Frost Burned

There were more ghosts here. They had been standing sentinel between the parking lot and the front of the house, and, although I’d noticed them, I hadn’t paid attention because they weren’t mine as Peter was. But when Peter had come to me, when I’d called him, they had all turned in my direction. Slowly, as if it were very difficult as well as imperative, they were coming toward us, too.

I bent down and took Peter’s head between my hands. I breathed into his nose because it seemed like the right thing to do. Long-ago words spoken to me by Charles rang in my head.

Vision quest is opening yourself up to the world and waiting to perceive what it wants to show you, he’d told me. Then, almost absently, he’d said,Magic is like that. It wants to use you, and your only choice is yes or no.

So I followed my instincts, my magic.

“Peter,” I told him, using Adam, using the pack bonds, using that other part of me—using everything I had. Stone-cold logic told me that what stood before me right now wasn’t a ghost the way I knew them. I’d remembered why Peter shouldn’t be bound by pack ties anymore.

Ghosts didn’t look at me with intelligence and need, didn’t respond to pack bonds. I looked, as I’d been learning how to do, I looked for the pack bonds and saw them, tinsel bright still, strengthened by my will. Pack bonds were soul binding soul—Adam had told me that. Though I could not perceive souls—pack bonds were another matter. Those bonds were firmly set in Peter’s soul, and that soul was still here in his ghost, where it had no business being—here, where it was in danger from whoever it was who called him.

My senses were still expanded to their fullest, which is why I saw something else, too—a cloud of darkness that surrounded Peter and tried to slice through the pack bonds and take him from me. Asil touched my shoulder and abruptly lowered his head to stare at Peter. Honey leaned against my hip and froze, her body tightening until it felt like stone.

“Peter,” I said, “you belong to us, to the pack. You aremine.” The touch of pack, of Honey, helped. I brushed at the cloud of darkness, and as I touched it

it dissolved under my hands, but not before I caught the tingle of magic. Vampire magic.

“Leave this place, Peter,” I told him. I needed to do something about the way his soul lingered when it should have gone on after his death, but instinct—and I trusted what my coyote knew—my instinct said it was more important to get him out of here. Away from whatever had been trying to claim him.

He glanced at Honey, who was watching my face.

“She loves you, too,” I said. “Peter,get out of here. Go somewhere safe.”

And then he was gone, and some of the life died in Honey’s eyes, too.

“It’s all right,” I told her. I felt down the pack bonds to be sure, and Peter was still there. He didn’t feel alive, didn’t feel like the others, but we still held him safely. I straightened and felt a buzz of relief that left me dizzy. “He’s safe.”

Hao watched me.“They are right,” he said. “You speak to the dead.”

“Who is binding the ghosts?” I asked Hao.

The dead were all around us, looking at me urgently. Their mouths were moving, but I couldn’t hear them. The net of darkness surrounding them was thicker than the one that had tried to capture Peter. Maybe it prevented me from hearing them, or maybe it was just because I was tied to Peter by the pack bonds.

Hao looked around.“Are they bound? Perhaps he has anticipated us. Are you finished here?”

“Who is it?” asked Asil, his voice a low, menacing rumble.

Hao was not intimidated—but then he didn’t know who Asil was. “That is not for me to say. If you are done, we should go.”

I looked at the dead here, three women and fourteen men. One of the women wore a black cocktail dress, but the rest of them were in power clothes like real-estate agents or business people. Suits and ties for the men, skirts and jackets for the women. If they were here, caught like Peter had been caught, then they, too, were not merely ghosts. But I was not bound to them the way I was bound to Peter; I didn’t know how to help them.

Then I recognized Jones, from when I’d seen him through Adam’s eyes—Armstrong had called him Bennet, I remembered, Alexander Bennet. I don’t know why it surprised me to realize I was staring at the ghosts of the other people who’d been killed here. I suppose it was because I was so used to seeing ghosts everywhere that I’d quit wondering who they’d been when they were alive.

Alexander Bennet had killed Peter.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m done.” I felt no need or obligation to save these people from whatever had caught them. They had killed Peter and would have killed our friends and their families—down to Maia Sandoval, age five, who had ridden a werewolf and tried to feed him cookies.

These people could hang in limbo for all eternity for all I cared.

“I’m done.”

They watched us as we returned to our cars. They’d quit trying to speak. I closed the door to the car, pushed the button to start it, and followed Thomas Hao to the parking lot, driving through several ghosts to get there. But this time I wasn’t weakened by fae magic as I had been when the ghost tried to possess me in the secret stairway in Tad’s house. All I felt was a slight chill as I passed through them. And then they were behind me.

I knew I was going to have to do something about them later, no matter how angry I was now. It wasn’t a matter of what they deserved—it was a matter of who I was and who I wasn’t. At some point, everyone had to draw a line in the sand over which they would not cross.

I almost turned the car around right then, but Marsilia—presumably—was waiting. There would be time enough to put things right if Icould put things right with these ghosts who were not also pack.

There was only one other car in the lot when we pulled in—and I knew it because I did the maintenance on the seethe’s cars in lieu of making the “protection” payments required of all supernatural creatures who couldn’t defend themselves from the vampires. I suppose as the mate of the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack, I could have refused service without encountering trouble. But I felt like the interaction, as little as it was, gave both the vampires and the wolves a meeting place where we could interact without a lot of drama. I hoped that would help make the TriCities a little safer for everyone.

The presence of the seethe’s car meant that Marsiliawas behind the meeting. It should have reassured me, but I was worried about the“he” who had bound the ghosts and tried to do the same to Peter’s.

I drove to the far side of the empty parking lot. The formerly sleek Mercedes slid into the space and purred to a halt. I got out of the car, zipped up my coat, and turned to walk over to the winery.

Marsilia stood by my rear left passenger door as if she had been there all along, though I knew that space had been empty when I pulled in. I managed not to jump.

The Mistress of the seethe was a beautiful woman. The night robbed her gold hair of its richness, but the moon kissed her even features and made her dark eyes mysterious. She wore the most practical clothes I’d ever seen her in: a formfitting, long-sleeved, dark, rib-knit shirt and khaki pants that were probably green—I can see well in the dark, but colors are tricky, and there was no helpful porch light here. Her shoes were combat boots that looked like she’d worn them a lot—and that didn’t fit in with the Marsilia I knew at all.

I took the key fob to the car out of my pocket and handed it to her. She looked at me, looked at the dent in the driver’s side door, and paced slowly around the Mercedes, saving the trunk for last.

“Remind me not to leave an expensive item in your care again,” she said. And that was the Marsilia who despised me, the one I felt just fine hating right back.

“You haven’t shown yourself to be all that wonderful at taking care of your treasures, either,” I said coolly. “At least the car can be fixed.” She’d hurt my friend with her carelessness, and I wasn’t sure Stefan would ever recover. “Besides, if what I suspect is true, this damage”—I waved at the car—“as well as the death of my wolf Peter Jorgenson is a result of vampire politics.”