Cryostorm (2 page)

“She’d been staring at you, that’s why I did the whole kiss thing in the first place, and now look what I did. Exposed you. Well, us.”

“No you didn’t. She probably just reacted to the mark. It’s hideous,” Nate said.

“No it’s not.” I hopped to my feet.

Anger bubbled in my tummy at what The Center had done to him. First they created him from a freaking Petri dish. He’d grown at supernatural speed, had uncharted intelligence, and even helped kill my real parents. Then he realized the error of his ways and escaped.

But they’d marked him both with ink and tracking devices, which he had to dig out himself. The results were bumpy, scar-tissued marks beneath the big, thick, black lines. I didn’t care, though. I liked Nate how he was. Black lines, no real birth parents, and freak of nature crap and all. We fit together so perfectly, it was like he was made for me.

“Mandy?” Nate’s voice cut through my tirade of thoughts.

I turned to face him and realized I was standing in front of the door.

“You okay?” Nate asked, stepping toward me.

“Yeah, um…why?”

He glanced at Georgia, then back to me. “You’re just a little hyper.” He moved closer. “While you were sitting you were twitching your leg, too. You feel okay?”

Now that he’d mentioned it, yeah, I had been doing that. There was so much energy bottled up in me I couldn’t sit still. Must be from being snowbound in this stupid place for so long.

“I’m okay. Just getting cabin fever.”

Nate watched me with his analytical, but very yummy eyes. Sometimes it felt like he could see into my brain, hear my thoughts.

“I’m going to get on the laptop and see the people currently registered. We’ve all been stranded here for two days.” Tim checked his watch. “It’s going on two o’clock right now of our second day. No one’s come or gone, so it should be easy.”

“I haven’t seen her before today, though. Not even for breakfast,” Georgia said. “Strange.”

“Shit,” I said. Georgia tossed a couch pillow at me. “Hey, I’ve always sworn, it’s you with the new potty mouth.”

“Very funny, Kelvin.” She stuck out her pierced tongue, another form of rebellion now that she was free from her adoptive parents’ rules. “Look, I’m sure it’s fine. We’re all paranoid and we’ve been stuck here and pissed because we keep hitting dead ends. But, Tim will do his computer work and figure it out, right hon?” She winked.

He smiled. “Yep.”

“Good. So I’m okay to go to our room to shower this chlorine off and change.” Georgia stood.

“Go together,” Nate said. “Never go anywhere alone until we figure this out. You have your phones?”

I stood next to my sister. We both held them up. “Yes dad,” we said in unison.

“Ha. Ha.” He winked at me.

That’d become a running joke since he’d arranged our deaths. He often shifted into protection mode, which was annoying sometimes. But I had to give him credit, he knew what he was doing in the keeping-us-safe department.

I so wasn’t in the mood to see protector-mode, though. Not after that whopper of a kiss down at the pool.

“Then go. Bolt your doors, get beautified as you call it, then come back. Okay?” He stepped toward me. “Better yet. I’m walking you guys to your room.” He glanced at Tim. “Okay with that?”

“We’re only five doors down, silly,” I said. “Can we say paranoid?”

“You’re right. Okay. Go.” He opened the door. “Hungry? I’ll get us some dinner.”

“Sounds good. Just no pizza,” Georgia said as she stepped through the doorway. “I’m sick to death of pizza.”

Nate tucked one of my wet strands of hair behind my ear, then leaned in and pressed his lips to my cheek. “See you soon.”

I charged toward Georgia, who was already halfway down the hall, still rambling on about how sick of pizza she was. I really needed to figure out what was going on with her. It was more than the ex-mom thing.

Georgia stopped in front of our door and I glanced back. True to his word, Nate stood in the hallway, watching, arms crossed over his broad chest. He leaned against the doorframe, his foot propping the door open.

I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve him; well I didn’t deserve him, but whatever. I was glad he was mine. The beep of our door card thingy sliding through the slot, followed by the click of the lock, drew my attention back to the issue at hand.

Georgia.

She stomped into our room, which was an exact duplicate of Nate and Tim’s, but smelled much nicer because of Georgia’s melon body spray. She tossed the card key on the table beneath the TV, then slid her damp shirt over her head, leaving her with her bright red bikini top on.

She’d taken to the color quite well.

