Page 12 of A Shifter Disaster Thanksgiving

The other woman looked dead serious, which made her gasp and her eyes widen. “You can’t be serious.”

Quinta tossed a few locks of hair over her shoulder, her intense grey fixated on Diane, and nodded. “Frost Mountain isn’t exactly another world,” she told her. “Think of it as more of a different… dimension.”

“Awhat, now?” The more Quinta said, the more Diane wondered if the woman was pulling her leg. But the look on Quinta face told her that this was the real deal.

“It’s a magical space apart from your world, your… Earth. You must have breached a portal, and it brought you here. There are portals scattered around your world. People have landed on Frost Mountain by accident. Cars, planes, even ships have crashed here. You’re not the first to arrive on this mountain.”

Diane couldn’t help noticing how calm she sounded as she spoke. “How did you get here?”

“I was born here, Diane.”

“Wait… what?”

“Don’t sound so surprised. People have lived on Frost Mountain for centuries, ever since the dimension came into being.”

“But why haven’t you all tried to leave?” The question seemed so obvious she wondered why no one else seemed to have considered it. “You said there were portals, right? A portalbrought me here. Why not try to go back? Why choose to live on this mountain? I haven’t even seen much of it, but it doesn’t sound all that great.”

Quinta chuckled. “No onechoosesto remain on Frost Mountain, Diane. It is all there is to this dimension. It’s a work of magic. You can’t get off the mountain. The portals lead here, but they don’t go back. You can’t even find one. And the mountain… well, it has no bottom. The entire mountain extends infinitely.”

“How’s that even possible?”

“Magic.”

Diane had been expecting an answer like that, but that didn’t make it sound any less ridiculous when Quinta said it. The idea of magic was farfetched. She’d never believed in it, never even had any reason to. It was unrealistic. But so was the fact that she’d somehow ended up on a snowy mountain out of nowhere, rescued by a dragon who also happened to be a possessive, yet irresistible hunk. All of that sounded pretty magical to her.

“It takes some time to get used to it,” Quinta assured her. “Trust me, you’re not the first outsider I’ve talked to about the mountain. Everyone gets confused and scared. It’s a massive mountain. And, well, magic makes most people uneasy.”

But Diane pressed her for more. “I don’t quite understand. Why can’t we leave? I mean, why does this place even exist in the first place?”

The smile began to fade from the other woman’s lips. “Frost Mountain is home to many of us… but it was intended as a prison.”

“Run that by me again?”

Quinta leaned forward in her seat. “Centuries ago, there was a battle between shifters and a group of witches. As you’ve probably already guessed, the shifters lost. The witches created this dimension to imprison them for the rest of their lives, perhaps hoping they would die out. They did not. Over thecenturies, this mountain has become home to not only shifters, but other supernaturals and humans as well.”

It was amazing how casually Quinta spoke about the supernatural, as if they were absolutely real, as if they weren’t just fictional ideas dreamed up in a novel.

“I’m human,” Diane said, feeling the need to point that out.

“I know.”

“You can tell?”

“Your confusion told me everything I needed to know. That, and the fact that you look like you wouldn’t last ten minutes on your own outside of this village.” The woman’s eyes gleamed. “No offense.”

“Huh.” Diane set her bowl down on the floor, sinking her face into her hands. “So I’m really stuck on this mountain. It’s just goodbye to my life?”

“What was your life like in your world?”

“I was a writer.” Diane straightened. “Iama writer.”

Quinta gave her a puzzled look.

“I… tell stories to people,” she tried. “I write them down.”

“So do I,” Quinta said. “It’s one of the reasons I love cooking.” The proud smile was back on the woman’s face.

Diane was flummoxed. She couldn’t believe she was doomed to remain on this mountain until she grew old and died or froze or starved to death. No more writing. No new novels. No agent. No book signings. No cats. As far as the world was concerned, she was missing, but they’d never find her. Diane Garrick was gone forever.

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