A Shiver of Blue

by Everly Frost

  A Shiver of Blue

  A Dark YA Gothic Romance

  Everly Frost

  Copyright © 2017 by Everly Frost

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead are purely coincidental.

  For information, contact www.everlyfrost.com

  everlyfrost@gmail.com

  For those who dare to read in the dark.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Also by Everly Frost

  Excerpt from Beyond the Ever Reach

  Sneak peek at The Princess Must Die, coming soon from Everly Frost…

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  I AM NOT one person. There is someone else inside my mind and she is strong. Stronger than me.

  I first met her when I was nine years old, when I did a terrible thing to my little brother.

  We were squelching around the edge of the ranch dam, Samuel’s small hand in mine, headed for a patch of watercress growing on the far side. The juicy stems made a nice addition to an otherwise dry salad and my eldest sister, Edith, wanted to make an impression for the fancy folk coming for lunch. I thought that would be difficult given that Dad refused to buy her any new clothes. She’d spent the whole day before mending patches and sewing hems.

  Mud squished between our toes as I dragged Samuel around the final bend and a gathering of stones. The watercress sheltered behind them, keeping cool in the exposed ridge at the edge of the flat land. If I looked up, I would see the top of the house not too far away on a crest of hill. Edith would already be impatient.

  I bent over the watercress, dropping into a kneeling position with my pinafore spread out on my lap, ready to gather the greens and keep them sheltered for the trek home. As I picked the little leaves, I kept hold of Samuel. We didn’t have time to play.

  He tugged. “Can I go in?”

  I glanced at his face, his eyes big and dark in the bright sunlight. I followed his gaze to the center of the dam. “Don’t be silly. You can’t swim.”

  “But I want to.”

  “Well, Edith hasn’t taught you, so you can’t.”

  “You teach me, Caroline.”

  Exasperation billowed through my chest. I spoke with all the authority of my nine years. “No, Samuel. I don’t have time. You can learn another day.”

  At the same time, my hand let go of his.

  It wasn’t my hand that did it, that pried itself away from his fingers and gave him a gentle nudge toward the water.

  The dam was dangerous and I was responsible for him. He was only five years old. I would never let him go in.

  I would never say, “Go on, then.”

  I tried to swallow the words, but not soon enough. He skipped across the shallow even though his bare feet stuck and squelched and he had to yank them out to splash across the mud.

  Around six feet in, the dam dropped suddenly. Sam didn’t know because he’d never swum in it. I tried to shout to warn him, but the sound never came out. My lips closed. My body stayed still.

  I watched him plummet.

  She watched him plummet.

  She was like a shiver in my heart. Like the uncoiling of a rope attached to my spine.

  Samuel surfaced. A strangled shout crashed across the distance. It cut short as he dropped into the water again.

  I had to get to him. I pulled away from that rope as hard as I could, willing my legs to move, to run after him. She wanted me to stop, to let him flounder and sink.

  Beneath the sound of frantic splashing, way down in the depths of the darkest corner of my being, I heard her say:

  Let him be what he should be.

  The real me knew he wasn’t meant to die. Not then. Not ever. Not the annoying little boy who trailed after me day in and day out and demanded to be taught because he believed that I knew everything. That I could do anything.

  I scrabbled at my back, reaching for the invisible rope she held me with. Of course I couldn’t find it. Even at nine, I knew that things like her didn’t exist. One body only had one head and one heart. Not two. I gave up searching for what bound me and instead focused on the water lapping at my toes.

  The dam was quiet. A small ripple touched the surface. Sam wasn’t coming back up.

  “Okay,” I said aloud. “I think he’s dead now. How about I bring his body back?”

  There was no response.

  I took a step. Then another. She let me go.

  I started to run, faster toward the drop, mud flying up around me until I reached the dark edge and peered into it. I didn’t expect to see where he lay. I didn’t bother throwing off my clothes; there wasn’t time. Instead I launched myself into the watery abyss. The other me—the one with the cold heart—followed me in.

  I swam as best as I could, pushing out my arms and spearing the water, further down toward the bottom. I would find him. I had to. As I swam deeper and my search continued longer than I thought possible, my hope faded. I needed air and I still hadn’t spotted him.

  At the last possible moment, I caught sight of his shape, floating and surrounded by moss. I held on to the last bubble of air—my mind turned black—just as my fingers closed around his shirt. I pulled, never letting go until we reached the surface.

  Finally, I dragged air into my lungs. I locked one arm around his body, pressed him against my chest, and paddled us backward with the other. I knew there wasn’t much time. He needed air, too. When we reached the edge, I dragged him out of the water, slipping and tearing my dress and not caring that I would be scolded for it.

  Just as I laid him on dry ground, there was a shout.

  Edith, with her cross face on, marched down the slope a few feet away.

