Winter Lost

4

Mercy

“I don’t mind snow and I don’t mind rain,” Zee growled as he stumped into the kitchen. “But this place likes to spit water that turns to ice.”

Tad, chopping vegetables, didn’t look up when his father entered. Zee glanced at him but quickly looked away.

Jesse exchanged a worried look with me. I had thought matters between father and son had improved. Apparently not.

When Tad started dating Jesse’s best friend, Izzy, Zee had taken an interest in her. Not in a creepy stalker way, but in a scarier “if you hurt my son, I will destroy you” way.

Tad was angry—and I think a little worried. Zee had a habit of dealing permanently with people who hurt his son. I thought Zee could probably tell the difference between an overstepping Gray Lord of the fae and a young human negotiating the confusing new adult version of romance. But Tad, like his father, was protective.

Fortunately, our kitchen was sized like one of those old-timey farm kitchens: fit for a family to gather in. There was more than enough room for the seven of us without forcing Tad and Zee into interacting with each other. For that matter, it was big enough to give Gary some space, too.

Honey looked up from tending to my brother as we approached the table, giving Zee a sharp appraisal. Honey was old, and old wolves tended to be more wary around the fae. At her increase in tension, my brother stiffened and set the last half sandwich back down on his plate. He saw us—I mean he knew there were people in the kitchen—but he plainly didn’t see anyone he recognized.

Zee stopped well short of the table, frowned for a bit, then stretched his right hand in front of him, fingers spread, palm out toward my brother. Like mine on most workdays, his hands were stained with burnt oil. Scars covered his knuckles, and he was missing half a nail on his thumb. His ring finger was crooked where it had broken and healed badly—I couldn’t remember if his fae form, his real form, had a broken finger or not. His hand looked old.

And powerful.

Zee closed his eyes and inhaled audibly. He mumbled in something that might have been German, except it didn’t hold any words I was familiar with. I’m not fluent in German, but as in English, the little common words tend to sprinkle through normal speech. He opened his eyes, put his hand down, and turned to me with a scowl.

“What?” I asked.

“This”—he waved in my brother’s direction—“is not something you should be able to feel. Tad told me that he couldn’t sense it.”

His scowl deepened, the wrinkles on his face growing to crags. He took two steps toward me and touched my forehead with his crooked finger.

“Is it worse?” asked Adam. He was sitting on the island, trying to give Gary as much room as possible. Gary was more agitated when Adam got too near.

“With Mercy, everything that can be worse is. Always.” Zee’s voice was a grumble, and I couldn’t help but snort a laugh.

He dropped his hand from my face and told me, “I do not like how you have been left wandering through the world with your senses wide open like this. Vulnerable.” He pursed his lips. “I keep hoping what that artifact did to you will correct itself.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.” But talking about it wasn’t going to change things. “Am I right about Gary? Is it fae magic doing this to him?”

He shook his head. “No. But I understand why you would think so. My own power, metal based as it is, has as much in common with the Jötnar as it does with other fae.” He used the German pronunciation: Yoot-nahr, rolling the final “r.” “But the Jötnar are mages of great power and greater stealthiness. And you shouldn’t be able to feel this spell at all.”

“The who?” asked Tad.

“Giants,” said Honey and I.

“Loki,” said Jesse at the same time, her knowledge of Norse mythology owing more to Marvel movies than study. She wrinkled her nose at us. “Loki wasn’t a giant.”

“The Norse giants and the Celtic ones were different,” I told her. “Two words got conjoined when moving them from one language to another.”

Zee snorted, but when I looked at him, he made a rolling gesture with his hand.

I raised an eyebrow, but this wasn’t the time to get lost in translation. “Some of the Jötnar in the stories were larger than human size, but mostly they were antagonists of the Aesir—the Norse gods. They came from different places.”

“The nine realms.” Jesse gave a little nod.

“Those movies have a lot to answer for,” Zee said, flashing Jesse a wry smile. He’d always had a soft spot for her. “More truth than they know and more ridiculousness, too. And the pronunciation. Bifrost. Odin.” He mimicked the way they were pronounced in the movie, hitting the long “i” in “Bifrost” and the “d” in “Odin.” Which was how I’d always pronounced them—apparently incorrectly. “But yes. Sadly for us, the Jötnar were and are powerful mages, not the Pictish giants who became mountains when they lay down to rest.”

“Did they?” asked Jesse. “Really? Mountains?”

Zee just gave her a Cheshire cat sort of smile, lingering and mysterious.

“Can you fix Gary?” asked Adam, pulling the room back to the point.

