Dead of Winter

Chapter 14

I didn't sleep well, despite having Rory's warm body spooned next to mine. Even the comforting sound of his deep, peaceful breathing wasn't enough to lure me into slumber. Every sound, no matter how familiar, unnerved me. The rumble of snow sliding off the roof, branches tapping against the window, and the protesting pops and creaks of the old barn as it settled against the cold—all conspired to conjure images of Taryn and her faceless accomplice returning for one last intrusion.

When sleep's weightless embrace overtook me, the muted cries of what did not sound like a neighbor's dog accompanied that descent, filling my dreams with a jumble of insensible yet sinister images.

The morning brought no ease to the night's anxiety. Sleeping in longer than usual, we awoke to a cold and silent house. Despite a generous dose of air freshener, the horrid smell from the basement, having somehow learned to climb stairs, now lingered like a malevolent ghost throughout the rooms on the upper floor.

Although Ferrilyn's car still sat in the drive, its windshield covered with a dusting of new snow, she wasn't in her room or anywhere in the house. Stranger still, she hadn't left a note. This wasn't like Ferrilyn at all.

"You worry too much," he said, while making his morning coffee. "I'll bet she went out for a run to clear her head. You know how she gets after a break-up. Just give her time and a boatload of space."

If this had been an ordinary break-up, I'd have been more inclined to accept his answer. Head shaking, I headed over to the refrigerator.

"Hey, what do you think you're doing there?" Turning away from the coffeemaker, he regarded me with his best authoritarian glare.

"Making a smoothie." I plunked the containers of vanilla yogurt and frozen raspberries on the counter.

Sliding on a stool, Rory sighed, but then flashed me a wry grin. "What part of 'nothing by mouth' did you not understand?"

"That means I can't eat anything. A smoothie's just a drink, so it doesn't count." I spooned some yogurt into the blender, added the berry mixture, and slapped the lid down tight. "Besides, if they're using me as a human pincushion, I'll need all the help that I can get."

"Okay, but when you're puking your guts out later, don't say I didn't warn you," Rory cautioned over the whir of the blender.

"They'll have drugs for that, won't they?" Winking, I grabbed a tall glass from the cupboard. As I settled in beside him, he pulled the booklet from New Horizons from a wire holder on the counter.

"Would you like to review this again?" he asked, his tone sobering. "Just in case you have any concerns about the procedure? The intrathecal aspect—"

"It all seems straightforward enough," I said over him, the greater part of me bristling with irritation by his attempt at professional distancing, the EMT in him forever fascinated by the task-oriented medical parts of the process. All the stabby-jabbity parts I preferred not to contemplate. "What concerns me more is whether it will work. I'd hate to go through this for nothing."

"Don't expect a major miracle. Nisha's samples have been in cold storage for a decade, Amara." He slid an arm around me.

"Wow, is that your idea of encouragement?"

"Don't joke about it." Pulling away, he spread the booklet open between us. "Have you given any thought to how this might affect you, regardless of the result? It says here that once they reconsolidate her memories—"

"There's a permanent attachment process involved; I know." I ran a hand through my hair. "Once inside me, they'll sort of mutate, like a smart virus or something, until they become an integral part of me. Carville's already tried to warn me off it."

"I wasn't—"

"According to him, memories are living entities, instead of these invisible, physio-chemical"—I waved a hand—"whatever. For Nisha, for the sake of justice, I'm willing to take the risk."

"This procedure is dangerous, Amara." Scowling, he squeezed my arm. "Where Nisha's concerned, I think you have a tendency to throw caution to the wind. One of these days, your impulsivity is going to bite you in the ass."

"And I think you sound like an alarmist, just like dear old Dr. Carville." I slid off the stool and headed back to the bedroom. "I'll call Mia before we head out. She deserves a heads-up about this latest business with Taryn." Having reached the hallway, I stopped and turned back to him. "You don't think she'll come back, do you—Taryn, I mean?" My gaze alighted on the ruined dollhouse. "Given the state she's in, I hate the thought of leaving Ferrilyn all alone here."

"Amara, we don't know for sure if it was Taryn who broke in."

I threw up my hands in complete exasperation. "Who else could it have been, Rory? And remember, Taryn still has her house keys. Just thinking about what she might do next makes me sick."

"Now who's being an alarmist?" He tossed two slices of bread in the toaster. "Ferrilyn's a big girl; she can handle one of Taryn's famous tantrums." Then, glancing at the clock, he nodded and said, "Better hurry. We don't want to be late."

Once in our room, I swapped my pajamas for a pair of yoga pants and an old t-shirt. Because the institute had been a little on the cool side during my first visit, I grabbed a red hoodie and wadded it into a roll. When I grabbed my tote, intending to stuff it inside, Nisha's case file fell out, spilling its contents over the bedroom carpet.

As I kneeled to gather them back into the folder, one photo caught my attention. It was the same crime scene photo I'd shoved under Carville's nose. I slid down against the side of the mattress and stared at the ragged gashes and deep gouges that covered her body. What he'd left of her body. Gouges, now bearing an eerie similarity to—

"Coincidence," I whispered aloud.

I stuffed the picture into the folder. No, this was not the image of Nisha I'd wanted to carry with me to New Horizons today. Not Nisha in the aftermath of a fatal struggle, her poor body, so mangled, so savaged—

Almost torn in half!

Breath coming in choked hitches, eyes squeezed shut against threatening tears, I curled into a ball on the rug and willed another image forth from the well of memory. A pleasant image. Dappled sunlight on dancing waves, the long slow sway of pine boughs in a summer breeze. Sounds burbling forth from the reliquary of the past soon accompanied these sights. Bare feet padding against a wooden dock, the splish-splash of a body cannonballing into water, and at last, the tinkle of laughter, clear as lake water and high as the summer sky.

Back against the bed, I held my breath and waited, mind trained on the spreading waves on the lake, hoping for an image of a long-legged teenager in an abstract-patterned blue Speedo bathing suit to appear. Nisha, the last summer we ever spent together.

Instead, the sky darkened, the past's sunlight eclipsed by black thunderheads. Waves, frozen in place, wore their jagged peaks like crows of tiny serrated teeth. Branches cracked, echoing like miniature explosions as they unmoored themselves from nearby trees. And in the sudden downpour of ash-like snow that followed, a voice I barely recognized as Nisha's hissed in the wind:

It sees you, Amara. It sees you!