Free Thin Air by Rachel Caine Page A

into the night.
    Only it wasn’t night. It was full daylight, and the reason it had been so dark in the tent was that the tent was covered at least four inches deep with snow. It looked like an igloo. My first step sank almost knee-deep in pristine white powder: great for skiing, terrible for hiking.
    Lewis’s tracks went off in the direction of the tree line. One set, though midway through the unbroken snow another set of footprints joined him.
    Had to be David, since the two of them had walked on without any obvious trouble.
    So I was on my own, at least for a little while.
    I swigged some water—on Lewis’s advice, I’d taken a couple of bottles into the sleeping bag with me, to keep it sloshy—and tried to ignore a dull, throbbing headache. Caffeine withdrawal, pressure, general stress…who knew? I had no idea if I liked caffeine, but it seemed likely. I felt a surge of interest at the idea of hot coffee.
    And then I heard something. Not Lewis, I was pretty sure of that; Lewis had that woodsy thing going on, and this sounded too heavy-footed for him. Bear? Something worse, maybe? I swallowed the water in my mouth in a choking gulp, screwed the cap back on the bottle, and hastily stowed it in my pack as I surveyed the underbrush. The lead-gray light seemed to bleach color out of everything that wasn’t already piled with snow, and all of a sudden the tent was looking quite cozy.
    â€œLewis?” I didn’t say it loudly, because I felt stupid saying it at all. Obviously it wasn’t Lewis. There was another confused flurry of sound from the underbrush. Bear , I thought. Definitely a bear. I am so dead.
    And then the underbrush parted, shedding snow, and a small woman pitched face-forward into the drift. Her skin was a sickly white, and her hair was matted and tangled with leaves and twigs and…was that blood? And she was definitely underdressed for the weather in a hot-pink sweater and blue jeans….
    It was the girl who’d attacked us before. Cherise. She wasn’t looking so tough anymore. In fact, she wasn’t looking good at all, and as I hesitated, staring at her, she moaned and rolled over on her side and pulled her knees in toward her chest. Her half-frozen hair, now caked with snow, was covering her face, but I could see that her eyes were open.
    She blinked slowly. “Jo?” she whispered. “Jo, help. Please help me.”
    I wanted to. She looked pathetic, and she looked desperately in need…but I couldn’t forget how she’d been earlier, when not even bullets could stop her. She certainly didn’t look invulnerable anymore, though; she looked like she was in deep trouble.
    The kind of trouble that kills you.
    â€œCherise,” I said, testing out the name. She was either nodding or shuddering with the cold. I didn’t come closer, but I slowly crouched down, at least indicating a willingness to hang around. “What happened?”
    Lag time. A long, unresponsive second of it.
    â€œD-d-d-d-don’t know.” Her teeth were chattering like castanets, and her lips were an eerie shade of blue in her pale, pale face. Her eyes were huge, and they were the color of her lips. “Kevin…I remember Kevin was…he was trying to…”
    â€œWas trying to what?”
    â€œJo, I’m so cold, please !” She didn’t seem to have heard me at all. Her voice was faint. Her shuddering was lessening, and I wasn’t so sure that was a good thing. “Kevin was trying to show me how to fight the fire.”
    â€œWhat fire?”
    Another lag, as if she had to wait for the words to circle the globe a couple of times before comprehending. “The one…” Cherise seemed confused by the question. “You know the one. The one they sent him to fight.”
    â€œThey, who?”
    She just stopped talking. Blinked at me, like she had no idea why I was being so cruel to her. And honestly, I was