Ice Maiden Read online

  He grinned. “At least you’re not used to it.”

  “What do you mean by at least? Why on earth would anybody want to drink this?”

  He laughed at that. “Now,” he said, “get back under the water.”

  “I would if I could breathe,” she said, still coughing a little bit. She sank back under the water, feeling her body shaking and quivering some more.

  “The shivers are good,” he said. “It means your body is trying to raise its temperature back to normal.”

  “Sure, but that doesn’t tell me why I was out there without a coat on though,” she muttered.

  “No, it doesn’t,” he said. “We must find out, and we must find out fast.”

  She nodded. “Well, I don’t know who you’re supposed to interview to find out,” she said, “because I can’t tell you jack shit.”

  “Yeah, you just stay in here and warm up. I’ll go make some calls.”

  She nodded and didn’t know what to say. What could he do? When he came back twenty minutes later, he had an odd look on his face.

  “Are you still okay in here?” He bent down, tested the water temperature with his hand, and nodded.

  “I’m fine,” she whispered. “I don’t want to get out yet, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “No, you need to stay in there for a while,” he said. “When it cools down, we’ll drain some and put more hot water in.”

  “And since I can talk now, can I ask why the hell you don’t have a hot tub?” she said with half a smile.

  “Well, I hadn’t planned on rescuing an ice maiden. If I’d known ahead of time,” he said casually, “I might have been more prepared.”

  “That would make sense,” she said, and then she yawned unexpectedly.

  “I don’t want you falling asleep yet,” he said. “You’re not out of danger.”

  She sighed and said, “Did you find out anything?”

  “I did,” he said. “I want to show you something on my laptop.” He disappeared to grab his laptop and returned quickly. “Can you tell me what I’m looking at?”

  She watched as a street camera zoomed in on the bridge, and there she was, standing on the bridge with no sign of him. She noted that date and time stamp. So it was definitely after he had left, and there she stood, twirling around, her face to the sky. Then she took off her coat, threw it to the side, and just stood there for the next twenty minutes. He had it on Fast Forward, so that they could confirm that nobody else was with her.

  “I don’t remember that,” she said softly. “Like, as in, I seriously don’t remember it.”

  “And that’s what worries me,” he said. “If I hadn’t come when I did, what do you think the chances of you surviving this night are?”

  She shook her head. “But I don’t remember taking off my coat,” she said. “I wouldn’t normally do that. I’m not suicidal at all.”

  He just nodded, but his gaze was searching.

  She knew with a sinking heart that he didn’t believe her, but then why would he? She stared at the video herself and didn’t believe it. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she whispered. “Everything has not been okay since that snowboard accident.”

  At that, he frowned, settled back, and studied her for a long moment.

  “Now what?” she asked in exasperation.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Drink your tea.”

  “It’s empty.”

  “Good,” he said. “I’ll go get you more.”

  He disappeared again, and she heard him on the phone, talking to somebody a few minutes later, but had no clue who it was. As long as it wasn’t the paramedics. Things like that were expensive, and she was out of money in a big way. And, although she kept hoping she’d retain her job, she had no guarantee that would happen. As more strange things happened, and things got weirder, chances were good her job would be gone without any warning. It’s not like she could blame her boss either. If she were a detriment to his business, he had to deal with it. He needed to survive too.

  But still, she needed more than that to live on anyway, and, once again, she was brought back to what had brought her here in the first place. She’d always thought about coming to Aspen ever since she learned to snowboard in school. And, of course, it didn’t hurt that her adoptive parents had told her that they had picked her up here, and sometimes she wanted to come back to wherever that was.

  They didn’t tell her that she’d been born here; they just said that they had taken possession of her here. Like picking up a puppy. Something for her to contemplate. She hadn’t thought anything was weird about it until now, and all she could think about was what if she were driven to come here for some other godforsaken reason? That didn’t bear thinking about because the what-ifs would drive her crazy. And there are no what-if answers. Just something in her world had gone seriously wrong, but what was she to do about it?

  *

  “I know, Dr. Mica. All I can tell you is that the video shows her all alone. Yet I saw something bizarre that isn’t showing up on the video, and that concerns me even more.”

  The doctor continued, “I’ve made a couple calls,” she said, “but I haven’t made any connection yet. Stefan is crazy busy.”

  “I don’t even know who to take her to,” he said. “I don’t know who can even help her.”

  “But you don’t think she’s suicidal?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m not exactly sure what’s going on, but I need to get back to her.”

  “Will she be okay, or do you want me to call an ambulance?”

  “Well, she’s against the ambulance idea because of the expense, and she is warming up in the bath, but I really don’t feel comfortable leaving her alone right now.”

  “Do you think she’ll do something else that’s—Let me try Stefan again,” she said. “It’s out of the ordinary, I know. But I don’t want to say anything until I’ve confirmed with him.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I guess it’s her mental state I’m worried about.”

