Winter Lost

“And it is bad for him.” She stared at the row of white robes on the back wall. “Is this something I have done to him? Called him back with my need and trapped him here?”

I shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t have those answers.”

When I’d been trying to help Jack with the spider, I’d understood why that was—how something about the necromancy that kept Elyna up and moving affected what Jack was.

“Spilt milk,” said Adam briskly. “He is here. You can’t change it. Make the best of it and move forward.”

The icy wind blew through my jacket and I shivered, tucking myself closer to Adam. The fire was pretty, but it was too small and too far away to provide any warmth.

Elyna wiped her eyes and kept her face covered for a moment before she brought her hands down to her lap and straightened her back. “Thank you,” she said.

“Be careful what you ask for,” I offered.

“No,” she said. “Information is good. Speaking of which, you wanted to know about the people trapped here in the storm.”

“That’s right,” Adam said, accepting her change of subject.

“And you want to know about something someone stole? Something that you think might have some bearing on why Gary Johnson isn’t up at the ranch where he should be.”

I was keeping my chin tucked in my coat so I couldn’t see Adam’s face, but I heard the smile in his voice. “That’s right, too.”

“Maybe,” she said, “if you tell me more about your mystery, I will be more use to you.”

Fair enough.

“My brother has been cursed,” I told her. “Because of the nature of the curse, he can’t communicate. He showed up at our house yesterday. We came here looking for a way to help him. But before we can do that, we need to find an artifact—you know what those are?”

Not everyone did. There were a lot more fae in the Tri-Cities than there were most places in the US. Artifacts were mostly a fae thing.

“An artifact?” she said. “Like a fae artifact?”

“Yep,” I said, my voice wavering with the chattering of my teeth. “Well, not fae, I don’t think. But an object bound with magic.” I thought of the deal we’d made. “If we don’t find it, the being who is causing this storm isn’t going to let anyone leave here alive.”

Silence—except for the howl of the wind—hung in the air.

“There is no reason for you to freeze while we talk,” Elyna said. “Let’s go soak in the hot water.”

I glanced at Adam. He’d been treating Elyna like an ally since he’d matched her to a vampire whose story he had heard. I didn’t know if that would make him willing to share a hot tub with her. It sounded like a good idea to me. Except for the “stripping naked in subzero temperatures in a snowstorm” part.

Elyna didn’t wait for us to agree. She stood up and removed her clothing.

When Adam stood up, I knew we’d be doing it, too. I was a shapeshifter—nakedness didn’t bother me. All of my reluctance was temperature-based.

Adam frowned at me. “Are your clothes still wet, Mercy?”

There was a bite in his voice that I ignored.

“What happens after we are all toasty and have to get up and run for cover?” I asked, fumbling with the zipper of my coat.

“You can run pretty fast,” Adam said. “I noticed that when I was courting you.”

His words were teasing, but his mouth was tight as he brushed aside my hands, which were being pretty fumbly. Sitting out here talking had made me colder than I had realized. My jeans wanted to cling—and Adam ripped them down both outside seams.

“Hey,” I protested, stepping out of the pile of rags that used to be my pants. “You werewolves might destroy clothes on a daily basis because they get in your way, but I’ve had those jeans for years. They have good pockets.”

I expected him to make some quip like the ones I’d made when he’d ripped his own jeans.

Instead, he said, “You need to warm up, and they were in the way of that.” He picked me up and pulled my boots off. One sock came off with the boot, but the other one stayed on.

His voice was biting when he said, “Before God, Mercy. Were you going to wait until your toes fell off?”

I took a good look at my bare foot. “That’s not—”

I was still wearing my T-shirt, bra, underwear, and one sock when he strode to one of the steaming tubs and dropped me in. When my cold extremities hit the hot water, I made a sound I wasn’t proud of and instinctively tried to hop out. He put his hands on my shoulders and kept me there. Only when I quit struggling did he start to take off his own clothes so he could climb in, too.

“—not frostbite.” I completed my sentence once my brain was functioning past the pain. “Which is good, because you aren’t supposed to stick frostbitten toes in boiling water.”

My toes ached all the way up to my knees, and I bounced my legs, trying to defer the familiar pain of flesh warming up to normal temperature, while I struggled to remove the last of my wet clothing with fingers that burned from the sudden warm-up. The utter agony of the process told me that Adam’s diagnosis of frostbite hadn’t been that far off.