Page 26 of Winter Lost

The various witnesses to Gary’s arrival repeated their parts of the story. It had already acquired bits and pieces that were told in the same words. Honey had a good game face, but I was pretty sure she was as worried as I was.

“He hasn’t said anything since Dad brought him in the house,” Jesse told Honey.

“That’s not quite true,” Adam said. “He tried to say something when he figured out Mercy was here. I didn’t understand the language he used.”

“Not words,” I said with emphasis, because the memory of the sound that had left my brother’s lips still freaked me out. “It wasn’t words. It felt like the opposite of speaking.”

They all stared at me.

Honey frowned at me. Somewhat cautiously she asked, “Is that some more of what the Soul Taker left you with, Mercy?”

I hadn’t thought so. Most of what I had noticed had been the sometimes overwhelming sensitivity to magic and unwanted insights into people. But once she asked, it seemed more probable than not. I shrugged uncomfortably.

“Huh.” Honey frowned again. “He smells like magic to you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“My dad is coming,” Tad said. “If he can’t sort it out, he should be able to point us in the right direction.”

She nodded. “Okay. Let’s get some food and water into him.”

“Good luck with that,” I said.

—

Adam had been right to call Honey.

Gary was easier with her than he had been with me, once he’d figured out who she was. And when he was unwilling to move, she just picked him up and moved him. He didn’t fight her the way he had Adam. Eventually she got him up the stairs and into the kitchen.

He sat, his back to the bay of windows, with the table between him and the rest of the room. He was hollow-eyed and twitchy, but he ate whatever food we set before him—though only with one hand. With the other, he kept a fierce hold on Honey’s hand, as if to remind himself she was still there. Periodically he’d glance around the room, but hunger kept most of his attention on his food.

I couldn’t figure out why he was that hungry. He didn’t look like he’d been missing meals. When I shifted back and forth between human and coyote, I got hungry like that. Working magic was draining. I wondered if he’d been shifting a lot—or if he was using magic to try to resist whatever made him smell of foreign magic.

Jesse had put together a couple of steak sandwiches from leftovers while Honey got him into the kitchen. When he fell onto them with ravenous hunger, she and Tad set out to build an omelet of epic proportions full of whatever odd ingredients were in the fridge. In the midst of their chopping, the front door opened in a fierce whirl of wind and weather—evidently the fat snow had given way to wind and sleet while we were downstairs.

My brother in safe hands, I headed to the front door to find Zee, coatless and soaked to the skin, standing in the doorway with iridescent silver eyes. For a moment he looked like a stranger—as if the forces driving the storm drew out his magic. Even though I knew he still wore his everyday glamour, I saw the malevolent and powerful fae that his magic disguised. The familiar if rain-drenched T-shirt clinging to his skin appeared to me as though it was a finely worked chain mail shirt.

I blinked and he turned to push the door closed. When he turned back, he swiped his wet white hair out of his face with an impatient hand, and when I saw his eyes again, they were a more familiar color and intensity. Everything about him had toned down now that the storm was firmly sealed outside.

“Where’s your brother?”

He looked, now, as he had in the garage, wiry and tough—dried out by age to sinew and bone, a grumpy old mechanic feared only by people who didn’t change their oil regularly.

Wordlessly I waved him in the right direction. He carried authority in his wake with the same ease that my husband did. Familiar and safe.

But in the back of my head, I knew that was not really true. Or not always true.

Interlude

Earlier That Day

Jesse

Jesse looked up from her textbook with an irritated frown when someone knocked on her door. Her irritation was not appeased when she saw Tad standing in the doorway. Being caught belly down on her unmade bed in her oldest set of sweats made her feel uncomfortably exposed.

“What?” she growled.

He pulled out his hand and showed her a rectangle of silver-embossed card stock he held between his fingers, fluttering it to draw her attention.