Winter Lost

A cold smile grew over the frost giant’s face. “She is payment for what I do here. It has been agreed. Mercy is your mate, empowered to make bargains on your behalf.”

It wasn’t the time to do anything stupid like ask what the two of them were talking about. But I hadn’t spent a decade fixing cars with Zee without learning to pay attention to my words. I thought back over what had been said.

But Zee got there first.

“Mercy made no bargain,” he said. “Accepting your word that a payment has been made is not agreement. And I have no hold on the wolves that you can use my approval to take one of them. No bond to Mercy that I can make bargains in her stead. If you chose to accept some past action or inaction of mine for your aid with Mercy’s brother, that is not our fault.”

Ymir stiffened and made a gesture at the air, and I felt a fizz of unfamiliar magic. It seemed to tell him something.

“I am not a mortal child,” Zee said, menace easing into his voice, “to be fooled by the likes of you. Nor do I lie. Your bargain is with me. That you chose to believe it was with Mercy is not her fault. And if you had been honest in your bargaining, it would not have mattered who you were making the agreement with.”

Ymir looked at me, face so expressionless it sent ice down my spine. “I should have expected one of your kind to be duplicitous. Loki was always so—and I am told that he and Coyote are of a piece.”

“Winter roads are treacherous,” I said slowly. I wished that I’d gotten a chance to talk to Larry the goblin king instead of hearing his message from Uncle Mike. I might have been able to get more clarification. I’d tell Larry that he needed to give better warnings next time I saw him. “What did he do, Adam?”

“He’s got Mary Jo,” Adam said grimly.

“I found her spying upon me,” Ymir said. He looked at Zee, and his upper lip curled derisively. “Before I accepted guesting rule. Bargain or no bargain, she stays mine,” he said, his voice mocking, his attention on Adam now, “unless you can take her from me, remembering that I am a guest in your house.”

When no one said anything, Ymir looked pleased. “Mary Jo. Is that her name? Pedestrian and Christian both. I will change it.”

He snapped his fingers and I heard the crash of the big plate-glass window in the living room. A frigid blast of air swept through the kitchen, then a silvery wolf with black markings on her face that would have looked more at home on a cheetah or on the face of an ancient Egyptian queen stalked into the room. Pieces of glass and drops of blood fell onto the tile floor in an irregular pattern.

Mary Jo’s eyes were fixed on Ymir, who looked smaller next to her even though Mary Jo’s wolf form was as compact as she was as a human. The frost giant laid his hand on the top of her head and turned gloating eyes to Adam.

My brother leaned his shoulder against me and let go of my hand. I couldn’t tell if that was to free me for action—or to free himself.

“Mary Jo,” Adam said, and I felt him light the pack bonds, as he had earlier for Gary, but this time he drew on one particular bond with a little more emphasis.

I was not so good with the pack bonds that I understood what Adam asked for, but I didn’t need to be. The flavor of Sherwood Post in our pack bonds had changed over the past few months until he felt almost more like Joel, who wasn’t a werewolf at all, than he did any of the rest of the pack. Through Adam, I felt Sherwood hesitate, and then he gave Adam what he’d asked for.

Our pack’s ties strengthened and became something more, something that lived and breathed magic. When it was stable—a time both infinite and less than the tick of a clock—Adam made another ask, this time to Joel. The response he got was more immediate than Sherwood’s had been but less sure, a hot vital spark that Adam’s more subtle skill blended with the powers Adam already held. Then my mate asked me. Like Joel, I had no idea what he was asking for, less than Joel really, but I opened the barriers between us and offered him whatever he needed to gather from me.

Ymir’s eyes widened and he sniffed the air. Zee’s eyebrows rose and he allowed the hand that had been moving ever so slowly behind his back to return to his side. My usual carry was a gun in a holster in the small of my back, and even absorbed by whatever Adam was doing, I still wondered what weapon Zee carried there.

“Mary Jo,” said Adam deliberately, and he shoved all of that—the pack magic entwined with Sherwood’s primordial wild power, with the fire that was our tibicena Joel’s weird addition to our pack, and with something that felt like Coyote smelled—and sent it blazing along the single strangled path that led to Mary Jo.

The hold Ymir had put on one of ours melted away in the fire of our Alpha’s displeasure, as if it had been nothing.

Adam was good with the pack bonds. I knew that. I also knew that what he’d just done was more than mere ability. Someone had been working with him. I wondered if it was Sherwood or someone else.