her energy as it invaded my skin, muscles, nerves, and cells. The next pulse collected bits of lux lucis from me, sampling and recycling them. Rifling through bits and pieces of me.

  My soul crawled beneath my skin.

  When Pamela withdrew her hands, my net snapped back to my body, and I stumbled against the chain-link fence.

  “Easy there.” Pamela steadied me with a hand on my arm. “You’re clean.”

  Rose’s hasty departure made sense now: Shadowing Pamela all day had forced her to endure not only a procession of uncomfortable inquisitions but also the emotional distress of dozens of purity tests; I’d have run to escape the nauseating ordeal of another one, too.

  Half-eaten granola bar forgotten, Jamie pushed to my side, and Pamela backed up so smoothly it didn’t look like a retreat. Inky swirls of atrum curled over skittering waves of lux lucis within the confines of the pooka’s body, telegraphing Jamie’s agitation. I reached for his bare hand, and the moment we touched, he altered his soul so I made contact with lux lucis. He smiled and I returned it without holding his gaze. In Primordium, his eyes whirled in hypnotic spirals of black and white, and staring too long made me dizzy.

  I gave his fingers a squeeze, then released them; holding hands in front of t
he inspector wouldn’t project confidence or authority. However, the brief contact did the trick, and his soul’s energies calmed. Touching had helped steady me, too, and I savored the return of my equilibrium as I tugged on the glove I’d removed for Summer’s lesson.

  “Okay, we’ve got drones to kill and—”

  My phone blasted Shakira’s “Ready for the Good Times” from my pocket, interrupting the inspector. Bridget.

  Normally I would have let my best friend’s call go to voice mail, but Bridget lived in my region, and this job cultivated paranoia. Yesterday we’d made a pact to dissect my date with Alex, and a low-level worry had settled in my gut when I hadn’t been able to reach her earlier.

  “Sorry. I need to take this,” I said, stepping away from the group. Jamie trailed after me, crunching his way through the granola bar. Brad scowled, his fingers strangling each other, but he smoothed his expression when Pamela turned toward him.

  “Hello, this is Madison,” I said, unnecessarily formal and hushed. No need to project the nature of my call to the inspector.

  “Dice! I’m so glad you answered. Today’s been hell. Some first-year got caught in the supply closet with an intern’s face up her skirt, and the partners decided to punish us all with a mandatory five-hour sexual harassment and office etiquette training session today, on a Saturday. The only thing that got me through those horrid videos from the nineties was looking forward to hearing about your date with the luv doctor.”

  “‘Face up her skirt’?” Jamie parroted loud enough to turn Summer’s head.

  My eyes bulged. Thumbing the volume down on my cell, I put my finger to my lips, my relief to discover Bridget safe and sound swallowed by a flush of mortification. Jamie and I so weren’t ready for a conversation about oral sex.

  “Hello? Are you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Oh crap. The date wasn’t terrible, was it?”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Brad’s glare should have drilled a hole through my forehead. “Uh, no. I would give the experience high marks.”

  “Is something evil gnawing on you?” Bridget asked, her tone caught between alarm and disapproval.

  I snorted. “Not at the moment.” Unlike my family or most of my friends, Bridget knew every detail of my crazy life, up to and including my ability to use lux lucis to kill evil creatures she couldn’t see. The most amazing part was she believed me.

  “I thought humans didn’t sniff each other’s crotches,” Jamie said.

  “They don’t,” I hissed, covering the phone’s receiver with one hand.

  “Did I just hear a man?” Bridget asked.

  Scratch that. Bridget knew almost every detail of my crazy life. I hadn’t, however, had time yet to explain a shape-shifting pooka to her, let alone the bond connecting Jamie and me. I didn’t want to do it over the phone, either, especially not with my boss, my boss’s boss, and my boss-mentor Niko a few feet away.

  “Then why else would someone have their head up—”

  I snatched the last bite of granola from Jamie’s hand and stuffed it into his mouth, then hunched over my phone, cupping my hand around the receiver for privacy.

  “Do you remember the inspector I told you was coming? I’m training with her tonight. Like right now.”

  “Shoot! Why didn’t you say so? I’ll let you go—”

  “Wait. Do me a favor. Stay indoors tonight.”

  “What type of evil creature is it this time?”

  This was why I adored Bridget: It didn’t matter how insane I sounded; she took it in stride.

  “Something called a soul thief. I’ll explain tomorrow.”

  Niko strode past me, a reproving look accompanying his nod farewell. A cold ping of guilt zipped through my body, blossoming to alarm when I checked on the others and found them all waiting on me.

  “And tell me about your date? Over lunch?” Bridget asked.

  “Deal. Gotta go.”

  “Who’s Bridget?” Jamie asked when I hung up.

  “My best friend from college.” I squeezed past him, eager to get back to the others before Brad burst a blood vessel. “I’ll introduce you tomorrow. I think you’ll like her.”

  Jamie grinned and bounced after me. Tomorrow would be interesting, especially for Bridget.

  “Keep me apprised of any changes,” Pamela said to Brad as I rejoined them.

  “Of course.” Dismissed, he departed with one last bug-eyed look for me and a mouthed “Impress her.”

