Frost: An Otherworld Tale (The Otherworld Tales Book 1) Read online

  Chelsea Moye

  Frost

  An Otherworld Tale

  First published by Clemmons Moye Publishing in 2016

  Copyright © Chelsea Moye, 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  First Edition

  This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

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  Contents

  Dedication

  Door Mat

  Overreaction?

  Meeting the "Messengers"

  Extractions

  Déjà Vu?

  On The Run

  Refuge?

  Rescue Me

  Tiernan

  Tamara

  Plans & Preparations

  Revelations

  Unwelcome Arrival

  Linothorax

  Magic in the Music

  Oh, Jealousy

  Spilled Beans

  Noah

  Siege Engines & Worse Things

  To Kill a Dragon

  Farewells

  Godspeed

  Homecoming

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  For Shelby Lynn and Kaya Leigh Clemmons. Never stop dreaming!

  1

  Door Mat

  I stared down at my best friend's face, lit up with a broad grin, warm brown eyes, and framed by blond corkscrew curls. He beamed out at me from a picture pasted on the last school valentine I'd ever gotten from him. To: Lauren Frost and From: Noah Rivers were scrawled on the back in crimson crayon. He disappeared when we were in first grade, and that was 11 years ago.

  Familiar waves of bitterness and longing washed over me as I replayed the last time I saw him in my mind. It was the end of the school day, and just like every other day since our first day of kindergarten, Noah gave me a quick hug before we went our separate ways. He grinned at me over his shoulder as he headed to the bus line, and I waved goodbye to him as one of my Granny Betty's students took me by the hand to walk me across the street to the middle school where Granny taught English. I never saw Noah again.

  My eyes filled with involuntary tears, as they always did when I thought too much about Noah. Part of me resented the fact that I couldn't help crying over his disappearance, even eleven years later. Part of me wanted to wallow in the misery of having lost my best friend in the world when I was six years old. My world imploded when he disappeared.

  I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with how emotional I am. My mother has always been a champion of logic over emotion, and my father's emotional depth could make a mud puddle look like the Mariana Trench by comparison. I, on the other hand, have always felt things with a depth and intensity that borders on the ridiculous.

  I scrubbed the tears off my cheeks with the hem of my powder blue tank top and turned my attention to my sketchbook. I continued my work on a sketch of what I thought his face might look like now, at 17. I sketched in a crooked, mischievous grin with straight, white teeth and a full bottom lip. Next came the straight, Grecian-type nose. After that, the hooded, almond-shaped, dark eyes that crinkled at the outer corners and sparkled with mischief flowed from the tip of my pencil. Then, I added short, but still noticeably curly, hair that had darkened from blond to sandy brown with age framing the oval of his face. Finally, I peppered his jaw with a dark five o'clock shadow.

  How is it possible that there's been no trace of Noah found in the past 11 years? It's insane that there's no evidence at all...like he fell off the face of the earth.

  I was contemplating getting out my colored pencils and adding a more lifelike feel to the sketch when my father's girlfriend, Michelle, burst into my bedroom uninvited. At the sight of my near-lifelong bully, I stifled a groan and pasted a neutral expression on my face before speaking in flat tones.

  “Is there something I can help you with, Michelle?”

  I swallowed the mixture of bile and disgust that always clawed its way up my throat when I had to deal with her. She’d been bullying me since I was in kindergarten and she was in third grade. Four months ago, she turned 21, met my father in a bar, and they started dating hot and heavy.

  “Cute, Lauren, but no. Well, you could hurry up and turn 18, graduate, and go off to college somewhere so I can have your father all to myself.”

  I think you mean my father's money. I suppressed a shudder at her obvious daddy fetish and sighed. “If I possessed the power of time travel, believe me, I would be happy to oblige. As it stands, I don’t have that power. Was there something else you needed, or are you just hanging out in my bedroom for kicks and giggles?”

  I’ve always loathed confrontation, or I would have just told her to get out. I could feel my gut knotting up and churning as she studied me through her narrowed, cold gray eyes. My anxiety ratcheted up as her gaze swept down from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. All the hair on my body was standing on end when her eyes locked onto my sketchbook and a sardonic smirk curled at the corners of her pouty, Barbie doll pink lips. I stood, frozen, seemingly exempt from the fight or flight reaction as she snatched it from my grasp and a mocking laugh spilled out of her too-perfect mouth.

  “Really, kid? Still obsessing over your dead best friend?”

