Cold Mirage

By Kristina Bak

In Nowever, high school misfit Stevie juggles secrets-her haunting visions, her uncanny gift, a confusing relationship that might be love-searching for her missing dad and narrowly escaping death on two continents.

In Cold Mirage, sequel to Nowever, Stevie battles her worst night­mare with two newfound allies-who

• Language: English
• Publisher: Luminare Press
• Release date: Jun 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781643888910

Kristina Bak

Kristina Bak has adventured on islands large and small beneath the North Star and the Southern Cross. She writes in an Oregon mountain town. For more information visit www.KristinaBak.com

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Floating, warm, I snuggled as I woke, nestled into soft pillows. The mattress yielded, adjusting itself to my body like a plushy living thing. I remembered where I was and my eyes snapped open.

In my new room, the ceiling fan high overhead poised for voice command. I refused even to clear my throat. The reading lamp next to the bed angled discreetly away, but I sensed its alertness. Mom had been the realtor who sold James his smart house a year ago, before he became her boyfriend, and now that they’d taken the plunge to live together this hyper-attentive suite was mine. I stuck one leg out from beneath the downy comforter, then the other, and got up in slo-mo to not trigger the whole room to spring into action. It was watching me; I couldn’t fool the room. Good morning, Stevie! It’s 8am. I had to figure out how to smother that honeyed voice, at least make it less relentlessly cheerful, or switch to a language I couldn’t understand, Chinese or Urdu, more poetry than call to action.

My floor-to-ceiling window looked east over the garden and Elliott Bay to Seattle. The outdoor temperature, air quality, and wind speed appeared in illuminated print at eye level on the glass. Okay, I saw the day was dreary, and not a leaf quivered. The window view menu popped up beside the weather report and began scrolling options: a sunny version of the same landscape, or Venice, Paris, the streets of Manhattan; the Grand Canyon via drone flight, Antarctic ice with penguins, wolves in Yellowstone, elephants on the African veldt. The options rolled faster and faster, the window panicky at my failure to choose.

Mom had never bought into the the smart-everything home concept. To her it was one more troublesome tech thing, a nominally helpful nosy roommate, but James’s house had come over-equipped with digital helpers. Moving here to the island and living solo beginning his early retirement, he’d taken to all those companionable AI voices with little-boy keenness. Mom, enwrapped and enraptured by her new life, ignored them. They made my skin crawl. James was proud of all he was able to provide us; he’d programmed my room to make me feel welcome. I couldn’t complain to him.

I didn’t necessarily miss our undistinguished 20th century two-bedroom-one-bath, a ten minute walk from the ferry dock, but I’d lived there the whole seventeen-plus years of my life. That house held my history, including when my family was whole: Mom, Dad, and me. The disconnect of leaving it had capped off all that had happened in the past twelve months.

Coming home after finding my lost dad in Australia’s Deep North, and on the way solving the mystery of a young artist’s death in Sydney, I’d returned to the practiced low profile that served as normalcy for me. I wanted to creep into a cave—metaphorically, not being a cave-type person—concealed from the world. Instead I’d acquired another dangerous secret. I’d helped my first love, Nate Wu, flee over the Canadian border after his animal-rights action debacle. It was impossible for me to brand Nate a domestic terrorist, much less a killer. He’d tried to liberate factory farm pigs and shot a man who was trying to shoot him. I had to believe he’d acted with high ideals in self-defense, that I’d done the right thing. I wanted peace, and this preternaturally observant house wouldn’t let me be.

I’d grown up feeling responsible for the sadness Mom thought she hid from me, working to make her happy when I wasn’t. Paradoxically, the worst news I’d brought her—that Dad, who’d disappeared in his sailboat when I was four, had made a new life, a new family, eight thousand miles across the Pacific—released her to embrace happiness with James. I was finally off the hook, but I couldn’t reconcile myself to the gooeyness of Mom and James, their pet names, intimate pats, private jokes, baby talk for God’s sake. Picturing them in their bedroom? No way! Not that I couldn’t understand Mom’s attraction to James. He was easygoing, six-foot-two with a rich brown complexion, not entirely bald, and buff for a sixty-year-old man. Mom had been without a partner for a long time.

I’d carved my courage to search for Dad out of hurt and anger. The hurt of loss was vivid, but I’d learned there was no point in the anger. Its targets melted into a past I couldn’t change, people trying to live their lives, screwed by poor judgement, bad luck, terrible circumstances. All forgiven. Except the couple who had stolen me when I was five years old; I could never forgive their cruelty. Useless rage at them ate me from the inside, though they had long since vanished. In my nightmares and fragmentary flawed memories, I mercifully couldn’t see their faces.