  “What on earth is keeping you?” Her eyes shot wide. “Sam!”

  She ran and slipped the last few feet, snatching him out of my arms, her chest heaving as she whispered his name again. “Sam.”

  I pointed at the water. “He fell in. I told him not to. But he didn’t listen.” That wasn’t exactly true, but I told myself I wasn’t lying. It wasn’t my voice that told him to go in. It was the other one’s voice.

  Edith didn’t look at me. Her face had become such a pale shade of gray that I thought she’d turned into a sky obscured by fog.

  “Drowned?” Her disbelieving hiss might have been a shout; it knocked into me that hard.

  Her apron mushroomed as she crashed to one knee. With a violent twist, she spun him over and thrashed every part of his back with her fist.

  I winced with every thud and every shriek she made with it.

  “You terrible, wretched boy! How could you do this to me? Naughty—” thud “spiteful—” thud “miserable—” cough.

  I stood up straight. I heard it again. “Edith! Stop!�
�

  Her eyes were wild, red-rimmed, but she must have registered the movement at her knee because she stopped her furious thumping.

  Sam wriggled. Water splashed out of his mouth.

  “Sam!” She wrested him upward, grasping him against her, then just as quickly pushed him away to check his face and run her hands over it. He kept coughing, but she didn’t seem to notice as she crushed him against her.

  She held him for the longest time, until he wiped his eyes and began to squirm.

  I let out my breath, not realizing I’d been holding it. I took a step toward them, ready to take Sam and lead him home, but Edith stopped me.

  Her hand snapped back, ready to hit me. At the same time, she hugged Sam closer, pulling him away from me. The look on her face reminded me of scalding steam.

  I met her eyes, prepared for the punishment I deserved.

  I’d let him go in. I should have kept him safe. I stared at her open palm, willing it to fall, wanting it to connect.

  It would be the first time she’d touched me since I could remember. I almost welcomed it—the touch—even if it came in the form of violence. I didn’t understand why, but Edith hadn’t come near me for years.

  Not since the day I came back from the dead.

  Her hand shook and the slap never landed. The steam evaporated and she lowered her arm. She scooped Samuel into her arms and scrambled away up the slope and over the lip of the rise, leaving me alone by the dam.

  I realized something then: the other me was quiet.

  If I thought hard about it, it might have been the moment Edith appeared. Or it could have been later, when she raised her hand at me.

  I didn’t care. I was glad. I never wanted to hear her voice in my head again.

  Except when I climbed the slope to go home.

  Then the wind whistled and the old metal doors on the nearby shed rattled, and she writhed, somewhere deep down, hot and cold at the same time, wanting to burst out of me.

  That was when I knew she’d never be gone.

  For the next ten years, she stayed with me, even though she kept herself hidden, like a dormant snake in winter.

  Sometimes I sensed her watching Sam, and I would turn away from him, as though I could protect him somehow. Other times she edged me toward my other sister, Rebecca, and my older brother, Timothy, as if she was trying to connect with them.

  Every now and then, when I wasn’t concentrating, I found myself reaching toward them, my hand tingling and foreign.

  Mostly though, the other me was so quiet that I could believe I was free of her, but it was never true.

  It would never be true.

  Timothy stepped in front of me. “You don’t have to watch this, Caroline.”

  I stood at the lip of the valley, the wind plucking at my shirt, my heart lurching at the sight of the lolling death in my father’s arms. Timothy’s body cast me into shadow and blocked the view of my father flinging the dead calf onto the bonfire in the shallow gully below.

  I should have been used to it. At nineteen years of age, it shouldn’t have bothered me. We’d lost a lot of calves. It was a fact of life on a ranch. But coming across that one, all bitten and pecked, and just in time to see it heave a last breath, had rattled me something terrible.

  “Timothy, did you see its eyes? They were all pecked out.” I clutched the reins of my horse, relying on the feel of the strong leather to keep me focused on my brother and not on the acrid smoke riding the chill wind up the incline where we stood.

  Timothy half twisted back to the fire. The sudden tightness around his eyes made me more worried.

  His wild hair dropped over the sides of his face as he took my shoulders in both his hands. “Dad said it was sick already. Dying of starvation and snakebite. Doesn’t matter what the crows did to it. There was no saving it.”

  I tried to read his face. It was just like Timothy to try to ease things over. He urged me away from the lip of the valley, tugging on Cloud’s bridle so I had no choice but to follow.

  The crows wheeled against the bleak afternoon sky like black sails across the face of the weak sun. I followed their movements with a curl of my lip. “Revolting creatures.”

  “Forget it, Caro. Look—” He shushed me before I argued. “Just go for the rest of your ride, okay? Edith’s still in town. I saw her take the SUV, so she’s bound to be ages at the store, getting flour or whatever it is that she does. You should ride Cloud while you can.”

