Page 56 of Crown of Wings and Whispers

“I really don’t want to freeze to death.”

“All right. Let’s establish a safe word. You use it at any time and we’ll come back inside.”

“If I’m freezing, chances are I won’t shout anything nice.”

“Come on.” He went to the corner to the right of the door where our coats hung on pegs. He pulled on the goggles first, then stood there looking like some giant grinning bug. “Ten minutes. We’ll do one experiment, then we’ll come back and warm up.”

“Fine,” I said, then began pulling out the sections of screen to go around the fire pit. “I definitely don’t want to burn the house down or I won’t have a warm place to grumble for the rest of the day.”

“So? What is your safe word?”

I laughed. “Fudge. My safe word is fudge. But don’t worry, you’ll hear me.”

“Because I have excellent hearing?”

“Because I can curse like a very loud sailor.”

* * *

To be safe,we bundled up as if we were getting back on the snowmobiles, but when we stepped out of our mökki, the wind had died. It was still snowing, but the fat flakes fluttered to the ground on their own instead of being launched at our faces.

We were surrounded by pine trees so dark they still looked black in the meager orange light. A frozen lake lay directly to the south, and the promise of sunrise teased us through a break in the forest on the far side. The road we’d come in on stretched alongside the lake, but the tracks of our hosts were nearly erased by an hour’s worth of Finnish weather.

As far as I was concerned, the first snow of the season was Christmas snow. We were still more than a week away from the actual holiday, but I was tempted, despite the subzero temperature, to make a snowman.

Through my foggy goggles, I grinned up at my fellow bug and pulled down my mask so he could see my teeth. “Christmas snow,” I said.

His face contorted under his mask enough to assume he was smiling back. “In Finland, it’s Christmas most of the year. Santa lives up here, you know.”

I nuzzled against him to reward him for reinforcing my holiday delusions. Alwyn had cooked a turkey on Thanksgiving, and because there were a handful of Americans on the team, we’d all pitched in to make traditional dishes that reminded us of home. I’d never enjoyed a Thanksgiving more, nor had such a big family with whom to celebrate. So I’d really been looking forward to Christmas…

I lifted the mask back over my nose so Griffon wouldn’t notice my smile was gone.

“Let’s move away from the cabin,” he said, and held my arm while we picked our way down the snow-covered steps and headed toward the open space between us and the water.

“Wanna go skating?”

“Maybe tomorrow. We’ll have to clear the snow off the ice first. There were blades hanging on the wall, the type you attach to your boots.”

“I thought those were just for decoration.”

“I think we can assume nothing here is for decoration. But for today, you must work before you can play.”

I glanced around. “You want me to shovel snow or chop wood?”

“You know what I mean. We’re here for a reason. We’re here to discover your talents. Or would you rather let Orion reveal them to you?”

“No, thank you.”

We stopped in the middle of the road with thirty feet between us and the nearest trees.

“First of all,” he said, “I want to assure you that you cannot hurt me. I will not freeze. I will not burn. Unless you chop off my head, I’m not going anywhere. Do you understand?”

“You’re a vampire. Got it.”

He rolled his eyes. “Unless you had something else in mind, I thought you might want to try warming yourself.”

“Warming myself. I don’t know. You’d think if I had that kind of capability, I would have figured it out on my own. Winters in Wyoming and Idaho are pretty gnarly.”

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