Zee’s face twisted, but not in its usual sour expression. This expression was wrong. His lids lowered and his eyes darkened to flat deep gray, sending a chill up my spine. I’d been seeing a lot of this part of Zee, the older, more dangerous version of him. Or maybe that was just me and the Soul Taker’s gift. Maybe he’d always been this dimensional and I’d just never noticed. But, I reminded myself again, Tad was worried about him, too.

I shivered even though the kitchen was warm. But no one was watching me.

“It depends.” Oblivious to my doubts, Zee studied my brother, who, after his brief pause at Zee’s entrance, was eating the last half sandwich as if he was afraid someone was about to yank his plate out from under him.

“It’s not that he’s blind,” I told him. “And he can hear things. It’s like he doesn’t understand—”

My brother’s head jerked up and he inhaled sharply, emitting a growl as his lips pulled away from his teeth. Honey moved her free hand to his forearm, a reassuring move that not incidentally gave her leverage on his right arm that would allow her to keep him from doing anything dumb. She was right. He didn’t know Zee. If all that he could interpret was smell—and if he could scent like I could—then this could go badly.

“—what he sees or hears,” I continued. “But it’s not everything. He drove all the way from Montana, and his truck doesn’t have any fresh damage. He sees objects like stairs and doors, but he can’t see people as people. Or hear words as words.”

“Almost like glamour in reverse,” observed Tad to the room. The frying pan he held hissed as Jesse poured the egg mixture in.

His analogy was close, I thought. Glamour very seldom covered up scent entirely. It wasn’t that the fae didn’t have, some of them, a keen sense of smell—it was that most of them didn’t use it. Humans were like that, too. Oh, normal people couldn’t scent as well as I did, but they could have used their noses a lot better than they chose to. It was why blind people’s other senses seemed to gain unexpected strength—they actually started paying attention to them.

“I’ll need to touch him,” said Zee.

But he took no more than two steps closer, and my brother rose to his feet, using the arm that Honey should have had control of to put her behind him, the table upending with a lot of drama—though it was sturdy. It would probably survive. Gary’s plate and glass were toast.

Honey looked at that hand that held hers with an expression of astonishment.

Me, too. I didn’t have any more strength than I would have if I’d been wholly human. I wouldn’t have been able to shove Honey around like that. I knew it, I’d tried a time or two—mostly in training fights. Werewolves are strong.

I understood that walkers, people like me who were descended from avatars—Coyote, Hawk, Raven, and others—all had different abilities depending upon which avatar we were descended from. And also how close the generational relationship was. I hadn’t thought any of us were stronger than the average human, though. Evidently, I was wrong.

Unworried by my brother’s stance, Tad grabbed the table and righted it. He didn’t put it back where it had been, though. He hauled it out of the way. Jesse grabbed a broom and dustpan. She was a little more circumspect—staying back from Gary and Honey. But she cleared the mess from the floor. If anyone started a fight, at least they wouldn’t end up rolling in glass.

“I can’t see into this magic without touching him,” Zee said to me. “I can hold him still, with your permission, as he is not in a state to give it.”

If Zee needed permission, it meant he felt that however he needed to hold my brother, it would not be something he’d normally do to an ally. Magic, of some sort, I was sure. Physically restraining Gary, if that was a real option—I gave my brother an assessing look, as I was still unnerved by the ease at which he’d moved Honey—would not have required permission.

“No,” said Honey.

“No,” I agreed with her.

“I can hold him,” Adam offered.

“Wait,” I said.

I considered the interactions I’d had with Gary over the past hour. His vision and hearing were screwed up. I looked at the grip he had on Honey and thought if his sense of touch was really okay, he wouldn’t have had to hold on to her so hard. But he seemed to be getting good information through his nose. That’s how he’d known me, and that’s how he’d known Honey.

If scent was all that we had to communicate with, we’d have to use that. What kinds of things could I figure out from scent?

Werewolves all carry a whiff of pack. It grows to something more easily detected when we’re acting in concert with each other—a hunt, a battle, even a baseball game. I pushed power through the pack bonds, but it wasn’t enough to trigger any kind of scent flare.

Before I asked him, Adam did it for me. He lit up our bonds—and only the ones of the people in our house, so we wouldn’t end up with the whole pack converging here. I’d noticed that he could do a lot of things I had never known were possible. I’d have put it down to me not being a werewolf, but I knew that he surprised some of the older wolves, too. I’d heard Zack, one of the three oldest wolves in our pack, call Adam “the Maestro” because of his command of pack magic.

