Her fingers had gone numb long before fear had time to settle in, turning from pink to pale to a frightening shade of blue that she would later learn adults associate with words like hypothermia and permanent damage, but in that moment all she knew was that she could no longer feel pain, which somehow made it easier to keep going, as if her body had decided on its own that sensation was a luxury she could not afford.
The man lay half-buried in drifted snow near the rusted iron gate at the edge of her grandfather’s property, his broad frame twisted at an unnatural angle, one leg bent wrong beneath him, dark blood frozen stiff along his jaw and collar, the heavy black leather jacket on his back marked with a snarling wolf skull stitched in white thread, cracked and rimmed with ice—a symbol most people in town would have crossed the street to avoid.
Emily did not cross the street.
She leaned backward, heels slipping uselessly beneath her, breath coming out in sharp, panicked bursts that vanished instantly into the wind, and she pulled.