Holly stayed by Jack, her ears slowly going deaf to the sound of his screaming, until a few of the other Invierno residents came.
“Took you long enough” was the only thing she could say when one of the panicking young men yanked her to her feet and led her away. It was only when she was several hundred yards from Jack’s unnatural shrieks that she realized how quiet the city was otherwise.
The young man steering her away said his name, but it went one ear, out the other. Holly’s thoughts zeroed in on Jack and didn’t shift.
“What are those other people gonna do with him?” She barely remembered how many citizens had appeared; she just knew it was enough to get Jack to safety.
“They’ll take him to our hospital,” the young man soothed. She loathed that tone he was using. She wasn’t a fragile little icicle. “You can stay at my house—“
“No,” Holly broke in. “Just no. I’m staying with him.”
The guy shrugged, and that was that. He took Holly to the hospital – a tall, white-stone building close to the center of Invierno. Holly barely remembered the way there, just that it didn’t feel cold enough. At all.
This was the land of ice and snow and blizzards and... and cold! Why was it so hot...
“Miss?”
The guy’s words jolted Holly just enough for her to realize she had stopped walking. Oh, don’t you dare pass out, she told herself, and slumped over into the curiously not-cold snow.
A snapping, whirring sound brought Holly out of the faint.
Something was biting into the side of her face. Holly groaned and eased herself into a sitting position, sliding her arms over the wooden chair arms. Her eyes felt like they were stuck together, but she managed to get them open.
She shook her head, briefly disoriented. The dimmed lights on the walls glowed a barely-there blue that only let her see a vague outline of the hospital room. Just to her side, an air conditioner, cranked to the maximum setting – low, even for an Invierno AC – hummed a comforting buzz. A window at her back let in the pre-dawn light, creeping over her shoulder and onto the hospital bed in front of her.
Holly pushed herself up on her hands. “Jack!”
She sprang out of the chair and rammed herself against the hard edge of the hospital bed. A cooling blanket covered Jack, leaving only his shoulders up showing. With his face pressed into the side of his pillow, his feathery shocks of dark gold hair all tousled around his cheeks, he looked like a kid, an overgrown twelve-year-old sleeping late for school.
Holly gripped the cooling blanket in her fists, swallowing back the tightness in her throat. “Come on, you idiot,” she whispered. “Joke’s over. Ha, ha, very funny. Scare the goofy redhead who doesn’t take anything seriously, not even a millennium in a torture asylum. I get it. Just wake up.”
Jack didn’t move. His eyelids flickered, like his gaze was darting back in forth in his sleep – coma – whatever it was. But that was it.
Holly gritted her teeth, hating the painful tears she kept bottled in her throat. They made her eyes hurt, too. “Get up, you mental patient,” she hissed. “Open them baby blues for me. Please?”
Nothing. Jack’s lips parted, but nothing came out. A silent cry for something.
Holly latched onto his hand. His skin was dangerously warm to the touch. “You aren’t gonna melt on me,” she said, forcing the quiver out of her voice. Maybe he could hear her. “You’re gonna wake up and tell me exactly why you’re doing this. You read me, Frost? You’re gonna give me every single detail. And then I’m gonna toss you in a bonfire for a couple seconds. See how it feels.”
Jack moaned, barely audible, but loud enough to go over the AC. Holly felt fresh tears spring to her eyes and blinked hard.
“Oh, I didn’t mean it, you iceberg.” She tightened her grip on his hand. “You know that. Well, maybe I did mean it a little. But I’m not going to put you in the fire. I’ll probably never let you go long enough.”
Jack fell still, his jaw clenched. His slender fingers gripped at the cold blanket, but it didn’t do anything to chill the warmth.
Holly eased her hand from his and straightened. Firmed her chin. Okay. She could do this.
“I’ll be back in a while, Frosty.” She bent down, hesitated, then did something she’d never dared to do before. She pressed her lips against his warm forehead. Then pulled back.
“And no, I’m not going to tell you about that,” Holly muttered as she hurried from the room.
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