Page 78 of Blade

I find the footprints, one set, quickly disappearing. They head through an opening between two condo units, and I follow them, walking where she’s walked before I lose her trail. The snow rises from the ground and covers everything now, the parking lot, the cars, the pavement. It flies through the air on swirls of shifting wind, and I stop to zip my coat and lace my boots. I can’t see more than a few yards in any direction.

I follow the steps, lifting each foot from the imprint, the deep holes they’ve carved, then into the next one. Left, then right. Left, then right. Following her tracks as the cold whips across my face, burning my skin.

The footprints lead to the access road, the one that snakes up the mountain. A plow has just come through. It’s carved a tunnel, which I step into and continue walking, following the trail.

My phone pings, and I take it out, pull off a glove to touch the screen, but my fingers are too cold. I lift it to my face, and it opens, revealing a message from Westin.

I just heard about Grace—let me know when you find her ... be careful. It’s not safe in the storm.

Artis must have called him, and I remind myself that Artis knows nothing about the exposé. Or the report about Grace from years ago.

The air is cold when it hits my lungs. I let it out slowly, slipping the phone into my pocket.

The wind quiets to near silence, the kind that comes after a storm leaves, when the ground is covered, and there’s not a car or truck for miles. And in this strange silence I hear my body, heart beating, blood flowing. I hear Jolene crying in my arms, begging me to find Grace. I see her on the floor of the Orphans’ room at Avery Hall. Cowering beneath her father. Her mother yelling about the baby inside her.

Kayla in the woods. In Emile’s bed. In his bathtub while he washes her. The memories are wired. A string of lights, like the cars that move along the highway at night.

I shake off the snow, pulse pounding in my ears, as I walk this familiar road. Step by step.

Left, then right. Left, then right.

I walk this road I know by heart, even in the blinding snow, up the incline, the hill that becomes the mountain.

Then I reach the entrance to the place I swore I would never return to. That I’d put behind me.

The Palace logo, with the circle and the pine trees, the stencil of a skater in a layback spin. The parking lot toward the side door, the one that opens to the snack bar.

Get inside,I hear myself think. I hurry across the lot, reach for the handle, and pull, the same way I’ve done hundreds of times, but so long ago. The door sticks and releases, just like it used to. My body remembers. My fingers know exactly how hard to grip the metal.

I walk in, let the door slam behind me, closing out the storm.

The place is empty and dark, but it smells of fried food, so I think they must have been open. Neon lights buzz from behind the counter, a sign that saysSmoothie, which wasn’t here fourteen years ago but now provides enough light to see the shape of things. The benches in the back. The wooden tables. The rubber mats beneath my feet. I shake off the snow and search for the opening to the rink on the other side of the counter.

Images appear now, of walking through that opening, the mothers sitting in the stands to the right, the doors to the boards that gave accessto the ice, here and again around the corner, at the south end where the locker rooms were, and my locker in the third row, and the bench where I would sit and lace my skates, the nylon cutting into my fingers.

And farther around to the other side, the hallway and the offices in the back. Dawn’s, and the room where Dr. Westin met with the skaters. With us.

These images provoke visceral reactions that explode inside me, the same way they did last night when I looked out the window and saw the four lights on each corner of this place. And when I sat with Grace and studied her. When I looked at the photos of blood pooling in the snow, the four gashes in Emile’s head.

And today when I walked inside Dawn’s house.

Don’t think. Just move.

I pass through the opening to the rink, where the smell hits me hard. Ammonia, minerals, gasoline, rubber. The sweat of the skaters that leaves their bodies and hangs in the air.

I close my eyes and inhale three long breaths and focus on conscious thoughts to remind myself that I’m me, Ana, now, at thirty. Not thirteen. Not fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Not a child. My heart slows. Then a door slams from the other side of the ice, and I open my eyes to a brighter light, coming from across the rink to the hallway that leads to the offices.

Cautiously, I move toward the light, along the edge of the boards to the hallway that leads to the locker rooms, then up two levels, crossing through the seats to the opening on the other side.

Don’t think. Just move.

I walk down the passageway that leads to Dawn’s office, and I stop at the open door and look inside. I can smell her from where I am, the perfume and cheap cosmetics that linger in the dark, empty room. It pulls me like a siren, just like it did earlier at her house, and more memories flood in.

“Emile is joining us for dinner.”

“I am what you should fear.”

“What do you need, Ana?”