Read Helpless (Blue Fire Saga) for Free Online

smiling.
    Cali ostentatiously flipped one of the wolf ears on her cap. “Why, for my style, dahling,” she said. “For my style.”
    Once again, they all joined in a round of giggling laughter.
    “Okay, let’s get going on that snowman,” Cali said when they all stopped laughing.
    They formed a square about four feet across, facing each other, and began scooping snow with both hands and tossing it out in front of them. The snow was wet and heavy, but the moisture made it stick together nicely when they scooped it. Before long, Leesa was beginning to work up a sweat beneath her clothes, so she slowed her pace. It wasn’t a race, she reminded herself. The idea was to have fun, not wear herself out before they had barely gotten started.
    Ten minutes of digging by the four girls produced a narrow trench surrounding a pile of snow more than four feet high. They packed the snow down with their gloved hands, shaping it into a big ball as they did so.  
    “So far, so good,” Cali said.
    “What’s next?” Leesa asked. “We still can’t roll any balls to make the upper sections.”
    “Let’s do the same thing again, only smaller,” Stacie said. “If we pack it tight enough, the four of us should be able to lift it up onto this one.”
    “You should be a freakin’ architect,” Cali said grinning.
    They repeated the process on a smaller section, packing it even tighter and then chopping off the corners first with their feet and then with their hands until they had rough ball of snow almost two feet across. Together, they were able to hoist it high enough to place it atop the base. Its weight and the stickiness of the snow kept it firmly in place.
    “We’re really cooking now!” Cali said as they all admired their handiwork.
    Leesa was ecstatic. She could see they were going to have a pretty giant snowman after all. They had just one more ball to make, the smallest and simplest yet, to serve as the head.
    They set to work. There was really only room for three of them to make this smallest ball, so Caitlin backed away and let her friends do their thing.
    When they were finished, they had formed a tightly packed ball of snow about the size of a basketball. Leesa and Caitlin hoisted it up into place. Except for some minor shaping and adding the decorations, the snowman was done!
    Leesa stepped back and admired their creation. It was taller than any of them—at least six feet tall—with a big, bulging lower section. Just the way a snowman should look, she thought—big and fat. All their digging had created a small clearing around the snowman, making it stand out even better in the courtyard full of such deep snow. She couldn’t wait until they finished decorating it. She liked it so much she decided she would even donate one of her scarves to wrap around its neck.
    Without warning, her vision began to grow dim. The snowman faded away, replaced by a swirling gray mist. Leesa blinked her eyes, trying to get rid of the fog and bring the snowman back into focus, but it didn’t work. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut but the mist remained, continuing to dance in whirling patterns. She understood now it was not her eyesight playing tricks on her—she was experiencing one of her visions, the first she’d ever had while she was awake.
    Slowly, the mist began to coalesce, forming an outline very similar in shape to the snowman. It was not the snowman, though. It was a man—an enormous man with a huge bulbous belly and a round, hairless head. As the details continued to come into focus, Leesa could see that his skin was almost white. Not the clean, beautiful white of the snow—no, this was a milky, deathly white.
    Next, his face became clearer, revealing a pair of thick lips, a broad, flat nose and no eyebrows at all. His eyes were closed, but his eyelids were so pale Leesa could almost see through them. She tried to pull her gaze away from his hideous face, but found she was unable to move her head.
    Suddenly, the