Page 34 of Winter Lost

“Mary Jo,” said Adam deliberately, and he shoved all of that—the pack magic entwined with Sherwood’s primordial wild power, with the fire that was our tibicena Joel’s weird addition to our pack, and with something that felt like Coyote smelled—and sent it blazing along the single strangled path that led to Mary Jo.

The hold Ymir had put on one of ours melted away in the fire of our Alpha’s displeasure, as if it had been nothing.

Adam was good with the pack bonds. I knew that. I also knew that what he’d just done was more than mere ability. Someone had been working with him. I wondered if it was Sherwood or someone else.

Mary Jo flung herself away from the frost giant in a desperate leap and lost consciousness midair. Her limp body hit my legs with bruising force. She knocked me away from Gary, who shot his hand out, and I grabbed it even as I reached down to see if the wolf at my feet was still breathing. I counted on Zee and Adam to keep the three of us safe.

That had been a lot of power Adam had used. My own ears still rang with the echo of it. But Adam, who stepped between us and Ymir, didn’t show any effect other than the light sweat that dampened the back of his shirt.

Ymir’s white eyes locked with Adam’s.

“What a surprise you are,” Ymir purred, stepping forward.

Zee swung a staff he hadn’t been holding when I’d last looked at him between the frost giant and Adam. The weapon buzzed through the air and then stopped, more or less waist height, in a horizontal barrier between Adam and Ymir.

It took me half a second to realize that the staff he held was my walking stick with the spear blade ascendant. Zee had produced the walking stick once before, so I wasn’t astonished he’d managed it. I just wondered why he’d used the walking stick instead of the various weapons he had to call upon that belonged to him—or the one he was carrying on his back.

“You stand guest,” whispered Zee. “You accepted hospitality while you assaulted the mind of one of those who belong to the house. You would have stolen her will and taken her from those who love her and who are loved. And now you would attack its master. While you are a guest.”

That last word hissed out and a lick of silvery light flashed to limn the edges of the spear blade Lugh had forged. Ymir stepped back with a hiss. Adam backed up, too, and I didn’t think it was voluntary.

“Think well what happens to those who violate guesting laws,” Zee said, his voice once more belonging to an old grumpy mechanic and not a god of the forge.

Ymir stepped back several more paces, shaking his shoulders in a way that reminded me of a lion shaking his mane. Adam stayed where he was. No one looked like they were going to kill anyone else in the next few seconds, so I took a moment to actually assess what my free hand was telling me about Mary Jo.

“Breathing,” I told Adam. Then realized that he’d know that through the bonds—and so should I have, if I hadn’t been so panicked.

“She approached me,” Ymir said, but not like he was talking to any of us here. “Wolves are mine to call. I called and she came.” There was a short pause, and he said, “There are not so many wolves as there once were. It has been long and long since I had a wolf to call.”

“She approached you as a guardian of this house,” said Zee. “A house that you intended to enter as a guest.”

Ymir closed his eyes, took a deep breath. As he let it out, his body relaxed, and when he opened his eyes, they were a deep, clear blue-gray.

“My apologies,” he said with utter sincerity. “Adam Hauptman, Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack, I have moved against you in this, your house. Instincts are powerful in my kind, and she is strong and beautiful. I could not resist the temptation of her.”

As an apology, it was lacking.

“She belongs to me,” said Adam, his voice deeper than usual with restrained rage. “She is not yours to call.”

There was a flash of anger in Ymir’s eyes. But he blinked and it was gone.

The frost giant nodded solemnly. “It is to my shame that I have done this. For this cause shall I complete what you have asked of me in recompense for my transgression.”

All of my senses told me that he spoke the truth, and there was the ring of it in the air. But I knew, I knew, that he lied. Which did I believe? The instincts I’d honed over a lifetime of being Coyote’s daughter? Or the insight I’d had shoved down my throat by the Soul Taker, an animated gateway for a dark god?

To make matters even more special, now that the temperature had come down in the room, the incident was trying very hard to bring on one of my inconvenient panic attacks. Like Mary Jo, I’d had my will stolen away once, too.

“Can you help my brother?” I asked—and almost didn’t recognize my own voice. I had expected to sound shaky because of the increasing shortness of my breathing. But I sounded like Adam had—enraged.

“I cannot disarm the binding spell,” Ymir said with apology. I didn’t believe that any more than I believed his other apologies. “This is because it is magic that belongs to my name-brother Hrímnir. Unlike me, he is the original bearer of that name, and his abilities outstrip my own.”

I was a little surprised that there wasn’t more bitterness or something when he admitted another was more powerful than he was. But there was nothing like that in his voice or manner.

“Do you know how Gary can be freed?” I asked.

I’d had to force the words out through a throat that wanted to close. I deliberately tried to ignore Mary Jo at my feet because looking at her was making me worse. I understood what it felt like when someone stole your will. Maybe we couldn’t trust Ymir’s information, but I intended to make him talk as long as I could.

“My brother is the only one who can free yours,” Ymir told me, then he gave a slight grimace. “I am bound not to tell you where or how he can be found.”

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