Frost Burned

“All right,” Tad said. “All right. But you take the sword.” He held it out again. It looked wicked and wrong in a room filled with Thomas the Tank Engine’s cheery presence.

I made no effort to take it.“I know about your father’s swords.”

Tad laughed.“Yeah, there was a long period of time when Dad was pretty angry with the world. This one is called Hunger, and it needs to taste your blood; then it will serve you—until it tastes another’s blood it likes better. I know you’ve done some weapon forms in karate, but, you’re right, it’s still better not to use it unless you have to. You’ll never know when it might prefer someone else—and since you aren’t fae, it will be even less inclined to stay with you. However. It will kill vampires in a way a normal sword ca

He held the sword out again, and I took it gingerly.

“Use it to cut yourself to bind it to you. I’d recommend forearm or calf—and be careful, it’s really, really sharp.”

So I touched my left forearm to the blade—and it zapped me a good one as it sliced into the skin. It felt like magic turned to electricity—like touching a hot wire on a fence.

Tad frowned.“That’s not supposed to happen. Let’s try this.”

He pulled out a pocketknife and cut his index finger. He got a few drops of blood flowing, then pressed his finger on the still-bleeding cut on my forearm. I winced and winced again when he took hold of my hand that held the sword and guided it to taste of our mingled blood.

This time there was no zap of magic but a gentle dance of power through my body.

“That’s better,” he said. “Now you should be able to sheathe the blade just by thinking about it.”

He was right. In an instant, the blade had vanished, leaving what looked like a random lump of pitted metal.

“If the Gray Lords were mad about the walking stick—” I said—the lump of metal’s residual magic made my forearm buzz all the way to my elbow.

“Let’s just say that it would be better if you give it back to me as soon as you return—and I intend to give it back to my father at the earliest opportunity. This isn’t like Peace and Quiet; Hunger is a major artifact, and the fae lords won’t be happy to find that it is in your hands—particularly as you gave another fae artifact to Coyote.”

I jerked my head up to look him in the eyes, and he gri

I started to put it into the pocket of Kyle’s sweats when Tad stopped me. “You aren’t really going to wear those to meet with Marsilia are you?”

“Right,” I said. “I’ll go look in Kyle’s closet.”

Kyle’s closet yielded a pair of jeans that were tight but not unbearably so and a blue sweater that Tad picked out. I hoped I wasn’t stealing Kyle’s favorite clothes. I got downstairs, and Honey, still in wolf form, and Asil waited for me.

Asil handed me a coat.

It was a good coat, and it fit. More importantly, it had a pocket big enough for the fae artifact that was sometimes a sword, so I didn’t have to keep it stuffed in the too-tight jeans.

Asil drove Warren’s truck, with Honey beside him—she wasn’t happy about that, but I didn’t like her any more than she liked me. That she was mourning Peter, whom I liked very much, just made me more uncomfortable around her. Let Asil deal with her and vice versa.

I drove Marsilia’s Mercedes. We’d take the truck back and leave the car with Marsilia. That would get it out of my hands, and anything else that happened to it would be her fault. Tad had had to bend the trunk more to get it to latch. Now the trunk looked like a tree had fallen on it, which didn’t improve the car’s appearance at all. I’d moved my gun from the car to the truck, but I pla

Thomas Hao led the procession in an inconspicuous white Subaru Forester with California plates. I thought we were going to the seethe right up until he turned in the wrong direction at the Keene roundabout, taking us away from the TriCities.

I hesitated, driving an extra round on the roundabout. If he was from out of town, as the California plates indicated, he might have gotten lost. When I could see him again, the vampire had pulled to the side of the road and was waiting for us.

If he’d taken a wrong turn, he’d figure it out when we ran out of town and ended up out in the countryside, I decided. If not—then I’d guess we were meeting Marsilia somewhere else. It didn’t make me happy, but I wasn’t unhappy enough to turn back to Kyle’s.

I pulled out behind Hao, and Asil followed me. When he drove past the big hayfields without slowing, then turned to take us farther out into West Nowhere, I figured that we weren’t going to the seethe and took out Gabriel’s sister’s phone—which I still had—and called Sylvia on Tony’s phone.

“We’re not going to Marsilia’s,” I told her. “We’re out on Highway 224 headed toward Benton City. I’ll give you another call when I know more.”

“I’ll keep the phone nearby,” she said.

Twenty minutes later, we were through Benton City and headed up on the bluffs that overlooked the Yakima River, surrounded by orchard and vineyard. I hadn’t seen a house in miles when Hao turned up a gravel road between rows of orchard trees.

I’d spent the entire time thinking about vampires. Old vampires had money. Marsilia had been going through a fugue—old-vampire version of depression, from what I’d gathered. She had sat around not doing much for years, and that made her look weak, which is why Gauntlet Boy had attempted to steal her seethe. Marsilia would never so much as blink unless it benefited her.

She wouldn’t arrange a meeting with the pack unlessshe needed help. This,all of this, had begun with the vampires. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made.

Of course a vampire would kill the mercenaries who might know too much. He wasn’t scared of what they might say to the police; he was scared of what they would say to Bran or Charles. If the pack died—and he’d intended them to die, probably couldn’t believe that they’d let themselves be taken by a handful of mercenaries and Cantrip agents—then the Marrok would hunt down the responsible parties.

The trees fell away first, then the gravel, and we crawled through what seemed like acres of grapes that looked deader than could be attributed to the season alone. Marsilia’s car was a city car and wasn’t too happy with the rocks and ruts that had replaced the gravel.

Vampires gained powers. Stefan could teleport—and that was a real secret because it made him a target. James Blackwood, the Master of Spokane, could steal the abilities of the supernatural folk he fed upon. Maybe this vampire could create a zombie from my assassin.Why anyone would want to was another matter.

I was so lost in my thoughts that it wasn’t until I got a good whiff of smoke that I figured out where we were going. The smoke itself wasn’t unusual—this time of year a lot of places burned agricultural rubbish. But this smelled like a house fire and not just burning plant matter.

Hastily, I called Sylvia again.“Tell Adam that we’re going to the place where he was kidnapped and held.”

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Not necessarily,” I said, though I was suspicious that Hao had been so careful not to tell me that we were meeting at the winery Adam and Elizaveta had burned to ash. “She might have something to show me here.”