Page 73 of Winter Lost

I returned from the bathroom and contemplated the bare mattress.

“It’s still dark out,” I said. “But it feels like morning. Are we getting up?”

“It’s seven thirty or thereabouts,” Adam agreed. “Six thirty our time. We might as well get dressed.”

We’d had about five hours of sleep. I could function on five hours, but I wasn’t going to be happy about it. Adam was a machine. If he needed to, he could go days without sleep. That didn’t have much to do with being a werewolf—werewolves need sleep like anyone else. It had to do with being Adam.

I dressed in my only clean clothes. I hadn’t packed with the idea of getting snowed in. With the power out, I thought it was unlikely that the lodge would have a functioning laundry. I picked up yesterday’s wet clothes, rinsed them off, and hung them up to dry on the towel racks, the shower rod, and a couple of chair backs. There was no saving my jeans, so I tossed the remnants into the inadequate garbage can in the bathroom.

Adam had put on his clothes and taken a seat on the mattress. He watched me with a thoughtful expression. Drat. I’d given him time to think. I smoothed out my socks so they would dry without wrinkles—something I cared nothing about.

“We should check in with the pack,” I said, and hearing my own words I was suddenly concerned with doing just that. “Let them know we made it here and see how my brother is.”

“We can’t call out,” Adam said. “My sat phone isn’t finding reception.”

I stared at him. “I thought those things picked up signal in Antarctica.”

“I suspect that something is interfering,” he said. “The storm—”

“Or the frost giant,” I said. “We’re stuck in the dark until we make it out of here.”

“Yes.” My mate looked thoughtfully at me. “And that was a good distraction—or would be if I didn’t know you better.”

I frowned at him, and his eyes warmed. “All right, Mercy, what don’t you want to tell me?”

I bounced on the bed next to him and put my head on his shoulder. “You’re going to make me talk.” I sighed.

“Yes,” he said.

I heaved another sigh. “That ghost shouldn’t have given me any trouble. It shouldn’t have been able to trap me. I shouldn’t have needed someone else to destroy it.”

Adam kissed the top of my head and let the silence continue, because he was good at interrogations.

“I don’t think it belonged here at the lodge,” I told him. “The spider said the hungry ghost sensed me and traveled here to enjoy a meal. Apparently, something the Soul Taker did made me a good snack for hungry ghosts and probably other things that feed that way.” I paused. “I’m pretty sure that I didn’t help matters when I fixed Jack.”

Adam’s muscles were tense against me. “Whatever the Soul Taker did to you, it’s not getting better,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

I shrugged. “Comes and goes, mostly.”

“How often do you have a headache?”

Busted. I shrugged. “Nothing too bad.”

“Mercy.”

“I think I need to go look for help,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “Where?”

“That’s the eighty-four-thousand-dollar question,” I said. “And that’s the reason I haven’t looked for help before this.”

“Sixty-four,” he corrected.

“Inflation,” I offered. More seriously, I said, “There’s Sherwood.”

Adam shook his head. “I asked him. He says he can tell there’s something wrong with your magic, but it’s deeper than that. He is afraid that if he tries to mess with it, he’ll only make it worse for you.”

I lifted my head so I could see his face. “You’ve been going behind my back?”

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