The bathroom tiles were toasty to my bare feet. The toilet obligingly flushed the moment I stood up. I waved my hands to turn on the faucet, splashed water on my face, and dried with the heated towel dispensed by the rack beside the basin.

Moving in with James, I’d stashed my boxes and bags in the walk-in closet and hadn’t had the heart to unpack. I’d had no choice in moving here, and it felt temporary, more like a luxury hotel than my home. I cracked the closet open an inch and peeked in. The Voice launched into what to wear given the day’s weather prediction. I slammed the door on it mid-sentence. Being told how to dress reminded me of my ex-best-friend Winter Martin. Since pre-school Winter had obsessed enough over clothes for both of us—I surrendered to her dictates, never having to choose my wardrobe, saving myself from her scathing criticism. We’d been toddlers when our moms met in a playgroup. They became buddies, and made us buddy-up, too. My resentment of Winter’s bossiness grew through our adolescence. In our sophomore year of high school, it broke out in a violent scene that didn’t hurt much more than her dignity, but did me no credit, and ended with my dropping out. As far as I was concerned, our roles in each other’s lives were history.

A few months ago, I’d started the UW’s early entry program (which wasn’t going so well for me, but no one knew that). Winter’s message at the end of the term had surprised me. Her parents were letting her trade high school for a pricey private acting academy in Seattle. We can ride the ferry into the city together! Winter’s arrest as an unrepentant habitual shoplifter had apparently alienated her own mean girl squad; now she was sucking up to me. I’d deleted the message, but it bumped my predicament up the scale from uncomfortable toward intolerable. Like Dad, I carried the urge to leave in my DNA, a solution I went to instinctively. Winter was a catalyst—again.

In the oversized tee I’d slept in, I checked the hallway outside my bedroom—good, James-free. I dodged a bot disk vacuuming the carpet on my way to the happy couple’s love nest. To my relief, Mom was alone there, in her bathrobe, perched in the window seat, daylight rounding her softly. She studied her face in a hand mirror, her makeup arranged beside her.

Morning, sweetheart! She practically sang her greeting; that’s how she was these days. That thing has different ideas than I do. She waved a mascara wand in the direction of the gilt-framed mirror over her dressing table across the room. It’s awful for doing my face, magnifies all the flaws. The frame was elaborately baroque and antique, in contrast to the smart mirror it contained. James says there’s a manual override, but I haven’t figured it out, and some details I’m happier not to see.

If mirrors could sulk, that one did, reflecting me as a mere silhouette, skinny and towering over my cozy-looking mom.

Have a seat, lovey.

I refused to sit on the disarranged covers of the king-sized bed she shared with James. I plunked myself cross-legged on the carpet at her feet and watched her draw a delicate black line on each eyelid over her hazel eyes. She traded the liner pencil for blusher she blended onto her cheeks.

Okay, what? I can tell you have something to say. Did I let the hairdresser make my hair too dark? Is this foundation too light for me?

I’d gotten my dad’s height and cheekbones, and Mom’s olive complexion. The sun in Australia had darkened my skin and bleached my hair, but back in the Pacific Northwest my tan had gone sallow and my hair returned to a darker shade, my mom’s, or the shade I remembered before she started having hers colored.

No, Mom, you look terrific. She did, for a forty-two-year-old with, admit it, pretty ordinary features. Whatever effort she was making was paying off, or the love glow transformed her. It’s not about you. Well, but in a way it was.

She put down her mirror, gathered her robe over her knees, and gave me a penetrating look. Let’s hear it.

I knew from the sigh she suppressed fairly well that she dreaded another problem from me. I wished I shared her newfound happiness. I want to go away. I went on too quickly for her to object. Not far, just transfer out of the U. It’s overwhelming, bigger than a lot of cities.

I’d never told Mom about my predatory art professor, or meeting Ruby when she modeled for our life drawing class—Ruby with her wild claims on my history. Perhaps she had rescued five-year-old me from those abductors, but I filed her story, my disturbing visions, and all the rest, in a mental folder labeled Secrets and Forgotten Things. That folder was full to bursting.

I want to go to Western in Bellingham. It’s less than a hundred miles away. I can live in a dorm. I got to Australia and back fine, I can handle a college town. I wanted to get away and I wanted to stay close; Mom was the only parent I had who was purely mine. I was asking nicely, not threatening rebellion. I’d grown up a lot since I used that tactic with her.

I waited out her silence while she methodically returned tubes and bottles and pencils to her quilted makeup case before she answered. I suppose you’ve researched everything thoroughly.