  “Keep an eye on her,” she said. “If you need me to, I can come talk to her.”

  “I could bring her to the office tomorrow maybe,” he said. “She’s quite worried about losing her job, and, considering all that’s been going on, that is a possibility.”

  “No, I could come to her,” Dr. Mica said. “I don’t know what hours she works, but I could always make a house call after she’s home. If you think she’ll be well enough to go to work?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “That’s just part of the unknowns right now.”

  “Right. Well, let’s take a look and see what’s going on. I’ll call you back as soon as I can.” And, with that, Dr. Mica hung up.

  Damon walked back into the bathroom to check on her and found her dozing lightly. “Make sure you don’t fall asleep,” he warned.

  “I’m not,” she said. “I’m just relaxing. My teeth have stopped chattering, so don’t worry about taking me to the hospital.”

  “Well, I’ll keep worrying,” he said, “because, whatever you were doing out there, you can’t explain. But it’s right there on the video.”

  “Thanks,” she said, “I was trying to forget that.”

  “I don’t think we can,” he said. “I don’t think we should.”

  She opened her eyes and stared at him. “What do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, and, with that, he went back to the living room. He returned to check up on her a few minutes later, and she was fine, eyes closed, dozing calmly. He tested the water and turned on the faucet to add some hot water, forcing her to open her eyes and to look at him. “I’m just making sure it’s still warm.”

  “The shivers have stopped,” she said, with half a smile.

  “Good, now let’s get some more heat in the tub, and I’ll go make some more tea.”

  “I’m starting to feel waterlogged inside now,” she announced.

  He chuckled. “It doesn’t matter if you
are or if you’re not.” When his phone rang, he looked down at it in surprise and said, “I’ll be right back.” He walked into the living room to answer it. “Hello?”

  “Right,” said the man on the other end. “My name is Stefan Kronos, and Dr. Mica asked me to contact you.”

  Damon didn’t know what to say, other than, “Oh.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I get that response a lot.”

  “You’re the Stefan Kronos?”

  “I’m not exactly sure who the would be,” he said, “but I am a psychic, an artist, and a consultant for the police.”

  “Okay,” Damon said with a nod, his mind filling in all the details of what he’d heard and read since. “Thank you for contacting us. I’m not sure you can do anything to help though.”

  “What did the shadow around her look like?”

  “Honestly it looked like a normal person, only higher and off to the right.”

  “Depends what normal is. Could you see any facial features?”

  “No, it looked like she was wearing a hood.”

  “She?” he asked immediately, as if pouncing on a clue.

  By then, Damon had relaxed a bit. “I’m not sure, but, yes, I feel like it was a she.”

  “Interesting,” he said. “Could you tell anything else?”

  “No, but it was almost like it was smiling.”

  “And did your friend appear to recognize that this thing was there?”

  “No, I don’t think she did, but she was out there for an hour without a coat in freezing temperatures. When we first went outside for a walk, she said she was hot, that she was really warm. I didn’t want to leave her, but I had to go to the office and get some stuff. By the time I came back, she’d been out there without a coat on, according to the video footage, basically since the time I left.”

  “And she was fine?”

  “She was fine, until somehow she wasn’t, and she collapsed and pitched forward into the snow. Then she almost seemed to come back to herself.”

  “Can you explain what happened just before that?”

  He did the best he could. “I didn’t know what I should be looking for,” he said. “She just acted so bizarrely, not like herself at all.”

  “Okay, so what kind of run-up was there to this event?”

  “Run-up?”

  “What other strange incidences?”

  “Well, there’s been a few,” and Damon quickly filled in Stefan on what he knew.

  “Plus these recent murders?”

  “Yes,” he said, staring at the phone. “But I wasn’t thinking they were connected.”

  “Interesting,” Stefan said.

  “You’re not really thinking they can be connected, are you?”

  “Haven’t had much experience in this line, have you?”

  “Depends on what you mean by this line,” he said. “I’ve never worked with a psychic before, if that’s what you mean.”

  “When did she open the tarot cards?”

  “As I understand, the package was already torn,” he said for clarity, “and it was a few days before her snowboarding accident. Some people report that Gabby had apparently come in with readings that were way too accurate, and not all of them were terribly proper or nice. She hadn’t really worried about it because she’d been having fun, making it up. But then one of the customers came back and raised a stink because her husband had died in an accident. She made an accusation of negligence, saying Gabby should have told her exactly what would happen, so the wife could have done something to save her husband.”

  “Well, Gabby couldn’t have done anything to save him, if that was the way his life was to go,” Mr. Kronos said, in an almost absentminded way.

  “Maybe,” Damon said, “but there’s no talking to the grieving widow.”

  “Of course not,” he said. “Then Gabby went snowboarding that day?”

  “Well, it was a few days later, yes, and had this terrible accident. She said somebody spoke to her, but she couldn’t see anybody, and she felt like she’d been pushed off the course down the mountain.”