  Without waiting, Pamela marched toward the stadium, and Summer, Jamie, and I rushed to catch up. The inspector took a winding route, detouring to intercept a wayward frost moth that had homed in on a group of teens clustered at the rear of a minivan. The matching lines of their clothing and the blocky letter V sewn into their jackets proclaimed them all to be members of the Oakmont High Vikings band. Oblivious to everything except each other, they squealed and yelled and jostled, making a general ruckus for ruckus’s sake.

  Jamie slowed, enticed by their chaotic camaraderie. Glancing between him and the high schoolers, I realized the pooka would have no trouble fitting in with them. Full of energy, half evil, and more than a little reckless, Jamie embodied the spirit of a teenager.

  It made me feel old.

  Telling myself it wasn’t a bad thing—that with age came maturity and freedom—I examined the teens’ souls. Every one of them exhibited a classic norm soul, their accumulated immoral actions splashed in stagnant shades of gray and black across otherwise pristine white lux lucis. Humans—normal humans, not enforcers and wardens and people who worked for the CIA—always had patchwork souls. I’d never met a norm over the age of ten who didn’t have some gray on her soul, and by the time most people reached their fifties, usually their entire souls were pewter. Or darker.

  I’d learned not to judge gray. Gray was the human equivalent of Jamie—some good, some bad. Absolute black atrum was another matter, and I steered wide around the one teen with ebony veins running up her knuckles to her elbows.

  Grabbing Jamie’s arm, I urged him to catch up with the others. The moth followed, drawn by the lure of three pure white souls and one mesmerizing pooka.

  “Summer, why don’t you show Madison how to exterminate a frost moth,” Pamela said, stopping several car lengths from the boisterous band members. The moth ghosted closer on silent, intangible wings, and Summer jostled me aside to put herself in its path.

  “How evil are they?” I asked. From afar, the moth had appeared solid blue, but now I could see its body hung atrum-black between its radiant wings.

  “Mostly harmless,” Pamela said. “It would take a long feeding or an absurd number of frost moths to taint a norm, but it could happen. In an average winter, they might not even warrant your attention. Can you see what she’s doing?”

  I stepped to the side for a better angle. Summer formed a softball-size net in her palm and swept her hand through the moth, miring it inside the energy of her soul. I cringed. Allowing Pamela’s lux lucis inside mine had been awful; the thought of trapping living atrum in such an intimate cage made my stomach twist.

  Lowering her arm, Summer turned to face us and drew a lighter from her pocket. The moth dipped its dark head and fastened its tiny mouth on Summer’s soul just above her wrist. As it fed, its wings fanned in lazy beats, generating an icy draft that stirred my hair and chilled my cheeks.

  Impossible. The frost moth existed solely in Primordium. I could pass my hand right through it. It shouldn’t have been able to affect the physical world. And yet . . .

  And yet, how else would the moths have lowered the entire region’s temperature?

  “Even the cooling weather wouldn’t be a problem if not for the timing.” Pamela’s tone took on a lecturing quality. “But combined with the sjel tyver migration, it’s disastrous. The tyver will push as far south as feasible, which means they’ll be crawling over this region in no time. Normally tyver will migrate no lower than the high Sierras, and the regions up there h
ave measures in place to protect their inhabitants. Down here, the best you guys have is the moderate help of a tragically thinned prajurit population and your palmquells. With all these frost moths bringing record lows to Roseville and more people than ever using their fireplaces, it’s going to be a tough fight.”

  Her comment about fireplaces seemed random until I remembered Val’s explanation about tyv reproduction. According to the handbook, tyver had evolved alongside humans, adopting our survival techniques for their gain, most blatantly by co-opting our fires as spawning grounds for their young. Tyv larvae required a cycling hot-and-cold environment for metamorphosis, which made our fireplaces their preferred hatching grounds. Extending their migration as far south as possible proved another tried and true tyv survival tactic; the farther south a tyv drone hatched, the more opportunities it had to feed on human souls during its inaugural migration back to the arctic tundra.

  Summer clicked the button on her lighter. Nothing appeared to happen; like other natural forms of light, fire wasn’t visible in Primordium, though a quick blink to normal sight confirmed a cone of blue-red flame extended from the lighter’s nozzle. Without being able to see the snared frost moth, it looked as if Summer were posing for Pyro Magazine, her “empty” hand cupped beneath the slender black lighter, her upper hand holding the flame steady.

  I blinked to Primordium to check the frost moth’s reaction. The evil insect fluttered its wings, but trapped in Summer’s net, it couldn’t escape. As fast as a snowflake would melt against a flame, the moth shrank until its entire dark body disappeared inside the bubble of Summer’s soul. Summer collapsed the net, and like a magic trick, the frost moth vanished.

  “Whoa!” Jamie brushed past me, his hand reaching for the air beneath the disintegrated frost moth.

  I blinked to normal sight and gawked at the flurry of white powder drifting from Summer’s hand. Jamie caught a piece on his glove, drawing it to his face. I leaned close to examine it with him. It wasn’t lux lucis made visible in the normal spectrum, as I’d first assumed. It was snow.