  The nearest town was an hour away by car—a little place called Blue Ash, population 823—which meant Edith wouldn’t be home any time soon.

  Still, I hesitated. After finding the calf, I’d raced back to the cattle yards to find Dad and Timothy fixing fences. They’d jumped on their quad bikes and Dad had grabbed his gun—just in case—but there was nothing left to do for the calf but build a fire. I knew there wasn’t anything I could help with now. And with Edith away, it meant a small taste of freedom.

  Finally, I gave Timothy a smile. “While the cat’s away, right?”

  He laughed and widened his eyes at me. “Play, mouse, play.”

  He gave me a leg up, and I urged Cloud into a canter, away from the gully and the fire and the horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  I headed across the pasture, all the way back past the hunkering ranch house, down beside the dam, up over the hill, and out across the flat land, taking deep breaths of fresh air and forcing myself to forget the poor, dead calf.

  I focused on the rhythm of Cloud’s hooves and the glide of the wind across my cheeks as I rode with my ragged coat turned up around my ears. The imposing house disappeared behind me, as welcome in its absence as the heavy scent of burning wood and the flicker of the bonfire.

  Burying my bare hands in Cloud’s soft mane, I wished for the afternoon sun to spare me some warmth. But even the cold couldn’t stop me relishing this moment, this time to ride away from all the chores that came hand in hand with being a daughter in a motherless house.

  The flat land was just that. Expansive, grazing land, but it was rimmed on one side with thick bush. I didn’t know if the bush had a name. It was miles wide and miles deep, a tangle of trees, vines, and brush, running a third of the length of the ranch.

  I never went into it.

  Instead, I turned Cloud toward the clear land. My father rested all of the paddocks so the cattle didn’t eat the grass down and a new herd wasn’t due to come in for another week, so I had the whole place to myself.

  I was about to kick Cloud into a gallop when something caught my eye. Something coming fast.

  A shimmer streaked from the edge of my vision and before I could figure out what it was, Cloud reacted. With a scream of rage, he reared. In an instant, he dropped his hind legs backward. I locked my knees and drove the length of my arms into his neck, relying on pure instinct to keep me on his back.

  For a second, we froze, suspended in space as his white forelegs arched and the cold air gushed across the empty grassland. I drew a quick breath. All I could do was cling.

  Then the grass rushed up at us and Cloud pounded his powerful hooves into it. Again and again, kicking up clumps of green and brown—and then pink. In the blur of movement, I struggled to get a look at the thing he beat down on or understand what kind of creature had launched itself out of the brush at us.

  He jabbed a last time, always my protector. Then, he shook his head with a satisfied snort, and backed up across the pasture in a trained procession of muscle and movement. I leaned forward to pat his neck with one hand, wishing I could talk to him, calm him, while I regained control of the reins. But as I maneuvered him back to see the ground ahead, I couldn’t make a sound. I’d already seen one dead thing today. I didn’t want to see another.

  The ground was a mash of bits. A long tail, paisley orange and brown, emerged from the mess.

  I let out my breath with a hiss. “Copperhead.”

  I was never any good at spotting snakes, but a copperhead shouldn’t have
been this far west in Nebraska. And it certainly shouldn’t have launched itself at my leg.

  I’d only seen one once, last summer, in a fine wire cage coming off the train that ran through town, and that one had been half dead. I didn’t know why anyone would want to buy one—as a pet perhaps. I suppressed a shudder as I imagined the snake stealing through the grass and hiding its russet body among the sunburned tips. I thought about the snakebites all over the dead calf’s body. A tremor ran the length of my spine.

  Scanning my surroundings, I realized I was at least a fifteen-minute ride from the house. Leaving a dead snake out in the grazing fields would probably only attract ants, but I couldn’t be sure, and Dad would tan my hide if the crows gathered again. I was going to have to bury it somehow.

  I slid off Cloud with another pat on his neck and rifled through the contents of my satchel. Nothing to put the dead snake in—that I didn’t want ruined, that was.

  The satchel rattled in my shaking fingers. I snatched my hands away and clenched them into fists. It wasn’t like me to turn into a quivering heap. I swore under my breath—the kind of word that Timothy would use—except whispering it did no good, so I shouted it. Finally, the shaking stopped.

  Gathering my wits, I cast around for a stick to dig a hole.

  Off to my right, the thick bush loomed. I smeared my palms down my dusty pants. I jiggled my shoulders, trying to ease them, and studied the woods from the corner of my eye.

  Shadows toyed with the blades of grass. The trees crackled against each other like old limbs. I jumped as Cloud nickered at my elbow.

  I gritted my teeth. “Come on. If I’m going over there, you’re coming with me.”