As the bonds flared to life—Honey’s to Adam, Adam’s to me, Adam’s to Jesse (that last one was a different kind of pack bond, but still a claiming, father to daughter)—I could see Gary feel it and heard his sigh of relief. I stared at him. Gary’s secrets were coming to light today. Because he hadn’t scented our bonds, he’d felt them.

It was wrong. I was taking advantage of him when he was defenseless. I—we had no right to this knowledge. But none of us had any choice, not even Gary.

Only Tad and Zee were outside of the pack bonds.

My brother closed his eyes and inhaled, breathing deeply now that he scented the bonds. He kept his eyes closed and tapped his free hand on Honey’s, then nodded at Adam, at Jesse, and finally at me.

But we needed him to accept Zee’s touch—and Zee wasn’t pack.

I turned to Zee. “I need to give you my scent, so he knows that you”—I almost said “are mine” but thought it might be unacceptable, because the ties between Zee and me were mostly unspoken and worked best that way for us both—“are here at my invitation.”

Zee frowned at me. “How are you going to do that?”

He didn’t sound offended. But I didn’t know exactly how to answer. Lovers smell like each other, but a casual touch wasn’t going to transfer my scent to him. Maybe if I put a shirt I’d worn on him—

“Zee’s hands smell like a mechanic’s,” Adam suggested. “Just like yours do. Might be enough to have Zee run the inside of his wrist along the side of your neck.”

Adam took his own wrist and ran it under the line of my jaw to show what he meant. He sniffed his wrist, then shrugged with a hint of humor.

He always carried my scent.

“I can do that,” Zee agreed. “With your permission, Mercy?”

I tipped my head to allow him access, and his wrist slid across the soft skin of my neck with a slight rasp of warmth that was cooler than Adam’s wrist had been.

Adam raised an inquiring eyebrow, and Zee lifted his wrist in invitation. Adam sniffed.

“Almost,” he said. “Try one more time.”

It took three times—a number that gave Zee obvious satisfaction. The number three had magical significance to the fae.

I stood between Zee and my brother and put my own wrist to Gary’s nose. After a second, I backed away and Zee put his wrist near my brother’s face and held it there.

Gary tipped his head, put his nose closer to Zee, and nodded.

Zee put Gary’s free hand under his own and carried both up to the side of Gary’s neck, just over his pulse point. Gary bent his head and hissed, the muscles of his body tightening, and he broke out in a light sweat. But he didn’t fight.

After a few seconds, Zee jerked his hand away and walked back to the other side of the kitchen to give Gary space, shaking out the hand he’d used on my brother as he did so.

I was surprised I hadn’t felt a surge in the magic in the room, given how much reaction both men had shown. Maybe my senses were just overloaded. I tried not to feel hopeful that maybe whatever the Soul Taker had done to me was fading. Or could get overwhelmed and fizzle out. I’d take either option.

“Pest,” Zee said. “I am sorry, Mercy. This is not something I can break without damaging him.”

And my concerns about myself disappeared, telling me how much confidence I’d had that Zee could take care of it.

“The Jötnar work their own kind of magic,” he said. “This is subtle and powerful—the work of one of the old ones, I think.” He frowned. “There is one who could tell you more and he feels obligated to you, but I am not sure it is a good idea to involve yourself with him.”

I knew who he meant. I’d just seen Ymir at Uncle Mike’s.

A couple of years ago, under the influence of someone else’s malicious magic, Ymir had shown his true form and nearly destroyed Uncle Mike’s pub. Mary Jo had been killed—or almost killed, depending upon who you talked to. It hadn’t been the Jötunn who had damaged her, but he’d been part of the problem. I’d broken the spell and—though fae do not say thank you—it had been implied.

The Jötnar weren’t properly fae. Or maybe they were; I knew that the lines between fae and not-fae were blurry. In any case, the Jötunn at Uncle Mike’s called himself an ice elf—and elves were a type of fae.

There were a lot of classifications of fae that had been made up to satisfy government forms—Zee called himself a gremlin, which is a term that he predates to a ridiculous degree. “Ice elf” was no more a real classification for the being who’d run amok than the abominable snowman would have been. But when a frost giant told you to call him an elf, you did it.

“The ice elf?” I asked.

“Snow elf,” Adam corrected me absently, staring at Zee. “Ymir calls himself a snow elf.”

“Oops,” I said without meaning it. Either way, they were ridiculous terms, conjuring up something that should be helping Santa Claus deliver presents instead of destroying the world in the fated Ragnarok.

“Ymir,” Adam said, talking to Zee, “has power over wolves.”

That was true, assuming our Ymir was the one in the stories.

“Ja,” agreed Zee. “That is one reason not to invite him to your home.”

