I needed a way in. Something we had in common. What did I have in common with an ancient frost giant except my brother? And I’d just proven that was less than useful just now.
Reading fairy tales had become something of a passion with me because I dealt so much with people who had inspired them. More than once I’d found a kernel of truth that helped me. The fae love to bargain, I thought. I was pretty confident that the Jötnar weren’t fae, no matter what they had told the government. But a bargain was almost legal tender among the creatures of power I’d met, not just the fae.
“Is there anything we can do for you that would change your mind?” I asked carefully.
Hrímnir started to reply—a negative by his body language. Then he hesitated, closed his mouth, and frowned at me. “What is it you think you can do for me?”
Not a freaking clue.
“I am Mercedes Hauptman, daughter of Coyote and mate to Adam Hauptman, who is the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack.” I didn’t try to match his proclamation-of-greatness tone, but a little hubris was necessary. “This is my mate, Adam Hauptman, who took our wolf back from your brother when he would have claimed her for himself.”
“Daughter of Coyote?”
I had thought that might get his attention.
“As my brother is son.” I wasn’t sure it was smart to bring my brother back into the conversation, but it also seemed counterproductive to leave him out. He was the reason I was here—I dug my fingers into Adam’s fur—the reason we were here.
Hrímnir rocked back on his heels a moment, then said in a completely different voice that had lost the German or Germanic accent entirely, “Gary is your brother?”
“Half brother.” It didn’t seem smart to say anything that he might read as a lie.
“Is Gary Coyote’s son?”
His voice was still not a frost giant’s voice.
I thought of my brother, living up here all alone. He wasn’t the type to enjoy being alone. I thought of the way I had been able to taste the frost giant’s magic in the storm. Would my brother have chased that down? Had they been friends? Acquaintances? But an acquaintance would not have engendered the complicated emotions I sensed in this…well, not a man. Being.
“Yes,” I said.
Slowly the frost giant nodded. “That explains…” Then he shook his head and drew in a breath. When he spoke again it was in that soft voice designed to make gods tremble, accent firmly back in place. “He stole from me.”
Adam ghosted in front of me, standing between me and the frost giant.
“Are you certain?” I asked, risking his temper.
He looked at me. “Can you lie? Can your brother?”
The answer was yes, of course. I didn’t want to tell him that.
“I am not fae,” I told him as a compromise, quickly following it with a question of my own. “What was stolen from you?”
But Hrímnir had turned away from me again and was pacing in his circle. Talking to himself.
“He was my friend. Our friend. He couldn’t have taken it. Taken him. He lied. They wouldn’t. He is our friend,” he muttered, then followed it with a louder and more heated statement. “He lied. He is a liar. He took it and lied.”
He seemed to be stuck there.
I loved being faced with a being of godlike powers who might be in the middle of a psychotic break, complete with vague pronouns. I didn’t know if I should interrupt or hope he forgot about us entirely.
His voice dropped again. “He hurt us. Hurt me. Did they do it together?” He stopped and looked up at the sky, where the stars were hiding behind the clouds.
“What was taken?” I asked.
He turned to me, face lighting with rage. “My harp. He took my harp.”
“I don’t know if he took it,” I told him. “He can’t tell me because of your magic. But he came to my home, a day’s journey by car. He did not bring a harp with him.”
I’d looked in his truck to see if Gary had brought any clothes—which he hadn’t. I was pretty sure I’d have noticed anything as big as a harp.
“He got away,” Hrímnir growled. “But he didn’t take it with him. It’s here. I can feel it, but I can’t get to it because he has taken refuge.”
“Someone took your harp,” I said, parsing through his words. I couldn’t tell if he was certain it had been my brother who took it or not. Maybe that’s what the argument he’d had with himself had been about. Maybe not. “You know where it is?”
His eyes narrowed on me suspiciously. “I do.”
“And it is not with my brother.”
“He took it,” he snapped with such force that I wouldn’t have been too surprised to see bits of teeth fly out of his mouth. He turned his head away in a motion that brought lashing tails to mind. “He didn’t take it. He wouldn’t. Not from us. He didn’t know what it meant.”
I’d grown up with very old and sometimes irrational creatures who could kill me if I pushed them too far. I knew what was possible and what was not. I needed to redirect Hrímnir to more useful thoughts.
“You know where the harp is,” I said. It wasn’t a question because he’d said as much. “But you can’t get to it.”
“They won’t keep it,” he said slyly. “They will all die. None of them will keep it.”
“Of course not,” I agreed. “Where is it?”
“In the holy place of fire,” he said.
I blinked at him while I assimilated that. The snow was still deep enough it was hard to see where the road was, the road that my helpful informant at the gas station had told me led to two properties. The dude ranch my brother worked on, and Looking Glass Hot Springs. One of those fit the phrase “holy place of fire” better than the other.
“You believe the harp is at the hot springs,” I said. “The resort. And you are going to let this storm rage until everyone there is dead. There are people at the hot springs now?”
“It was taken there. They took it there. He took him there.”
Truth shivered through his words. Which was very helpful because I couldn’t tell if what he said was true—which is what it felt like. Or if it was that he believed what he said—which was a different thing entirely. And it didn’t matter, because what he said didn’t make sense to me at all.
“Why can’t you just go get it?” I asked.
“They fled before me to a place they knew I could not follow,” he told me with sudden coherence. “But they will die there.” He paused and said, with the force of a prophecy, “He will die there.” Sadness came and went so fast I wasn’t sure I had seen it at all. “I may not be able to go there, this is true. But it is also true that they cannot leave unless I let them.”
“If they escape—”
“They die,” he said with a fierce smile, and I thought of the gryphon—or whatever the beast had been.
I rubbed my forehead as if pressure could make the Soul Taker’s damage go away. Wind I did not feel lifted the skins on his back and made them flutter.
“Why can’t you just go to the hot springs and retrieve the harp?” I said, holding up a hand as his anger began to rise. “I am ignorant about holy places of fire and also mostly ignorant about Jötnar. Maybe if I knew more, I could help.”
He considered me.
“This is a place where the heat of the heart of the world rises in the water,” he said. “Rich in magic and healing.” He closed his eyes and turned his hands palms up—and the air became thick with a magic as pure as the snow. Evidently, from the rush of effervescent power on my skin, my senses were noticing magic again.
He closed his hands and I could breathe, though magic still rippled around us.
“This fire I may sup upon,” he said simply. “But the land has been held sacred and the element opposes my own. Generations upon generations have made the springs a refuge. If I get too close to the fire of the holy place, I burn.”