Page 75 of Winter Lost

Elyna’s eyelids lowered, and there was a growl I had not heard before in her voice. Not quite a threat, but nearly there. “They are mine, these men. I will protect them.”

That was why they had traveled to the lodge before the rest of the wedding party, missing the storm. Elyna had to come early because travel was complicated for vampires. Feeding along the way would be dangerous. Feeding at an isolated place in Montana in the winter would be very dangerous. Vampires need to feed often. Most of the ones powerful enough to live on their own find it more convenient to have a pool of humans who are regular donors: sheep.

“Understood,” Adam said easily. He knew vampires as well as I did. “We are here to get the artifact back, not to hurt anyone.”

Even without Tammy among them, I could have picked out the table of police officers. Not because I was so good at picking out policemen or vampire donors. And not even because it was the largest group seated in the dining room. It was because I could spot a pack at a hundred yards.

All of the laughing faces were turned toward their Alpha. The father of the bride, Peter Vanderstaat, I assumed, because he looked like Tammy. And also because when Elyna had spoken of him, she had done so with affectionate respect—and she hadn’t named the other men. It might have been because she didn’t care about them, but I thought it was to protect them from us. They were hers. But she hadn’t felt the same need to protect Peter. Or his daughter. She considered them her equals.

The second table held only two people, a man and a woman. Both of them bore a clear resemblance to each other in features and coloring, though her build was slight while his was heavier. He was dark haired and dark eyed. Her face was turned away, so I couldn’t see her eyes, but her hair was dark and, even braided, reached down past her hips.

“Then there are the refugees,” Elyna said. “They came here yesterday—no. It is after midnight. That means they came here the day before yesterday.”

The day my brother arrived at our house.

“I haven’t met them. I am a writer with odd hours.” It was said so airily I couldn’t tell if she really was a writer or if she used it as an excuse for not appearing in daylight. “They are hikers who go to bed early and, presumably, rise early, too. Victoria and Able Morgan, Peter told me, brother and sister. Midtwenties—about Tammy’s age.”

“What were they doing out here?” I asked, levering myself up on the edge of the tub for a while because, even after nearly freezing my feet earlier, I was now too hot.

“They were hiking.” She smiled at me. Neither she nor Adam had had to get in and out of the hot tub. I used my toe to splash some water in her direction.

She said, “I know, that’s what I thought, too.”

So her smile hadn’t been because I wasn’t as tough as she and Adam were, but because my face had shown what I thought about human people hiking for fun in the Cabinets in the middle of the winter. When I was growing up, not too far from here, my foster father had been part of a group of volunteers that went out to find people who had gone hiking in the winter. Once in a while they found them when they were still alive.

“Still think, actually,” she said. “I might be a city girl, but I know stupid ideas when I hear them. Peter tells me they are experienced winter hikers who have done winter hikes in Alaska, Northern California, and even, once, the Swiss Alps. This is the first time they’ve been here. The sudden cold snap that preceded the storm caught them unawares, and when they saw the lights—we had lights then—they decided it was smarter to take shelter for a few days and resume their hike when the weather subsides. Peter says they keep to themselves. Jack says he can’t get into their room.”

“Is that unusual?” Adam asked her.

Elyna shrugged. “He sounded like it was.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” I said, sliding back into the tub until the water hit the bottom of my chin and wishing my head didn’t hurt. “What about the groom’s people?”

“Zane’s not here,” Elyna said. “He was supposed to be on a plane landing in Missoula. But that wasn’t looking good last I heard.”

“Zane is the groom?” Adam asked.

Elyna nodded. “I haven’t met him, but Peter likes him—and after decades in the CPD, Peter’s instincts are pretty good. The only members of Zane’s party here are his parents.” She grimaced. “His parents—”

“The billionaires?” I said sympathetically.

She looked at me, eyebrows raised.

“The gas station attendant in Libby said it was a billionaire’s wedding.”

She laughed. “I don’t know about billionaire, but rich, yes. The family owns Heddar’s.”

“The grocery store chain?” Adam asked.

She nodded again. “And has controlling interest in two other chain stores I know about. Andrew and Dylis Heddar. Andrew’s grandfather started the grocery chain. Andrew’s father turned it into a national business concern, and Andrew, the biggest shark of all, has taken it international. They are not happy that their only child has chosen to marry a social worker from Chicago. Not happy at all. At least, Andrew isn’t pleased, and his wife…Peter says that she feels however her husband tells her to feel. She was an heiress of some sort, I think. Her family money was what allowed Andrew to expand.”

“Are they trying to stop it?” I asked.

Elyna shrugged. “Peter says there’s nothing they can do. Zane has his own money, inherited from his grandfather. He runs the company’s charitable arm—that’s how he and Tammy met. But he doesn’t need to work.”

At the table nearest to Adam and me, an elegantly clothed woman, presumably Dylis Heddar, pushed around her food—an egg white omelet—without enthusiasm. The man sitting next to her, his arm possessively on the back of her chair, conversed with a teenage girl who had a serving tray on her hip. The girl was Native, like me—nothing unusual in that, given where the lodge was located.

I found my eyes returning to Dylis Heddar. Elyna had dismissed Zane’s mother as a society woman who happened to be married to a dangerous man. The vampire had sounded both pitying and dismissive. But my instincts warned me to keep my eyes on Dylis—the nonentity wife rather than her business-shark husband—as if she were the more dangerous of the two.

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