Even with Adam breaking trail in front of me, I was dripping sweat from effort by the time I made it to the barn, though my toes were still freezing. My coyote could have made this trip a lot easier—and I’d do it that way tomorrow. Because I could hear and smell the horses in the building.
From the SUV, the barn had looked as traditional as the house. But up close, it was a thoroughly modern building with a pair of twelve-feet-wide roll-up doors the same shade of red as the barn itself. There was a control panel next to each door. I pressed the one nearest me and nothing happened.
Of course the electricity was out. Doubtless there were generators around somewhere, but I wasn’t going to be able to locate them easily.
Around the corner from the big doors was a person-sized door. The snow was a lot less deep here. I couldn’t decide if someone had been here recently or if the wind had blown most of the area in front of the door clear.
It was unlocked. The minute I opened the door, I was greeted with a chorus of whinnies, the mysteriously satisfying smell of horses, and the rich scent of alfalfa.
Adam preceded me into the cavernous building. It wasn’t as dark as I expected, mostly because there were translucent panels in the roof that let in what light was available. At night, with a blizzard outside, there wasn’t much of that. A normal human would probably not have been able to see anything.
Traditional stalls lined both sides of the barn, maybe ten on a side, and all of those were empty. The center was obviously meant to be an open arena, maybe a hundred feet by a hundred and twenty feet. Temporary fencing had been set up to create a large pen in the arena that held two sleepy great horses. Belgians, maybe? Though these were some lighter color, and I had the impression from somewhere that Belgians were usually darker—bay or black. They weren’t big enough to be Clydesdales, and Belgians were the only other breed of draft horse that I could name. To one side of the pen was a sleigh.
The big horses watched us curiously but not anxiously. Their water trough was filled to the brim with crystal clear water. The barn felt warmer than it was outside by virtue of being out of the wind. But it still wasn’t above freezing in here. Their drinking water should have ice, if only on the edges.
There was a stack of forty or fifty hay bales just out of reach of the horses. While Adam took a sniff around the barn for hidden threats, I broke off a couple of six-inch-thick flakes from an open bale and tossed them over the fence.
Leisurely, the big animals moved to the hay and began eating. They appreciated the nighttime snack, but there was no urgency to their feeding like I’d have expected in horses left on their own for as long as Gary had been gone. There was no manure in the pen.
When I was growing up, my foster father had kept a couple of horses, and one of my chores had been mucking stalls. This pen had been cleaned recently, probably within the last few hours. I reached through the fence and touched the trough. The aluminum was warm. After a second, my fingers tingled with a hint of magic. I’d expected the magic, but I hadn’t expected it to feel like my brother. I couldn’t do magic like that. It wasn’t a kind of magic I would have expected from Gary, either. Useful magic was more a fae thing. Or a frost giant thing, maybe.
When I next had the chance, I was going to pin my brother to a chair and make him talk. Hopefully, the next time I saw him he would be able to talk. To that end, I needed to finish up here and head for the Looking Glass resort or hotel or whatever it was.
The water might have been Gary’s work; however, my brother hadn’t cleaned the pen or fed the horses today. Under the stronger, more usual barn scents, I could detect something that smelled of winter, magic, and wolfskins.
“The frost giant is taking care of the horses,” I said out loud.
Adam, finished with his inspection, huffed his agreement, turning my presumption into a certainty. In his wolf form, Adam could catch scents better than I could as a human.
“After he damaged my brother, Hrímnir took over his duties.” Why had he done that? To protect innocents? Maybe he just loved horses. “If it weren’t for what he’s done to my brother—and his whole disregard of the kind of damage he’s doing, and the people who are going to die because of his storm—I think I might like him.”
I pulled out my phone to check with Honey on how my brother was—maybe she could figure out a way to let him know the horses were okay. But there was no reception. We were pretty far from civilization, so it wasn’t surprising. When we got to the hot springs, if I still didn’t have a signal, I could use Adam’s sat phone to make the call.
“Do you think we should spend the night here?” I asked Adam. “I could shift and we could stay in the barn, or I could break into the main building. There are chimneys—there should be firewood somewhere.”
Adam shook his body as though shedding water, and trotted to the door we’d used coming into the barn, impatience in his body language.
“Okay,” I said, relieved. Staying here would have been smarter. I let us out and then shut the horses in their safe space. “The sooner we find that harp, the sooner we’ll be done.”
I was pretty sure the harp was an artifact of some sort, a magical item. It could be something of great power or mostly sentimental. But I didn’t think the frost giant was a sentimental creature, and the last great artifact we’d encountered hadn’t been a picnic for anyone. I rubbed my temples, wishing I didn’t have to listen to the magic in the storm.
“Vulnerable,” Zee had said.
We found the road to the resort about a mile back down the road. The storm had pulled down the sign and flipped it backward—which is why we missed the road the first time. Well, that and the snow that had gathered about two feet deep over the roadway so it looked no different than the terrain around it.
I stopped before I turned off the main road, rolling down the window. Adam trotted over to me.
“Hrímnir said magic is weird at the resort. Maybe you should take on human shape before we get there.”
Adam considered this, then shook his head.
I felt something pass through our bond. But though sometimes we could talk through that path, it was intermittent. Just like my part-time immunity to magic. But I caught a bit of his confidence. He thought that wouldn’t be a problem, but if he had to get stuck in one form among possible enemies, he’d rather be the wolf.
Fair enough.
The SUV roared as I scaled the steep road through the trees behind the wolf. I’d learned to drive in this kind of country, and it still took every nerve I had to keep going. I couldn’t see the road in front of me most of the time—not because of the storm or the darkness but because of the way the road humped up and down, leaving my headlights illuminating the sky or the trees. And if I slowed down at all, I’d be in a world of trouble. Only my speed allowed the SUV to keep climbing instead of sliding down the mountain backward.
It was probably less than a quarter of a mile before we breached the top, but it felt like a thousand years. When the chassis was level, I stopped to catch my breath. There had to be another way into the resort.
In front of me, all I could see was snow flying sideways, illuminated by my headlights. I couldn’t see trees or any sign of which way the road went. Before I could worry too much, Adam appeared, trotting toward me.
I rolled down my window. “When we go home, you are driving back down that excuse for a road.”