Read Online February Thaw by Tanya Huff - Free Book Online

disconnected from his body. "Oh wow. It’s a good thing I kept the mustard."
     
    *
     
    "You can't feel your skin from the inside," Isabel snorted at last. They were walking along College Street, heading toward Spadina.
    "I can't?"
    She glanced over at Fred, but he was watching where he was putting his feet with single-minded intensity. "Okay, I can't."
    "When you try, what do you feel?"
    "I don't know." A pause while he crouched and picked something off the sidewalk – she didn't want to know what. "A sort of a sizzle."
    "Good. You found the power." He straightened, putting the something in his pocket. "That's what I wanted you to find."
    "Yeah? Then why didn’t you just tell me to look for the power?"
    "Did you know what to look for?"
    "No, but..."
    "Now you do."
    Isabel sighed. What a waste of time. "Is that lesson two?"
    Fred started. "There was a lesson one?"
    "Yeah: trust what you actually see, not what you think you should see." They'd reached the lights and, as they seemed to have been wandering without purpose, Isabel crossed north with the green.
    "Good lesson." He stepped off the curb after her. "Wish I’d had a fish."
    "Right." And as far as she was concerned, that was it for the night. Godfry, by far the more consistently articulate of the two, had long since disappeared. "Look, I gave it a shot but it's getting late and I promised my dad I'd be in bed by midnight."
    "You agreed to be my apprentice."
    "Fine." She rolled her eyes and picked up the pace back toward Bay Street. "I'll be your apprentice tomor..."
    The shadows moved in the way shadows didn't, drawing closer, growling softly, tiny red lights flickering in pairs. They were all around her, cutting her off.
    "Find the sizzle! Grasp it. Throw it at them!"
    Fred sounded kilometres away although she knew he couldn’t have been more than a meter behind her. Propelled by the pounding of her heart, the sizzle raced around just under her skin. No way she could catch it. And what the hell did grasp mean anyway?
    A louder growl. Isabel spun around to face it. Her elbow brushed shadow. Sparks flew. She wanted to scream but she couldn't find her voice. Wrapping her arms around her body, she tried to make herself as small as possible. Which seemed to contain the sizzle.
    So she'd found it. But if this was grasping it, how did she throw it?
    As a second shadow brushed icy terror against her.
    The night exploded in light.
    When she could see again, Isabel stared at the image of an elongated arm burned into the bricks of the building beside her, the talons nearly touching the shadow of her throat.
    She peered through the white spots dancing through her vision. "Did I do that?"
    "The youngest is the most powerful."
    "So you said." There were other images burned beyond the closest one. "Cool. So, if I can do this, why do I need you?"
    "Do you know how you did it?"
    "Uh..." Icy terror. Light. "...no."
    "Can you do it again?"
    The sizzle had faded to a tingle – and in some places not even that. "Not right now."
    "What if you had to? What if they attacked again?"
    "More of them?" When he nodded, she moved a little closer to the streetlight. "Okay, okay, I need you. Still, can't I have a moment to enjoy my victory?"
    "No." His voice dropped an octave and he held out his hand. "Teenager sets off explosion in street. Film at eleven."
    "That's so retro, but I take your point." The wail of police sirens grew closer. His hand was still basically clean. She reluctantly put hers in it.
    And they were standing outside her building.
    Fighting the urge to puke, Isabel staggered back until her shoulder blades were pressed against the brick. Waiting for the world to stop rocking, she sucked in deep lungfuls of air.
    "Downside to everything," Fred murmured philosophically. "Can you spare some change?"
    Although Isabel offered him the use of the spare room, Fred spent the night on the terrace, wrapped in a disgusting sleeping bag he pulled from his pocket universe.
    "I have to be