My man.
I’m so lost in the melody and lyrics I don’t realize how much time blurs by until one of the stagehands ducks in the back. “Uh, Peace? Hey, it’s almost time for that fire safety thing? Where are they?”
Oh.
I lift my head, looking around.
No sign of Andrea. No Justin. No Blake.
It’s just me back here, all by my lonesome with my guitar.
I flash the stagehand a distracted smile. “Let me see if I can find them.”
My heart throbs sadly. I bet Andrea just moped off somewhere to give up.
Poor girl.
Maybe Blake and I can take her out for a special dinner tomorrow to make up for the disappointment.
I’m still thinking of things I can do to help her feel better as I head off toward the row of temporary bathrooms backstage that aren’t much better than port-a-potties, just cleaner.
But I don’t start worrying until my foot catches something.
I look down and recognize the ragged patchwork colors of Andrea’s neon-stitched messenger bag. There’s a scrap of blue notepaper poking out of it I can’t help but recognize.
“No!” I whisper, my hands already starting to shake.
My vision flashes, a sudden hot rush of panic, vertigo, adrenaline.
And as I bend down, slow with dread, to pluck the paper out, I see the familiar, scratchy handwriting.
The same handwriting on the notes left by the monster.
Hey, babe, let’s make up. Meet me out beyond the fence. I’ll be waiting. You were right. Love you. -Clark
Clark didn’t write this.
No flipping way did Clark Patten write a single word.
The tone is too adult, the script too obvious, and why would Clark say love you when they aren’t even technically dating?
My heart pounds so hard it’s making me sick.
There’s a time to meet scribbled below his signature.
Fifteen minutes ago, and Andrea’s still not back.
I feel like I’ve just swallowed razors.
Quickly, I look up, darting my gaze around. I’m in a narrow corridor leading out beyond the backstage staging area and around to the dressing areas, the bathrooms, other little enclosed bits of the ice palace that were thrown together for construction and maintenance.
I’m alone.
No Andrea.
No anyone.
I need to find Blake, before the worst happens.
His daughter needs him.
I need him.
And maybe this whole town needs him. Again.
Because whoever wrote this note…I think they want to hurt way more people than just Andrea.
Choking back the sickly panic in my throat, I spin on my heel, darting to the exit.
That’s how I slam right into something solid and warm.
I stumble backward, reeling, my vision crossed for a second.
Then my eyes refocus, and I’m staring up into a masked face. A pair of murky hazel eyes I recognize now with a horrible familiar chill.
A single dark, Grecian curl escapes the mask, drifting across his eyes.
And I don’t even get a chance to scream the horror rising up from my darkest depths before he’s on me, his hand clapped over my mouth.
A foul, acrid smell washes over me.
Everything goes cloudy, dark, distant, and I’m gone.
* * *
I wake to a pounding headache, brutal nausea, and the deepest cold I’ve ever felt in my life.
It’s like I’ve been sleeping on a slab of liquid nitrogen.
As my vision clears, the clarity coming back in the darkness, I realize I’m close to the truth.
I don’t quite recognize where I am.
Only that it’s dark and closed off with billowing cloth walls. There are chunks of ice everywhere. Stacked and tumbled in towering crumbles, slabs the size and weight of two or three men, many of them dirty or broken in half.
It’s the leftovers from building the ice palace. The mistakes, the unclean bits, the oddly shaped bricks.
And I’m lying on top of one of them, numbly aware of the freezing cold so deep it practically burns my skin. Oh, God.
Frostbite city, here I come.
But I’m less worried about that than the fact that I can’t feel my left leg, and I think my cheek might be fused to the ice.
I can’t lift my head.
There’s something around my ankle, too, cold and heavy.
But if I roll my eyes, I can just make out the source of soft whimpers rising in my peripheral vision, paired with this strange, disturbingly happy masculine humming. A man’s voice.
And Andrea.
She’s in worse shape than me.
She’s been stripped out of her coat, down to a sleeveless shirt and thin leggings under her skirt.
And she’s sobbing in sheer misery as the tall, lean demon in black stands over her, painting her lips red, ignoring how she writhes against the handcuffs. They’ve been stabbed like icepicks into the ice block, keeping her bound in a crucifix position, arms spread, ankles together.
And her poor bare skin touches the frigid slab, already looking red and irritated.
Oh, God.
Oh my God, it’s Justin.
It’s been Justin all along…and I don’t think he even remembers I’m here.
He’s so utterly fixated on Andrea’s face, watching her with a sort of scary, obsessed adoration.