“Omelet’s done,” announced Jesse. “Tad, can you move the table back so I can feed my step–half uncle?”

Once Gary was eating again, I said, “I’ve been wondering about this since I heard Uncle Mike call him Ymir. Ymir is supposed to be dead, right? Odin and a couple other Norse deities killed him and used his body parts to form the earth, right?”

“Origin story,” huffed Zee dismissively.

“So he’s not dead?” I asked. “This is the real Ymir we’re talking about?”

“I don’t know whether or not the landmasses were formed from Ymir’s body,” Zee said. “I wasn’t alive yet. But I have my doubts. I suppose that your mate is the first human because he uses that name? He is the husband of Eve and Lilith, who came before?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Don’t try to be funny. It doesn’t suit you. It’s not my fault that I’ve spent the last few years meeting people—beings—who I’m just finding out are real and living here. Baba Yaga. Guayota.” I narrowed my eyes even more because I was really grumpy at this one. “Wayland Smith.”

Zee grunted.

“If Wayland Smith is repairing Volkswagens in Kennewick, Washington, then it is not out of the realm of possibility that Ymir died to form the land we stand upon,” Adam said, his tone just this side of amused—enough to take the temperature down without leaving Zee insulted. When he wasn’t angry, my mate was pretty good at managing situations.

Zee threw up his hands. “All right. Yes. I see how you might think that. Most origin stories are ridiculous, which does not make them untrue—or at least does not make the allegory of the story untrue.”

“Well, then,” I said. “Ymir is supposed to be dead.”

“Ymir is…” Zee let his tone drag out as he translated his thoughts. “Ymir is an honored name among the Jötnar. There is only one who wears that name at any time. They must hold the power of Winter”—I heard the capital letter there—“and call wolves, but it is more than that. They must be a worthy Power and able to defend their use of that name. There are none among the Jötnar who have objected to this snow elf—who now lives here, in this time—taking that name. Or none who lived.” He frowned. “Ymir becomes a worse idea the longer we talk about him. Instead, we could call in Uncle Mike, who is better with this kind of spellcrafting than I am. Or your Sherwood Post.”

“You don’t think they can help,” I said. I could read this Zee.

He shook his head. “No. But they are safer options.”

Adam looked at my brother, who was dividing his attention between us and his food, tension never really leaving his body. “Would you invite the Jötunn to our house for us?”

Zee assessed my mate, and for just an instant I could see that unfamiliar something look out of his eyes. He glanced at me and as quickly as that, he was my friend again.

Phone in hand, Zee peered out the window with a grimace. Then he opened the back door and walked into the storm. The strength of the wind meant that there was no chance we could overhear him. I don’t know why he needed to keep his conversation from us, but I trusted Zee to know what was best.

Tad brought the pan, cutting board, and assorted cutlery they’d used for Gary’s omelet and set it in the sink. He glanced out the window at his father, then over at Adam.

“You should probably go before Ymir gets here,” he advised. “Ymir is…”

“Dangerous?” asked Adam dryly.

“Yes,” Tad agreed. “But that’s not what I meant. ‘Malicious’ is too strong of a word.” He hesitated. “Bored. Ymir is bored. I think that all of the werewolves around are going to be too much for his self-control. It would be best if you all were gone.”

He looked at me. “I don’t think Ymir can do dogs. Which means you should be safe, Mercy.”

“Not a dog,” I told him.

“Dog is as far from a wolf as a wolf is from a coyote,” he answered.

“And a werewolf is from a wolf,” I argued back.

“Ymir can call werewolves,” Honey said, but her voice was very quiet, and I don’t think anyone else heard her because Adam spoke at the same time.

“So I should leave you, Jesse, Mercy, and Gary to meet with Ymir while I run away?” Adam’s voice was too mild.

Tad flushed but persisted. “Dad will be here, too. No one is touching Mercy if Dad is here.”

Something came and went on Adam’s face. A flicker that my instincts told me was important. But Adam covered up whatever it was.

“Ymir is not my enemy,” Adam said. “And he doesn’t want to be my enemy.”

“Adam.” Honey’s voice was careful. “He is not wrong about Ymir. Ymir can call werewolves.” She paused, then said, “I’ve been in his power.”

Adam’s body stiffened and he took a step toward her.

“Centuries ago,” she said, her voice calm even for her. “He needed backup, but perhaps more than that, he needed us to impress his enemies. He came to our pack house and called us. The whole Kraków pack numbered around sixty, but there were only seventeen of us at our Alpha’s house when Ymir called. None of us, not even Kazuch, our Alpha, hesitated when Ymir asked us to come.” She made a humming sound, as if considering what to say.