“Okay, what’s going on, G?” I slouched on the edge of the bed. “Seriously. We got this whole twin vibe thing going, and it’s wigging me out.”

“Twin vibe.” She huffed.

“Like that. All with the negative. You aren’t like that. You—”

“Yeah, well—God!” She shook her head. “I’m sick of being cooped up. Sick of Lois dodging us. How is she doing that unless she’s an Agent?”

“G, you don’t know that. She could—”

“No. Don’t say it. Lois is like freaking Jasmine, you know? All with the covert existence, dodging Agents for all those years before she came to Trifle and hooked up with our bro.” Georgia flopped onto her back in the middle of her bed. I mimicked her and looked at the bubbly ceiling.

Light flowed in from our open window, but it was from the snow buzzing around out there. Visibility wasn’t more than five feet out the window for sure. We overlooked the side parking lot and not a car could be seen.

“She has to be an Agent,” Georgia said.

“But maybe an ex-Agent like Jasmine?”

Another huff.

“So not liking your huffs and grunts, girl. Talk to me.”

“I miss Scott. I only just got to know my brother and now I can’t talk to him. I can’t see him. It’s like Mom and Dad. They were killed. I never got to know them. You did. You had all that time with Mom and Dad, and even more with Scott. It’s not fair.” Her voice cracked. “Then, the only mom and dad I’ve ever known turn out to be adoptive parents who have been lying to me. Oh, not to mention my fake mom, Lois, might have been an Agent this whole entire time.”

She pretty much summed everything up with that. Except the torrid affair with Zach, my first true love. He ripped my heart out with a spoon thinking he was protecting me. But then again, it led me to Nate.

At least that’s what I told myself on an almost daily basis. The envelope he gave me for my birthday was still sitting in my backpack—unopened. I’d put it with Mom’s disks and the book, so when Tim got my stuff after he “killed” us, it was in there.

I’d almost opened it, like a billion times, but…I really should throw it away. I was with Nate now. I didn’t want Zach.

I shook my head, bringing my attention back to my sister. She was the one having a meltdown, not me—for once. “Your mom’s letter said why she left. We have to trust it. She isn’t an Agent.” Though how she was constantly evading us was a conundrum on its own right.

“I’ve read that letter, like fifty times, Mandy.” Georgia sniffled. “I don’t know what to believe. I’m freaking out. Sick of this place. Sick of snow. Sick—”

“I know. And I miss Scott, too, girl. But it’s safer this way. You know that, right?” I scrubbed my face with my hands.

“I know it, but it still sucks. I wish I could see him. You know, like, from afar.”

“Nate said that after some more time, maybe we could. It’s not safe right now. Nothing is.” I sucked in a deep breath and closed my eyes. Scott’s image and even Jasmine’s came into focus. I’d not liked Jasmine for the longest time. Turned out she was an Agent, but one of the good guys, and she loved my brother, protected him. She’d proven that time and time again.

“Look. Maybe we can, like, check out Facebook. He might be on there. You know?” I asked.

“You have your account?” The bed squeaked as Georgia sat up.

“I tried my old log in, but it’s deactivated. I mean, we’re dead.”

“You’ve tried to log in? What if you were caught? Or someone saw you online, Mandy?”

“Like I said. It didn’t work.” I sat up. “I wanted to—well—see what people were up to.”

“Oh, man, Mandy, does Nate know?”

“Hell no.”

“Secrets already. Tsk. Tsk.” She smiled.

“I was just—”

“Checking on Zach?”

Heat fused my cheeks. “No.”

“You lie.”

“Like I said. I couldn’t get on.”

“We could set up a fake one. Random name no one would know.” Georgia stood. “You have the laptop Nate gave you, right?”

I nodded. “Really?”

“Yeah. Then we could watch Scott, if he has an account.”

“He won’t. We’ve been off the grid for so long, he’d never do that. He didn’t like that I had Twitter and Facebook accounts, even with our fake names.”

“Let’s try. You could be Kelvin. No one will know. We could—”

“I don’t know, G.”

“Fine. I’ll do it. Go take a shower. You can plead the fifth if I’m caught.” She moved to the desk beside the window. “I have to see him or I’m going to go nuts.”

“I’m going to go nuts from not using my powers. You feel twitchy?”

She straightened. “Twitchy?”

