Winter Lost

7

Mercy

The storm resumed its fury as soon as the gryphon flew away.

“What do you think?” I asked Adam.

It had been too bad he’d been stuck in wolf form, unable to help negotiate. He was better with words than I was. I hoped I could deliver on my part of the bargain.

“Maybe I should have tried to contact Coyote instead of coming here.” As soon as I said it, I realized that might have been smarter. Instead, I’d dragged Adam out into this storm on a wing and a prayer—and the word of a lying frost giant who lusted after our pack. “Coyote might have been able to free Gary without this journey to winter hell.”

Or not. Coyote was unreliable help at best—and I knew exactly what Gary would say about asking our father for anything. Gary knew Coyote better than I did.

The wolf gave me a sly smile, and warmth blossomed through our bond. Apparently, my husband preferred the path we’d taken. I hoped we could deliver on my promise. Finding a stolen harp and returning it didn’t sound too difficult, given that we knew it was at the resort. I hoped it wouldn’t take very long.

The wind hit my wet jeans, and my toes burned from the cold. My boots were too short, although I wasn’t sure they made boots tall enough for this kind of snow. Snow had snuck in from the top, and my socks had wicked the moisture all the way to the soles of my feet. Adam bumped me toward the SUV.

I shut myself in the blessed warmth of the car, leaving Adam outside to continue his role as guide. My wet jeans clung to my knees, fighting me when I put my foot on the accelerator. Once we left the area Hrímnir had cleared, the snow got deeper. There were a couple of times that even in four-low, I had to back up and hit the drifts at higher speed before the SUV could break through.

We’d traveled another two miles in about twenty minutes when the road made a few sharp turns and ended abruptly in front of a huge log building fronted by a massive porch. A giant rustic sign hung from the rafters in two parts. The top sign read Mountain Home Guest Ranch. A larger sign hung below it, connected by two thick chains. It read Welcome friends.

I turned off the engine and got out of the car. The wind whistled around the buildings, and there were a few shingles on the otherwise pristine white surface. The covered porch had a few feet of wooden planks visible, where the wind had scoured the snow. The rest of it was buried deep. Beyond the ranch house, set at a little distance, was a huge red barn.

“We missed the turnoff for the resort,” I told Adam, who huffed an acknowledgment.

“Since we’re here, I might as well see about those horses that could be tucked up somewhere in the barns.” The horses had been bothering me since the conversation I’d had with the people at the gas station.

It was legitimately an accident that I’d missed the turnoff. But I’d have felt driven to find my way up here tonight anyway. I was here on Gary’s business, and part of that was taking care of his responsibilities.

There were other buildings visible—cabins and garages—but I didn’t care about those. The barn, painted bright red, was maybe a hundred yards behind the main building. I picked it as the most likely place to confine a couple of horses out of the weather. In the summer, the barn was probably a convenient distance from the main building. In knee-high snow with drifts up to my hips, it was a trek.

Even with Adam breaking trail in front of me, I was dripping sweat from effort by the time I made it to the barn, though my toes were still freezing. My coyote could have made this trip a lot easier—and I’d do it that way tomorrow. Because I could hear and smell the horses in the building.

From the SUV, the barn had looked as traditional as the house. But up close, it was a thoroughly modern building with a pair of twelve-feet-wide roll-up doors the same shade of red as the barn itself. There was a control panel next to each door. I pressed the one nearest me and nothing happened.

Of course the electricity was out. Doubtless there were generators around somewhere, but I wasn’t going to be able to locate them easily.

Around the corner from the big doors was a person-sized door. The snow was a lot less deep here. I couldn’t decide if someone had been here recently or if the wind had blown most of the area in front of the door clear.

It was unlocked. The minute I opened the door, I was greeted with a chorus of whinnies, the mysteriously satisfying smell of horses, and the rich scent of alfalfa.

Adam preceded me into the cavernous building. It wasn’t as dark as I expected, mostly because there were translucent panels in the roof that let in what light was available. At night, with a blizzard outside, there wasn’t much of that. A normal human would probably not have been able to see anything.

Traditional stalls lined both sides of the barn, maybe ten on a side, and all of those were empty. The center was obviously meant to be an open arena, maybe a hundred feet by a hundred and twenty feet. Temporary fencing had been set up to create a large pen in the arena that held two sleepy great horses. Belgians, maybe? Though these were some lighter color, and I had the impression from somewhere that Belgians were usually darker—bay or black. They weren’t big enough to be Clydesdales, and Belgians were the only other breed of draft horse that I could name. To one side of the pen was a sleigh.