“It felt so wonderful to serve him,” she said. “All of my doubts, all of my desires and wants, just vanished, subsumed in his presence. You’ve seen those dogs who focus on their owner with all their being, right? Just vibrating with the need to follow the next command. I know exactly how that feels.”

Honey’s voice and demeanor were matter-of-fact. But Gary’s eating slowed and his head canted toward Honey. Behind her, her dead mate’s shade wrapped his arms around her, his face twisted in sorrow. I hadn’t noticed him when she first came in.

“When he was finished with us, Ymir took us back to our pack house and left us—all seven of us. Ten of us died in his service, including our Alpha and our first. We just…the pack dissolved. Today is the first day that I feel angry about what Ymir did to us. Kazuch was a good man, a good Alpha, and I didn’t mourn him. None of the wolves Ymir took mourned him.”

She looked at Adam and said seriously, “We should leave before Ymir gets here.”

Adam might have agreed then, but Zee came into the kitchen, closed the door behind him, and said, “Ymir is coming. You who are wolves should go. I will keep Mercy and her brother safe. That will be easier if I do not have to contend with you.”

Twenty minutes later Adam and Zee were still arguing about it in short savage sentences that sounded as if a physical clash were only moments away. The testosterone in the air made the kitchen feel a lot smaller. It was a big kitchen, but if the two of them actually started engaging with fang and axe (with Zee in this mood, nothing else was going to do), a football stadium would have felt too small.

Tad stood next to the stove, just a little in front of Jesse, who looked a lot less worried than she had when they’d started in on each other. I’d caught Tad nudging her attention toward my face. I couldn’t help but grin when Zee resorted to German—a wonderful language to swear at someone in—and Adam answered in Russian. I understand a lot of German, but Russian is beyond me. Adam’s speech was not as consonant heavy, but the rich vowels made it sound like Adam was purring epithets in preparation for biting Zee’s head off.

If I’d been Jesse, I’d have been worried, too. But I could feel Adam’s pleasure—relief, even—at being able to just let fly at an opponent who was capable of meeting him full force. He’d been eating a lot of frustration for the past year, and Zee wasn’t someone who was going to misunderstand an argument for a war.

But time was passing.

I slid off the counter I’d retreated to when it had seemed the verbal combat needed more room.

“Okay, Adam,” I said. “If you keep this up, you’re going to still be arguing when Ymir gets here.”

Adam’s white teeth flashed in a grin, and he dropped the aggression. “Too true.”

He wasn’t stupid; he’d heard what Honey had said. Zee had ruffled his fur, though. The fight hadn’t been playacting, exactly. But it hadn’t been serious, either.

Zee scowled at me and then at Adam. “You,” he said in an aggrieved tone, “have as much sense as earwax.”

“Thank you,” Adam said serenely. “Okay, Honey, we need to head to Tad’s.”

Zee looked at his son. “It would be helpful if you go with the wolves. It would give them some protection if they do encounter Ymir. And I would prefer that he does not notice you unless he makes it necessary.”

Father and son stared at each other for a moment. I couldn’t read either of their faces.

“Come on, Jesse,” Tad said, turning away from Zee. “We’ll take the werewolves to my house and have cookies.”

“You made cookies?” Jesse asked him.

“Nope,” he said. “Izzy’s mother did.”

“Yum.”

Adam took his ducklings—and Honey—off to Tad’s house to eat cookies.

It had taken some finesse to pry my brother off Honey. He was more on edge without her, his grip on my wrist near bruising. Zee had dragged the kitchen table away again so Gary and I weren’t trapped behind it.

My timing had been a little too close for comfort. Adam and the others barely had time to get beyond the fence in the backyard when I heard a car coming down our road about a quarter of a mile out.

There was something weird about it.

I frowned as it purred to a halt in the driveway, and Zee looked at me expectantly.

“That’s a rotary engine,” I said. “Renesis. I haven’t heard one of those in years.”

“He drives a 2004 Mazda RX-8,” said Zee in satisfied tones. “I keep it running for him myself.” He looked at me. “I don’t want him going to the garage. Too many werewolves hang out there. And although he hasn’t eaten a person in years, I don’t want him to start with you.”

The first time I’d met Ymir, he’d struck me as hesitant and polite, once he’d quit trying to kill everyone.

“I appreciate that,” I said.

A car door shut quietly and then nothing. As minutes passed, Zee turned to give the wall between him and the front door a frowning look.

“Wait while I check this out,” he said to me.

But then we both heard the sound of booted feet on the wooden steps and the doorbell rang.

