Page 9 of Winter Lost

She sighed. “A little. Maybe.” She looked at her borrowed scrubs. “I didn’t actually come here to get drunk—or to tell stories about idiots.” She rocked her head from side to side to stretch her neck. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”

“No worries,” I said.

She looked at me. “I haven’t always been nice to you.”

“I’ve been not nice to you back,” I said. “Miniature zombie goats.”

“Someone had to collect them, I suppose. Miserable little demon escape artists.” She flashed me a sudden grin. “I like the way your mind works,” she said.

“Don’t get mad, get even,” I deadpanned.

She raised her empty glass, hesitated, and set it aside to replace it with the apple cider and sipped from that. “Imagine my surprise when I ran into a personal problem and the only one I could imagine taking it to was you.”

I waited.

“If it hadn’t been you, I’d have canceled this meeting after I had to climb into that toilet.” She looked as though that was some sort of revelation. After a minute she said, “You aren’t a very judgmental sort of person.”

“Thank you?” I wasn’t sure it was a compliment.

She gave me a quick grin and used the flats of her hands to play out a quick beat on the tabletop.

“Here goes nothing,” she said. “Why did you marry Adam?”

Interlude

December

Chicago

Zane

When Zane opened his eyes, dawn had already claimed the room. He’d slept in, then. It was becoming an unexpected habit, this sleeping in, when sleep had always been a fitful thing that happened when he could not keep going. High anxiety, the doctors his father had sent him to had said. Too much magic, his mother had said with an envious sigh.

Tammy soothed his inner demons in a way medicine had never been able to. Maybe she was magic as well, he thought whimsically, when whimsy had once been rarer than sleep in his life.

She stood looking out of the big north-facing window that gave the best view of the frozen field that was Lake Michigan, her body side-lit by the morning sunlight coming from the east window.

The windows were the only way he could sleep indoors at all. That the floor-to-ceiling walls of windows in his condo gave him magnificent 360-degree views of the lake and Chicago was a bonus.

Watching the light play over Tammy’s ash-blond hair made him think of afternoons wandering the art galleries of Chicagoland—where he’d seen nothing that appealed to him as much as she did. It didn’t hurt that her rock-climbing hobby had left her body muscled in a way a weight lifter would envy. He loved to look at his fiancée.

Fiancée.

She was. She’d said yes when he was sure, so sure, after he’d explained everything to her, that she would say no. Who could blame her? Social-working daughter of a police officer, she had no background to face his fate, steeped in ancient spells and magic as it was. She didn’t remember it, of course, and would not until after they were married, when it was too late. That was the nature of the magic that had made his life a living hell from the moment he was born, but he’d been careful that she understood everything that he understood. Understood and believed. Consent wasn’t enough. Informed consent was precious.

She’d said yes.

He loved her hair, her body, her clear eyes that saw right through people and cared about them anyway. Her endless compassion, which was a fitting curb to his honed ruthlessness. She allowed him to be softer. Kinder. She allowed him to sleep. And she’d said yes.

She turned to him, though he hadn’t moved other than opening his eyes.

“Good morning, sunshine,” she said. “It’s a bright day out today.” She paused and her smile dimmed. “Means it’s going to be cold.”

He knew she worried about the people who weren’t living in a high-rise condo. Her charges slept in alleyways and parks. Shelters were all well and good—and he funded a couple—but there were people who couldn’t abide four walls and a roof, especially when they came with rules. He could understand that.

“What time are you leaving?” he asked.

The wedding was in Montana. He’d looked for something more accessible, but he was probably lucky he’d found the place in Montana. Fate, his mother said with an airy smile. He needed an isolated place—a holy place—and the old sanatorium in Montana had presented itself.