The big horses watched us curiously but not anxiously. Their water trough was filled to the brim with crystal clear water. The barn felt warmer than it was outside by virtue of being out of the wind. But it still wasn’t above freezing in here. Their drinking water should have ice, if only on the edges.

There was a stack of forty or fifty hay bales just out of reach of the horses. While Adam took a sniff around the barn for hidden threats, I broke off a couple of six-inch-thick flakes from an open bale and tossed them over the fence.

Leisurely, the big animals moved to the hay and began eating. They appreciated the nighttime snack, but there was no urgency to their feeding like I’d have expected in horses left on their own for as long as Gary had been gone. There was no manure in the pen.

When I was growing up, my foster father had kept a couple of horses, and one of my chores had been mucking stalls. This pen had been cleaned recently, probably within the last few hours. I reached through the fence and touched the trough. The aluminum was warm. After a second, my fingers tingled with a hint of magic. I’d expected the magic, but I hadn’t expected it to feel like my brother. I couldn’t do magic like that. It wasn’t a kind of magic I would have expected from Gary, either. Useful magic was more a fae thing. Or a frost giant thing, maybe.

When I next had the chance, I was going to pin my brother to a chair and make him talk. Hopefully, the next time I saw him he would be able to talk. To that end, I needed to finish up here and head for the Looking Glass resort or hotel or whatever it was.

The water might have been Gary’s work; however, my brother hadn’t cleaned the pen or fed the horses today. Under the stronger, more usual barn scents, I could detect something that smelled of winter, magic, and wolfskins.

“The frost giant is taking care of the horses,” I said out loud.

Adam, finished with his inspection, huffed his agreement, turning my presumption into a certainty. In his wolf form, Adam could catch scents better than I could as a human.

“After he damaged my brother, Hrímnir took over his duties.” Why had he done that? To protect innocents? Maybe he just loved horses. “If it weren’t for what he’s done to my brother—and his whole disregard of the kind of damage he’s doing, and the people who are going to die because of his storm—I think I might like him.”

I pulled out my phone to check with Honey on how my brother was—maybe she could figure out a way to let him know the horses were okay. But there was no reception. We were pretty far from civilization, so it wasn’t surprising. When we got to the hot springs, if I still didn’t have a signal, I could use Adam’s sat phone to make the call.

“Do you think we should spend the night here?” I asked Adam. “I could shift and we could stay in the barn, or I could break into the main building. There are chimneys—there should be firewood somewhere.”

Adam shook his body as though shedding water, and trotted to the door we’d used coming into the barn, impatience in his body language.

“Okay,” I said, relieved. Staying here would have been smarter. I let us out and then shut the horses in their safe space. “The sooner we find that harp, the sooner we’ll be done.”

I was pretty sure the harp was an artifact of some sort, a magical item. It could be something of great power or mostly sentimental. But I didn’t think the frost giant was a sentimental creature, and the last great artifact we’d encountered hadn’t been a picnic for anyone. I rubbed my temples, wishing I didn’t have to listen to the magic in the storm.

“Vulnerable,” Zee had said.

We found the road to the resort about a mile back down the road. The storm had pulled down the sign and flipped it backward—which is why we missed the road the first time. Well, that and the snow that had gathered about two feet deep over the roadway so it looked no different than the terrain around it.

I stopped before I turned off the main road, rolling down the window. Adam trotted over to me.

“Hrímnir said magic is weird at the resort. Maybe you should take on human shape before we get there.”

Adam considered this, then shook his head.

I felt something pass through our bond. But though sometimes we could talk through that path, it was intermittent. Just like my part-time immunity to magic. But I caught a bit of his confidence. He thought that wouldn’t be a problem, but if he had to get stuck in one form among possible enemies, he’d rather be the wolf.

Fair enough.

The SUV roared as I scaled the steep road through the trees behind the wolf. I’d learned to drive in this kind of country, and it still took every nerve I had to keep going. I couldn’t see the road in front of me most of the time—not because of the storm or the darkness but because of the way the road humped up and down, leaving my headlights illuminating the sky or the trees. And if I slowed down at all, I’d be in a world of trouble. Only my speed allowed the SUV to keep climbing instead of sliding down the mountain backward.

