Free A Winter of Ghosts (The Waking Series) by Thomas Randall Christopher Golden

it could not drive away the
terrible, icy certainty that had spread through her.
    "I can't leave without
Hachiro," she said.
    Miss Aritomo and the others had
halted as well and Kara saw Miho and Sakura staring back at her in concern,
though their teeth chattered and their lips had turned blue.
    "Go on, Yuuka!" Kara's
father called. "We'll be right there."
    Miss Aritomo nodded and
reluctantly got the rest of them moving again. Kara's father held on to her,
forced her to meet his gaze.
    "What are you doing, honey?
The exposure you've already suffered could be dangerous. We've got to get —"
    Kara searched his eyes, frantic
and filled with growing desperation. "Dad, I can't. I just . . . I can't
leave without him. I look down at that bus and all I can think — I can't
get it out of my mind — is that if I get on board, if I let them close
the doors behind me, then I'll never see him again. He's going to die up there."
    Her father held her face in his
hands, his gloves rimed with half-melted snow. "No, he's not. They're
going to find him, Kara. And it will do him no good if you end up losing
fingers or toes from frostbite. The storm is already starting to slow and there'll
be a couple of hours of daylight left for people to search . . . people who are
better equipped and prepared for the elements than we are."
    She took a deep breath, taking
that in, and stared at the bus waiting ominously below before meeting her
father's gaze once again.
    "How does something like
this happen?" she asked. "What Mr. Yamato said about the forecast . .
. I mean, it was nothing, not much more than flurries at first, and then . .
."
    Overwhelmed, Kara could not
finish the sentence.
    "A squall," her father
said. He took her by the arm and guided her down the trail, getting her walking
again. "I've read about freak weather before. It happens. Like 'thunder
snow' and things like that. When weather fronts collide the weather is always
wild."
    As he spoke, police cars began
to pull into the parking lot of Takigami Park below, their lights spinning,
reflecting off of the snow. They were followed by an ambulance and two SUVs. When
Kara saw police officers and other people start to pile out of the vehicles,
relief swept over her. The snow was subsiding. Mr. Sato and Mr. Yamato
were still up there, and soon the search would expand. There might not be more
than a couple of hours before dark, but maybe that would be enough. It was
possible that they had already found Hachiro and the other boys and that none
of this would turn out to be necessary.
    She turned to say as much to her
father, and saw Sora standing beyond him, perhaps fifty feet from the path. He
stood amidst a copse of cherry trees, their bare branches interwoven like a
spider's web. His red jacket had turned pale, bleached of color the same way
the winter storm had turned the whole world gray, but Kara could see him
clearly enough.
    "Oh, my God," she
said, a laugh bubbling out of her.
    "What is it?" her
father asked.
    But Kara started running, boots
sinking into four inches of fresh snow. A grin spread across her face and she
glanced past Sora, searching for Hachiro and Ren, putting it all together in an
instant — they must have found some other path that led them to a place
where they could see the bus waiting in Takigami Park and started down toward
it.
    "Sora!"
    "Kara, wait!" her
father called.
    She glanced back at him for only
an instant, but when she looked toward the cherry grove again, Sora had
vanished. There were only the bare trees and contorted interweaving of
branches.
    All of the air went out of her
in a single breath and she faltered, staggering to a stop. Suddenly she felt
more exhausted than ever. Falling to her knees in the snow, she felt all of her
fear and worry overflowing, rushing out of her. Somehow it became a laugh, even
as tears began to spill down her cheeks.
    She heard footsteps crunching in
the snow and a gentle hand on her shoulder.
    "Kara?" her father
ventured, so