“Victoria and Able didn’t know about the wedding or the Great Spell or anything like that,” I said. “But they were sent to steal the artifact. They knew about it. When they abandoned their unsuccessful mission, they were called like everyone else.”
“Yes,” agreed my guest. “Yes.”
“Ymir hired them to steal the artifact and bring it to him, so that Ragnarok”—I was having trouble enough with English sounds, I couldn’t be bothered to pronounce “Ragnarok” the way Zee would have wanted me to—“so that Ragnarok would begin and he could break free and bathe in the blood of his enemies. You know what I don’t understand?”
“What?”
“How did Ymir know about the Great Spell?”
“I told him about it,” my visitor said. “I called him on the telephone a couple of months ago, when I understood what was going to happen. I called him and told him how to bring about the end of the world.”
Timor mortis conturbat me.
“Okay,” I said. “That explains Ymir.”
I’d never have figured out that one without help.
“Anyway, Able and Victoria were called to Looking Glass,” I said. “So they weren’t truly refugees of the storm.”
I clutched my pillow to my face and dried the pain-driven tears leaking out of my eyes. Hrímnir was right when he said there wasn’t much time.
“The goblins were guests,” my visitor said, sounding a little impatient. “But not refugees.”
I nodded my head into my pillow. “Victoria and Able, right.” I wondered how long I’d been sitting without speaking.
“This place is a refuge,” I said. “And people who come here in need, people like you, are protected.”
Instead of agreeing with me, Hugo said, “You aren’t a refugee, either.”
I took a breath.
“Not a refugee,” I agreed, then changed the subject. It wasn’t time for that yet. “But Victoria and Able didn’t know about the wedding, they only knew about the lyre—”
“The harp.”
“They didn’t understand why they were here. But they thought they figured it out when I told them that the artifact they were supposed to steal, the one someone else had stolen, had been brought here. Ymir, the power they served, would have been capable of herding them here—or they thought so. Dylis heard the lyre—”
“Harp,” said Hugo firmly.
“In the walls. Your room—a room in the back of the greenhouse where you sleep when you stay at the lodge—shares the back wall with Dylis’s room.”
“Yes,” he said.
“The goblins waited until everyone was out shoveling snow. They broke into the greenhouse and stole the lyre.”
“Yes,” he said. “I was asleep.”
I opened my eyes to see an older man sitting on the chair by the window. He was a little stooped and his eyes were red-rimmed, as though he’d been crying. He sat a little sideways, so I only had a clear view of the side of his body facing me.
“I have another story to tell you,” I said, “if you can bear with me just a few minutes more.”
He gave me a faint nod. He didn’t want to come to the end of our conversation any more than I did.
“My father is Coyote,” I said. “Once upon a time, he was wandering in the world and grew bored. So he put on a mortal body and lived as a young rodeo cowboy, Joe Old Coyote. Joe was a bull rider and amateur vampire killer. He didn’t remember that he used to be Coyote. He met my mother, conceived me, and then died under the fangs of some vampires he was hunting. Joe was dead, but Coyote? Death doesn’t hold any surprises—or permanence—for him. He dusted off his jeans and went back to wandering around the world. He remembered being Joe the cowboy and he remembered my mom. But he wasn’t Joe Old Coyote. My father—with all of his hopes and dreams, his love of my mother—that man was dead.” I paused. “I told my brother that story. I think he must have told it to Hrímnir.”
“I have a story, too,” Hugo said.
I had to squint, because I’d been right: keeping my eyes open made my head hurt worse.
“Once upon a time,” he said, “there was a good dog who was bored. And his master said, ‘I will give you a body, and you can go live in the world for a while as a human. Until winter solstice, when I shall take back the gift.’ ” His voice broke and he continued in a whisper. “I learned that I liked to grow plants and be useful. I liked to meet new people.” He stumbled to a halt. Then he said, “If the wedding doesn’t happen, maybe Hugo can live.”
“You became Hugo,” I said. “And you knew that Hrímnir couldn’t come here. When my brother stole the artifact, he brought it here and left it with you. Where he thought it would be safe. Why did he go back to talk to Hrímnir?”
Hugo shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said.
“I don’t think that preventing the renewal of the spell will save you,” I told him gently.
He looked down. “You don’t know that. Ymir said…”
“Ymir lies,” I told him. “You know that.”
“Maybe so,” he said. “Probably. But at least Garmr will be free. I…I will be free. And there will be no more lies.”
I was ready when he pulled out the revolver. I’d smelled the peculiar combination of gun oil, gunpowder, and char that is the scent of a recently fired gun when he’d come into the room.
Still, I waited until I saw his finger twitch before I shot him through the pillow I held in my lap. Adam’s gun, the one I’d liberated with his permission, given with a nod because Zane and Liam and Emily had been watching, wasn’t the HK I was familiar with. But Hugo was less than six feet away.
He will die there, Hrímnir had told me the first time I’d met him. I’d thought he’d been speaking of Gary. I knew now that he had not been.
Hugo’s body hit the floor, and a few seconds later, the giant beast that had ripped my mind open stood over it. He was still not quite real. His lips drew back in a snarl.
“You’ve done your job,” I told Garmr. My head hurt too much—and I was too sad—to be afraid of him. “I played my part in this farce. If you had left me alone, I’d never have figured everything out before Hugo killed me, too. Save your snarls for your master.” I put the safety back on Adam’s gun. “Hugo was always fated to die.”
The words tasted like ashes and truth on my tongue.
Adam would be here soon, drawn by the sound of his gun being fired. Zane was with him, and apparently Zane had been able to drive off Garmr. I wasn’t surprised when the door flew open with enough force to hit the wall.
But it wasn’t Adam who came in.
An elderly Native woman entered the room, clothed in a white deerskin elk-tooth dress and white leggings, her long hair a shade of gray that looked metallic silver, plaited into two braids that draped over her shoulders and down her chest, ending at her waist.
Her feet were bare and thick-soled, as if she spent most of her days without shoes. Her strong, fine-boned hands bore long, thin calluses, as if one of her usual tasks wore her skin.
Her attention was not on me but on Garmr.
“Poor boy,” she said. “Poor, dear boy. It was not her fault. She only had her part to play, and she played it. Come here.”
Garmr closed his lips over his teeth and quit growling at me. He carefully stepped over the body, around the bed, and sat at the old woman’s heel. His attention focused on her face.
She set a hand on his head, unbothered by the not-quite-realness of it. “This has been difficult for you, and your tasks are not done, poor boy. Fetch the harp for me, if you would. We have need of it tonight.”
He whined softly.
“Hugo doesn’t need it anymore,” she said. “He never did. You know that. Be a good boy and fetch it.”