  I couldn’t stop myself from gasping and letting out a ragged sigh. “Noah’s not dead, Michelle. He just disappeared. There’s a difference.”

  My fingers twitched as I fought the desire to ball my hands up into fists while Michelle snorted and rolled her eyes at me. “Just because they haven’t found any trace of your dearly beloved friend doesn’t mean he’s not dead. It just means they haven’t found his body.”

  “Please stop,” I plead, my voice cracking. “I can’t think about that right now.”

  “Why?” Her voice was flippant, but I felt the razor edge in it. “Why are you so incapable of letting go of the idea of this little friend of yours? He’s been gone for eleven years. Wherever he is, he’s never coming back, and he’s most certainly forgotten about you. Move on.”

  “Can I have my sketchbook back, please?” My fingers were trembling and I was fighting the urge to throw up. I’ve always had physical reactions to conflict, and Michelle has always seemed to enjoy eliciting those reactions, for whatever reason.

  “Your stupid doodles aren’t going to bring him back, you know.” Her sneering observation made bile rise in the back of my throat.

  “That’s not the point, Michelle,” I rasped, holding my hand out for my sketchbook. “Please just give it back and leave me alone.”

  “What for? So you can cry yourself to sleep and dream about your soulmate who never was? You’re just going to wallow in this stupid obsession until it kills you.”

  “What do you care if it does?” My mutter was barely audible.

  “Oh, I don’t. It wouldn’t affect me in the least. You’ve always been little more than a meaningless toy to me, kid. You’re an outlet…boredom relief at best. At worst, you’re an obstacle between me and your daddy’s money. Losing you might kill him, though, so I’m going to need you to snap out of this gloomy obsession.”

  All I could do was stand there and shake from head to foot with distraught rage. “Please, I’m begging you, just leave me alone, Michelle. Do you even love my Dad?”

  “Believe me when I tell you that you being l
eft alone is something I’m happy to arrange, and for the record, there are a lot of things I love about your father.”

  Yeah, we all know you love his money, I thought. I remain unconvinced on all other points, though.

  She gave my sketchbook a careless toss and it landed face-down on my well-broken-in black Converse low-tops as she flounced out of my room. I snatched the book up off the floor and smoothed the page with the speculative sketch I’d done of Noah on it, then hugging it to my chest as if that would somehow strengthen the connection I still felt to the boy who’d been missing for eleven years.

  I gently laid it on my desk and willed my cramping stomach to ease up as I got out my colored pencils. I settled into my leather desk chair with a shaky sigh and coaxed my fingers into bringing my speculative rendering of Noah to life. I worked from the top down, adding a coffee-brown tone with lighter brown highlights to his hair, milk chocolate for the eyes, a ruddy tint to his cheeks because I remembered that he loved being outside in the sunshine, and the finishing touch was a warm tanned tone to his skin.

  I closed my eyes and breathed deep. I’d hoped that the sketch would somehow be therapeutic for me, but all it did was make me miss my best friend that much more. As if on cue, the soft music playing on my iPhone switched to Johnny Cash’s version of “Hurt.” I let out an ironic chuckle and leaned my desk chair back, letting it cradle me as the music ebbed and flowed around me.

  Something about Johnny’s voice was a balm for the raw places in my heart and soul, so I was in a much better state of mind when my father knocked on my door and stuck his head in my room.

  “Hey, honey. Did Michelle tell you the news?” He was grinning his best, goofiest, most innocently boyish I've-done-something-dumb-and-selfish grin.

  I sat up and swiveled my chair to face him, unable to stop myself from frowning at him as dread slithered and squirmed in the pit of my stomach. “What news?”

  “Ric and I got the update for the game cranked out and online last night, so I’m off until after New Year’s Eve, now.” He beamed at me, and I was completely nonplussed.

  “That’s cool, Dad, but why would Michelle tell me something like that? She’s pretty much clueless about everything having to do with Nic & Ric Software. I have more to do with the company than she does.”

  His grin faltered, but he recovered quickly. “Well, this means that I’m going to get to take that vacation with Michelle I’ve been wanting to take since we released Wytch World Online. I just booked our tickets to Las Vegas, and we’re going to get married while we’re there. We’re leaving in a couple of hours. This shouldn’t interfere with your plans to go to your Mom’s for Christmas, but you are going to have to find someone else to drop you off at the airport. Is that okay?”

  I stared at him with my mouth hanging open for a minute before I recovered my senses enough to respond. “Yeah, sure, that’s totally fine, Dad,” I stammered. “I’m sure Audrey, James, or Granny Betty can give me a ride, no problem.”

