Winter Lost

He was right to be angry. I’d been stupid. I knew better than to stay wet in this kind of cold. I wasn’t a werewolf or vampire, and I couldn’t judge my endurance by theirs.

He should have been angry at me—but he wasn’t. He was angry at himself. I’d scared Adam. He counted on me to take care of myself, to draw boundaries with him and the pack so neither of them put me in a situation I couldn’t handle.

The hot tub Adam had chosen could have fit maybe eight people comfortably, more if they were good friends. It had enough space that we three predators could share it for a time. Elyna had climbed into the far side sometime when I wasn’t paying attention. Adam climbed in next to me.

“You,” he said, “warm up a bit while I tell our new friend what we’re doing here.”

I sank lower in the water, closed my eyes, and drifted for a moment. The ache of my feet and hands subsided as Adam’s voice rumbled beside me.

Elyna’s voice got a little shrill now and then. She knew what frost giants were, but not that they weren’t figments of Norse mythology. It is always an uncomfortable adjustment when the rules of the world get rewritten over the course of a conversation. But Elyna’s problems weren’t mine.

When he finished speaking, we all soaked for a little more and listened to the hissing as the storm met the waters of the lake.

“There’s a piano here,” Elyna said, “and one of the staff members has a guitar she’s learning to play. But I haven’t heard any harp music. Do you know what it looks like?”

“He said we’d know it when we saw it,” I offered. “Silver with blue gemstone inlay. Not crystallized stone, but turquoise shaped to fit. A pair of wolves on the ends of the arms—or yoke.”

I had a sudden thought and sat up a little straighter before ducking back down to keep my shoulders in the water. “He called it a harp. But now that I think about his description, it sounds more like a lyre”—I made a yoke shape with my hands and then a straight horizontal line across the imaginary top—“than a harp.” I swooped my hands in the graceful fall a harp makes as the strings vary from the deep-toned long strings to the shorter, higher-pitched ones.

“A woman’s face at the base,” Adam added, “with gemstone eyes.”

“I’ll ask Jack,” she said. “He’s not…reliable about things like that. But it would be stupid not to put in a request.”

“Tell us about the people trapped here with us,” Adam said.

—

About twenty minutes later, wrapped in the big fluffy robes and carrying our wet and frozen clothes, including the rags left of my jeans, Adam and I made our way back to our room.

Adam had chosen one on the corner of the first floor. It had windows on the north and the west walls, and shared only one wall with another room—and that room was empty. The windows were original to the lodge, which meant that the room was a little breezy, though the hot spring–fed radiator had no trouble keeping it plenty warm.

Adam had brought a flashlight, but with two sets of windows, the room was light enough for us to see. A human would have had trouble, though, between the storm and the night.

After the elegance of the reception room and hallways, the room felt distinctly utilitarian. With spare, beautifully made furniture, its tribute to Art Deco style leaned harder on the Great Depression side of 1929 than the flapper era that had preceded it.

A thick, dark green quilt folded on the foot of the bed contrasted with the white chenille bedspread, setting the color scheme in the room. The end tables and the headboard were genuine antiques, while the mattress and the chest of drawers were new. I was not an antiques expert, but anyone with a nose as good as mine could tell the difference between antique and modern. Age carries a much more complex scent.

I dropped my clothes on the floor, stripped off the robe, and dropped it, too. Then rethought that. I kicked the robe off the wet clothes. It took me two kicks. I would have crawled right into bed if Adam hadn’t caught me and dragged me into the bathroom, which was lit by his flashlight on the floor.

“You’ll thank me tomorrow when you, I, and the bed don’t all stink like sulfur,” he assured me, grinning when I growled at him.

“Why aren’t you tired?” I snipped at him as he shoved—I mean, urged—me into the large shower stall.

“I am,” he said, turning the hot water on both of us. “What I don’t have is a killer headache from saving ghosts from mythological spiders.”

I shot him a look. “I haven’t complained.”

He gave me a smile. “That’s how I know it’s bad. Turn around.”

When I turned, the water beat down on my back. It was very hot—only a few degrees cooler than the hot springs had been. It felt wonderful, and warmed up the parts of me that had refrozen in our dash from the hot tub to our room.

I rested my throbbing head on Adam’s shoulder, and he pressed his fingers against the back of my neck, working the knots out.