“Come as guest and as guest depart,” said Zee, staying where he was.

Ymir opened the front door. “Accepted,” he said before the sound of his feet told me he was inside. I heard the door close gently. “Threshold to threshold.”

In the house, he was soft-footed—if I hadn’t been listening for him, I wouldn’t have heard him walk from the doorway to the kitchen. That meant he had intended for us to hear him on the porch. He stopped as soon as he could see us, a slight man a few inches shorter than me—and I’m average height for a woman. He was wearing glasses, and he blinked at us as if they weren’t quite strong enough.

Then he ruined the whole look by exposing his white, slightly crooked teeth at Zee. The expression muted itself into a smile when he turned it to me.

“I am pleased to see you once more, Mercy Coyotesdaughter. Zee has explained to me that your brother is suffering from a spell cast by one of my kind.”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“I will examine him and remove it if I can. If I cannot, I will tell you what I know about it. Is this acceptable?”

“Payment?” Zee asked before I could say anything.

“Payment has already been made,” Ymir said mildly.

Because I’d broken the spell on him at Uncle Mike’s, I thought, assuming that the Jötunn obeyed the same laws as the fae. It felt like the right sort of balance for what we were asking of him tonight.

Zee glanced at me, then gave a brisk nod, accepting my judgment.

“Here’s my brother,” I said, raising my hand and, because he was gripping it tightly, Gary’s.

Ymir approached us; with his hands clasped behind his back and his face thoughtful, he examined my brother. Bored, Tad had said. Ymir didn’t look bored now.

Gary figured out that there was something going on. He inhaled strongly and squeezed my hand. I squeezed it back. He held up three fingers with his free hand, gestured at himself and made it four. I squeezed his hand four times, one for each of us in the room.

Ymir dropped to a knee in front of Gary and tipped his head like one of the werewolves catching an interesting scent. My brother’s whole body stiffened and a growl rumbled in his throat. I squeezed his hand again, but he didn’t relax. I didn’t blame him. I found the Jötunn unnerving, too.

Ymir’s vivid blue eyes had brightened to near-white in a way that reminded me of the Marrok’s son Samuel, and he smelled of ozone and chill air—like an incipient ice storm. But there was something else, too, a quality of wildness my other senses observed, something that made me believe this being was able to call wolves.

Ymir stood up after a while and paced slowly around the kitchen, the picture of a man in deep thought. He raised his face as if to speak, and Adam boiled through the back door, coatless and shoeless.

Rage hot in his yellow wolf eyes, Adam stopped, weight balanced over his feet in a stance that spoke of his readiness to fight.

“Release her,” he growled. “She is not yours.”

It wasn’t me he was talking about. I looked at Ymir.

A cold smile grew over the frost giant’s face. “She is payment for what I do here. It has been agreed. Mercy is your mate, empowered to make bargains on your behalf.”

It wasn’t the time to do anything stupid like ask what the two of them were talking about. But I hadn’t spent a decade fixing cars with Zee without learning to pay attention to my words. I thought back over what had been said.

But Zee got there first.

“Mercy made no bargain,” he said. “Accepting your word that a payment has been made is not agreement. And I have no hold on the wolves that you can use my approval to take one of them. No bond to Mercy that I can make bargains in her stead. If you chose to accept some past action or inaction of mine for your aid with Mercy’s brother, that is not our fault.”

Ymir stiffened and made a gesture at the air, and I felt a fizz of unfamiliar magic. It seemed to tell him something.

“I am not a mortal child,” Zee said, menace easing into his voice, “to be fooled by the likes of you. Nor do I lie. Your bargain is with me. That you chose to believe it was with Mercy is not her fault. And if you had been honest in your bargaining, it would not have mattered who you were making the agreement with.”

Ymir looked at me, face so expressionless it sent ice down my spine. “I should have expected one of your kind to be duplicitous. Loki was always so—and I am told that he and Coyote are of a piece.”

“Winter roads are treacherous,” I said slowly. I wished that I’d gotten a chance to talk to Larry the goblin king instead of hearing his message from Uncle Mike. I might have been able to get more clarification. I’d tell Larry that he needed to give better warnings next time I saw him. “What did he do, Adam?”

“He’s got Mary Jo,” Adam said grimly.

“I found her spying upon me,” Ymir said. He looked at Zee, and his upper lip curled derisively. “Before I accepted guesting rule. Bargain or no bargain, she stays mine,” he said, his voice mocking, his attention on Adam now, “unless you can take her from me, remembering that I am a guest in your house.”