“You know, like you’re going to boil over?”

“No.”

“It’s like exercise. When I don’t use my power, I feel like I’m going to explode. I just want to shoot some ice or something.” I clapped my hands together. “And you know what?”

Her eyebrows furrowed. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

I laughed. “Of course you will.”

“Right. What?”

“I’m thinking, since the visibility is so bad, maybe we can go
play
out behind the hotel tonight.”

“There’s a blizzard, Mandy. Are you insane? Is all this traveling day in and day out starting to freeze your brain?”

“You’re so funny. No. I want to go mess around. Let loose.” I glanced at my blue fingernails. They flickered as if acknowledging my feelings. Like they were anxious to let the ice flow. I opened my palm and conjured a baseball of ice. I curled my fingers around it, relishing the feel of the smooth surface against my flesh.

“Yeah, you think Nate and Tim will allow that? About as much as a fake Facebook account.”

“I’ll convince him. It’ll be fine.”

The thought of having a little fun with some ice production and a room swap for the night sent a flurry of excitement through my stomach. Like a thousand butterfly wings fluttered against my insides. Almost made me forget about Supermodel, Agents, and Bev, the evil mastermind of my last imprisonment.

Almost.

Chapter 3

“A
re you kidding?” Nate shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

“Come on. G and I are going nuts.” I tunneled my hands through my hair as I paced in front of the closed door.

Georgia had totally nailed it. Nate freaked when I asked to go out and play. Sure he was my boyfriend, who said he’d protect me and take care of me once he killed me off to protect me from The Center, but still. He’d turned into my warden, too, and that part was so
not
appealing.

“Look, I know it’s tough playing dead, and that we’ve been stuck in this hotel for two days, but we have to be careful.”

“How are you
not
going insane? I mean, I can only take so many Ricky Lake reruns and cheesy movies. Let alone hotel food.” I shoved my hands in my pockets and stared out the window. Darkness had fallen, but I saw the thick blanket of snow against the floodlights perched outside the window. A flash of red caught my eye, too. No, yellow. Yeah, yellow. “Hey, what’s out there?”

“Plows. Trying to stay ahead of things. It’s stuck, though.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s our in. Let’s go help. We can—”

“No.”

“Nate. Come on.” I wanted to flop onto the floor in an all out hissy-fit, but I restrained myself. I know, how big of me.

“Mandy,” he whispered. “Just because Tim ran every person’s name registered at this hotel through a check and all came clean, doesn’t mean that chick you saw earlier today isn’t someone dangerous to us.”

“What are the chances? Her here? No way. I was just being paranoid.”

“Paranoia has kept me and my team hidden for years. If she triggered something in you, then we need to pay attention to it.” Nate’s forehead crinkled and his dark brows pulled together. “What exactly happened when you saw her, anyway?”

I stepped away from the window and toward the couch. It was nice having the room to ourselves while Georgia and Tim went down to the lobby to get ice cream. Usually we try and sneak a quick make out session whenever we got alone time, but not today. He was probably mad that I was bugging him to let me and Georgia go out and let loose with our powers for a bit. For some
exercise.

“Mandy?”

“Well, I got a little rumble in my tummy, but that was probably because I was mad. She was staring at my boyfriend like a cougar stares at her meal after not having eaten in ten days, you know?”

He laughed, and I turned around. He sat in the armchair next to the couch and watched me with big eyes.

“What?”

“I like hearing you call me your boyfriend.” Redness painted his cheeks. “And that you got jealous.”

“You really didn’t see her?”

“No.”

“How? She’s beautiful. Long, red, flowing hair. Miles of legs. Perfect skin. Perfect boobs. Perfect—”

“Hey.”

“Well, she is. You had to have seen her. You see everything. Like a hawk.”

“I saw her, but only watched her for a second to assess the threat. Didn’t get anything from her on that level, so she was of no interest to me.”

“Wow. Because, aren’t guys all visually oriented? I heard that once. Like, that’s why they like to look at women. But us chicks aren’t wired that way.”

He laughed again.

“Okay. The snickers are getting annoying, buddy.” I plopped onto the table in front of the couch. I sure was pouty. What the hell was wrong with me?

“All right. Let’s go see if we can help that plow.”

I jolted to my feet. “What?” Damn, could he read my mind sometimes or what?