“Okay, okay, just wait. Just wait a second,” Oliver said.
Father and Collette were in their rooms. It was late enough that Friedle had probably retired to the carriage house by now. Oliver shook his head, blew out a long breath, trying to collect his thoughts. All right, get him out the back door and to the bluff. How hard can that be?
What the hell am I thinking?
Oliver reached out and clicked on the hated Gaudí lamp, then gently shut the door, once again closing himself in the parlor with his unexpected visitor. The many colors from the glass shade cast a rainbow of antique hues upon the sharp facets of the winter man’s frozen form.
“What are you?”
The winter man staggered slightly, dagger fingers still clamped to his side. He lowered his chin and glared dangerously at Oliver, an eerie fluorescent light in those pale blue eyes, now narrowed to slivers.
“I’ll help,” Oliver heard himself say, stunned by his own words. “I will. But tell me that, at least.”
Carefully the winter man moved to the fireplace and placed a hand upon the mantel to support himself. He cast a glance at the windows, at the storm outside, and when he turned his attention again to the question at hand, Oliver thought he saw fear in those haughty, jagged features.
“I have many names, but by your custom, I am known as Frost.”
Frost, Oliver thought. In his mind, something clicked into place. Tonight, this very night, had been the first snowfall of winter.
“Jack Frost,” he whispered.
Frost nodded curtly. “Now you must aid me, or I shall have to attempt to reach the Borderland on my own. The Falconer—”
“But,” Oliver interrupted, shaking his head, staring at the being he still half thought of as the winter man. “You’re just a myth.”
With a hiss, colors sliding over his translucent form, Frost lunged across the parlor at Oliver. The winter man did not so much leap as flow . Terror shot through Oliver and his heart thundered in his chest as Frost clutched him by the throat in a frozen grip, icy fingers like arrows embedding themselves in the wooden door, trapping Oliver there.
Frost sneered, showing glistening fangs like ice diamonds, and a polar wind seemed to wash from his open mouth as he spoke.
“Don’t ever call me that again. Nor any other of my kin. Many of the Borderkind would slay you for that. I might have as well, another day.”
Oliver felt his neck freezing, his skin sticking to the winter man’s hand. He stared into those frozen eyes and swallowed hard.
“I . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” he rasped.
Frost glared at him another moment, then pried his fingers from the wood and pulled his hand away, the ice tugging at Oliver’s throat, leaving the skin seared by the cold.
“Will you aid me?” the winter man asked.
Oliver nodded.
Frost exhaled a blast of misty, frozen air and seemed to diminish somehow. His eyes— lashes tiny spikes of ice— fluttered lightly and his hand slipped away from the gouge in his side. Water spilled from that wound in a small cascade that spattered Oliver’s pants. He could feel the freezing chill of that water, the winter man’s blood, soak into the fabric and numb his skin where it touched.
The winter man slumped toward him. Stunned, Oliver reached up to support him and his hands slid on the creature’s frozen surface, barely able to get a grip beneath his arms. Frost’s body was so cold that it burned to touch him. It was as though only his fear and rage had kept the creature going and now, whatever he was, monster or myth, this thing who claimed to be Jack Frost had surrendered to injury and exhaustion.
“Shit,” Oliver hissed at the pain in his hands. He spun around and propped Frost against the wall. “You’ve got to stand here. Right here, while I get . . .