Free Strange Things Done by Elle Wild Page B

of rum-laden chocolate. Comfort food. She crooked the receiver under her chin while reaching for the pan of brownies. “I need to do this myself.” She thought she heard Pepper growl at something in the background as she cut herself a thick slab of sweetness.
    “If you say so,” Frank grumbled, clearly unhappy with the decision. “Let me know if I can do anything. I just … you know, I’m feeling …”
    “Oh!” she said, grimacing at the skunky flavour of the laced brownies.
    “What? Are you okay?”
    “Just bit my lip,” she lied, because there was no way she could answer the question without lying anyway, and there was no way she was going to tell Frank that her housemate had cooked up quite a lethal batch of pot brownies. She swallowed down the lie, enjoying the dark, velvet aftertaste.

7
    Sharp tongues of flame devoured the vehicle, crackling and popping ravenously as the tires sagged and something—melting rubber around the windows perhaps—dripped ominously. Black smoke billowed from the silver SUV into grey skies as Jo was drawn closer. There was something she needed to know about what was inside, some question she needed answered, but she couldn’t quite remember what it was. Then the back window exploded in an angry flash, sending shards of glass raining down everywhere.
    The heat of the fire reached her face. She felt her skin melting like snow, running over clean bones, only she couldn’t stop because she could see someone in the passenger seat. A dark outline against the blaze. Now the corpse was calling her, but the tone was not what she expected; there was no sense of redress. Something was not quite right. This was not the way the dream usually went, because when the charred skeleton’s jaw swung open and it turned its face toward hers in accusation, it merely whispered softly, “Wakey, wakey.”

    In the muddy hours before dawn, Jo was nudged rudely awake by the long nose of a rifle, her thoughts still milky. The room was dim. The heady scent of Verbena perfume replaced the lingering memory of smoke and decomposition.
    “Rise and shine, sweetheart.” A woman’s voice.
    Jo sat up slowly. Her heart was fluttering like a June bug in a glass jar and her mouth was dry. She eyed the gun. She knew this person was going to kill her now. She had made a terrible mistake somewhere …
    “Not loaded. Thought we’d be able to skip the coffee this way.” A low chuckle. The figure was blurred and shadowy, a soft, surreal extension of the gun.
    Jo reached for her dark frames on the nightstand, almost knocking over a glass and spilling the golden dregs of whisky and melted ice. She felt lightheaded. The figure at the foot
of her bed snapped into sharper relief as Jo slid her glasses
in place.
    Sally.
    Her housemate was not going to kill her. Jo felt something unexpected then, not quite relief. She felt glad to be alive, here in the middle of nowhere, in Dawson City. The feeling surprised her, a sudden warmth washing over her body. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had that feeling. Not since before things had all gone wrong, since the woman had been found in that car. She knew she should feel outraged, but instead she felt a kind of gratitude toward Sally.
    “What the hell were you dreaming about, anyway?” Sally asked.

    The sky was just beginning to bruise in violent colours behind a fan of feathery clouds: a showy performance to kick off a mundane Tuesday morning in Dawson City. Sally’s thickly gloved hands lifted a white, birchbark horn to her mouth, making a mournful call that echoed in the still air. The two women stood rigidly silent for a moment, as though overwhelmed by the solemn presence of the trees. Then came the distant notes of other hunters playing the same lament, an anguished baying that tugged at the heartstrings. Another lull.
    Finally Jo broke the silence. “Can’t we just order a pizza?”
    Sally whispered, “You wanna make it through a winter in the Klondike,