Winter Lost

“Thank you,” Adam said serenely. “Okay, Honey, we need to head to Tad’s.”

Zee looked at his son. “It would be helpful if you go with the wolves. It would give them some protection if they do encounter Ymir. And I would prefer that he does not notice you unless he makes it necessary.”

Father and son stared at each other for a moment. I couldn’t read either of their faces.

“Come on, Jesse,” Tad said, turning away from Zee. “We’ll take the werewolves to my house and have cookies.”

“You made cookies?” Jesse asked him.

“Nope,” he said. “Izzy’s mother did.”

“Yum.”

—

Adam took his ducklings—and Honey—off to Tad’s house to eat cookies.

It had taken some finesse to pry my brother off Honey. He was more on edge without her, his grip on my wrist near bruising. Zee had dragged the kitchen table away again so Gary and I weren’t trapped behind it.

My timing had been a little too close for comfort. Adam and the others barely had time to get beyond the fence in the backyard when I heard a car coming down our road about a quarter of a mile out.

There was something weird about it.

I frowned as it purred to a halt in the driveway, and Zee looked at me expectantly.

“That’s a rotary engine,” I said. “Renesis. I haven’t heard one of those in years.”

“He drives a 2004 Mazda RX-8,” said Zee in satisfied tones. “I keep it running for him myself.” He looked at me. “I don’t want him going to the garage. Too many werewolves hang out there. And although he hasn’t eaten a person in years, I don’t want him to start with you.”

The first time I’d met Ymir, he’d struck me as hesitant and polite, once he’d quit trying to kill everyone.

“I appreciate that,” I said.

A car door shut quietly and then nothing. As minutes passed, Zee turned to give the wall between him and the front door a frowning look.

“Wait while I check this out,” he said to me.

But then we both heard the sound of booted feet on the wooden steps and the doorbell rang.

“Come as guest and as guest depart,” said Zee, staying where he was.

Ymir opened the front door. “Accepted,” he said before the sound of his feet told me he was inside. I heard the door close gently. “Threshold to threshold.”

In the house, he was soft-footed—if I hadn’t been listening for him, I wouldn’t have heard him walk from the doorway to the kitchen. That meant he had intended for us to hear him on the porch. He stopped as soon as he could see us, a slight man a few inches shorter than me—and I’m average height for a woman. He was wearing glasses, and he blinked at us as if they weren’t quite strong enough.

Then he ruined the whole look by exposing his white, slightly crooked teeth at Zee. The expression muted itself into a smile when he turned it to me.

“I am pleased to see you once more, Mercy Coyotesdaughter. Zee has explained to me that your brother is suffering from a spell cast by one of my kind.”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“I will examine him and remove it if I can. If I cannot, I will tell you what I know about it. Is this acceptable?”

“Payment?” Zee asked before I could say anything.

“Payment has already been made,” Ymir said mildly.

Because I’d broken the spell on him at Uncle Mike’s, I thought, assuming that the Jötunn obeyed the same laws as the fae. It felt like the right sort of balance for what we were asking of him tonight.

Zee glanced at me, then gave a brisk nod, accepting my judgment.

“Here’s my brother,” I said, raising my hand and, because he was gripping it tightly, Gary’s.

Ymir approached us; with his hands clasped behind his back and his face thoughtful, he examined my brother. Bored, Tad had said. Ymir didn’t look bored now.

Gary figured out that there was something going on. He inhaled strongly and squeezed my hand. I squeezed it back. He held up three fingers with his free hand, gestured at himself and made it four. I squeezed his hand four times, one for each of us in the room.

Ymir dropped to a knee in front of Gary and tipped his head like one of the werewolves catching an interesting scent. My brother’s whole body stiffened and a growl rumbled in his throat. I squeezed his hand again, but he didn’t relax. I didn’t blame him. I found the Jötunn unnerving, too.

Ymir’s vivid blue eyes had brightened to near-white in a way that reminded me of the Marrok’s son Samuel, and he smelled of ozone and chill air—like an incipient ice storm. But there was something else, too, a quality of wildness my other senses observed, something that made me believe this being was able to call wolves.

Ymir stood up after a while and paced slowly around the kitchen, the picture of a man in deep thought. He raised his face as if to speak, and Adam boiled through the back door, coatless and shoeless.

Rage hot in his yellow wolf eyes, Adam stopped, weight balanced over his feet in a stance that spoke of his readiness to fight.

“Release her,” he growled. “She is not yours.”

It wasn’t me he was talking about. I looked at Ymir.