Page 4 of A Heart of Winter
What Morwenna had said about a warm vacation when I’d gotten my magic under control was stuck in my head. That was silly, though, right? There was no reason for me to go to a tropical island. I loved New York.
I didn’t need a change.
I’d been happy with Michael, in solitude in my penthouse. He’d been the one who had grown restless. Or maybe he’d always been restless, and I’d simply been too complacent to notice.
The wind howled outside, and I shivered involuntarily.
The cabin wasexactlylike the house we’d grown up in, but that had been three hundred years ago. Before furnaces in every house and the wonders of modern elec—oh no. I spun toward the wall, filled with a terror that the whole cabin was going to be without electricity of any kind, and I’d end up reading by candlelight and . . . hells, did people even have iceboxes anymore?
But no, there, on the wall, was a set of light switches. I reached out, almost hesitant, and flipped one. A chandelier over my head turned on, filled with funny little flame-shaped bulbs.
Thank the gods.
Also, maybe the cabin wasn’texactlylike the one we’d grown up in. The witch who’d raised us had never had anything like a chandelier, let alone modern electricity or light bulbs. She’d passed away before those things existed, two thousand years old or more already when she’d found us.
With trembling hands—from the cold more than any great emotion—I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone, half terrified I’d find I had no connection.
5G, huh.
I told the phone to dial Morwenna, and before it even rang on my end, her voice came through on the other end. “Really, Johannes? You just got there. At least settle in before calling to complain.”
“S-s-settle in?” I asked, my teeth chattering loudly in the quiet entryway. “You want me to settle into . . . what, a snowdrift? It’s freezing, Morwenna. Tell me there’s at least a radiator somewhere in this monument to our mutual childhood.”
Her laughter was rich and deep, and told me I was in a lot of trouble before she even spoke. “It’s got a wood burning stove, dumbass. I know how you love a good fire.”
And . . . I did, it was true. But my fireplace in the penthouse ran on gas. I just flipped a switch and it turned on. What was I supposed to do with a wood burning fireplace? “Are you suggesting I go . . . chop down trees to burn? I haven’t collected firewood since I was fifteen, Morwenna. I don’t even remember what kinds you’re not supposed to burn!”
It was a lie, of course. We’d both been trained very well, and I knew entirely how to gather firewood. But the ground was already covered with snow, I was in a different country from the one we’d grown up in, and . . . damn it all, I hadn’t gathered firewood in almost three hundred years. My hands were soft and callus-free, my clothes far too delicate for?—
“You can just pay someone to bring firewood and stack it up out back, dumbass. There’s already some there, but you’ll need more if you’re going to stay the whole winter.” She was still laughing at me—I could tell from the tone of her voice, deeper than usual—but at least she was making an attempt to be helpful.
And at least there was some firewood already present, so I wasn’t going to die my first night in the cabin.
Probably.
“This is all a trick, isn’t it?” I grumbled into the phone, stomping the snow off my shoes, then marching my way across the rustic wood floor through the cabin. I found a surprisingly well-appointed kitchen and dining room, a cozy den with an enormous cast iron stove in the middle, and a back door that hopefully led directly to this stacked firewood.
Sure enough, right outside was a neat pile of gray, frozen firewood. I tried to remember how long wood lasted in fireplaces, and couldn’t for the life of me recall anything about how much wood I’d need for a whole winter. I scowled at it and then glared at the phone. “You’re trying to freeze me half todeath so I’ll have to get my powers under control just to keep from dying.”
“That’s clever, but no, sadly my uninspired reason for sending you off was to protect you like I said, not to freeze you into fixing yourself.” There was a bang and thump on the other end of the line, and then it went muffled for a moment and I heard the vague sound of her speaking to someone nearby. “Who’s that? Are you busy?”
She still sounded amused when she came back, and I couldn’t tell if it was from my suffering or something else. “Nope, I’m just having the locks on your penthouse changed. Never can tell who might decide to use a key they shouldn’t have anymore to let themselves in.”
“Michael left me, Mor. He’s not coming back.”
“And I’m just going to make sure of that.” She paused for a moment, then seemed to come to a conclusion and continued. “I’m reworking the wards too, just to be sure.”
Morwenna, I already knew, was paranoid as hell. Once upon a time, when we were in our mid-teens, the two of us had been three of us, when the witch had taken in another girl about our age, Callie.
Callie and Morwenna had never seen eye to eye, and she’d been rebellious toward the whole household whenever she was asked to do any chores. When she’d stolen a magical artifact and run away, Morwenna’s mistrust of outsiders had been sealed.
Without a word to either of us, Morwenna had left the house. She’d come back a week later with the stolen artifact, an old necklace that belonged to the witch, and no one had ever spoken of Callie again.
But my best friend had redrawn the wards on our house that time too, like a magical changing of locks, so anyone who knew the old wards would be unable to cross them anymore.
Since it was just paranoia and Michael wasn’t likely to come back anyway, I let it drop. It wasn’t as though he’d have a reason to come back, so if he did, he shouldn’t be there anyway. He’d taken everything he owned with him.
I simply sighed into the phone and shook my head. “I need to go start a fire so I don’t die. Then figure out how to get more wood. Also so I don’t die.”
