The Last End

Thea POV

My arm burned before the stone even left my hand.

I pushed off the block anyway, sliding low across the ice, eyes locked on the far end where the button waited under one flickering light. The rock spun out smooth. Straight line. Good weight.

Then it hit nothing, because the lights went out.

Not dimmed. Not flickered. Gone, all at once, like someone had pulled a plug on the whole building.

I stayed low on the ice, breathing hard, waiting for my eyes to catch up to the dark. Somewhere ahead, the stone I'd just thrown clicked against the boards. I couldn't see it happen. I could only hear it.

"Great," I said to nobody. My voice sounded too loud in a rink this empty.

I should not have been here. It was almost midnight, and the only key that should've been in this building was the one on my ring, the one I wasn't supposed to have made a copy of, the one Mom thought lived on a hook by the shop register and nowhere else.

If anyone found out I let myself in three nights a week to run drills alone, they'd ask why. And I didn't have an answer I was ready to give out loud. Not even to myself, most nights.

My phone buzzed in my jacket pocket, sitting on the bench. I skated toward the sound, blind, one hand out, boots finding the rubber mat by feel. Odalys's name lit up the screen.

I answered before the second buzz. "Hey."

"You still up?" Odalys asked. "I'm making tea. Thought I'd guilt you into coming over."

"I'm actually out," I said, which was true, in the way that left out every important detail.

"Out out? Like, a date?"

"Like, errands." My eyes had adjusted enough now to see the shape of the far boards, the dark blocks of the scoreboard. "The power just died here, actually. Whole building."

"Here where?"

I opened my mouth to lie and then didn't, because a sound cut across the ice that didn't belong to me.

A footstep. Not mine. Not an echo of mine either, because I was standing still, phone pressed to my ear, and the sound kept going after I stopped.

"Thea?" Odalys said.

"Hang on." I lowered my voice without deciding to. My whole body went quiet and listening, the way you go still when you think a sound might have imagined itself.

It didn't. Another footstep. Slow. Coming from the direction of the equipment room, not the front doors.

"Someone's in here with me," I whispered.

"What? Thea, where even is 'here'"

I didn't answer that either. I was already moving, sliding along the boards toward the bench, phone pressed so hard against my ear it hurt. My other hand found my stopwatch where I'd left it, and before I thought it through, I grabbed it and shoved it deep into my jacket pocket like the footsteps belonged to someone here to catch me at something instead of someone who might actually hurt me.

That was the wrong thing to be scared of first. I knew that even while I did it.

"Talk to me," Odalys said, and her voice had lost all its teasing now. "Is it Everett? Did he give you a key back or something?"

"I don't know who it is." My throat felt tight around the words. "I can't see anything."

The footsteps stopped.

I stopped too, right by the bench, one boot still on the ice, my heart doing something loud and uneven behind my ribs. The dark had a texture to it now, thick and close, and I hated how much it made me want to call out to end the not-knowing.

"Hello?" I said instead, to the room, not to Odalys.

Nothing answered. Not a voice. Not another step. Just the low electrical hum of a building that still had some backup power somewhere, keeping a red emergency light glowing weakly over the exit sign, too far away to help me see anything close.

"Thea, get out of there," Odalys said. "Right now. I'm calling you an ambulance if you don't say something in ten seconds"

"I'm going." I pushed off the ice onto the rubber matting, boots skidding once before catching. The exit was maybe thirty feet away. I'd walked it a hundred times without thinking. Tonight it felt like the length of the whole town.

Halfway there, I heard breathing that wasn't mine.

Close. Closer than a person standing by the equipment room had any business sounding, unless they'd crossed half the rink in the dark without a single sound I could place.

I didn't scream. I don't know why I didn't scream. I think some part of me was still busy being afraid of the wrong thing, still half-convinced that if I just got to the door fast enough, whoever this was would never know I'd been running drills at midnight like some kid who couldn't take a hint that her career was over.

My hand hit the exit bar.

It didn't move.

I hit it again, harder, both hands now, phone falling from my ear and clattering somewhere on the mat. The door held like it was locked from the outside, which made no sense, because I'd propped it myself three hours ago with a folded receipt so it wouldn't lock behind me.

"Thea?" Odalys's voice came thin and far away from the phone on the ground. "Thea, answer me"

A hand closed around my arm.

Not rough. Not grabbing exactly. Just there, suddenly, fingers wrapped around my wrist in the dark, and a voice close enough that I felt the words more than heard them.

"You don't want to open that door yet."

I went completely still, every part of me. My breath caught somewhere behind my teeth and refused to come out even, refused to come out at all for one long second that felt like standing on ice that hadn't decided if it would hold.

"Let go of me," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt, which surprised me almost as much as the hand did.

"There's someone right outside," the voice said. Low. Careful. Not asking permission to still be touching my arm. "Give it a second before you go through that door."

I couldn't see his face. I couldn't see anything except the shape of him, closer than any stranger had a right to stand, and somewhere on the floor behind us, Odalys was still shouting my name into a phone neither of us had picked back up.