Page 74 of Winter Lost
“You weren’t doing anything about it,” he said without shame or remorse. “We’ve all been worried.”
When I attempted a fierce stare, he said dryly, “You’d have done the same thing for me.”
“Fair enough,” I had to admit, resettling myself until I was lying next to him, my head on his thigh. My head did hurt, and the warmth of his body was soothing. “I assume you’ve talked to Zee?”
“He’s been looking since October,” Adam said. “He told me he has something he is pursuing, but he has that sour expression when he talks about it. I don’t think we should count on Zee pulling your fat out of the fire.”
“Well,” I said after a minute, “there’s my brother. But any help he can give is stuck in the world of ‘There’s a Hole in My Bucket’ territory. We need to fix him before he can help. And to fix him we have to find the harp that looks like a lyre.”
Neither of us mentioned my father. But both of us thought about it. Coyote’s methods of fixing something were terrifying.
“I think I smell food cooking,” I said. “And, dear Liza, the sooner we get out and meet these people, the sooner we can find the artifact and get my brother free.”
Adam took a deep breath and said, “I suppose we go look for some straw, then, dear Henry.” He hummed a few bars of the song as we headed out.
—
The reception desk was still unmanned, and Adam’s half-written note was undisturbed. Adam popped into the office to finish writing the note and added an addendum about the bedding and umbrella we’d destroyed. He didn’t say what had happened to them.
When he was finished, we followed the scent of breakfast down the long hall to the opposite side of the hotel. We walked by a wall of smoked glass that protected a speakeasy-style room with a dozen small tables and two large ones. A sign proclaimed that The Gunner’s Moll was closed for the season.
According to Elyna, Looking Glass Hot Springs closed down on Labor Day weekend and reopened on Memorial Day. The restaurant was a separate business that was open for the regular season. The resort opened in December every year on a limited basis for weddings.
During December, the hotel staff cooked breakfast and made sack lunches for guests. The guests were encouraged to take themselves off to one of the local communities for dinner—or hire a caterer or chef who could use the kitchen facilities. The groom’s family had planned on bringing their own cook, but like most of the party, he had been scheduled to arrive yesterday.
We passed the door leading outside to the hot tub area and took a left through a short corridor and into a dining hall still (according to the signage) awaiting renovations.
The plank pine floor had seen better days, and there were water stains on the dropped ceiling tiles. Five out of the eight fluorescent light fixtures worked—and those were better suited to my garage than a hostelry of any kind. But the music piped into the room—presumably generator powered, because the kitchen was—came from a decent sound system. Elyna had told us the lodge had fuel enough to keep the generators going for a couple of weeks. I hoped that we could resolve the cause of the storm before the fuel supply was put to the test.
The room might be ugly, but it was big. The three sizable round tables looked a little lost. Efforts had been made to brighten them up with white lace tablecloths and small bouquets of fresh flowers—Elyna had mentioned a greenhouse. The flowers and lace were completely outmatched by the general seedy air of the room.
Last night, Elyna had divided the people here into groups: the bride’s party, the groom’s party, random refugees from the storm, and the lodge staff. Around the tables, the lodge guests had organized themselves in much the same way, probably for different reasons.
“There are thirteen people here now, not including you, me, or Jack,” Elyna had told us.
Seventeen people. Four of us were definitely not hiding the frost giant’s artifact, which left thirteen. Thirteen didn’t feel like an unreasonable number of suspects. I’d suggested that maybe my brother, acting alone, had hidden the harp somewhere, and that was still a possibility. But it wasn’t likely.
Artifacts are difficult to hide. The warm water in the horse barn told me that my brother had tricks I didn’t know, but hiding an artifact was another level. Artifacts hummed with magic. Werewolves might not be able to hunt them down, but anyone with an ounce of fae blood could.
“We could just ask if they’ve stolen a lyre,” I’d suggested to Elyna and Adam last night, sticking my feet out of the tub to cool off, because the water was a little too warm to keep every part of me in it all of the time. “And make them give it back.”
“You’ll run into trouble with that,” Elyna said.
“She isn’t serious,” Adam told her. “We need the lyre back, not broken or thrown into the lake as a sacrifice or tribute.”
He’d accepted that we were looking for a lyre rather than a harp. I wondered why an ancient, presumably knowledgeable being hadn’t known what to call his own artifact. I wondered if it would turn out to be significant. Still, a silver stringed musical instrument with a face carved on it should be easy to identify whether it was a harp or a lyre.
“We’re getting off track,” said Elyna. “Let me tell you about the people trapped here with us.” She eyed me. “Maybe it would be best to keep your questions for the end.”
Adam waved a hand in invitation.
“The largest group,” she said, “even if you don’t count Jack and me, is the bride’s party. We arrived before the storm got so bad. The bride, Tammy Vanderstaat, is in her midtwenties. She has a master’s in social work and is employed by a nonprofit.”
Standing in the dining hall now, it was easy to pick out the bride’s party. They occupied the table farthest from where Adam and I stood. The bride definitely drew my eye first—and I wasn’t sure why. She wasn’t beautiful, but her face was full of character, lit from within. She had more muscle than I was used to seeing on someone who wasn’t a shapeshifter. Maybe she was into martial arts or gymnastics or something.
“The other members of the bride’s party are her father, Peter, and four of his crew—all Chicago police officers who moonlight in remodeling.” Elyna had stopped there, then said, “I’ve known all of them for nearly a decade. They’ve never been to Montana before. We arrived here the day before the artifact was stolen, but I judge it highly unlikely that any of them are involved.”
“Artifacts can make people do very strange things.” I answered her from a wealth of unwanted experience.