Winter Lost

I looked at him reluctantly. Even when I hadn’t been looking at him, he’d felt real. Now I could see things I hadn’t noticed before. His blue eyes had a dark gray ring around the pupil. He smelled of something familiar. After a moment, I identified it as ink. There were faint black smudges on his fingers. Ballpoint pens had come into common usage in World War II, I remembered. Before that, it had been all fountain pens.

“Were you a journalist?” I asked.

He frowned at me. “Architect.”

“Architect,” Elyna answered, too.

“What did you do to me?” he asked again.

“What does it feel like I did?” I asked.

He opened his mouth, shut it again. Finally, he said, “I don’t know.” He walked to the window between the reception room and the office and knocked a pen onto the floor. “That was a lot easier.”

“I can’t see you, Jack,” Elyna said. “But I can hear you more clearly.”

She hadn’t heard everything he said, though.

“Will it last?” Jack looked as though the answer mattered to him very much. I could see why it would.

“I don’t know,” I told him honestly. “Usually I try not to make the ghosts I see stronger than they already are.”

He grinned at me, a charming, boyish expression—but he was still wearing that gun. As soon as I noticed it, I could smell the gun oil.

“I can understand that,” he said. “Encouraging ghosts doesn’t make for restful sleep.” Then he sobered. “If they knew what you can do, they’d never leave you alone.”

“No,” I said. “If they—if you—knew what I can do, you’d all stay far away from me.”

I usually tried not to think about the night in Prague when I’d destroyed all the ghosts, using the power of that destruction for my own purposes. It still made me sick.

He looked at me a moment. “Wow. Okay. I’ll keep it in mind, then.”

Abruptly, there were only three of us in the room.

“He left,” I told the other two, then yawned, one of those jaw-cracking, inescapable yawns. “Is there any chance I could get to sleep sometime before the sun rises?”

Adam held up his purloined key. “Ms. Gray, we should head to bed.”

“Good night, then, Mr. and Mrs. Haupt—” She stopped midword. Frowned. “Hauptman. Tri-Cities, Washington. Werewolf. You’re them. Adam and Mercedes Hauptman.”

“Yes,” Adam agreed.

She whistled softly. “You are the Hauptmans the Lord of Night has taken such interest in.”

“Bonarata,” I said, and watched her flinch just a little. I wondered if she thought he’d appear if I said his name three times.

Maybe he would.

“What did you do to enrage him?” she asked me. “Your husband and pack he wants dead—he offers substantial rewards to the vampire who manages to kill any of them. But you, Ms. Hauptman, you he wants alive. Any vampire who harms you will regret the day they were made. He has made it clear he wants you for himself.”

“Do you intend to try for Bonarata’s reward?” I asked without answering her question. It was a long story, and I didn’t feel like sharing it. It was also the second time I’d said his name out loud.

She smiled. “To the extent of not harming you, yes.” She looked at Adam and shook her head. “I highly doubt Bonarata knows I exist, and I’d love to keep it that way.”

The third time his name had been spoken here tonight, and he hadn’t shown up or called. Maybe that was because my cell phone wasn’t working.

Elyna paused. “In point of fact, I owe you quite a lot. Jack is—” Her voice cracked. “Jack is necessary to me.”

She gave a short nod, as if to herself, then she spoke briskly. “You are looking for your brother. I will help you in any way I can. If you fear that he is lost in the woods, I can help look. The winter holds no fear for me. Vampires can freeze”—her face tightened just a bit, but her voice continued on pleasantly—“but we are rather like goldfish and will thaw without many issues. I am strong and I see very well in the dark. I can also find heat signatures”—her lips quirked up—“rather like a mosquito.”

“Thank you,” I said warily.

“You saved my husband,” she told me. “Without him…” She chose not to finish that sentence.

“Would you be willing to talk to us about the other people trapped at the resort with us?” Adam asked.

“The lodge,” she said. “It’s not really up to resort standards yet, is it? The entryway and some of the rooms, yes, but not the whole building. Everyone calls it the lodge—especially the people who work here.”

The people at the gas station had called it a resort. But I had to agree that “lodge” fit the building better.

“But you don’t expect someone here is involved with your brother’s disappearance, do you?” Elyna went on. “Most of us are just here for the wedding.”

I looked at Adam. For all we knew, Elyna was the one who’d taken the harp.

“Elyna Gray,” Adam said, “from Chicago.”

She looked surprised and a little wary. “Yes?”

Maybe no one else would have been able to tell, but I could see Adam relax.