  “Awesome,” his smile brightened by about 100 watts, and he nodded. “Well, I’ve gotta go throw some things in a bag and make hotel and dinner reservations. Have a good Christmas with your mom, sweetie.”

  “Okay, have fun in Vegas.” I forced a smile, and he leaned against my door frame.

  “Aren’t you going to congratulate me on my impending nuptials, honey?” His brow was furrowed, and I could tell that underneath his full head of salt-and-pepper hair, he was confused as to why I didn’t seem all that happy for him.

  “Do you realize that you used the word impending to refer to your upcoming Vegas wedding? You know…the word that usually precedes doom?" I scoffed and shook my head. "I’d say that says something about your feelings toward marriage in general, Dad. Are you sure you’re not feeling pressured to marry Michelle because this is the South, Bay Minette is a small town, and people don’t really approve of you living with her outside of wedlock?”

  My dad sighed and shook his head. “It’s not 1950, and not everybody’s as big of a prude as your Granny Betty, you know.”

  I shook my head and ran my hands through my hair in frustration. “I’m not trying to be a jerk, Dad. I’m just a little worried that you’re rushing into marrying a girl who’s only four years older than I am, and you might regret it later. You’ve been happily divorced for the past thirteen years. Why rock the boat now if you don’t care what people think anyway?”

  He groaned and shook his head. “I really wish you’d get past your age gap bias and try a little harder to be nice to Michelle. She’s fun and energetic, and she makes me happy. It shouldn’t make a difference that I’m 42 and she’s 21. I want to spend the rest of my life with her, and I expect you to respect that.”

  Yeah. You're literally twice her age. I hung my head with a resigned sigh. “Yes, sir. Enjoy your wedding.”

  “Thanks, sweetie. Enjoy your trip to your Mom’s.” He shut my door with a quiet click, and I started crying for a whole new reason.

  I snatched my phone out of its radio dock and called my other best friend, Audrey Miller. I was borderline hyperventilating when she finally answered.

  “Hey, Lauren, what’s up?”

  “Oh. My. God.” I almost choked on my tears. “My dad is freaking marrying that gold-digging bitch!”

  “Whoa, slow down! Your dad is actually marrying Michelle?” Audrey’s voice mirrored my own horror. “Your father is marrying Michelle Cain…the same Michelle who went to school with us? She’s 21 years younger than he is! That’s so gross. He could legally drink when she was born.”

  I gagged and resisted the urge to throw up. “When you put it that way, that makes it sound even more disgusting than it already was.”

  “The whole situation is screwed up. How do they have anything in common outside of beer and boinking?”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s all their relationship is based on. They’re both shallow as hell. He’s her limitless piggy bank, and she strokes his ego. They have fun together. I don’t think dad’s considered what’s going to happen when the fun runs out.”

  “Does he even care that she bullied you on a constant basis when we were growing up?”

  I snorted and rolled my eyes. “She still bullies me. Dad chooses not to see that. The truth would be far too inconvenient for him. He’s a hedonistic teenager trapped 42-year-old man’s body.”

  “Savage, but true,” Audrey quipped. “I’ve heard him tell people that he created his own software company so he could play video games for a living. What are you going to do if he marries her?”

  “Not if, Audrey, when, and I have no idea. They're hopping a flight to Vegas and getting married ASAP.” I sighed and shook my head. “I need to talk to Mom about it.”

  “Well, you’re flying up there in a few days.” Her voice was vaguely encouraging, but also managed to sound like she was trying not to let her classic redhead temper run away with her.

  I drummed my fingers on my sketchbook and shrugged, even though I knew she couldn't see the gesture through the phone. “Honestly, I’m thinking about seeing if I can have my flight moved up. I don’t even want to be here right now.”

  “Who could blame you? Your home has been invaded, and your dad is basically marrying your nemesis. I wouldn’t want to stay, either.”

  “If things get much worse here, I may move in with Mom.” I blurted, surprising myself as well as my best friend. I didn't even know I was considering it until it came out of my mouth in a frustrated rush.

  “Move to Massachusetts? Are you insane? You can barely hack the weather there when you visit her on Christmas break!”

  “You make a fine point, but I’m also looking at living with Michelle as my stepmother. She’s been a bad enough bully before now, but if she’s given any kind of real authority over me, I know she’s going to ruin my life.” I was pacing around my room, trying to build up the courage to follow through with the idea of moving in with Mom.