It was probably less than a quarter of a mile before we breached the top, but it felt like a thousand years. When the chassis was level, I stopped to catch my breath. There had to be another way into the resort.

In front of me, all I could see was snow flying sideways, illuminated by my headlights. I couldn’t see trees or any sign of which way the road went. Before I could worry too much, Adam appeared, trotting toward me.

I rolled down my window. “When we go home, you are driving back down that excuse for a road.”

He gave me a look.

“Okay,” I admitted. “That was really fun.” I held up my hands to show him how much they were shaking. “But you still get to drive on the way home.”

He gave me a laughing look and turned to lead the way forward. There were no trees or cliffs to indicate where the road might be. The road was flat, and the ground to either side seemed to be flat, too. We traveled slower because even Adam was having trouble finding the road.

I knew what flat, treeless ground in the mountains meant. Chances were that under the snow on either side of the road was swamp or lake. Probably we wouldn’t sink through—it was really cold, and frozen water was as good as asphalt for driving on. But considering we were heading for a place with hot springs, I’d just as soon not risk it.

The sound of the roadway changed as we crossed a bridge. My eyes didn’t see it, but I could feel the flow of water beneath me. It tasted like magic. My foot came off the gas pedal, but I didn’t notice until the SUV slowed to a stop as the power beneath the vehicle dragged at me. Called me.

A sharp sound by my left ear interrupted the water’s song. I turned to see Adam’s face right on the other side of the window. The sound had been his claws scoring the side of the door.

I blinked at him, then put my foot down on the accelerator. When the SUV pulled forward, a sharp pain slid through my chest, a pain that stopped as soon as we were off the bridge. The frost giant had been right that there was a Power here. The grip of the water, whatever the cause, had felt impersonal—like an avalanche. It was simply a barrier, designed to catch creatures like me.

I concentrated on Adam after that. We’d entered some kind of fog bank; between that and the driving snow, the first inkling I had that we’d reached our goal was when I realized that the lump of snow on my right was in the shape of a truck. Beyond it, now that I was looking for it, was a huge building, almost lost in the storm and the fog.

Following the wolf, I piloted the SUV into a space between two snowed-in cars and parked, steaming water about five feet in front of my bumper. I opened the door and slid to the ground. Adam leapt inside the open door to begin his change.

Through the snow beneath my feet, I felt it, a queer sort of warmth that was magic and not magic. Something nearly sentient, a guardian.

“Refuge,” I said out loud. Then chose a different word. “Sanctuary.”

Power swept through my chest as if in agreement or warning before sliding away and taking with it the taste of warmth, leaving behind a cold night and the smell of sulfur from the hot springs.

I went to the back of the SUV to open the rear hatch and grab our gear—and stopped.

On the other side of the parking lot there was a lake, or at least a very large pond—it was hard to be sure in such poor visibility. It was bitterly cold but the water at the edge of the parking lot was not frozen. A vast wall of mist rose up, like a great white dragon obscuring the view of the shoreline nearest the resort as well as the edge of that giant old building.

I waded through the parking lot snowdrifts and almost bumped into a sign that told me I stood on the shore of Looking Glass Lake. It also advised me not to swim in the lake, as the hot springs could be dangerous.

In my experience, hot springs were usually just that. Small pockets of water bubbling up from the ground steaming hot. Sometimes there were lots of pockets of water. Here, apparently, those pockets were underneath the lake.

The resort—which is what the locals had called it at the gas station in Libby—had been built on the edge of the lake. The building was half-obscured by darkness, storm, and mist, but it didn’t look like a resort to me. It had the spare, efficient lines of something erected with an eye to efficiency—probably at least a century ago.

And it was haunted.

I tried to pretend that the wisps drifting between me and the building were just an effect of the hot springs, but I could hear their quiet, ghostly voices. A lot of people had died here at one time or another. I eyed the rectangular building and thought sanatorium or hospital—and the label fit.

A random swirl of wind allowed the bare bones of a wraparound porch to emerge briefly from the mist and shadows, hinting at a past or possibly future attempt to soften the stark lines as the narrow white boards it was sided in did not. The roof of the porch was completely gone, but from the winter-dormant wood that draped over the structure, some kind of climbing plant grew over the frame in the summer.

Maybe if it had been daylight or if the numerous lights around the parking lot and building were lit, it would have looked more welcoming. As it was, three floors of blank windows stared out at me in a way that did not feel friendly. I could not imagine seeing this place and thinking, “This is where I want my wedding to be held.”

