Iced

I can’t even budge it on the snow!

“What? You got some kind of ultradense metal I ain’t never heard of?” I say grumpily, but if he hears me he doesn’t respond. How does Ryodan always have the coolest stuff? Where the heck does he get it?

I look back up at the funnel. It’s eerily beautiful, crystalline planes and angles reflecting the dazzling purples of the aurora borealis. I will a silent thought to the universe: Let this work. We’ve all had a tough gig lately. Let there be no casualties tonight.

Kat’s outside again, watching us. Ryodan told her she has to move the sidhe-seers out into the snow once we begin. It almost made her nuts! She took it as the equivalent of him saying the abbey was an accepted casualty, but I know him. He wasn’t saying that. He just takes the possibles into consideration and knows that trying to move nearly three hundred women in the middle of a crisis is a nightmare. I’ve tried to move them during times of peace and quiet and had the luck of a broken mirror nailed beneath an upside-down horseshoe with a ladder nearby that a black cat just walked under. Like sheep, sidhe-seers herd by nature, until you want them to go somewhere. Then they’re all fluffy bottoms and broken legs.

Since we’re just about to start, I guess they’re all inside bundling up. Freeze-framing the equipment into place is the only thing keeping me from shivering. Well, that and nervousness about overshooting my mark and ending up a crispy critter might be heating me up, too. Some of Ryodan’s dudes are getting fires going, and a few sidhe-seers begin to straggle out and gather around.

I look at Kat walking toward me from the abbey. She looks so slight with her hair blowing back from her face and her body like a reed that could be too easily broken. I worry about Kat. I know she didn’t want to run the abbey but everybody insisted. Kat exudes something peaceful and strong that makes you feel at ease even when you probably shouldn’t. She says faith is a rock and as long as you have your feet planted firmly on it you can’t falter.

“Dani.”

“Hey, Kat.”

“It’s too close to the abbey. Set it up closer to the IFP.”

“Can’t. When the Hoar Frost King comes, if the IFP is too close to the speakers, the funnel could get iced before we can cut the tether and use it.”

“If it’s not closer, the Hoar Frost King could appear, ice, and vanish before the IFP even gets to it.”

I don’t say nothing. I already took that into consideration when Dancer and me did our time calculations.

“Do you really believe this has any chance of working?”

I plug two speakers into a generator and begin piggybacking the connections. “Which part of it?”

“Any.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure we’re going to end up drawing it here. I don’t know the exact sound it’ll come for, but we’ll make it eventually. By the time Dancer’s done, the music is going to vie with arena-rock for sheer decibels. We shut everything down in and around the city and Dancer dropped the signal to our decoys once we got here. If sound is the Hoar Frost King’s Scooby-snacks—and I’m not wrong about this—it’s going to be starving and we’re leaving it only one source of food. I give attracting it ninety-nine percent odds.”

“And destroying it?”

I ponder that. I been pondering that all the way out. “I hear the IFP incinerated everything in its path, even boulders and concrete buildings and stuff, right?”

She nods.

“The IFP is part of Faery so it’s not like we’re trying to incinerate a Fae monster with human fire. We’re trying to burn it in fire from its own world. I think that increases the odds substantially.”

“But who says fire will win over ice? You said it’s not even made of ice. What if it’s made of something fire has no effect on? What if you summon the Hoar Frost King here and it ices the IFP?”

I been trying not to consider that possibility. “Then we’re all in a world of shit and probably dead, Kat.”

She gives me a look.

I flash her a gamine grin. “But then at least we got rid of the IFP!”

She gives me another look.

I spread my hands, palms up. “What do you want me to say? I’m not going to lie to you. You’re like Christian. You know anyway.”

“You do realize it will require impeccable timing. You have to draw it to a precise location, cut the tether holding the IFP, and hope the Ice Monster gets trapped in the few seconds it’s in our dimension. And whoever cuts that tether might get iced.”

“Dude, a few secs are all we need! Most of us can freeze-frame and Christian can sift. We’re darned fast! We’re setting up practically on top of the IFP. The instant the Hoar Frost King appears, we cut the tether, and both sound stage and Ice Monster get swallowed.”

Her gaze spans the fifteen yards between the sound stage and the perimeter wall of what used to be Ro’s chambers but are now hers. “And so does the abbey.”

“We’re going to retether it before that happens!”

“Again, that’s going to require impeccable timing.”

“Again, dude, we all freeze-frame. ’Sides, I heard the IFP wasn’t moving all that fast. Ryodan says as long as he’s got thirty seconds and gets it done before it enters the abbey, it’s a no-brainer.”

“And if it reaches the abbey?”

“It won’t.”

“If it does?” she presses.

“Look, we got at least a minute before it hits the abbey wall. We ain’t going to let it take the abbey.” I’m not about to tell her that Ryodan said if it entered the abbey he’d be unable to ward it off until it came out the other side. Something about a containment spell only working if you completely enclose on all four sides the object you want contained.

“One minute,” Kat says quietly. “Do you realize if it destroys this place, we will lose everything our order has spent millennia gathering? All our books and sacred objects, our history, our home. Do you see the grass and flowers growing up against the wall? Do you realize if the IFP breaches the abbey, it may very well melt Cruce’s prison and set him free? The Sinsar Dubh will be loose in our world, walking around in the body of an Unseelie prince!”

“Look, Kat, I ain’t saying it’s a perfect plan. But if you don’t have any better ideas, get out of the way and let us do our job.” I look around at the swells of snow, the iced trees, the piles of crusted drifts. “How much longer do you think we’ll survive like this?”