By the light of the moon

funeral
homes – that had cracked out of the icecap and stood on end
like grave markers in some strange alien cemetery.
    Cold , Shepherd had said.
    And it sure was.
    They weren't dressed for the top of the world, and even though
the infamous polar winds had gone to bed, the air bit with wolfish
teeth. The shock of the abrupt temperature change tripped Jilly's
heart into painful stutters and nearly dropped her to her
knees.
    Clearly stunned to find himself out of Lake Tahoe and in this
hostile realm of grim adventure stories and Christmas legends,
Parish Lantern nevertheless adjusted with remarkable aplomb.
'Impressive.'
    Only Proctor reeled in panic, staggering in a circle, flailing
his arms as though this panorama of ice were an illusion that he
could tear away to reveal Tahoe in its warm green summer. He might
have been trying to scream, but the leeching cold stole most of his
voice and left him with only a shrill wheeze.
    'Shepherd,' Jilly said, discovering that the cold air burned in
her throat and made her lungs ache, 'why here?'
    'Cake,' said Shepherd.
    As the biting cold steadily chewed Proctor's panic into numb
bewilderment, Parish Lantern pulled Dylan and Jilly into a tight
huddle with Shep, sharing body heat, their heads touching, their
faces bathed in one another's warm exhalations. 'This is killing
cold. We can't take much of it.'
    'Why here?' Dylan asked Shep.
    'Cake.'
    'I think the lad means we leave the bastard here, then go have
our cake.'
    'Can't,' Dylan said.
    'Can,' said Shep.
    'No,' Jilly said. 'It's not the right thing to do.'
    Lantern expressed no surprise to hear her say such a thing, and
she knew he must share their nanomachine-engineered compulsion to
do what was right. His usually commanding voice quaked from the
cold: 'But if we did it, a lot of problems would be solved. There'd
be no body for the police to find.'
    'No risk of him leading his business partners to us,' Jilly
said.
    'No chance of him getting his hands on a syringe for himself,'
Dylan added.
    'He wouldn't suffer long,' Lantern argued. 'In ten minutes, he'd
be too numb to feel pain. It's almost merciful.'
    Alarmed when, with her tongue, she felt a skin of ice on her
teeth, Jilly said, 'But if we did it, we'd be torn up by it for a
long time to come, 'cause it's not the right thing.'
    'Is,' Shep said.
    'Not.'
    'Is.'
    'Buddy,' Dylan said, 'it's really not.'
    'Cold.'
    'Let's take Proctor back with us, buddy.'
    'Cold.'
    'Take us all back to Tahoe.'
    'Cake.'
    Procter snared a fistful of Jilly's hair, jerked her head back,
pulled her out of the huddle, and locked one arm around her
neck.
    She grabbed his arm, clawed his hand, realized he was going to
tighten his chokehold until she couldn't breathe, until she blacked
out. She had to get away from Proctor, get away fast, which meant
folding.
    Her screw-ups at the church were fresh in her mind. If the
government had issued learners' permits for folding, she would have
been required to have one. She didn't want to fold herself out of
the choke-hold and discover that she'd left her head behind, but as
her vision clouded, as darkness flooded in at the corners of her
eyes, she went herethere, there being a few feet behind
Proctor's back.
    Arriving with her head on her shoulders where it belonged, she
found herself in a perfect position to boot Proctor in the ass,
which she'd wanted to do since she'd been in a chloroform haze the
previous evening, in the motel.
    Before Jilly could wind up to deliver a solid kick, Dylan
body-checked the scientist. Proctor slipped, went down hard, and
rapped his head on the ice. Curling into a fetal ball, shuddering
with cold, he sought their mercy through his usual rap, wheezily
declaring himself to be a weak man, a bad man, a wicked man.
    Although her vision cleared, the arctic cold stung Jilly's eyes,
drew a flood of tears, froze the tears on her lashes. 'Sweetie,'
she said to Shepherd, 'we have to get out of here. Take us all back
to Tahoe.'
    Shep shuffled to Proctor, crouched at his side – and the
two of them folded away.
    'Buddy!' Dylan shouted, as if he could call his brother
back.
    The shout didn't echo across the vast iciness, but fell away
into it as if into a muffling pillow.
    'Now this worries me,' said Parish Lantern, stamping his
feet to encourage circulation, hugging himself, surveying the
icecap as though it held more terrors than any alternate reality
inhabited by brain leeches.
    The subzero air caused Dylan's sinuses to run, and a