Hrímnir had called this a holy place and a refuge. I’d been given the word “sanctuary” by whatever being claimed this location. Sanctuary, in the medieval meaning of the word, had been both holy and a refuge. Historically, a person who had been given sanctuary could not be arrested as long as they stayed upon the holy ground. In real life, of course, this had been more true in some times and in some places than in others. But the tradition still lingered in modern times, culturally if not legally.

It didn’t look like a safe place. Unease finally got the better of me and I retraced my path through the snow to the SUV, putting it at my back so I could watch the lake.

I wondered what the clear warning I’d been given that this was a sanctuary would mean for our quest. Recovering stolen property shouldn’t be a problem. Hopefully, we wouldn’t need to hurt anyone. I tried not to wonder what Hrímnir would do after he got his harp back. Somehow, I couldn’t see him just letting the thief go—even if we did have a bargain. The frost giant wasn’t fae; maybe he wasn’t bound the way a fae would see themselves bound. What would I do if I brought the harp back to Hrímnir and he didn’t take the spell off Gary? Maybe if I proved Gary hadn’t done it?

He was my brother. I wanted to think he would never have been so stupid as to steal an artifact from a frost giant, but I couldn’t manage that.

I rubbed my face with cold hands. If I wasn’t going to use my gloves, I should have just left them at home. I remembered that I’d intended to grab our luggage, but I couldn’t make myself turn my back on the hot springs. Something out there was watching us. I squinted, but I couldn’t see anything.

I put my hip against the quarter panel of the SUV for the connection to Adam—it felt like it was taking him forever to change. In the dark, with the SUV’s tinted windows, I couldn’t see him, but the subtle rocking of the vehicle told me he was in there.

I pulled out my phone, but was unsurprised to see that I still had no reception. I couldn’t look this place up on the Internet. Or contact Honey or Mary Jo to check on Gary. We weren’t cut off, I reminded myself. We could use Adam’s sat phone.

Cold seeped up from the damp legs of my jeans and into my bones.

Eventually the door behind me opened and shut. Safely back in his human body, Adam nudged my shoulder with his own.

“Let’s get you out of the cold,” he said.

He grabbed his duffel and my backpack and took the lead on the way to the main entrance. I was braver with him, so I could take my attention off the lake and look at his backside instead. The jeans he wore weren’t as good as the ones he’d destroyed, but the view was still nice. I trekked behind him, in the path through the drifts that he made, humming an old carol softly to myself.

He laughed. “Not a king or a saint,” he said. “No heat lingers in the very sod where I tread.”

“But the winter bites less coldly,” I said. “You make a pretty good windbreak.” And keeping my eyes on him meant I didn’t have to notice the ghosts. Hopefully, they wouldn’t notice me, either.

As we got to the entrance, I saw that there were Christmas lights strung all over the bare trusses that used to bear the roof of the wraparound porch that clearly, now that I had a closer view, was an original feature. They’d have looked pretty all lit up, but unlit, they only contributed to the bleakness of the place.

I’d thought the door might be locked for the night, but Adam had no trouble opening it. Sleigh bells on the door’s Christmas wreath gaily announced our arrival as a wave of warmth engulfed us. We stepped out of the storm and straight into the first half of the twentieth century. Here, inside, and unexpected given the grimness of the exterior of the building, was the expensive elegance I’d have expected from a resort where billionaires get married.

“Huh,” I said. “I guess you really can’t judge a book by its cover.”

The reception area was small for a building this size, but that made it look more expensive rather than less, a kind of “good things come in small packages” experience. There was room for an elegant couch and a couple of chairs. Two original oil paintings hung on the wall. I would have bet money that they were worth a small fortune. I couldn’t name the artists, but they had the look of art that should be displayed in a museum and not a lodge in the Cabinet Mountains.

Rather than a reception desk, there was an open window into a small office. The counter was figured oak, presumably original to the building from the wear and tear carefully preserved in the varnished surface.

The whole reception area and the parts of the office I could see were immersed in Art Deco design, down to the vase filled with five or six peacock feathers and the burled walnut paneling on the walls. Even the Christmas wreath on the door was done with the sort of spare elegance of the late flapper era.

Adam said, “I feel like I’m a passenger on the Titanic.”

