Read Online Chills by Mary Sangiovanni - Free Book Online Page B

against the outside of her car door. She waited, listening, and thought she heard, though she couldn’t be sure, something like glass scratching against metal.
    â€œDan?” Her voice barely broke a whisper; she shook her head and buzzed the power window down. A gust of snow-choked air smacked her face. She grimaced against it and stuck her head out the window. “Dan? Dan!”
    Her hand found the door handle and hesitated. She shielded her eyes against the wind and snow as best she could and looked out into the darkness, but could see nothing. She looked down, scanning the snow drift piling up against her door for whatever could have made the banging and scraping sounds. She saw nothing.
    â€œDan!” she shouted, but in reply, there was only a rush of snow and ice in her eyes and down her throat, and suddenly close behind her, that metallic whine of glass on metal.
    The cold formed a hard lump around the panic in her gut, and she turned her head slowly toward the source of the sound.
    What she saw set loose a scream from her that the wind matched, picked up, and carried away.
    * * *
    Dan swore into the wind. Whatever was wrong with the car, it was far beyond his limited knowledge. No loose wires or burnt-out spark plugs. In fact, the engine was still giving off heat, so he couldn’t imagine the cold had done any damage. As far as he could tell, the battery was fine, but what the hell did he know? He was no mechanic, either.
    His fingers throbbed beneath the gloves, and his toes felt like they had been shoved between sharp rocks. He’d always had poor circulation in his hands and feet, and so had little tolerance for the cold weather. He’d only gotten out to look under the car’s hood to get away from Jessica for a minute. She could get on his nerves like nobody else, and while he liked her in some ways, she often made him want to smack that expression of smug satisfaction in her own good looks and charms right off her face. He’d done a lot for her because of those looks and what those charms promised, and over the last month or so, it had not proved worth the headaches she caused him.
    He slammed down the hood and huddled into his coat. He’d have Jessica call AAA. Hell, she probably already had the cell phone out, and if she wasn’t on the phone arranging for someone to come get them already, then she was biding her time, bitching to friends over texts, until he came back and she could make a big show of calling for a tow.
    Dan’s overhead light was busted, so when he opened the door, it remained dark. He slid in, fully expecting an onslaught of criticism. He didn’t notice the blood until he turned toward the unexpected silence.
    Jessica was gone. Her purse lay open on the floor. On the seat where she’d been, the cracked screen of her crushed cell phone offered pale slivers of light and darkness as it sat in a small puddle of congealing blackness.
    â€œJess?” A cloying coppery smell came from the passenger seat, from that puddle. Blood? When a gust of wind brought snow through her open window, Dan caught a whiff of something else. It was a sour smell he couldn’t place, but it reminded him of the way one’s fingers smelled after touching a metallic surface in a public place—layers of other people’s skin oils, dirty metal, germs, or how he imagined petting-zoo animals might smell after they di—
    A high-pitched wail carried over the wind, scraping across his bones so that the hairs on his arms and neck stood on end.
    Something was outside in the snow.
    Outside—where he had just been, alone and completely unaware.
    Dan pushed the window button just enough to buzz the passenger window all the way up, cutting off the cold, and then locked the doors. He peered cautiously from one dark pane to another, trying to make out what might be out there. The flakes of snow and ice brushed and slapped against the window like a thousand tiny