Chapter 1 THE ICE WOLF AND THE WRONG DRIVEWAY

POV: Isabella "Bella" Frost First Person

The wolf is almost perfect.

Almost. The left ear is still too thin. I lean in close, press two fingers against the ice, and push a little warmth out of my hands not much, just enough to soften the edge then I drag the shape upward and hold it until it freezes solid again. The whole thing glows faint blue where I touch it. My fingers always glow when I work. I stopped finding that strange around age twelve.

It is midnight. I am barefoot in the snow because I forgot my boots again. The cold does not bother me. That is the one good thing about being me I am never cold.

I step back and look at what I have made.

The wolf stands almost six feet tall. Its head is turned slightly to one side, ears sharp, mouth closed. It looks patient. Like it is waiting for something it is not worried about. I like that about it. I could use a little of that right now.

Beyond the fence, the Solstice Festival lights blink and shimmer over the rooftops of Everwood. Orange and gold and red, like a fire that never burns out. Music drifts across on the wind something cheerful with too many bells. I have heard that song every December for as long as I can remember, always from this side of the fence.

Always from this side.

I pull my sleeves down over my wrists and remind myself: this is fine. This is how it works. The town is out there, and I am in here, and nobody gets hurt. Clean arrangement.

My parents thought so too, when they handed me the estate three years ago and moved to a warmer city. My mother hugged me at the door with one arm because full hugs were always a little risky. My father said, "You'll be better off with space." What he meant was: the world will be better off.

They were not wrong. I froze a man's coffee cup to the table last spring just by setting my hand next to it. He was a contractor here to fix the roof. He did not come back.

Nobody comes back.

I crouch down and fix the wolf's left paw. The ice reshapes under my touch like clay, easy and obedient. This is the only thing my hands are good for — making beautiful, cold, completely useless things at midnight when no one can see.

I am talking to the wolf now. I do this sometimes.

"Left ear is better," I tell it. "You're welcome. Don't say I never did anything for you."

The wolf says nothing. Very rude.

I stand and stretch my back, and that is when the headlights sweep across the yard.

I spin around. A truck — big, dark, engine running — rolls slowly up my driveway like it owns the place. Every muscle in my body locks up. Nobody comes up my driveway. Nobody has come up my driveway in eleven days. I counted.

The engine cuts off. The door opens.

He is tall. That is the first thing I notice. Tall and unhurried, the kind of person who moves through the world like he has already decided it is not a threat. He drops down from the cab and looks around the yard. Then he sees the wolf. Then he sees me.

He goes very still.

We stare at each other for three full seconds.

My hands are still glowing blue.

"Are you magic?" he says.

Not: who are you. Not: what is that. Not the scream I have been half-expecting for twenty-two years.

Are you magic.

I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again.

And then I look down at my hands — bare, glowing, pressed against six feet of wolf-shaped ice — and I realize something that hits me like a fist in the chest.

I forgot to put my gloves on.

I have not stood in front of another person without my gloves on since I was nine years old. I have not let anyone see what my hands actually do since the day I touched my brother's hand in a hug and watched the cold spread across his palm like spilled water, turning his fingers white while he cried and I cried and our parents pulled us apart.

That was thirteen years ago. And I have kept my hands covered every single day since then.

Until right now.

The man is still watching me. He has not moved. He is not scared — or if he is, he hides it better than anyone I have ever met, and I have gotten very good at reading the exact face people make before they back away from me.

He does not make that face

He just looks at me, and then at the wolf, and then back at me, and says calm as anything

"That is the best thing I have ever seen in my entire life."

I shove my hands behind my back. "You have the wrong address."

"Seventeen Frost Lane?" He pulls something from his jacket. Paper. "I have the right address."

My stomach drops straight through the snow.

He holds up the paperwork. I can read the name of the booking agency from six feet away the same agency I hired six months ago to help manage the estate. The same agency that handles the outbuilding rentals.

The outbuilding I forgot to take off the listing.

He watches me figure it out. He has the steady eyes of someone who has waited out worse things than a silent woman in the dark. "I'm Ryder," he says, like that settles everything. "I'm here for two weeks. Festival fire show."

Two weeks.

I stare at him. He stares back.

And behind him, still glowing blue in the moonlight, the ice wolf watches us both patient and waiting like it already knows how this ends.

» Continue to Chapter Two: Fire Man in My Driveway