Cold Tomorrow

[29]

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The next morning, I wake to a word written across the wall in blood.

It drips down the wall in shining scarlet trails. It turns my room in a horror scene. And that's not even the worst part. No, the worst part is what it says.

CONSEQUENCES.

"Consequences," Lauren whispered into my ear last night, and now, this.

I love seeing people bleed, don't you?

The smell reaches me, a metallic and foul tang perverting the air. The contents of my stomach threaten to rise up my throat, but I don't move. I can't move. I remain sitting in bed, half out from under the covers.

"What's that smell?" Katherine says, walking into the room.

I can do no better than stare at the wall. My body is a dead thing and I don't know how to move it.

Katherine follows my gaze, turning. She doesn't immediately say anything. Instead she looks back over at me frozen on the bed, her face coated in concern.

I can't take my eyes off the crimson letters. Whose blood is that?

"Melissa," she says. "There's a note." She walks over and picks it up off the bedside table. It has my name on the front, written in the same handwriting as the word on the wall.

I find my voice. "What does it say?"

"'You have one week to break the curse, or–" She inhales sharply. "'Or he dies.'" She looks up at me. "It's signed by K."

"Keon," I murmur. I'm almost too tried for the threat to register. Last night was a bust and my abilities are weaker than they've ever been. I don't feel up for any of this. I just want the world to go away. Rubbing a hand over my face, I say, "He want's me to break a – a curse?"

Katherine frowns down at the note. "He must mean the Limit. But I don't understand why he'd ask you that. It doesn't make any sense."

"The Limit," I say. "The one that was put in place ten years ago?"

"More like eleven years now. It came at a time when we really needed it. It stopped a war." Dismayed, she puts a hand to her mouth and shakes her head. "If it's broken, it'll start a war."

"How do we break it?"

Katherine stares at me, aghast. "Melissa, we – we can't." She looks up at the bleeding bedroom wall and then back at me. Her gaze softens. "We don't have to discuss this here. Come on, I'll make you breakfast. I think you deserve the day off school, don't you? I'll call them and say you've got the flu. You won't miss much."

She goes to place a hand on my shoulder and hesitates as though she's afraid of touching me. And just like that I'm the diseased girl again – Melissa the freak with skin cold as ice. Only this time it's not the burn of my skin she's afraid of but what rests much deeper down, in the heart. I haven't felt like this since before I swapped back.

Before she can either pull away or make contact, I slide out of bed and away from her hand.

"Where are you going?"

I stop at the door and look back. "Breakfast."

-:-:-:-:-

At precisely midday, my phone starts ringing.

We're in the lounge room, Katherine and I, watching cheesy rom-coms and cringe-worthy daytime TV. It was her idea. It's meant to cheer me up, make me forget – even if it's just for a day.