I’ve applied. They’ll take my Udub credits, and tuition’s cheaper. Though she and James were a firm twosome, Mom hung on to her financial independence. Cheaper would typically be the clincher, but she didn’t ask about room and board expenses, so maybe she didn’t want to admit she’d like being left alone with James.

Another sigh she didn’t bother to suppress. Apparently she’d feared worse complications from me. How soon do we have to decide?

Tomorrow?

Get me the link to the details.

I sprang up and hugged her. "Thanks, Mom. I promise this will be the last change I make."

You can’t go until after the holidays. She hugged me back and kissed my cheek. Our first Christmas in our new home.

I kissed her, too. Of course!

How would I have wanted it any different? Until James intruded last December 24th, our Christmas celebration was the one family tradition we sustained intact through those years Mom and I were all there was of family. This year, she ordered a ten-foot tree from a local nursery, the biggest in stock, bigger than we had ever had. The great room with its cathedral ceiling dwarfed it. Mom’s strings of lights that had brightened our cramped old house twinkled faintly in the new space. Mom, undaunted, unpacked our ornaments, and directed James in decorating the higher branches; we hung our favorites from the lower ones.

I hated telling Sierra, my boss at the equine rescue stables where I worked two afternoons a week, that I’d be leaving with the new university term. I was currying Lightning, the big Clydesdale, as I made my announcement, so I wouldn’t have to look Sierra directly in the eyes.

Sierra shook her head, her red ponytail swinging beneath her trademark Stetson. Oh, no, Stevie! You’ll be hard to replace.

I’ll be here a couple more weeks, and anybody can shovel horse manure.

Sierra laughed. But you do it well. And the horses love you. Seriously, we’ll all miss you.

Can I come back and volunteer spring break?

"Forget volunteer, I’ll pay you the same whenever you want your job."

As much as I loved the horses, I liked the pay, too, having money to spend, not asking Mom for everything I wanted. On December 24th, I borrowed her Toyota and drove to a gallery near the ferry dock to do my Christmas shopping, the same gallery where Winter had been caught finessing earrings crafted by local artists. Winter’s theft, privileged brat ripping off struggling creatives, had been extra cringeworthy. This was the one place in our island’s tiny town where I knew I wouldn’t see her. I bought Mom an alpaca scarf made on a farm a few miles away, hand woven and colored with organic vegetable dyes. I shopped for something tasteful for James, then gave up and bought the same for him—too twee for words, but they would probably enjoy matching. I had both scarves wrapped and congratulated myself on my efficiency.

So many things were the same as every Christmas Eve, and yet everything seemed different. This year Mom and James cooked our feast together, all afternoon in the kitchen in (yep, matching) reindeer print aprons, pausing to canoodle when they thought I wasn’t watching. I was, with resentment I knew was infantile. We set the holiday table with Mom’s special-event crystal, our chipped china replaced by James’s, new or unused. James didn’t repeat last year’s giant poinsettia centerpiece gaffe, though, unlike our old one, this dining table was big enough for a bouquet that size. Mom sent me to the garden to clip stems of red-berried holly for between the candles.

The whole time Christmas carols blared and James and Mom sang along to holiday songs their boomer parents had loved, too, Mom’s wavery soprano weaving with James’s reliable baritone. Since my father disappeared, Mom had tried to make our Christmases good, but now I saw how much fun she could have, and be, when she was happy, which, honestly, made me sad. Mom whipped up a childhood favorite, a treat her grandmother had made for her—frothy coconut eggnog with vanilla and cinnamon. One reason she and James were jolly was that she topped theirs off with rum. I took mine straight; I’d never liked the taste of alcohol, and Mom didn’t offer me any.

Mom toned down the music during dinner. James was a good storyteller. He entertained us with tales of animals he’d known during his veterinary career in San Diego: the Dalmatian gone astray reappearing after three years; the kitten at its first exam scrabbling up his arm and sitting on his head with claws sunk into his then-abundant hair; the pedigreed Persian with a incurable habit of chasing dogs. Reluctantly, I cheered up. James was a good baker, too. He’d made berry pie for dessert. We took ample slices to eat lounging around the Christmas tree. Afterwards, Instead of my customary lingering in the twinkle lights’ beneficent glow with Mom, I took our empty dessert plates to the kitchen. Feeling Cinderella-ish, I loaded the dishwasher. It was Mom who’d met her prince.

When I came downstairs in the morning, James, with a seemingly insatiable appetite for celebration and baked treats, was taking hot cinnamon rolls from the oven while Mom brewed coffee, all to the accompaniment of Bing Crosby’s White Christmas album. The breakfast smells couldn’t have been more enticing. I’d pulled on yoga pants and a long-sleeved wool tunic, but Mom and James wore their