  “What did they say?”

  Damon answered and, as far as he could tell, gave an accurate rendition of everything. “I have it all written down in the statement, if you want to see it.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I do.”

  “I’ll send it. So, I don’t really know what you expect all this to mean,” Damon said.

  “I don’t know that I’m expecting it to mean anything,” he said. “No matter what, for you, it’ll seem like a far-off theory anyway.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, because, at the moment, I’m thinking possession.”

  Damon closed his eyes, took a long slow deep breath, and swallowed hard. “As in a spirit possessing her?”

  “Well, at least you’re not accusing me of being a charlatan and a fraud,” he said, with some humor in his tone.

  “No, but it’s on the tip of my tongue,” Damon replied.

  “Of course it is,” he said, “but, until you actually know what’s going on, keep an open mind.”

  “Well, I would have kept an open mind, except these things have been so bizarre that I can’t actually explain them away in any normal manner. And, when all else fails,” he said, “we must look at the abnormal answers. But possession is way out there.”

  “It is,” Stefan said quietly. “Particularly if this is new to you.”

  “Isn’t it new to everyone?”

  “For 99.9 percent of the world, absolutely,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean that it’s not out there for all of us.”

  “Okay, this is just too awful to even contemplate. But, if it is a case of possession, where and what would she be possessed by?”

  “Well, that is the question, isn’t it? We’ll figure that out because then we’ll determine why this spirit is still around and what it is doing with her.”

  “Do you think it’s actually affecting her? Like affecting how she acts and reacts?”

  “Let me ask you this question,” he said. “Would you have expected her to go out in the snow, take off her heavy winter coat, and dance around like that?”

  “No, but remember. I don’t know her all that well. Although I’m not sure what bothered me more. The dancing or the standing still, just letting the falling snow stack up on her head and shoulders.”

  “Then something suddenly changes, and she pitches forward into the snow like that and goes from being really hot to freezing. That was weird,” Stefan said.

  “That was definitely weird.”

  “Good,” Stefan said, “at least you can latch on to that bit. That’s common.”

  “But then what? How did the possession start? How does the spirit just decide all of a sudden that she’s it?”

  “I suspect it’ll have something to do with the tarot cards,” he said. “Maybe you can find out what happened and how they got torn open.”

  He stared at the phone. “Seriously?”

  “Absolutely,” he said with a hard voice. “I get that this is all new to you, but don’t mock it or knock it, for that matter. It’s about the only line we have to go on right now.”

  “How do we tell for sure?”

  “I have the means, and I’ll get back to you in a few minutes,” he said, and then the line went silent.

  Damon stared down at his phone. “Okay, now I’m wondering if I’ve lost it,” he muttered, as he stared around the room. “If any of the guys had heard that, I’d be the one getting fired.”

  He wondered what he had just done to his career. His mind struggled to grab some sanity in all this, but it just wasn’t coming. What the hell had happened, and why? He just didn’t know what to do. He made another cup of tea and took it back into the bathroom. He checked on her, and she was lying there, resting peacefully. Her skin was still too waxy for his comfort, but at least she looked to be recovering.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “And any more looks would be of the Peeping Tom va
riety, so go away.”

  He snorted at that. “Hey, I like a warm body in my bed,” he said, “not an ice maiden.”

  “Don’t say that,” she whispered. “That’s just not nice.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said and quickly disappeared. He wasn’t sure what about the phrase had triggered such a reaction, but he immediately felt like he’d pulled the wings off a butterfly. He shook his head, wondering what the hell had happened to him. When the phone rang again, he figured it was Stefan, even though the number came up as Unknown Caller. “Hello?”

  “At least you recognized it was me this time.”

  “Why is that?” he said. “Your number came up as an Unknown Caller, but the first time it came up with something weird.”

  “It tends to change, depending on what time of day I’m calling.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Technology doesn’t always like me.”

  “Just technology?” Damon said with a note of humor.

  “Glad you’ve got a sense of humor,” he said, “because we have a problem.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  “She’s definitely got a possession situation going on,” he said, “and, more than that, I think it’s a murderous one.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Gabby huddled down in the warm water but kept her ears up and heard some discussion going on from the latest phone calls Damon had been getting. She didn’t know what he heard on those calls, but she felt a chill deep inside that had nothing to do with her body temperature. Upon seeing that video, she tried hard to hide her reaction, but damn, it was scary to see herself doing something so ridiculous out there. Something she would never have done, and yet there she was, being a fool, and it didn’t even look like it was her. Maybe that was the part that really got to her. It just didn’t seem like it was really her; it seemed like it was somebody else being completely stupid out there. And it scared her. … It all scared her.

  When Damon came in the next time, he looked at her, and his expression said that something was wrong.

  “Who was that on the phone?” she asked.

  “Stefan Kronos,” he said.

  She stared up at him. “And who’s that?” she asked. “That name means nothing to me.”