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Collette could not even scream Instead she just scrambled away from him on the sand until her back hit the solid wall Grit showered down fro down the back of her shirt The floor of the chamber buckled and heaved and hands thrust up froround beneath her, all of theht of her luck and life, was still there It flickered weakly, but it had not yet abandoned her

She held her breath and tried to look away but she could not There were four children noo girls and two boys, all nearly featureless, blanched, and dry When theyat her without eyes

And in their ure she had seen before, cloaked in shuddering gray, body flowing, features thin and jagged, eyes that terrible leed teeth

The Sand at her, and then he reached out and touched the children one by one, and one by one they collapsed into nothing but piles of shifting sand Nothing but sand

"I see you," he said, tapping one long finger just below a sickly yellow eye "Oliver will coone, she could not tear her gaze from the place where he had stood, from the little mounds of sand where the children had been In the dark she was sure she could still see those leleamed dimly, and its soft whispers rasped like the breeze across the sand

Oliver kept his hand on the phone for ain his ears, word of his father’sa stitch in his chest He stared in disbelief through the red-fralass panes of the phone booth at Frost His ht This was London The real world It was earlymaybe a week before Christht was so visually dissonant that he felt locked in that place, trapped in the phone booth, though perhaps that was his secret wish, that heplace

A screah that it penetrated easily through the walls of the phone booth Oliver’s senses ca the world around hi toward the her abdomen, a spill-trail of crimson behind her Blue Jay folloith the still, ebony foron looked like so, a statue in the trickster’s ar her child in a praered out through the gate of Battersea Park The woman had almost hit her and as Kitsune passed, the back of her fur cloak had brushed across the blanket covering the baby’s legs On the blanket noas a bright red stain of fresh blood The woed the blanket away and threw it to the ground She stared after Kitsune and Blue Jay, shouting angrily

Others were beginning to pay attention A pair ofwork on the electrical box on a la quickly toward the corner now, their attention on the woe

Jack Frost stood like an ice sculpture in the hborhood, quite obviously alive, his eyes filled with frustration and anger, his ed frozen teeth

None of this was supposed to happen The Borderkind were not ends anyly, and it would stop hi out what had happened to Collette If he ended up in a cell soet to him He’d be a bloody smear on concrete

"No," he whispered, and then he was

Oliver slah to shatter two of the glass panes Kitsune was nearly upon him The pain etched in her face hurt him, but he turned to Frost

"Can you close her wounds?"

The winterThe sky had begun to darken, the sun obscured by a gathering storht have been the onset of Frost’s wrath or the power of the Black Dragon of Storms

"She’ll heal on her own," Frost said "She needs only a handful of ?" shouted one of the electrical workers

"Co to pull his et involved"

Oliver ignored their continued coo by and were e like curious birds, whispering to one another The an to retreatbut then she paused and pulled a rowled, shaking his head He shoved a finger at Frost’s face "We don’t have a ht now"

The anger that flickered across the winter one in an instant Frost stepped toward Kitsune and pulled her into his chilling eh her teeth in pain The winter man slid a hand beneath her cloak and she let him touch her wound Ice spread across the fabric of her black tunic, the blood that soaked it freezing solid Kitsune hissed again but the pain in her face seee at thefor now"

"Nued "Thank you"

Blue Jay joined the in the world More people were shouting at theate to the park and three or four behind the electricians, as well as a pair of elderly woan to beep angrily asin Battersea Park

"Look here, what the hell d’you think you’re doing? What is that thing?" snapped the fiercely red-faced electrician

"Keith," his partner cautioned

But Keith wouldn’t be swayed He started toward the the freak shoilling to do Maybe he just couldn’t believe what he was seeing, thought Frost was soimmick That didn’t mean he wasn’t afraid In his way, perhaps he was more afraid than anyone elseso afraid that the only way to combat that fear was to confront it

"Oliver--" Frost began

"No," Oliver snapped, staring at hi the winter man to look him in the eye "This is my world now None of this can happen We can’t afford it, not any of us You need to be gone Right now Gone"

The winter htest nod, and then he was, indeed, gone Icy wind shook Oliver where he stood and a trace of snoirled around his feet

"Bloody hell, did you see that?" called another man

But it ohts He heard the to one another and several of them cried out in surprise and alar it so off that, trying to , but it was only a glancing thought There had been too much blood

He took Kitsune’s ared to walk beside hi the chaos, and stillfroan to walk away froht had changed but cars were still stopped Horns honked The trio of strange arrivals to this neighborhood crossed the street as hurriedly as Kitsune couldon! Where you think you’re off to, now? There’s blood back here!" the electrician called

Persistent, he started across the street after thean tothat He snarled over his shoulder