“Or walking onto a movie set,” I agreed, not bothering to correct him. The Titanic sank in 1912, a decade or two earlier than the Art Deco period.

I surveyed him and then looked down at my own travel-stained wet clothes.

“Both of us are terribly underdressed, dear sir.” I borrowed my posh English accent from the one our English werewolf used. I knew I’d gotten it right when Adam grinned at me.

The only touch that was out of place was the pair of plastic battery-operated lanterns illuminating the room. One of them sat on the beautiful counter and the other on the floor beside the couch.

Adam leaned over the counter and grunted. He dropped our baggage and hopped over the barrier and into the office without so much as disturbing the little paper tent that announced that the office was closed for the night.

“Yep,” he said from the other room. “They still use keys. Assuming that the rooms with three keys available are not in use—and the ones that have three keys bound together with a zip tie are rooms that aren’t ready—that means the entire third floor and most of the second are out of commission or occupied. Are you okay with ground floor?”

“Sure,” I said.

If Adam hadn’t been with me, I’d likely have bedded down on a couch, though hopefully there was one somewhere that would be more comfortable than the one in this lobby. But he was right. In a storm like this, no one would begrudge us helping ourselves. We could pay for our room in the morning, assuming there was an employee to pay. Adam took a key and then found a piece of paper and a pen, doubtless to record our absconding with the key and use of the room.

There was a light switch just to the right of the counter. I flipped it, but nothing happened. “I wonder why it’s so warm in here if the electricity is off.”

“There is a generator,” a woman’s voice said from the narrow opening between the reception room and the dark hallway beyond.

I was startled. I’d had no inkling there was anyone around. She must have been standing there in the dark when we’d come in. I would have heard someone moving.

She continued in a friendly, informative manner that was very much at odds with her having been lurking in a hallway, watching us. “It’s confined to essential services—the kitchen and the walk-in freezer, as well as the water pump for the well and to keep the hot spring water circulating in the pipes and radiators. The building can run—without lights, of course—on minimal electricity.”

I wouldn’t have thought Adam could see her, either, but something galvanized him. Maybe he was more upset about her lurking than I was. He dropped the pen and abandoned his half-written note. Key in hand, he vaulted the counter again, landing lightly between me and the dark opening that led to the hallway beyond, as if to put himself between me and an enemy.

“Good to know,” I answered.

“I sounded like a tour guide, didn’t I?” The floorboards showed their age by squeaking a bit as the woman walked in, though she wasn’t very big. Slender, with big dark eyes and light brown curly hair cut short to highlight her fine features, she looked like she was in her midtwenties.

Despite the lateness of the night, she was fully dressed in a green silk shirt and herringbone-patterned trousers. She had pearl drops in her ears and a single pearl on a gold chain around her neck. Maybe there had been a party or reception earlier in the evening?

“You must be with the groom’s family,” she said. Her smile lit her face. “I’m sorry no one warned you about the weather. What are you driving, that you made it up those roads? And in the dark?”

Adam, uncharacteristically, did not respond to her friendliness. He’d come across the barrier as though he was prepared for a fight. But it wasn’t until he spoke that I understood why.

“Vampire,” he said.

Her smile died as though it had never been.

I honestly hadn’t noticed the scent until Adam spoke. The sulfur of the hot springs was pretty strong—and I was dog-tired. Once Adam drew my attention to it, though, it was obvious.

Vampire. Bonarata. Chills spread up my spine, and my stomach hurt. Was this whole thing a trap?

I’d grown up in the Marrok’s pack, and Bran Cornick was capable of engineering the situation that had forced us here, away from our people and our home. Vulnerable. Anything that Bran could think up was well within the capability of Bonarata.

But there was a danger in giving Bonarata more power than he had, wasn’t there? I looked at my husband’s hostile back and thought that his mind had gone to the same Bonarata-inhabited place that mine had. I put a light hand on his shoulder.

“Vampire,” the woman agreed coolly.

As she spoke, a man strode in behind the woman, as if he’d been lurking in the hall. The floorboard didn’t creak under his weight, even though he was a big man, a little over six feet tall and built wide. His skin was pale, and I thought in brighter light I’d see freckles to go with the light skin and the hair that looked to be red, though the yellowish lanterns played havoc with my ability to judge color.

It struck me that his clothing, like the woman’s, was a little formal for the middle of the night. He wore a snow-white dress shirt, set off by the black braces that held up his sharply pressed trousers.

