Some kids needed a little more encouragement than others to get into the fun. But Jack soon had them all laughing and screeching and tossing snowballs at one another. No one could resist a little sprinkle of snow on their nose, they all got into it eventually.

His powers were still a little sluggish, but Jack hadn't had them for three hundred years for nothing. The sled ride around town might be more than he was used to, but it was nothing he couldn't handle. Even if he was a little winded afterward.

He took no responsibility for the couch though. He was in full control of the sled, and nobody got hurt. But couches and ice were never supposed to mix.

At least it didn't dim the mood among the children.

Jack might not be entirely alone in the world anymore - although much more so now than normally - his friends weren't children. They didn't like to laugh and play in the snow like Sam had when he was that age. It made something in him uncomfortable to think about them all growing up and leaving him behind.

Like every child did at the end of the day.

Jack watched the group leave the town centre, skipping around one another and enthusiastically talking about the tooth fairy. No one thought of Jack Frost anymore.

It still hurt just the same when Jamie Bennett walked right through him as though he wasn't there. In fact, it hurt even more because he knew now what it was to be noticed, to be seen.

Jack couldn't say why he followed the boy home. Maybe it was because he felt somewhat responsible for the boy's missing tooth, maybe it was because he wanted to see if he could reignite the excitement of the snowball fight. He didn't know. All he knew was that he dogged those footsteps and followed the group of children back to their neighbourhood.

He left them to disappear into their houses and stayed outside to watch a little girl, Jamie's sister, he assumed, roll around in the snow, unconcerned with the world around her. She squealed and cooed when Jack settled into the drift next to her and tossed handfuls of soft powder over her head.

It wasn't exciting, but she was having fun, and Jack liked being there to make her happy. It kept her out of the way when a car pulled into the driveway of the house.

A young woman stepped out of the car, dragging a case out after her. She had dark brown hair and deep brown eyes, just like Jamie.

"Sophie!" She called, waving. "Sweetheart, how are you!"

Sophie ducked into the snowdrift, hiding under the white. Jack brushed snow over her, even as the woman approached, calling out, "I wonder where Sophie went? Oh, did the monsters get her? Oh, no! Now who am I going to give her present to?"

Sophie launched herself out of the snowdrift with a cheer, latching onto the woman's leg. "Auntie Rose! Auntie Rose!"

"Niece Sophie!" Rose returned, scooping Sophie up into her arms. "How have you been, huh? Look at you, you're so big! You must be getting taller than Jamie by now."

"Rosie, you're early," said Jamie and Sophie's mother, pulling on her coat as she hurried down the drive. "I wasn't expecting you until tomorrow."

"My classes were cancelled because of the snow, so I decided to get an early start. Mia, how do you have such a big girl?" Rose bounced Sophie on her hip. "I think she's got Uncle DJ's height."

"Hopefully she doesn't get DJ's communication skills," Mia grumbled.

"Mia," Rose sighed. "Can't we just have one Easter without you guys fighting? We've only got each other left. You, me, DJ, and the kids."

Mia forced a smile. "It's family time. Come inside, now that you're here, I think your nephew would like to show you his missing tooth."

The family moved into the house, leaving Jack alone in the snow.


Jessica wasn't a hunter.

A monster hunter or an animal hunter.

But she had had to become both in under a day.

Her hands shook as she cut skin away from flesh. Their small fire crackled merrily in the middle of the floor, caged by some loose bricks that she had fashioned into a fire pit. James had gotten the fire going while she went out, armed only with a kitchen knife that they had found in one of the dozens of abandoned buildings throughout Cold Oak.

She wasn't a hunter, and she couldn't move very fast with her stomach still held together with thread. But she could follow instructions, and James knew plenty of ways to build an animal trap. After three days, her mouth had started to water and the sound of it snapped shut on a poor, defenceless animal's neck.

The traps weren't always enough, and Jess had gotten good with the kitchen knife. She was pre-med, she knew more about anatomy than most people. Animals weren't dissimilar from humans. But she had never imagined that she would be using her knowledge of arteries and veins to slice through an animal's vugular.

