As we got to the entrance, I saw that there were Christmas lights strung all over the bare trusses that used to bear the roof of the wraparound porch that clearly, now that I had a closer view, was an original feature. They’d have looked pretty all lit up, but unlit, they only contributed to the bleakness of the place.
I’d thought the door might be locked for the night, but Adam had no trouble opening it. Sleigh bells on the door’s Christmas wreath gaily announced our arrival as a wave of warmth engulfed us. We stepped out of the storm and straight into the first half of the twentieth century. Here, inside, and unexpected given the grimness of the exterior of the building, was the expensive elegance I’d have expected from a resort where billionaires get married.
“Huh,” I said. “I guess you really can’t judge a book by its cover.”
The reception area was small for a building this size, but that made it look more expensive rather than less, a kind of “good things come in small packages” experience. There was room for an elegant couch and a couple of chairs. Two original oil paintings hung on the wall. I would have bet money that they were worth a small fortune. I couldn’t name the artists, but they had the look of art that should be displayed in a museum and not a lodge in the Cabinet Mountains.
Rather than a reception desk, there was an open window into a small office. The counter was figured oak, presumably original to the building from the wear and tear carefully preserved in the varnished surface.
The whole reception area and the parts of the office I could see were immersed in Art Deco design, down to the vase filled with five or six peacock feathers and the burled walnut paneling on the walls. Even the Christmas wreath on the door was done with the sort of spare elegance of the late flapper era.
Adam said, “I feel like I’m a passenger on the Titanic.”
“Or walking onto a movie set,” I agreed, not bothering to correct him. The Titanic sank in 1912, a decade or two earlier than the Art Deco period.
I surveyed him and then looked down at my own travel-stained wet clothes.
“Both of us are terribly underdressed, dear sir.” I borrowed my posh English accent from the one our English werewolf used. I knew I’d gotten it right when Adam grinned at me.
The only touch that was out of place was the pair of plastic battery-operated lanterns illuminating the room. One of them sat on the beautiful counter and the other on the floor beside the couch.
Adam leaned over the counter and grunted. He dropped our baggage and hopped over the barrier and into the office without so much as disturbing the little paper tent that announced that the office was closed for the night.
“Yep,” he said from the other room. “They still use keys. Assuming that the rooms with three keys available are not in use—and the ones that have three keys bound together with a zip tie are rooms that aren’t ready—that means the entire third floor and most of the second are out of commission or occupied. Are you okay with ground floor?”
“Sure,” I said.
If Adam hadn’t been with me, I’d likely have bedded down on a couch, though hopefully there was one somewhere that would be more comfortable than the one in this lobby. But he was right. In a storm like this, no one would begrudge us helping ourselves. We could pay for our room in the morning, assuming there was an employee to pay. Adam took a key and then found a piece of paper and a pen, doubtless to record our absconding with the key and use of the room.
There was a light switch just to the right of the counter. I flipped it, but nothing happened. “I wonder why it’s so warm in here if the electricity is off.”
“There is a generator,” a woman’s voice said from the narrow opening between the reception room and the dark hallway beyond.
I was startled. I’d had no inkling there was anyone around. She must have been standing there in the dark when we’d come in. I would have heard someone moving.
She continued in a friendly, informative manner that was very much at odds with her having been lurking in a hallway, watching us. “It’s confined to essential services—the kitchen and the walk-in freezer, as well as the water pump for the well and to keep the hot spring water circulating in the pipes and radiators. The building can run—without lights, of course—on minimal electricity.”
I wouldn’t have thought Adam could see her, either, but something galvanized him. Maybe he was more upset about her lurking than I was. He dropped the pen and abandoned his half-written note. Key in hand, he vaulted the counter again, landing lightly between me and the dark opening that led to the hallway beyond, as if to put himself between me and an enemy.
“Good to know,” I answered.
“I sounded like a tour guide, didn’t I?” The floorboards showed their age by squeaking a bit as the woman walked in, though she wasn’t very big. Slender, with big dark eyes and light brown curly hair cut short to highlight her fine features, she looked like she was in her midtwenties.
Despite the lateness of the night, she was fully dressed in a green silk shirt and herringbone-patterned trousers. She had pearl drops in her ears and a single pearl on a gold chain around her neck. Maybe there had been a party or reception earlier in the evening?
“You must be with the groom’s family,” she said. Her smile lit her face. “I’m sorry no one warned you about the weather. What are you driving, that you made it up those roads? And in the dark?”
Adam, uncharacteristically, did not respond to her friendliness. He’d come across the barrier as though he was prepared for a fight. But it wasn’t until he spoke that I understood why.
“Vampire,” he said.
Her smile died as though it had never been.
I honestly hadn’t noticed the scent until Adam spoke. The sulfur of the hot springs was pretty strong—and I was dog-tired. Once Adam drew my attention to it, though, it was obvious.
Vampire. Bonarata. Chills spread up my spine, and my stomach hurt. Was this whole thing a trap?
I’d grown up in the Marrok’s pack, and Bran Cornick was capable of engineering the situation that had forced us here, away from our people and our home. Vulnerable. Anything that Bran could think up was well within the capability of Bonarata.
But there was a danger in giving Bonarata more power than he had, wasn’t there? I looked at my husband’s hostile back and thought that his mind had gone to the same Bonarata-inhabited place that mine had. I put a light hand on his shoulder.
“Vampire,” the woman agreed coolly.
As she spoke, a man strode in behind the woman, as if he’d been lurking in the hall. The floorboard didn’t creak under his weight, even though he was a big man, a little over six feet tall and built wide. His skin was pale, and I thought in brighter light I’d see freckles to go with the light skin and the hair that looked to be red, though the yellowish lanterns played havoc with my ability to judge color.
It struck me that his clothing, like the woman’s, was a little formal for the middle of the night. He wore a snow-white dress shirt, set off by the black braces that held up his sharply pressed trousers.
He stepped between Adam and the vampire, the same way Adam had put himself between me and her. The big man looked from Adam to me, his face unhappy. When he spoke, the Irish in his voice was riding high—both in temper and sharp lilt. “Who the hell are you?”
Adam had been rude, maybe. But the stranger’s attitude was gauged to raise the tension in the room by a bit—especially since he directed his ire at me. There was going to be violence in a few seconds if someone didn’t try to calm the waters.
But I was tired.