Welcome to FROST HARROW Book 3. (No previous reading required.) Please support my work via Patreon at www.PaySteve.com. Enjoy!
NINE—MORNING RUN
Grant Winslow turned the corner at the bottom of the street and headed up Victor’s Hill. The cold November air stung his face and the hard pavement sent shudders through his feet into the rest of his body.
It felt good.
The one thing Grant disliked about being at sea with Greenpeace was the lack of running room. Sure, a few laps around the deck of the Rainbow Warrior II were good for clearing the head, but there was nothing like jogging down a quiet road, watching the world wake up.
Grant enjoyed these times of quiet solitude. Running in the morning, just before sunrise, was a lot like being at sea. The world stretched out around you in perfect peace.
His legs began to burn as he neared the halfway point of his run. He’d left the heavily populated portions of Frosthaven far behind, nestled below the Winslow mansion. In the valley, the town’s lights still twinkled like ship lights on a wine-dark sea.
Few habitations lay before him on the tree-covered hillside. The old Emerson place, almost completely refurbished by its new owner, stood on the hill like the town’s last lonely sentinel. What was the owner’s name? Grant had met her once socially. Something exotic or Egyptian…. Naile, that was it. Pronounced like the river. He could see the tops of the mansion’s roofs poking above the trees, the rising sun just beginning to catch the manor’s red shingles.
Grant turned and began to jog back down Hilltop Ave. toward his house.
The warmth of the exercise and the endorphins from the run made him slightly giddy as he headed downhill. He watched the sun break over the hills on the far side of the valley to the east.
Somewhere, nestled in those hills lay Ivy’s home, Frost Hall. Grant had never seen much more of the sprawling manor than the fleeting glimpse any driver could catch through the trees on Lighthouse Road. Once, when he was a boy, his father and uncle had taken him out on Lake Superior in the Winslow yacht. He’d spotted the mansion then, in the distance, rising above the trees. But when he asked about it, his father and uncle merely scowled and forbade him to speak of it further.
As he turned the corner off Hilltop and headed back toward his own mansion, Grant vowed one day to see more of Ivy’s ancestral home. He hoped to be able to put the long-standing feud between the families to rest. Then he’d get Ivy to show him around the place.
But, if that didn’t happen soon, he decided to get a better look from the yacht—his now, along with everything else—once the weather turned nice.
Grant chuckled quietly to himself, watching his breath turn to fog. In Frosthaven, the weather turning “nice” was likely to happen in late May.
He jogged past the Winslow mansion gate and through the front doors. As he came inside, Hall handed him a towel.
“Will you be having breakfast this morning, Mr. Winslow?” he asked.
Grant nodded. “Yes. I’ll shower and come right down. Honeydew melon, marmalade toast, apple cider, and coffee should do nicely. Thanks.”
“Very good, sir,” said Hall, turning toward the kitchen.
Grant jogged up the stairs to his bathroom. With work, the police, the Frosts, and his love life, Grant had a very full plate for a twenty-two year old. But renewed by the run and thoughts of Ivy, he felt ready to tackle the day.
CONTINUED…
Read the FREE Frost Harrow Halloween stories, too!
“The Weeping Ghost” (2012), “A Trace of Violet” (2013), “Lunchroom Zombies” (2014), “Omens & Visitations” (2015), “Fata Morgana” (2016), and “At the Appointed Hour” (2017), and “Devil’s Lake” (2018), “A Walk on Witches’ Hill” (2019), “The Beast of Bay Road” (2020), “Cat Burglars” (2021)
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