Winter Lost

“I am, at this moment, really, really glad you abandoned all of your duties to come with me,” I announced. “Just so you could— Eep!” I couldn’t stop the yelp as he hit a knot just under my shoulder blade. “Right there.”

The stiffness left my whole body, and I sagged against him in relief. He laughed—a low, soft sound that made me want to purr. Eventually he said, “Can you stand on your own for a minute?”

I did, and he soaped himself up with such brisk efficiency that I found it sacrilegious and told him so. He smiled when I reached out and touched his chest and let my hand drift down his belly.

“Careful,” he cautioned. But he didn’t mean it.

Both of us were too tired for that to lead anywhere. But the feel of his skin under my fingers soothed the restless worry of all the problems I didn’t know how to solve: My brother. Me.

My fingers were less sensitive than usual, wrinkled from all the water exposure. I examined them and said, “That was a bucket list item I never thought I’d satisfy.”

“Which item was that?” Adam asked as he grabbed a small hotel bottle of something and opened it.

A strong mint scent battled with the sulfur of the hot springs and won. He dumped some on his hands, rubbed them together, and then he rubbed them on me. The small bar of soap was sufficient for his skin, but apparently not for mine.

“I think that’s conditioner,” I told him as my skin grew slick but not soapy.

The flashlight yielded plenty of illumination to take a shower with. But it was angled wrong for reading labels.

He grunted. “What bucket list item, Mercy?” His voice was a low growl, but I figured it was because of where my hands were, and not because he was unhappy about my bucket list or impatient with me.

I lost it, pulling my hands away to avoid damaging anything important as I found myself laughing helplessly. “What a day—and a night. Jeez, Adam.”

“Bucket list?” He sounded serious, but I could tell he wanted to laugh, too. He put my hands back where they had been.

“Sitting naked with you and a vampire in a hot tub. Of course, I thought it would be Stefan—or, because our lives have been very strange lately, maybe even Bonarata. But Elyna was an acceptable substitute.”

He released my hair from its braids, working it free with gentle fingers. “Kinky of you. If that bottle is conditioner, this one must be shampoo, right?”

Interlude

Last November

A Desert Somewhere in the American West

There was a whole lot of nothing for miles in all directions. No, that was a little bit of an exaggeration, Tracy LaBella thought, getting out of her bright green Maserati SUV and stepping into sand that immediately tried to swallow her five-inch stiletto heels. Tried.

The ground wallowed in hillocks as small as her SUV and as large as a mountain, providing homes for small creatures in its meager plant life. Tough creatures survived—thrived, even—in this barren landscape. Tracy respected tough.

The dwelling—calling it a hut would have been insulting to…one or the other of them—blended in with the landscape so well that someone less observant might have driven right by it. As she got closer, she noticed the fit of the untreated, age-grayed wood was surprisingly tight in this hot, dry climate. The temperatures here sucked the moisture out of most wood, shrinking it in the first years so that gaps should have formed. There should have been repairs for that, and there weren’t. This building had been here a long time. The wind and sand had scored the surface, but it was largely unchanged from the day it had been built. Assuming, of course, it had been built.

Her own home, her first and oldest home, had been hatched.

The porch in front, covered to provide shelter from the sun, was larger than the whole of the building. She stepped onto it to knock at the door.

A rough piece of wood moved and an eye appeared briefly before the wood returned to its place. Nothing happened.

Tracy knocked again. “Grandmother, grandmother, grandmother.”

“That rot doesn’t work with me,” an amused voice answered her. “I’m not fae. And to that end—I don’t speak with liars.”

Tracy contemplated that. Heaved a sigh. “Really?”

Silence answered her.

She shrugged. “Very well.”

Dropping her magic and her illusions, Baba Yaga dusted off her heavy skirt and snapped the steel of her teeth together a couple of times because she enjoyed the sound.

The door opened, and a wizened old woman with Native American coloring and features came out, a tray with two cups of hot tea in chipped mugs in her hands. One mug read Proud Parent of a Valedictorian at Morris Middle School. The other one read #1 Witch. The old woman crossed the porch and walked around the side where a small table and a pair of cheap metal chairs awaited.

They seated themselves, and the old woman handed Baba Yaga the cup that read #1 Witch and took the other for herself with a contented sigh.