Winter Lost

Still under the roof, if only barely, was a propane fireplace surrounded by benches. Elyna lit the fireplace, brushed the accumulated snow off a bench, and sat down. Adam and I were wearing coats and boots—Elyna was still in her light shirt and trousers. Cold bothered vampires even less than it bothered werewolves.

Adam brushed the snow off the bench next to her, sat down, and lifted his arm for me to sit beside him, because even the fireplace and the heated floor could not fend off the bitter wind.

We’d dropped off our luggage in the room Adam had chosen, but I hadn’t taken time to change. In the warmth of the lodge, I’d forgotten my clothes were damp. I remembered as soon as we stepped out into the snow. I appreciated the windbreak.

“It’s supposed to be haunted, you know,” said Elyna in a thoughtful voice, her eyes past my shoulder.

I didn’t look behind me. I knew what the old building looked like—and I knew it was haunted.

“Jack doesn’t talk about such things,” she said. “I don’t know…how much of him is still left. It occurs to me that I am talking to someone who might know.”

She pinned me with her eyes. It wasn’t a vampiric power—it was raw need.

I closed my eyes against her question, then opened them. She had the right to ask.

“Ethically, I’m in uncharted territory,” I said, and Adam’s arm tightened over my shoulders. His coat was well insulated, so it was just pressure, not warmth. It still felt good.

“I have guesses,” I told her, “but they are only guesses. I don’t know if I helped either of you tonight. Furthermore, I’m not sure telling you what I think is going to—” Make you happier. Add to your peace. Make anything better. “—be useful.”

“I saw him tonight,” she said. “I’ve lived with him—with him as a ghost—for nearly a decade.”

I cleared my throat. “He’s been dead longer than a decade.”

Her mouth tightened unhappily. “Closer to a century. But I didn’t find him again until about a decade ago.” She paused. “When I returned home.”

I nodded.

“I can hear him sometimes, sometimes not,” she continued. “He has opinions and he’s saved me. More than once. But we don’t converse. He seldom touches me, and I can’t touch him at all. I read him books.”

She stopped speaking, and tears welled up in her eyes, spilling down her cheeks.

“I’ve read all the books about ghosts,” she said.

“Most of them are garbage,” I told her. “But I don’t know which ones.”

She gave me an unhappy smile. “I understand you aren’t certain of what you know. But I need to know this is really Jack.” She looked around.

“He’s not here,” I told her.

She wiped her eyes. “I murdered my husband, Ms. Hauptman. And I need to know that he’s forgiven me. That he is capable of forgiving me.”

“Oh,” I said. “That. I have seen ghosts my whole life. I used to think I knew about them. Now I think I don’t know any of the important things.”

All around us, the formless wisps of white that might have once been ghosts blended in with the fog off the lake and the blowing snow. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of them. They didn’t approach us, though. Something, the vampire’s presence maybe, kept them at bay. I tried not to notice them, dropping my eyes to my boots. We were sheltered from the wind and snow, but my toes were cold again.

“One thing I’ve been almost sure of is that a person’s soul is not meant to linger here after the body is gone,” I said. “It’s bad for the dead person—and it is harmful for the living.”

Elyna had quit breathing and leaned forward, the firelight reflecting in her eyes.

“Most ghosts are just a lingering impression,” I told her. “It still can act like the original, but it is not the person who died, any more than a photograph or a video is. And that’s right and proper. I’ve seen what happens when the soul is trapped in its ghost, and I worked really hard to stop the—” Vampire, I almost said, but I thought that might lead to a digression. Frost had been a monster even among monsters. “—the creature doing that. It was an abomination.” I didn’t know how to explain the wrongness I’d felt about what Frost had done. One of his victims had been a friend of mine.

“Jack—” I fumbled as I tried to express something I sensed, something I didn’t entirely trust, in a way that would do the least harm. “His soul is trapped.”

Elyna’s face closed down, though that had been the answer she’d hoped for before I started talking. “I see.”

“Here’s where it gets unclear,” I said.

“Woo-woo,” murmured Adam with more humor than the situation called for.

“Well, yes,” I snapped. “I am going by instinct. Jack doesn’t feel like an abomination. He doesn’t feel wrong in the same way that other ghosts with souls have felt to me.” For whatever that meant. “But his soul is still stuck, and I’m very much afraid I made that permanent tonight.”

She sucked in a breath and looked away. “Ah. So, he’s really here?”

“Yes.”