He stepped between Adam and the vampire, the same way Adam had put himself between me and her. The big man looked from Adam to me, his face unhappy. When he spoke, the Irish in his voice was riding high—both in temper and sharp lilt. “Who the hell are you?”

Adam had been rude, maybe. But the stranger’s attitude was gauged to raise the tension in the room by a bit—especially since he directed his ire at me. There was going to be violence in a few seconds if someone didn’t try to calm the waters.

But I was tired.

“Who the hell are you?” I snapped in return.

His blue eyes shot to my face with every evidence of surprise, which cut short his anger. The female vampire’s voice was frosty as she said to me, “Who wants to know?”

I opened my mouth to respond to both of them, when I realized that Adam wasn’t acting as if an aggressive man had just tried to start a fight. My mate hadn’t taken his eyes off the female vampire. He didn’t even look at the Irishman. Adam never ignored a threat.

For a second I worried that the vampire might have caught him in her gaze, but Adam knew better than to let himself be trapped so easily.

I replayed the last few moments in my head and almost groaned. We didn’t have a second vampire. We had a ghost.

“You can hear me,” the dead man said, his voice dropping to a purr. He paced forward, ignoring Adam and the woman, all of his attention on me—as if he were a lion and I was a gazelle who’d just thrown herself in his path.

Even now when I had proof positive, he didn’t feel like a ghost.

The clothes that he wore should have clued me in right away because they weren’t modern. They’d just blended so well with the theme of the reception room, period correct down to the handmade shoes, that I hadn’t taken note of them.

I’d always been able to see ghosts. I knew about them. Knew the difference between the repeaters—the poor remnants caught in emotionally fraught moments that they repeat endlessly—and the sentient ones. I could tell the difference between a ghost that was a fading record of the person they had been and one whose soul was trapped beyond death. A few times I’d seen ghosts that were so real-looking they could almost pass as living. This man was different.

Or maybe, I thought, a chill climbing down my spine, I was.

I hadn’t seen one of the real-seeming ones since the Soul Taker had ripped my mind open—except for Aubrey. Aubrey had been lifelike, too; but he’d been as influenced by the Soul Taker in his own way as I was. This ghost was a lot more like Aubrey had been than he was like any other ghost I’d seen. Maybe this was what one of those real ghosts looked like to my new awareness.

I was scared down to my bones, but not of the ghost.

“Mercy?” Adam asked without turning his head from the vampire, whom he perceived as the greatest threat in the room.

The vampire…she was looking at me with interest bordering on hunger.

And that was another weird thing. Ghosts, like cats and certain other sensitive creatures, avoid vampires to the extent that I can sometimes tell there is a vampire in the room because there are no spirits at all.

“You can hear him,” she whispered. “See him.”

Adam took a step back until I rested against his body. He gave the sort of grunt that told me he understood that there might be a second threat. One he couldn’t see. I patted him to let him know that a ghost wasn’t a threat. Or at least I didn’t think a ghost could be a threat to me.

I didn’t answer the vampire.

“She can, can’t she?” The Irish lilt was lighter when the ghost wasn’t angry. The dead man rocked back with a broad grin. “Hello, doll,” he said to me. “Aren’t you an interesting find, then?”

He was wearing a shoulder holster with a big pistol. A 1911, I thought, though I couldn’t pick out the make other than it was different from the 1911 model Adam carried as his backup. The ghost hadn’t been wearing a gun when he’d come through the doors, but ghosts could be changeable like that.

The vampire glanced toward the Irishman, looking a little high and to the right of him. She couldn’t see him. She took a deep breath—vampires didn’t have to breathe except to talk, but most of them are pretty good at maintaining the illusion.

She looked at Adam, tried to meet his eyes, I think. But Adam moved his head, tipping it so she was in his peripheral vision, making it harder for her to capture him—if that was her intention. My mate seldom made unforced errors.

Finally, she turned to me.

She pursed her lips. “I think it is time for introductions. I am Elyna Gray.”

“O’Malley,” said the ghost with a frown.

Her lips quirked up. “O’Malley.”

She couldn’t see him, but she could hear him. I thought about the last few minutes and changed that to she could hear him some of the time.

“But I go by Gray,” she continued. “I live—my home is in Chicago. I’m here because my good friend’s daughter is supposed to be getting married this weekend. Travel is complicated for people like me—vampires—so I came early, just in case.”

