Free Foretold by Rinda Elliott Page A

everything—it gave life. At the end of my bad dream, the ash was burning to the ground with my sister in it. She hadn’t been alone.
    It could be nothing. Just a bad dream. Or this could have been a part of our weird triplet connection. It felt like something that was going to happen and my abilities had nothing to do with the future usually. But I had to know—had to check on her.
    Pulling the covers from my face, I glanced at the nightstand and found one of those old-fashioned, curly corded office phones. Since I couldn’t call Kat’s cell phone collect, I went ahead and punched in the number. I could give the McConnells the cash.
    The phone rang a long time. She didn’t pick up, so I called again. This time it took three rings. “Yeah?” she yelled into the phone.
    In the background, I heard the slowing of a big rig’s air brakes. Closing my eyes, I sucked in a deep breath before answering because all I could see were the images from the dream.
    Kat in that massive , gnarly branched tree.
    That...that thing hovering over her. Some kind of fire demon.
    Red , peeling burns covering her skin and her hair... Her long hair had been burned to her scalp.
    I blinked away the horrifying images.
    “Hello!” Kat yelled into the phone. “If you don’t answer, I’m hanging up. Who the hell is this?”
    “Raven.”
    “Gods, Raven! You’re lucky I answered. It’s freaking noisy here and I didn’t recognize the number. Where are you?”
    “Oklahoma. I found him. Found Vanir McConnell.”
    “I know. Coral told me.” There was a muffled curse and then a string of clattering thumps. She yelled, “I dropped the stupid phone! Just hold on while I find a parking space away from these loud trucks!”
    I waited, looked out the window and realized why everything was silent. That loud, heavy driving precipitation had stopped, but white insulated the morning world. Trees, the two trucks by a detached garage—everything—had a layer of sparkling snow. There were drifts taller than me in places. As I stared, something dark skulked among the trees. Vanir’s wolves.
    “I’m back,” Kat breathed into the phone. “Where have you been? I called you, like, five times last night and Coral is totally freaked. You’d better call her right away if you haven’t already.”
    “I will. I don’t have my phone. Might have lost it.” I held my breath for a second, not sure how to tell her what had happened.
    “You’d better find it, or pick up another somewhere because we have to stay in touch. I’m in Wyoming already and holy goddess crap it’s cold up here.”
    “I expected it to take you longer. It took me forever to get here and Oklahoma is closer.” Yeah, me stalling. Nothing new there.
    “Me? You’ve already found your warrior. Coral told me . ” She snorted. “How?”
    “I crashed into a river. He helped me out.”
    This time, her silence wasn’t from dropping a phone. Strong, bordering on violent emotion trickled through the phone lines. Kat might have the temper of a badger but her ability to love, her loyalty to those she loved, was scary fierce.
    “I’m okay,” I hurriedly added. “The car is in a river and will have to be towed, fixed—hopefully. I don’t even want to think about how much of my savings that will suck up. But I came out with only a lump on my head. Vanir’s aunt is a doctor and she stuck around to make sure I was fine. And get this, Kat, she has seidr. Big-time. And her name is Sarah Eir.”
    “No shit.” She was silent then until a loud engine rumbled past on her end. “Wait, you met a doctor with seidr magic and her name is Eir? Like the healing goddess? That’s whacked.”
    Shivering, I pulled the covers tighter around my neck, cocooned myself underneath. “It’s not only her. Vanir has brothers, all with Norse names and they look like their Choctaw-Irish father. And everyone here knows what’s going on, I just know it. This whole situation is too surreal, Kat. We’ve spent