Love Like Winter ❄️ Xavier Thorpe

Chapter 33: Moonlight Duel

While I'm partly reminiscing and partly trying not to get sucked back into the trauma surrounding everything that happened, Xavier whispers into my ear, "Remember that Airbnb we stayed at in Salem?"

His lips brush against my ear and send shivers down my spine, my eyes flit up to meet his and he smiles. "I just got this weird email from the guy that owns it. He said he's putting it up for sale and wanted to reach out to us since we were the last ones who rented it, in case we were interested before he listed it."

"You want to move to Salem?"

Xavier shrugs. "It was just something I wanted to mention, Princess. I remembered both of us saying how safe we felt out there and it was just calm and quiet."

I shut my eyes, letting my thoughts wander back to our little Airbnb in the heart of downtown Salem, Massachusetts. Xavier wasn't wrong, not even in the slightest. I felt safer out there than I'd felt anywhere in Vermont in a long time, but am I really prepared to just pack up and move two hours away from our friends and family? What if we needed help with Zoey?

There's so many factors that play into deciding something like this, and before I even have a chance to respond, something hits the car with a resonating thud, hard enough to nearly spin the car around.

"What the hell was that?" I ask as my eyes try to scan our surroundings. "Did we hit a deer?"

Acantha whimpers from the seat ahead of us and shakes her head. "I don't think that was a deer."

The car goes completely silent, almost as if everyone stops breathing. Whatever hit our car is now on the roof, crawling and banging along, and all I can think about is the bus scene from Jeepers Creepers 2. None of the adults seem even phased. Wednesday keeps wincing whenever there's a really loud or sudden bang.

Xavier and I sit almost completely still except for my shaking hands. The banging stops and whatever entity is up there slides along the roof of the car until it jumps off and lands behind the car in the middle of the road.

Standing there menacingly is none other than Levi fucking Crackstone, staring at our car from the distance. I don't know what feels worse, seeing Levi behind our car after he literally rammed it and crawled on top of it, or the way it felt in that godforsaken facility. Neither situation is pleasant, and it feels like I'm not getting any oxygen.

Acantha mutters under her breath and barely hesitates before she climbs over Wednesday to get out of the car.

"Acantha, what the fuck are you doing? Don't go out there," Tyler says somewhere between a yell and a whisper.

She looks back at him and smiles. "Ty, I have to. He'll listen to me. I hope."

The car goes completely silent again as Acantha shakily approaches Levi. The back windows are down so we can hear what is being said between them as we watch from the back window of the car.

"Levi, what the hell are you doing here?" She tries to stay calm and not show how nervous she is, but it's clear as day to me.

Levi crosses his arms across his chest and laughs. "I think I could ask you the same question."

"I'm doing what you told me to do, remember?"

"If you're doing all of that just to make them trust you, then you're certainly doing a convincing job," he pauses and takes a step towards her. "But, if that is the case, then you should have no problem at all turning on them, right?"

Acantha stutters and looks anywhere but at Levi, her eyes darting between the ground and the road behind him. He closes the distance between them, one large step at a time, until he's barely a foot away from Acantha and our car. His hand flies up to her throat and he lifts her off of the ground as high as he can with his hand and then he continues levitating her with his telekinesis.