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Dante saw the dusting of frost crystals along the bottom frame of his window this morning, but getting hit with a blast of icy air when Ivete opens the front door is a whole other feeling entirely.
“Goddamn!” she exclaims. “They weren’t kidding when they said ‘cold snap’.”
Arthur sighs. “And not even any snow to show for it.”
“Shame,” Dante remarks, pulling his coat a little tighter around himself. His usual cape is underneath it, and he’s suddenly grateful for the layers. “As fun as it would’ve been, though, it’s probably for the best.”
“Oh probably. I don’t think São Paulo is equipped to handle snow.”
“Or ice.”
“Or ice. Damn. At least we wouldn’t have to drive in that to get to base.”
“Come on, come on, keep moving,” insists Ivete. Dante hears her head down the short steps to the sidewalk. “We’ve got to shut the door to keep the heat in.”
Dante feels Arthur move forward down the stairs. He follows after, his own hand finding the railing—cold and slick with moisture, a feeble frost that dies instantly under the heat of his skin. Dante makes sure he’s got a good grip on it before he brings his white cane in front of him and heads down the steps with practiced ease. And perhaps just the slightest bit more of caution.
Ivete’s arm finds his once he’s on the sidewalk, their elbows linked. Ivete shivers a bit. “Damn the cold.”
Dante smiles a little, pulling her closer. “Got the door, Arthur?” he asks.
“Yep.” There’s a telling thunk and a jangle of keys. “All set here. Let’s go.”
“We’ll warm up a bit when we start walking,” Dante says to Ivete.
“We better.”
They get to the main thoroughfare soon enough. Dante tilts his head. He can hear…more cars than usual? It sounds busier. Not as many willing to walk in the chill, he supposes. Dante’s never been a fan of the colder months—the orphanage was “drafty” at best, and his apartment with Jasmine and Leo wasn’t much better; but when the worst of the cold is a brisk 20 minute walk and an underground base that gets a little chilly sometimes, it’s not so bad.
He can enjoy the novelty of it now, he supposes. Frost decorating the window when he woke up, bundling himself up in a coat, walking tucked a little tighter to Ivete’s side than usual as they head to base together. It’s not so bad.
~*~
“Ohhhh, hey, hey!” Dante hears Agatha spin off her chair in the back of the ritual room and come trotting over. “See, this is what I was talking about—people are posting videos about the snowfall south of here.”
“Yeah?” Arthur’s chair creaks as he leans, likely to look at Agatha’s phone. There’s the rustle of papers as he sets down his case files on the table. “Oh yeah, look at that.”
“Look, there’s one of someone nailing their friend on the back of the head with a snowball from like, twenty meters back.”
“Oh seriously?”
“Yeah! Dante, you wanna watch?”
Dante pauses his fiddling with the artifact in his hands—the arrangement of its etched sigils has some intricate pattern with the hum of the Paranormal beneath the surface of its chain links—and shrugs. “If you think I should.”
“I do, I really do think you should. It’s important.”
“Alright.” Dante opens his eyes, and the veil is parted in a swirl of imperceptible shadow, and he Sees. His head takes a second to adjust to the sudden stimuli as usual, but the shape, color, sharpness of Arthur and Agatha sitting at the table before him settles in his mind quick enough. “What am I looking at?”
“This here,” Agatha says with a grin, scooting closer so Dante can see over her shoulder. She has a different sweatshirt today, he realizes; black with a faux wool lining inside the hood. He moves his cane out of the way so he can get closer. “Look look look, it’s funny, I swear.”
They’re four silly videos into a hashtag of people dunking snow on each other’s heads when there’s a knock at the door. “Come in!” Arthur calls.
Samuel pops his head in through the door. “Morning, all. You guys busy?”
“Ehh, not really?”
“Depends on how you define busy,” Dante provides.
“You wanna watch someone get snow poured down their shirt?” Agatha asks.
“Uh, in a minute,” replies Samuel, a small laugh in his voice. He sobers a beat later: “CRIS might’ve picked up some activity, and you guys are the only ones in this early who aren’t already wrapped up in something.”
Dante feels the air in the room shift immediately. “Occultist?” he asks.
“Hard to say, but…I don’t think so?” Samuel opens the door a little wider and points towards the computer room. “I can show you guys, if you want.”
~*~
What Samuel wants to show them, apparently, is more videos from Twitter. They aren’t like the ones Agatha was showing them, though. These ones were all taken during the previous night when the snow rush hit: videos from people sitting at bedroom and living room windows, showing the wild tempest of swirling snow outside, the rattle of it against their windows, the roar of it against their walls. Porch lights were shattered, a few people lost power, and someone even lost their whole satellite dish to the winds.
And there is one video in particular showing, through a window, a strange glow from somewhere in the darkness, bright and blue-purple-orange around its edges. The person who posted it initially thought it was a broken power line, but when they checked this morning, the power line seemed intact.
“All of these posts came from the same town,” Samuel explains, a heat map of location pins pulled up onto his second monitor. “And the thing is, I’ve looked at the official reported weather patterns in the greater region, and what you see here is way more intense than what it should have been.”
“And then there was that glow,” Arthur says.
“And the ‘roaring’ sound from some of videos,” Dante adds. He looks at Arthur. “That didn’t sound like wind to me.”
Arthur considers this. “Soooo, creature causing a blizzard?”
“Could be. Or feeding off it. Either way, it’s worth checking out. Has anyone from the region been reported hurt or missing, Samuel?”
“Nnnnnot that I’ve seen…” Samuel says slowly. “There might be more in the database of the local police, but I haven’t seen anyone post about anything like that other than like, normal accidents that probably happened as a result of the sudden power outages. Nothing major.”
“We should try to keep it that way,” Arthur decides. “There’s nothing in particular we’re needed for here, so Dante and I can go check it out.” Arthur looks his way. “That is, if you’re up for dealing with some more of the cold?”
“It’s not so bad,” Dante replies. He feels his own smile somewhere in it. “When do we leave?”