Chapter 17: Frost and Stone

That wasn't important, what was important was she knew how to get Mr. Riordan to meet her at the stone. She looked up Riordan's number in her father's book.

"Good morning, Mr. Riordan," she said when he answered the phone. "I'm sorry for bothering you so early, but my parents are both in the hospital and I need your guidance. You're the only one I could think to call. There is no one here, it wouldn't be right for you to come to the house. I'll meet you in front of the school and you can tell me what I should do."

She hung up before he could get a word in, but she heard him breathing like he'd just run a marathon. He'd be there, but she wanted to be there first. She threw on her coat and ran out the door. The ice almost sent her flying. It coated the world as it had in her dream. Siobhan pushed the thought away and headed toward the school. People were moving about trying to scrape ice off their cars and cursing the weather.

The sky shone a pewter grey in the east. She didn't have much time. Fortunately, the school wasn't far. She took the shortcut through the tiny park that faced the main doors, but stopped and waited at the black stone pillar that stood in the middle of the park. The stone was the same kind of stone that her aunt had sent her. She put her hand on it and felt the cold that went deeper than the coating of ice on the pillar.

Mr. Riordan was standing at the door of the school.

Siobhan waved and tried to put the siren call as well as her own innocence into the motion. She must have succeeded as Mr. Riordan walked across the road to her.

"I think we'd do better to talk in my office," he said. He looked terrible. His suit hung off him and his tie was askew, but his eyes burned with desire.

"Sure, Mr. Riordan," she said, "but please, may I have my stone back? I'm really sorry, I'll do anything to prove that." Siobhan felt like throwing up, but Riordan started breathing harder and he brought his left hand out of his pocket. It was clutching the stone like he wasn't able to let go of it.

"I can't let go," Mr. Riordan said. "It won't let me let go." His voice was thin and plaintive like an old man's.

"Just stretch out your arm," she said. The sun was lighting the tops of the skyscrapers she could see past the school building. "Just stretch your arm, and it will be enough."

Shaking as if the stone were the heaviest thing he'd ever lifted, Mr. Riordan reached out to her. She took the stone and he let his arm drop with a huge sigh of relief.

"Alright, I'm here, and I have the stone," she said. She ignored Riordan's puzzled look as the grey man stepped around the side of the building. He was enormous.

"Your friend has been feeding me," the grey man boomed. "Give me the stone."

"Come here and get it," she said, "you said at the standing stone."

"I also said dawn," the grey man said as he thumped across the street.

"The light isn't on the stone yet," Siobhan said. She gave him the stone just before the sun lit the top of the stone.

"Your mother will live," the grey man said, "but she will curse you for saving her." He backhanded her. Siobhan rolled across the icy park with the heat of the blow on her face. The grey man was laughing as he stomped toward the pillar. What would happen if he connected that stone to the pillar? Nothing good, Siobhan thought. She ran at the grey man. He obviously thought she was defeated because he didn't even look at her. Not until she hit his feet with her best illegal soccer tackle. He hit the ground as she rolled away. Now, he noticed her. He roared rage at her and tried to crush her with his feet. She kept rolling, pulling him further away from the pillar. Then he switched tactics and grabbed her by the throat. He lifted her up and let her dangle from his hand.

"It would have been so much easier to just give me what I wanted," he said. "That's not such a big thing, is it? He had no problem." The grey man pointed to where Riordan sat gasping air and watching them with his mouth hanging up. He looked like he was dying.

"I'm taking back my kick," Siobhan said. "They aren't dead."

"What?" The grey man slammed her into the pillar. She felt the ice run under her skin. It pulled her will from her. The sunlight lost its glow as the world began to turn grey.

"He," she pointed at Riordan, "he's still alive, my mother's still alive, my father's alive. The deal was my kick for their death." The grey man's hand was choking the life from her, but she forced the words past the barrier in her throat.

"That can be fixed," the grey man made a fist with the other hand. He was big enough now he could reach across to Riordan.

"Too late," Siobhan said. She took hold of the energy that flowed around her, sensing Riordan's exhaustion and self-disgust, and the students who were beginning to show up at the school. The ice of the pillar exploded into flame and colour returned to the world. The flame pushed the grey man's hand from her throat. His presence still blotted out much of the light, but she felt past him to something she hadn't noticed missing.

Thanks for coming, she thought toward the sunlit sky. She heard the light laughing, and breathed energy into a web around the grey man.

"Why are you saving this creep?" the grey man said as he stretched toward Riordan, but his arms were too short to reach now., "He was going to rape you. You know that."