Page 83 of Winter Lost
We wove through and over construction debris to the end of the hall and around the corner to another hall, where the destruction ended and material storage began. Four pallets of flooring held up five rolls of carpet. Another pallet of five-gallon buckets of paint. Large boxes, some of them unopened and others ripped open for inspection, disgorging masses of bubble-wrapped furniture or fixtures.
“Pardon the chaos,” he said as he led us around a stack of drywall that reached past his shoulder. “Construction is not a neat or tidy business.”
But once we were past the drywall, we emerged into about twenty feet of pristine hall that did not look as though it belonged in the lodge at all. Or not a lodge built in the last thousand years.
The floor under our feet was rough-hewed wood, eighteen to twenty inches wide, with narrow gaps modern construction would never have tolerated. The walls were fieldstone fitted far more tightly than the floor.
“Granite,” I said, letting my fingers slide over the rough surface of the walls, though my eyes were on the door at the end of the hall.
Liam nodded. “That it is. Makes it feel like home.”
The door.
There was an entrance to Underhill at the edge of our backyard. It wasn’t fancy, made of thick and battered oak that looked as though it had stood there for a century and would probably stand there for another. It was a good door, solid, but not a beautiful thing.
Underhill herself had put it there when Aiden, a human child who’d been trapped in her world for uncountable years, had come to live with us. We’d moved him when our pack house had become too dangerous for innocent bystanders. We hadn’t sent him away to keep him safe—but because he was needed to keep the world safe from one of our more interesting pack members.
Though Aiden wasn’t currently living with us, the door was still there. Underhill, in her human-seeming, used it to visit us sometimes.
Liam’s door was nothing like the door in our backyard.
His was a spectacular piece of art, though not at all in keeping with the sleek Art Deco of the renovated parts of the lodge’s ground floor. Nor even the medieval castle construction of the hall the door stood in, though the rounded top and the heavy forged-iron hinges and knob were obviously a nod to the Middle Ages. Instead, the oak leaves—carved in bas-relief all over the door and frame—made me think of Art Deco’s nature-loving fanciful predecessor, Art Nouveau.
It looked nothing at all like the entrance to Underhill in our backyard—but, like that one, Liam’s door felt like a door between worlds.
“Nice door,” Adam said.
“Yes,” Liam answered with a sly smile. “I made it myself.”
He opened the door, revealing a very modern apartment with a tile floor covered by thick area rugs. The kitchen was part of the living room and it was a chef’s workshop. All business and no fripperies, but I was pretty sure that the big gas stove was a work of art in a different way than the door was.
“Welcome,” Liam said, and there was a pop of magic as he stepped aside to allow us entry.
He hadn’t unlocked the door, but that door didn’t need a lock to keep people out any more than Underhill’s door did. I was pretty sure if we’d pushed past him before he welcomed us, something fatal would have occurred. There was a tang to magic spells that were designed to kill, a sort of eagerness or anticipation. I could sense that here.
The windows looked out on the surroundings of the lodge, the storm raging outside. I hadn’t expected that, somehow. It felt as if this room was both in the lodge and not in the lodge.
Magic doesn’t have to make sense.
Adam and I sat side by side on a soft couch that the muscles in my body—still sore from the shivering cold of yesterday—found amazingly comfortable. Because Adam was here, I let myself sink down into the gentle support. My mate perched on the front edge of the couch. He didn’t like soft seating that could slow him down if he needed to move.
“Here we cannot be overheard,” said Liam. “This morning I arose thinking I knew why this storm decided to be so inconvenient. Imagine my surprise when you told our goblin twins that it is caused by someone trapping us here until you retrieve a musical instrument—though there seems to be some confusion about just what kind of instrument you are looking for. An artifact.”
I noticed that his Irish accent was abruptly toned down, until it was only a faint lyrical note instead of a John Philip Sousa march.
Adam’s eyes narrowed. “Uncle Mike would know if someone brought an artifact into his pub.”
“Why did you think the storm was so bad?” I asked.
Liam sighed—and answered Adam. “Yes, of course he would.” He dragged a chair across the room and placed it directly in front of Adam and me. Then he sat, legs crossed at his ankles, elbows on the arms of the chair with his hands steepled.
“We,” he announced with a sigh, “are at an impasse. I cannot afford to trust you, and you cannot trust me.”
“Why not?” Adam asked. “We are all trapped here until someone figures something out.” He looked at me.
“I’m still hung up on why a green man wouldn’t know if there was an artifact at his lodge,” I said. I frowned. “And why were you surprised when we showed up for breakfast?” Had he expected the hungry ghost to take care of us? But that didn’t make sense because if that were the reason, he should have known it hadn’t. Uncle Mike would have known if something like that invaded his pub.
“Green man?” Liam said. “I haven’t heard that term in a very long time. Is that what Uncle Mike is calling himself?”