Winter Lost

“Zane and I are,” Liam said. “It’s a secret—part of the protections bound in the spell is that only the people directly involved in the spell will remember it. To keep someone from trying to interfere. Zane was born knowing about it. I learned after I was called here—though I have officiated at several, if not all, of the previous weddings. His parents remember. This close to the wedding, though, everyone in the wedding party should be starting to understand what their roles will be.” He smiled at us. “This close to the wedding, you’ll remember about it until after the wedding.” His smile turned wry. “And if the wedding doesn’t happen, and the Great Spell is broken, I suppose you’ll remember about it until you die.”

I wondered if Coyote knew about this wedding. And then I wondered if he would try to keep the binding safe—or if he’d be more interested in seeing what happened if the binding did not continue. Had he sent my brother here to steal the lyre and bring about the end of the word?

I rubbed my forehead as if I could erase that thought, because it sounded all too possible.

“Could Zane still make it here?” Adam asked. “Mercy and I managed the trip last night.”

“The last time I talked to Zane—yesterday afternoon, when my sat phone was working—he’d found out that his flight to Missoula was canceled. No flights are going in or out of Missoula or Kalispell because of the weather. He thought he might have a flight to Spokane on a private plane.” He spread his hands. “He is resourceful.”

“A Great Spell,” I said, putting the same capital letters on the words that I’d heard in his voice. “Spells have requirements, right? A bride. A groom.” The groom had bought the lodge a decade ago. “This place?”

“A holy place,” Liam said. “Yes. There’s a reason we find ourselves in the Montana wilderness in the middle of winter. Finding a holy place we could own so that we could control it when we needed to perform the marriage wasn’t easy. There are very few holy places that are not controlled by religious orders.”

“A holy place,” I said. “Is that why the lodge isn’t yours the way Uncle Mike’s tavern is his? A holy place”—I tried to put words to something that I understood viscerally—“belongs to itself.”

He looked at both of us and then shrugged, folding his arms across his chest. “Though I claim this lodge as my own, the lake has its own divine guardian. She is why this ground became sacred, or perhaps she is because this ground is sacred. I did not think, when I first arrived, that it would be a problem. The lodge isn’t holy ground, or shouldn’t be. Only the lake and the surrounds that the lake touches.”

“The manitou is the spirit of the lake, of the hot springs,” I said, using the word Charles had taught me for the spirits of place. “Her power is tied to the water.” I remembered what the frost giant had said. “Or fire.”

Liam’s eyebrow rose. “Fire?”

I wasn’t qualified to argue magic or magical things with someone like Liam. Instead, I kept going to make sure I understood the problem he had, because it might be important when we were looking for the harp.

“The lodge is on solid ground, so it should be separate.” I paused, thinking about what I’d felt when we’d parked Adam’s SUV. “But it’s not just the lake that belongs to the manitou. It’s the hot springs.”

If the lodge had not belonged to the manitou of the lake in some way, the frost giant could have retrieved his artifact himself.

“There are underground springs,” Liam said. “And the lodge is riddled with piped-in water from those springs. The lodge functions as my home—”

“Like Uncle Mike’s pub?” I asked.

“Yes and no,” he said. “That’s the problem. My power is unaffected, but the lodge…has a mind of its own. A will that acts without me—or even the will of the spirit of the hot springs.”

“Magic’s unpredictable like that,” I said.

Liam gave a short laugh. “That it is. How may I help you find the artifact?”

“Could you speak to this spirit?” Adam said. “Ask her if she knows about the artifact we’re looking for?”

“I can and will,” Liam answered. “But I don’t know that it will do much good. She won’t always speak to me. She isn’t motivated by the need to prevent the end of days. I’m not sure it would matter to her at all. What is important to her, what is essential to her very nature, is that her springs are a sanctuary for healing and for people fleeing trouble.”

I knew that. I’d been told.

“Too bad for us,” I said. Adam and I weren’t either of those. We were in pursuit.

Liam gave me a twist of his lips. “I think that’s why she and I get along most of the time—our magics align. I take care of my guests—and so does she. You are a problem. You are my guests, but you didn’t come here for sanctuary.”

“Just to clarify,” Adam said, because you always were careful about assuming things with the fae. “You cannot sense an artifact here?”