“Jack O’Malley,” said the ghost, extending his hand to me with a challenge in his eyes. “Also from Chicago.”

“Mercy Hauptman,” I said.

I stepped around Adam so I could take Jack’s hand. It felt real, solid and warm—and a breath later it felt like nothing, though I could still see it. Disconcerted, I let my hand drop back down to my side, rubbing my fingers together to let the feel of his flesh dissipate.

“Jack O’Malley, Elyna”—I dispensed with the last name issue by dropping hers entirely—“my husband, Adam Hauptman.”

“Hauptman?” Elyna said with a faint frown. “I didn’t see your names on the guest list.”

“We’re not attending the wedding,” I told her.

Adam made no effort to join in the conversation except for a faint nod of acknowledgment when I’d introduced him. Because I could deal with both of them, vampire and ghost, while Adam could see only her, he would play backup. Adam didn’t say that was what he was doing—but I knew my husband.

Jack bent to his wife. I didn’t see his lips move, but Elyna nodded. “He says you feel like Gary Johnson, the caretaker of the ranch up the canyon.”

Johnson? I thought. Really, Gary. You couldn’t have come up with something better?

“My brother,” I said.

“Is there a reason you’re here rather than at the ranch with him?” she asked.

“Yes,” I told her. “He’s not there. The rig he drives is gone, and I’m worried about him. We were hoping there might be people here who know more about what’s going on.”

Honest answer. It wasn’t my fault she—they—would get a few false impressions from that.

Something skittered behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder. It was only a big house spider running across the tiled floor.

I returned my attention to Elyna—but that spider had been in a frantic hurry.

“Gary was supposed to bring down the sleigh today for a dress rehearsal, but he didn’t make it,” Elyna was saying in a determined effort to pretend Adam wasn’t still treating her like the enemy. “Jack was pretty sure it was the weather. The landlines are out—”

I should have been listening. Spiders, the ones I was familiar with, didn’t hunt down their prey like a coyote did. They waited for prey to come to them. That spider wasn’t hunting anything. It hadn’t been a predatory run; it had been a get-out-of-Dodge run.

I turned to see what the spider had been running from. I half expected to see nothing, having hesitated long enough for anything of the insect variety to have disappeared from sight. Maybe it was something as simple as a hotel cat or, in this lobby, a falcon, though I trusted it wouldn’t be a Maltese.

But it was there, all right—the thing the small spider had run from. It was a bigger spider, a much, much bigger spider. I felt the quietness that overtook the others as, alerted by my sudden tension, they, too, saw the spider.

The last time I’d seen her, this spider had been on the tree at Uncle Mike’s.

A thimble wasn’t a big thing, but a spider with a body the size of a thimble was a very big spider. She wasn’t as large as some tarantulas I’d seen—there’s a kind of tarantula in South America that’s so big its legs could hang over a dinner plate. But tarantulas weren’t metallic silver, either.

In a strange way, like the ghost, she fit with the decor of the room. The metallic silver and the spider shape was exactly the sort of combination that looked so Art Deco in design that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see it echoed in the vase that held the peacock feathers.

“That’s not a normal spider,” Elyna said.

The spider made a leisurely, if intent, trek along the same path the other—the harmless spider—had taken. She appeared to take no notice of us. But I knew that wasn’t true. I had to look at my arms to make sure that there was no silvery spider silk sliding across my skin.

Adam shifted his weight, and I put a hand on his arm to keep him where he was. I didn’t think trying to squish the spider or throwing her out into the storm was going to be a good move. It took maybe twenty long seconds for her to find the crack between flooring and wall where the first spider had sought refuge. It didn’t look as though there was going to be room for her to follow it.

“Does this have anything to do with the Soul Taker?” Adam asked. “The spider-fae?”

My feet itched with the memory of the bits and pieces of the fae spider-thing that had served the Soul Taker and its absent god.

I shook my head. “No.”

The silver spider didn’t feel like something fae. She felt like something that belonged here in a way the fae did not.

When I spoke, the spider turned around to face us, face me.

“What the fuck is that?” asked Jack O’Malley, sounding freaked-out. “What’s she doing to me?”

I had to fight to make myself look away from the spider so I could see the ghost.

The whites of Jack’s eyes were showing as he shook his head, staring down at his arms. His hands were simply gone—and as I watched, the pale forearms, corded with muscle, grew less solid.

Feeding, the spider told me.