When no one said anything, Ymir looked pleased. “Mary Jo. Is that her name? Pedestrian and Christian both. I will change it.”

He snapped his fingers and I heard the crash of the big plate-glass window in the living room. A frigid blast of air swept through the kitchen, then a silvery wolf with black markings on her face that would have looked more at home on a cheetah or on the face of an ancient Egyptian queen stalked into the room. Pieces of glass and drops of blood fell onto the tile floor in an irregular pattern.

Mary Jo’s eyes were fixed on Ymir, who looked smaller next to her even though Mary Jo’s wolf form was as compact as she was as a human. The frost giant laid his hand on the top of her head and turned gloating eyes to Adam.

My brother leaned his shoulder against me and let go of my hand. I couldn’t tell if that was to free me for action—or to free himself.

“Mary Jo,” Adam said, and I felt him light the pack bonds, as he had earlier for Gary, but this time he drew on one particular bond with a little more emphasis.

I was not so good with the pack bonds that I understood what Adam asked for, but I didn’t need to be. The flavor of Sherwood Post in our pack bonds had changed over the past few months until he felt almost more like Joel, who wasn’t a werewolf at all, than he did any of the rest of the pack. Through Adam, I felt Sherwood hesitate, and then he gave Adam what he’d asked for.

Our pack’s ties strengthened and became something more, something that lived and breathed magic. When it was stable—a time both infinite and less than the tick of a clock—Adam made another ask, this time to Joel. The response he got was more immediate than Sherwood’s had been but less sure, a hot vital spark that Adam’s more subtle skill blended with the powers Adam already held. Then my mate asked me. Like Joel, I had no idea what he was asking for, less than Joel really, but I opened the barriers between us and offered him whatever he needed to gather from me.

Ymir’s eyes widened and he sniffed the air. Zee’s eyebrows rose and he allowed the hand that had been moving ever so slowly behind his back to return to his side. My usual carry was a gun in a holster in the small of my back, and even absorbed by whatever Adam was doing, I still wondered what weapon Zee carried there.

“Mary Jo,” said Adam deliberately, and he shoved all of that—the pack magic entwined with Sherwood’s primordial wild power, with the fire that was our tibicena Joel’s weird addition to our pack, and with something that felt like Coyote smelled—and sent it blazing along the single strangled path that led to Mary Jo.

The hold Ymir had put on one of ours melted away in the fire of our Alpha’s displeasure, as if it had been nothing.

Adam was good with the pack bonds. I knew that. I also knew that what he’d just done was more than mere ability. Someone had been working with him. I wondered if it was Sherwood or someone else.

Mary Jo flung herself away from the frost giant in a desperate leap and lost consciousness midair. Her limp body hit my legs with bruising force. She knocked me away from Gary, who shot his hand out, and I grabbed it even as I reached down to see if the wolf at my feet was still breathing. I counted on Zee and Adam to keep the three of us safe.

That had been a lot of power Adam had used. My own ears still rang with the echo of it. But Adam, who stepped between us and Ymir, didn’t show any effect other than the light sweat that dampened the back of his shirt.

Ymir’s white eyes locked with Adam’s.

“What a surprise you are,” Ymir purred, stepping forward.

Zee swung a staff he hadn’t been holding when I’d last looked at him between the frost giant and Adam. The weapon buzzed through the air and then stopped, more or less waist height, in a horizontal barrier between Adam and Ymir.

It took me half a second to realize that the staff he held was my walking stick with the spear blade ascendant. Zee had produced the walking stick once before, so I wasn’t astonished he’d managed it. I just wondered why he’d used the walking stick instead of the various weapons he had to call upon that belonged to him—or the one he was carrying on his back.

“You stand guest,” whispered Zee. “You accepted hospitality while you assaulted the mind of one of those who belong to the house. You would have stolen her will and taken her from those who love her and who are loved. And now you would attack its master. While you are a guest.”

That last word hissed out and a lick of silvery light flashed to limn the edges of the spear blade Lugh had forged. Ymir stepped back with a hiss. Adam backed up, too, and I didn’t think it was voluntary.

“Think well what happens to those who violate guesting laws,” Zee said, his voice once more belonging to an old grumpy mechanic and not a god of the forge.

Ymir stepped back several more paces, shaking his shoulders in a way that reminded me of a lion shaking his mane. Adam stayed where he was. No one looked like they were going to kill anyone else in the next few seconds, so I took a moment to actually assess what my free hand was telling me about Mary Jo.

“Breathing,” I told Adam. Then realized that he’d know that through the bonds—and so should I have, if I hadn’t been so panicked.