James could build a fire, but his hands were still too damaged to skin an animal with any amount of proficiency. So that fell to Jessica too.

"I swear," she gagged. "After this, I'm becoming a vegetarian."

"You're drooling at the smell," James pointed out.

"Next to you, anything smells good."

James snorted. There was a little bit more colour in his cheeks today. They had found the overgrown remains of a vegetable garden, and there had been enough there to make up something vaguely similar to a soup. It was far from civilised medicine and care, but it was something.

It had been nearly five days since they arrived, but Jess wasn't sure how much she could trust that. She had counted the days and nights, but James was healing too fast. And she was moving too quickly. She couldn't straighten too quickly because her stitches pulled, but not because it hurt. There were no spare bandages to change their own dirty ones. But there was no sign of infection. They were surviving almost entirely off meat and whatever they found in forgotten tinned cans in the back of these empty cabinets. They should not be recovering as fast as they were. Time was either moving differently, or they were healing wrong.

"Maybe both," she murmured.

"What?"

Jessica shook her head. "Nothing. How do you like your rabbit?"

"Cooked," James snarked. "Seriously, Jess. It's dead, and skinned. It's not going to run off."

Jessica sniffed. "It just…"

"I know. I'm hungry too."

Jessica swallowed and hung the rabbit from their spit, watching it slowly cook over the fire. "How are your hands?"

"Good. My fingertips keep tingling. I don't know if that's cold or if the nerves are healing, but it has to be a good sign, right?"

"I hope so."

They lapsed into silence while the meat bubbled.

"So, Cold Oak," said James. "You haven't asked."

"Do I have to?"

James sighed. "I thought it was just a dream."

"Like the dream of me dying?" Jessica asked, raising an eyebrow, unimpressed. Finding out that your best friend, and boyfriend hid their prophetic dream of your death from you did not leave someone in a good mood.

James smiled helplessly. "I'm sorry?" He offered, for the eighth time. "But, not quite like that. This has been… recurring. For years. Since before I can remember."

"It's been that specific?"

James nodded. "The bell tower. I must have seen it a hundred times. I don't know why I started looking into it. I must have been to a million different towns by the time I was ten years old. But it was always so specific, and always the same."

"How did you find out that it was Cold Oak?"

"How else? The library."

"You? Willingly walking into a library?" Jess teased.

He shrugged. "If you know where to look, there's… the things that happened here? They were bad. And there were a lot of them. Hundreds of people just left. They upped and left, because of how haunted this place was. And then no one ever came back."

"They left everything behind."

James shook his head. "I don't think they had a choice."

"Well, we do," Jessica decided. She took the rabbit from the spit and cut the cooked meat. There were bowls and plates, but only minimal running water. Nothing worth wasting on dust. James' hands were healed enough to eat out of. His fingers twitched but they curled around the meat without any complaint on his part. "Eat up," she ordered. "We can try for the border tonight."

"At night? What about those… things?"

"The demons?"

"Not like any I've ever seen."

Jessica shook her head. "They've gotten bolder. They're already coming out in the day, we can't afford to stay in one place for the night. We need to move anyway."

James sighed. "I suppose you're right. The longer we stay in one place, the more likely they are to find us. But we don't have to move just yet. I can keep watch."

"I'm not tired."

"Jess," said James. "We've been on the move for days. You much more so than me. You breathed in plenty of smoke too. Rest."

"I don't need to."

"Jess," James said again. Quieter. "Sam's fine. He's got his brother. I'm sure they're looking for us."

"But what if he's not, James?" Jessica asked, grateful for the way out. Her concern for Sam left her stomach in knots, but that wasn't why she was afraid to sleep. Everytime she closed her eyes she saw those things. The demons. The ones that looked like little girls. Only, they weren't coming after her like they did in reality. They came from James. And no matter how hard she tried to shout, to scream, to pull them away from him. She couldn't. Instead, the only thing that came out of her mouth was; "Faster."

When they pulled away from the body - it didn't even look human.

It was just a nightmare, she told herself. Just a vivid, recurring nightmare.