There was a newcomer that year. New members were uncommon, but not unusual. They happened every twenty Convocations or so. Frost wondered who it was this time. The more prominent figures were all present, and, as far as he knew, none of the lesser members had changed, either.
He hadn't been able to find out during the initial mingling. There had not been the undercurrent of discreet whispers that usually accompanied a fresh face. Whenever he tried to approach the stranger, his quarry had somehow ended up on the opposite side of the room. Finally, he'd asked a Jack outright.
"Who is that man?"
The Jack, a turbaned man with a goatee, had looked at him blankly. "What man?"
Ah. So it was one of those cases. Very well, then. He'd excused himself politely and spent the rest of the evening acting as though nothing was out of the ordinary.
The speech gave him a chance for a thorough scrutinizing. It wasn't as if he were missing anything important; their leader was in the midst of berating "our failed efforts to eliminate the threat to our ways." He was trying to intimidate Frost, who didn't need it. With every year that passed, the end—if that's what it was—drew nearer. Yet he had never come closer to locating the boy than on that one foggy night. He faced the speaker stonily, while examining the newcomer out of the corner of his eye.
He was wearing the customary black, of course. The style of his garment gave to hint as to his background, as it was as featureless as a shadow. His skin tone was similarly untraceable. It was gray; not merely ashy or pallid, but truly gray. There were no warm undertones of yellow or pink at all. If it hadn't been for the brilliant gold irises, Frost could have wondered if he was looking at a black-and-white photograph.
The stranger sensed his gaze. Glancing over at Frost, he smiled lazily and leaned back in his seat until obscured from view.
The speaker did not acknowledge the stranger in the slightest. Frost did not expect him to. As the congregation rose to their feet and clapped politely, he made his way over the entrance of the hall.
There was no gatekeeper. They didn't need one. Those who needed to be there, came; those who didn't, knew to stay away. There was, however, the ancient ledger kept on the similarly decrepit claw-footed table. Each page was filled with row after row of signatures attesting to that year's attendants.
Frost scanned the newly filled page. Familiar names jumped out at him. Nimble's forest green. His own icy blue, so pale it was almost white. His lip curled when he saw that Giantkiller had chosen a single leaf. Ripper was still using blood, how quaint. Finally, he saw it, the first name on the page. It looked as though the signer had branded it into the paper:
Black
He tried it out in his mouth. It rolled nicely off the tongue, but he was certain that he had never heard of a Jack Black before. On a whim, he leafed through the earlier pages, searching.
Black didn't attend every Convocation, but when he did, his was always the first entry. Frost flipped faster. 1950, 1893, 1793. Before he knew it, Frost had gone so far back into the book that the parchment had changed to cloth. He eagerly reached to leaf through that, too, when a long-fingered hand smoothed the page back down. Frost looked up, already knowing who it was.
Keeping one hand on the book, Black raised a finger to his lips and shook his head. Then he was gone, melted back into the crowd of black-clothed figures.
When Frost looked down again, there was a hole burned through every single page of the records.
I can't believe there aren't more ROTG/Graveyard Book stories out there! Given that they both prominently feature Jack Frost, of course. I've got a Bod-and-Jack story in the wings that I might attach to this one to make a full-blown crossover. Stay tuned and please review!