“She approached me,” Ymir said, but not like he was talking to any of us here. “Wolves are mine to call. I called and she came.” There was a short pause, and he said, “There are not so many wolves as there once were. It has been long and long since I had a wolf to call.”

“She approached you as a guardian of this house,” said Zee. “A house that you intended to enter as a guest.”

Ymir closed his eyes, took a deep breath. As he let it out, his body relaxed, and when he opened his eyes, they were a deep, clear blue-gray.

“My apologies,” he said with utter sincerity. “Adam Hauptman, Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack, I have moved against you in this, your house. Instincts are powerful in my kind, and she is strong and beautiful. I could not resist the temptation of her.”

As an apology, it was lacking.

“She belongs to me,” said Adam, his voice deeper than usual with restrained rage. “She is not yours to call.”

There was a flash of anger in Ymir’s eyes. But he blinked and it was gone.

The frost giant nodded solemnly. “It is to my shame that I have done this. For this cause shall I complete what you have asked of me in recompense for my transgression.”

All of my senses told me that he spoke the truth, and there was the ring of it in the air. But I knew, I knew, that he lied. Which did I believe? The instincts I’d honed over a lifetime of being Coyote’s daughter? Or the insight I’d had shoved down my throat by the Soul Taker, an animated gateway for a dark god?

To make matters even more special, now that the temperature had come down in the room, the incident was trying very hard to bring on one of my inconvenient panic attacks. Like Mary Jo, I’d had my will stolen away once, too.

“Can you help my brother?” I asked—and almost didn’t recognize my own voice. I had expected to sound shaky because of the increasing shortness of my breathing. But I sounded like Adam had—enraged.

“I cannot disarm the binding spell,” Ymir said with apology. I didn’t believe that any more than I believed his other apologies. “This is because it is magic that belongs to my name-brother Hrímnir. Unlike me, he is the original bearer of that name, and his abilities outstrip my own.”

I was a little surprised that there wasn’t more bitterness or something when he admitted another was more powerful than he was. But there was nothing like that in his voice or manner.

“Do you know how Gary can be freed?” I asked.

I’d had to force the words out through a throat that wanted to close. I deliberately tried to ignore Mary Jo at my feet because looking at her was making me worse. I understood what it felt like when someone stole your will. Maybe we couldn’t trust Ymir’s information, but I intended to make him talk as long as I could.

“My brother is the only one who can free yours,” Ymir told me, then he gave a slight grimace. “I am bound not to tell you where or how he can be found.”

“I’d expect it is somewhere near where Gary was living,” said Adam.

I’m sure he meant his tone to be dry, but the rasp of his wolf was in it. He knew I was fighting off a panic attack, and he was doing his best not to add to it. I could feel the support he sent through our mating bond. Not calmness—we’d learned from experience that he could not be calm when I was freaking out. But strength and the knowledge I wasn’t alone.

When a panic attack hit me when he and I were alone, sometimes his physical touch helped. But if he touched me right now, I’d lose the battle I was fighting to seem normal in front of the stranger in our house.

Gary released his hold on my wrist—I was thankful because that hold was making me feel trapped—and dropped to the floor next to Mary Jo. He felt her limp body with careful hands, then focused his attention on our guest.

“Is there anything more that you can tell us that would be useful?” Zee asked.

Ymir shook his head.

“Then go,” Zee said. “And cause no more trouble for your hosts.”

“Remember my name, old friend,” Ymir said pleasantly. He looked at Adam. “I’ll tell my brother to expect you.”

Ymir bowed his head—but even in my distracted state, I could see that something raw and violent flared in his eyes as he glanced at Zee and away.

As soon as the front door closed behind the Jötunn, I gave Adam a frantic look.

“I’ve got this,” he said.

I bolted for the stairs as Zee rumbled something. Before he finished, I was at our bedroom door.

I heard Adam say, “Leave her be,” as I shut the door behind me and sprinted to the bathroom just in time to lose Uncle Mike’s excellent stew. Nausea only hit me sometimes in a panic attack, but this one was a doozy. I stayed in the bathroom for a while.

Sounds traveled up. I heard Warren’s voice. Then Mary Jo’s. She sounded agitated, but she wasn’t dead, so that was a win. Jesse came upstairs, walked past her room, and paused in front of our door.

She tapped lightly on the door. “Headed to bed, Mercy. Hope you feel better soon.”

“I’m good,” I croaked.

“Okay,” she said wryly. “As long as you’re good.”

“Yes,” I told her. And then more truthfully, “I’ll be good in the morning.”

She tapped the door twice and then I heard her bedroom door shut, leaving me to the unhappy task of making my breathing even out.