Page 6 of Winter Lost

“Mercy, your companion is awaiting you in the silver room. Do you know how to get there?”

I felt my eyebrows rise. The silver room was a small one located in the maze of private spaces in the back of the pub reserved for secret meetings and expensive dates. I hadn’t thought that either I or Mary Jo—who had asked me to meet her here—was of stature or need to rate the silver room.

“It has its own air vents,” Uncle Mike said obscurely as he cupped a solicitous hand under my elbow and pulled me gently away from the Christmas tree.

The bright lights followed us for a moment, clustering around Uncle Mike’s face. He pursed his lips and blew them back to the tree with far more effect than a simple puff of air could have managed. I followed the green man out of the dance hall and into the halls that led deeper into his domain.

Uncle Mike gave a whistle as we neared the closed door to the silver room, tucked somewhat inelegantly in an alcove between the men’s and women’s restrooms.

A server appeared from around one of the corners, bearing a tray with a glass of water, a champagne flute filled with a violet liquid, and one of those overly scented candles—this one smelling of apples. Uncle Mike took it from her with a nod, then, balancing it on one hand, he opened the door.

The room was a step back in time to a more gracious and formal era. It was small, maybe ten feet by fourteen feet, but the ceiling was high, making it feel larger than it was. The walls were covered with delicately pink silk wallpaper embossed with patterns of silver fleur-de-lys. The floor was marble, and the table where Mary Jo sat was oak carved with graceful flourishes.

Mary Jo’s short blond hair was wet and plastered to her head. She was dressed in blue scrubs that fit her in the shoulders and hips but everywhere else were too big. The bottoms of the pant legs were rolled up and secured with a safety pin on the outside of each leg. Judging by the size of the roll, they were a good six inches too long. The muted blue of the scrubs made her sparkling purple toenails stand out.

I didn’t see shoes anywhere, so she must have come here barefoot.

The silver room was a room where proposals of marriage took place or where two people might celebrate reaching their fiftieth year of marriage—elegant, expensive, and romantic. It was not a room that anyone would expect a pub to have, and in my jeans and T-shirt, I was definitely out of place—but not as out of place as Mary Jo.

Mary Jo looked exhausted, and the gold flash of the wolf in her eyes nearly distracted me from the smell. Despite the evidence of her freshly washed hair, an unpleasant reek had settled around her, a combination of harsh disinfectant topped with other chemical scents I couldn’t quite place. I thought of Uncle Mike’s earlier comment about air vents.

Uncle Mike, breathing through his mouth, pulled out the unused chair for me and put the tray on the table in the same graceful motion. He gave me the water glass and set the violet drink in front of Mary Jo, who already had a glass of water in front of her. Then he put the apple-scented candle on the table and lit it with a butane lighter he pulled from somewhere. It could have been out of a pocket—or not. There was too much magic running around Uncle Mike’s this afternoon for me to sense any separate act.

“The candle will help,” he told Mary Jo with a sympathetic smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Give it a minute or two and it will eat the scent.”

He paused before leaving, looking at me with a frown of something that might have been concern. It looked like concern, but he was the consummate host, and I never entirely trusted any emotion Uncle Mike expressed that was in the category of useful attributes to make a guest feel cared for.

“Are you doing well tonight, Mercy?”

I wondered if he could feel the thundering rush of magic that rumbled under my feet. Or if that was something only I felt. For a moment, as our eyes met, I saw—

Forests deep and old, hiding secret—

He averted his eyes and the insight died away, leaving me with a harsher-than-usual headache. Since the Soul Taker had played with my mind or whatever it had done, I always had a headache. I rubbed my temple in irritation.

“I’ll bring you something that will help with that,” Uncle Mike said at the same time that I said, “I’m fine.”

He spoke, I noticed, a bit more quickly than usual and retreated, shutting the door firmly behind him. He left me trapped in the room with Mary Jo. And that smell.

I inhaled a little too hard trying to figure out what I was smelling, and one of the chemicals dried the back of my throat. I coughed. Mary Jo met my eyes, her own gold-touched, and dared me to say something. Or possibly plug my nose.

“Disinfectant?” I asked, sitting down opposite her in the chair Uncle Mike had pulled out. Normally he would have waited around and pushed it in for me. I found it interesting that the odor emanating from Mary Jo apparently bothered him even more than it did me. My sense of smell is very acute.

“I wish it was just disinfectant,” she said sourly. She took up the glass Uncle Mike had left her and swirled it a couple of times before she tipped it back and swallowed a good two-thirds.

I think she meant to drink it all, but she had to set it down. After she quit making funny noises and caught her breath, she said, “I heard that he had something that could give even a werewolf a buzz for an hour or two, but George didn’t say that drinking it would be the hard part.”

“What happened?” I asked. From a closer distance I was beginning to smell hints of other scents underneath the chemicals. I’d expected skunk, maybe. Something like that. But it wasn’t skunk.

“I hate stupid people,” she told me. “I also hate that I was the smallest person on our team today when our firehouse got called to extract a fifteen-year-old from an outhouse vault.”

Outhouse. Yep. That was the scent.

Mary Jo watched me out of gimlet eyes and brought the glass to her lips again. This time she didn’t choke. I didn’t smile. Or laugh. But it took an effort.

The only outhouses I knew of around here were in some of the parks outside of town. Most of those weren’t in much use this time of year.

“In the winter?” I asked.

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