Cold Fire [SAMPLE]

[11]

CHAPTER ELEVEN

When I open my eyes, Rand is kneeling in front of me, my untouched glass of water in his hand.

“Water?” he offers with a smile. I accept it, and I down the glass in a few seconds.

He gets up and returns to the seat he was in when I blacked out. The spot next to him is empty.

“Where’s Caden?” I ask.

“He’s, uh…” He stops, his gaze flicking to something over my shoulder. I turn to see Caden walking around the corner, his eyes on us.

“I was just getting something to eat,” Caden says.

I watch as he makes his way back to the couch and then look to Rand. “How long was I out?”

“About fifteen minutes. Do you want me to pick up where I left off?”

It takes a second for me to remember the explanation – the reason that I fainted – and when I do, all I can think about is the memory of me in a dark room with a man holding a hard unidentifiable object. It doesn’t feel right to think of it as a memory, but I don’t think I can call it a nightmare anymore.

I nod in response to Rand’s question even though I don’t really want him to continue– I would rather forget everything he told me before I fainted – but I won’t be able to sleep tonight if he doesn’t answer the pounding questions in my head.

“Okay, well, as I was saying, they swapped your spirits. So, when I knew you as a child, your name was Sarah and you were Sarah, but then they put your spirit in Melissa’s body and put Melissa’s in yours. And because no one could see a physical difference and you were too young to realise what was happening, you just became Melissa. Is this making sense? It’s kind of a tricky thing to explain.”

I nod, but in truth, I’m still trying to get my head around it. “So my parents aren’t my real parents and my body isn’t my real body and my name isn’t my real name?”

 “Yep.” He smiles, and I can’t understand why anyone would smile at a time like this. He basically just told me that everything I know is a lie.

I really want to stop there, but there are still things I have to ask. “What does all this have to do with my disease?”

Rand smiles again, as if I’ve just asked him the best question in the world. “Spirits are freezing cold, but the body acts as a sort of container for the cold. If you were to come across a spirit which left its body, you wouldn’t be able to get within a metre of it before you froze to death. Everyone’s body is designed to hold their spirit and their spirit only, so if they’re swapped, the body won’t be able to contain the cold. The cold won’t leak out of the skin, but it will leave the spirit and freeze the body. And since your spirit knows that if the body gets to too cold and dies, it will die too, it extracts the heat from the air to keep you and your body alive.”

Rand gives me a few seconds to think over everything he said, and even then, it still just feels like a mess of words.

 “It only happened once a month at first because the cold takes a while to freeze the body, but as time passed your body got colder, and it will continue to grow colder.” Rand takes a deep breath. “There’s something else you should know. Your ‘heat attacks’ as you call them, only delay the freezing process. Eventually, your body will get too cold, and you’ll die.”

I can’t breathe.

This can’t be happening – this can’t be real. He’s lying – this just a joke and boy, have they fooled me.