“Yes!” the voice said. “Can you let me in? It’s freezing out here!”
Aria opened the door. A tall figure was standing on her porch, snow all over his head, shoulders, and face. She pressed the red OFF button on the phone. “Hallbjorn,” she whispered again. He was here . . . in Rosewood. At her house.
Aria wouldn’t have been more surprised if it had been Santa Claus.
Chapter 4
Icelandic Boys Are Hot
Hallbjorn stomped into the Montgomerys’ foyer and kicked his snowy boots. “I didn’t know it got this cold in Pennsylvania,” he said in the crisp, jaunty accent Aria had missed since she’d left Iceland. “This feels just like home!”
“W-what are you doing here?” Aria stammered, not having left her post by the door.
Hallbjorn pulled his bottom lip into his mouth playfully. “I missed you. I wanted to see how you were doing.”
“At ten o’clock at night on Christmas Eve?”
“My plane was rerouted here because of weather—I’m trying to get to New York, but there was a bad storm. Flights have already been canceled for tomorrow, too. I tried calling your house from the airport, but there was no answer, and I didn’t know your cell phone number. I thought I’d take a risk and just come.” He looked around. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I? Did I wake your family?”
Aria leaned against the wall, feeling dizzy. “They’re all out of town. It’s just me.”
There were a million questions she wanted to ask him, but her mouth couldn’t form the words. She hadn’t seen Hallbjorn in two years, but he looked even better than she remembered: His tall, reedy body now had a bit more muscle on its frame. His white-blond hair had grown to his chin. He still had the same handsome, angular face, but his eyes seemed even more piercingly blue than ever. And when he smiled, he had perfectly straight, white teeth, the kind that deserved their own Aquafresh commercial. Just looking at him made her heart flutter.
He’d had braces when he and Aria had met. A week after her family had moved to Reykjavík, Aria had taken a bike ride around the town, feeling lonely and displaced and mixed up. It was only a few months after Ali had disappeared, and that still weighed heavily on her mind. She had hoped that getting away from Rosewood would help her recover from everything that had happened, but it still felt so fresh and raw.
She’d heard music playing in a local coffee shop and had wandered in. A band had been playing on a small stage at the back, and a bunch of people were gathered around. During a break in songs, a blond guy had turned to Aria and asked her something in Icelandic. Aria had blushed and said the only two Icelandic words she’d learned so far: English, please. The boy had smiled. “Are you American?” he’d asked in perfect English. When Aria said yes, he’d welcomed her to Iceland and said his name was Hallbjorn.
After a few minutes of exchanging musical tastes and getting Aria’s general impressions of Reykjavík, Hallbjorn had insisted on showing her around the country. The next day, he’d arrived at Aria’s curb in the biggest SUV Aria had ever seen—everyone in Iceland drove massive-tired vehicles that could propel them over lava fields, glaciers, and snow. He’d taken her to see important Icelandic landmarks—the beautiful, clear waterfalls that looked like something out of the Lord of the Rings movies, the giant craters, the burbling volcanoes, and the Akureyri Puffin Island, where puffin colonies spent part of the year before they migrated to Greece. They’d talked during the whole tour, never running out of things to say. Aria had found out that Hallbjorn was two years older than she was and wanted to study architecture, that he’d learned to drive a snowmobile at five years old, that he was a DJ in his spare time, and that he was addicted to American reality shows like Big Brother. In turn, Aria had told him about the boring little suburb she’d come from, how her father was doing a research study here about the Icelandic beliefs in huldufólk—elves—and how, this past summer, her best friend had mysteriously disappeared.