Frost Bite

Chapter 3

Jack

I shouldn't have saved her.

I know that as I stare at her friend, lying with the heavy weight of pneumonia on his chest, keeping him from breathing. I know that as I watch her tear apart my house looking for anything that will help him. As she breathes in and out and glares at me with the fierce, burning hate that only a human can produce.

I shouldn't have saved her because she reminds me of everything that I'm not.

"What are you staring at?" she demands, folding her arms across her chest again.

"That's a defensive position," I say automatically.

She raises her eyebrows. "What?"
 "Folding your arms across your chest like that. It's a defense mechanism."

"You're analyzing my body language?" Her voice is flat and that's how I know she's really mad.

"You're a very overt person, physically," I inform her because that seems like the sarcastic sort of thing to say to get under her skin.

And I'd like to be under her skin.

"And you don't even have Tylenol. Who doesn't have Tylenol? You're not some naturalistic let's-die-instead-of-using-modern-medicine crazy, are you?" she asks warily. And something about it amuses me. This girl who wants to be a doctor has no room for anything but the scientific in her mind. Hard facts and numbers and controlled variables are her playground. How ironic that she's talking to an imaginary creature – a myth so old and unbelievable I'm in a children's cartoon that airs every Christmas
 But I don't — can't — say that. So I just shrug. "I just don't get sick."

"Who doesn't get sick?" she demands, throwing her hands up in the air.

"Me."
 "Rhetorical question..." She stares at me and then opens her mouth to speak again. "What's your last name?"

If my blood weren't already cold, that question would have chilled it. "Does it matter?"

She arches a brow. "Yeah, it matters. Because you don't want to tell me."

I have to smile at that. "You like knowing things."

She rolls her eyes but I see her mouth twist into a ruefully self-aware shape. "Everyone likes knowing things."

"But you insist on it."

She glares at me. "Jack, stop screwing with me."

"I'm not going to tell you my last name."
 "Why not?!" she demands stepping closer to me, invading my personal space and she's gotten closer to me than any human being has in the last two hundred years.

I forgot how warm people are.

I raise an eyebrow at her and she blushes, slightly, but holds her ground. "Why are you cold?"

That startles me. "What?"

She rolls her eyes at me. Like I'm stupid. It's startlingly attractive. "I can feel you. You're cold. Like opening the freezer. Why the hell is that?"

I smile. "I have a block of ice for a heart. Didn't you already guess?"
 "That's not an answer," she begins and I should be annoyed that she's arguing with me. But I like it. She's feisty – overflowing with life and so, so vibrant.

In the middle of Alaska. Who in Alaska is overflowing with life?

"Maybe you're just warm."

She frowns. "You mean a normal ninety-eight point six?"

I'm about to answer when Ryan lets out a horrible cough. It's sounds like he's drowning. Which, I guess, in a way, he is.

Oh, the fragility of humanity or whatever you want to call it. I should pity him. I'm immortal. I'm a force of nature with more power than he will ever have. But instead all I can feel is envy. Because he may be dying, but a single day matters. He matters to someone and other people matter to him. He has a life.

I have an existence.

Josephine runs toward Ryan and lets out a cry when she sees him because his lips are tinged with blue and at this point it's clear: he's going to die.

"Ryan, no." She stars to cry and something inside me buckles and I sit down next to her as she cries for her friend. The depth of her grief is startling. And I realize just how much I've forgotten about humanity.

She makes me remember.

"I can save him," I say without thinking. 
 She looks up, her sobs quieted. "What?"

"I can save him. It will look pretty horrible to you. I don't think you should be in here while I do it." I reach for the Swiss Army knife in the bed stand — salvaged from her friend's jacket.

Josephine stares at the knife and then back at Ryan and then she turns to me and clenches her jaw. "I'm staying," she informs me with a shaking voice and I admire her bravery.

"Don't throw up," I plead before set the blade against my palm and cut it open.

"What the – " she starts to shout but I silence her with a look.

I grab Ryan's palm and do the same thing, and Josephine doesn't make a sound, doesn't move an inch, doesn't even breathe as I do it.

I press his palm to mine and already I can feel my wound beginning to knit itself back together. Immortality does have some advantages. Even if they are few and not nearly enough to outweigh the loss.

"How will that help him?" she demands because in her world of science this will do nothing, just risk him contracting whatever illnesses I may have and be unaware of.
 "Just watch," I tell her as I let go of Ryan's hand and clean it off. Josephine gasps when she sees his palm, clean and healed, with only the faint sheen of a scar that looks years old.

"How did you do that?" she demands, staring at me with only a little fear.

"I told you my name was Jack. You asked if I had a last name. I do. It's Frost."

She sputters out a laugh. "Jack Frost? Like in the kid's cartoon? Where are your tights? You're crazy."

"Look at his palm again and then tell me if you really believe I'm crazy," I fire back and she quiets.

She stares at the thin, silvery line on Ryan's hand and I can practically see logic and what's right in front of her battling away in her mind. "Why did you save us?" she demands, barely breathless. "If you're Jack Frost then why do you give a damn?"
 I shrug. "I don't know. I honestly don't know."

She frowns at me. "You're crazy," she echoes.
 I smile. "Let's see what you say in a few hours when he's better." I turn around and walk away. And I can't help – against my better judgment – but worry that she won't trust me, that she doesn't like me.

It shouldn't matter, and I shouldn't care, because in the blink of the eye of the universe she'll be dead.