Page 9 of A Winding Wave of Magic
The voices keened. The water called.
Staggering now, I shed my coat, bag, and gloves before plowing through ice-encrusted cattails that blocked the road and running trail from the water. And with a barbaric scream that matched all the others in my ears, I crashed through the ice and into the water beneath.
Darkness found me. Quiet. Death, maybe.
Not mine, but theirs. None that I regretted, though, because with a torrent of visions trying to shout and strangle and squeeze the life out of me, it did feel like kill or be killed. It was their lives—or at least what was left of them—or mine.
Sweet, blissful silence wrapped around me like a blanket.
Then the cold set in. And with it, the knowledge that I was floating through an iced-over lake in the middle of winter. If I didn’t get out soon, I was going to die of hypothermia instead of magical schizophrenia.
Frantic and quickly numbing, I turned in the water for the hole I’d made in the surface. Then I smacked ice, a glassy mirage of freedom. I was trapped. My flight complete, the urge tofightarose just as strongly. I had seconds. If I could get back at all.
But as soon as my hand punched through the ice again, another grabbed it. Then its owner took my collar and proceeded to drag me up and back to the bank whilesomethingin the water literally lifted me from below like a small platform and carried me to shore.
“L-l-let mego!” I spluttered through thick, numb lips.
The hand around my neck was warm. And then it was gone as I was unceremoniously dumped on the snowy bank. I looked up to find the green-eyed man from Rachel Cardy’s talk bristling furiously at me.
“What in the hell did you think you were doing?” he demanded. “It’s less than five degrees out here, and you thought it was a good time for a bloody dip?” He jerked his head toward the water. “You might be the only person in the world who can drown in a meter of water, do you know that? Can you even swim?”
My teeth started to chatter, as much with anger as with chill. But before I could snap that of course I could swim, better than almost anyone, something else occurred to me. I stared at his hand as it waved through the air. Hisbarehand. Which had grabbedmybare hand, and my neck too. We had touched, skin to skin. To absolutely no effect.
“I was b-b-blocked b-by the ice,” I started to babble, already shivering convulsively. “I would have made my way out.”
I grappled on the bank for my coat. My gloves. Anything to stop the cold from lodging itself so far into my bones I couldn’t get it out.
“Of course I grabbed you. And it’s good I was here, you know. You were bloody drowning.” He seemed disgusted by the fact as he got up. He shook out his wet shoes, then rescued my coat a few feet away and shoved it roughly over my shoulders.
“H-help,” I said, unable to control my stutter. “P-please. I c-can’t get up on m-my own.”
I couldn’t, either. My feet were frozen.
He stared at me from where he was retrieving my gloves and messenger bag. Then, as if he had no choice, he reached down and offered his hand.
Tentatively, shaking, I took it and allowed him to pull me to my feet.
Again, there was nothing. No voices. No jumble of his emotions or immediate thoughts. No hints of secrets or even childhood memories waiting to be released. Like the water, he was utterly silent.
How odd. And how…lovely.
The man frowned, then hissed through his teeth like he was in pain before yanking his hand away.
“Come on,” he said gruffly. “My car’s over here.”
I stopped. “Your c-car?”
He scowled. “You need to get home and into a warm bath. It’s that or the hospital. Your choice.”
Then he turned for the road without waiting for an answer. It was almost as if he knew the new wave of panic just the idea of entering a place like that caused. Especially today.
Shivering, I stumbled after him, pushing away any trepidation of getting into a car with a strange sorcerer right along with the niggling questions of why he had been there in the first place. And why he had saved my life. Or why he seemed to hate me for it.
Once the heater was on,I gave him my address. The chattering in my teeth subsided while I held my hands in front of the vents and tried to ignore the chill of my wet clothing. But it wasn’t until I leaned my cheek into the seat only to feel a whole lot ofnothingthat I jerked straight, again in surprise.
“It’s a rental,” the man remarked. “Brand new. But it’s also been…cleaned.” His green eyes flickered toward me, then back onto the road as we circled the pond.
“So you are f-fae,” I murmured. “A seer too?”
