Page 57 of Winter Lost

“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.

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