Frostbite

"He's taking the semester off."

I stared.

Smiling at my shock, she nodded. "He's going to stay and work with me… and Ms. Carmack. All this time, he never even knew what spirit was. He just knew he hadn't specialized but that he had these weird abilities. He just kept them to himself, except for when he occasionally found another spirit user. But they didn't know any more than he did."

"I should have figured it out sooner," I mused. "There was something about being around him. … I always wanted to talk to him, you know? He just has this … charisma. Like you do. I guess it's all tied into spirit and compulsion or whatever. It makes me like him … even though I don't like him."

"Don't you?" she teased.

"No," I replied adamantly. "And I don't like that dream thing, either."

Her jade eyes went wide with wonder. "That is cool," she said. "You've always been able to tell what's going on with me, but I've never been able to communicate with you the other way. I'm glad you guys got away when you did…but I wish I could have figured out the dream thing and helped find you."

"Not me," I said. "I'm glad Adrian didn't get you to go off your meds."

I hadn't found that out until a few days after being in Spokane. Lissa had apparently rejected Adrian's initial suggestion that stopping the pills would let her learn more about spirit. She had admitted to me later, however, that if Christian and I had stayed missing much longer, she might have cracked.

"How are you feeling lately?" I asked, recalling her concerns about the medication. "You still feel like the pills aren't working?"

"Mmm…well, it's hard to explain. I still feel closer to the magic, like maybe they aren't blocking me so much anymore. But I'm not feeling any of the other mental side effects…not upset or anything."

"Wow, that's great."

A beautiful smile lit her face. "I know. It makes me think there might be hope for me to learn to work the magic after all someday."

Seeing her so happy made me smile back. I hadn't liked seeing those dark feelings starting to return and was glad they'd vanished. I didn't understand the how or the why, but as long as she felt okay-

Everyone has light around them, except for you. You have shadows. You take them from Lissa.

Adrian's words slammed into my mind. Uneasily, I thought about my behavior these last couple of weeks. Some of the angry outbursts. My rebelliousness-unusual even for me. My own black coil of emotion, stirring in my chest…

No, I decided. There were no similarities. Lissa's dark feelings were magic-based. Mine were stress-based. Besides, I felt fine right now.

Seeing her watching me, I tried to remember where we'd left off in the conversation. "Maybe you'll eventually find a way to make it work. I mean, if Adrian could find a way to use spirit and doesn't need meds …"

She suddenly laughed. "You don't know, do you?"

"What?"

"That Adrian does medicate himself."

"He does? But he said-" I groaned. "Of course he does. The cigarettes. The drinking. God only knows what else."

She nodded. "Yup. He's almost always got something in his system."

"But probably not at night…which is why he can poke his head into my dreams."

"Man, I wish I could do that," she sighed.

"Maybe you'll learn someday. Just don't become an alcoholic in the process."

"I won't," she assured me. "But I will learn. None of the other spirit users could do it, Rose-well, aside from St. Vladimir. I'll learn like he did. I'm going to learn to use it-and I won't let it hurt me."

I smiled and touched her hand. I had absolute faith in her. "I know."

We talked for most of the evening. When the time came for my usual practice with Dimitri, I parted ways with her. As I walked away, I pondered something that had been bothering me. Although the attacking groups of Strigoi had had many more members, the guardians felt confident Isaiah had been their leader. That didn't mean there wouldn't be other threats in the future, but they felt it'd be a while before his followers regrouped.

But I couldn't help thinking about the list I'd seen in the tu

I shook my head. I couldn't worry about that. Not today. I still needed to recover from everything else. Soon, though. Soon I'd have to deal with this.

I didn't even know if our practice was still on but went to the locker room anyway. After changing into practice clothes, I headed down into the gym and found Dimitri in a supply room, reading one of the Western novels he loved. He looked up at my entrance. I'd seen little of him in these last few days and had figured he was busy with Tasha.

"I thought you might come by," he said, putting a bookmark between the pages.

"It's time for practice."

He shook his head. "No. No practice today. You still need to recover."

"I've got a clean bill of health. I'm good to go." I pushed as much patented Rose Hathaway bravado into my words as I could.

Dimitri wasn't falling for any of it. He gestured to the chair beside him. "Sit down, Rose."

I hesitated only a moment before complying. He moved his own chair close to mine so that we sat directly across from each other. My heart fluttered as I looked into those gorgeous dark eyes.

"No one gets over their first kill…kills…easily. Even with Strigoi…well, it's still technically taking a life. That's hard to come to terms with. And after everything else you went through …" He sighed, then reached out and caught my hand in his. His fingers were exactly like I remembered, long and powerful, calloused with years of training. "When I saw your face…when we found you in that house…you can't imagine how I felt."

I swallowed. "How … how did you feel?"

"Devastated … grief-stricken. You were alive, but the way you looked … I didn't think you'd ever recover. And it tore me apart to think of that happening to you so young." He squeezed my hand. "You will recover-I know that now, and I'm glad. But you aren't there. Not yet. Losing someone you care about is never easy."

My eyes dropped from his and studied the floor. "It's my fault," I said in a small voice.

"Hmm?"

"Mason. Getting killed."

I didn't have to see Dimitri's face to know compassion was filling it. "Oh, Roza. No. You made some bad decisions…you should have told others when you knew he was gone…but you can't blame yourself. You didn't kill him."

Tears brimmed in my eyes as I looked back up. "I might as well have. The whole reason he went there-it was my fault. We had a fight…and I told him about the Spokane thing, even though you asked me not to…."

One tear leaked out of the corner of my eye. Really, I needed to learn to stop that. Just as my mother had, Dimitri delicately wiped the tear off my cheek.

"You can't blame yourself for that," he told me. "You can regret your decisions and wish you'd done things differently, but in the end, Mason made his decisions too. That was what he chose to do. It was his decision in the end, no matter your original role." When Mason had come back for me, I realized, he'd let his feelings for me get in the way. It was what Dimitri had always feared, that if he and I had any sort of relationship, it would put us-and any Moroi we protected-in danger.

"I just wish I'd been able to … I don't know, do anything…"

Swallowing back further tears, I pulled my hands from Dimitri's and stood up before I could say something stupid.

"I should go," I said thickly. "Let me know when you want to start practice again. And thanks for … talking."

I started to turn; then I heard him say abruptly, "No."