Fire and Ice

  “He looks like he’s in a pissy mood,” Rick softly snarked as the lawyer got out to talk with Andel. After a moment, the lawyer unlocked and opened the gate, then drove through and pulled to the side of the gravel driveway to allow Andel’s car to get by. When they passed, he closed the gate behind them, relocked it, and followed Andel’s car up the long, winding drive. The rolling grounds were thick with large shade trees and lush grass.

  As the house came into view, Lina felt the breath sucked from her lungs. “That’s mine?”

  “Yep,” Jan said. “Lock, stock, and barrel.”

  “How big is this?”

  “Twenty-five acres,” Jan said. “Not a bad little hovel, huh?”

  She playfully shoved him from across the seat.

  Made out of reddish stone, the huge three-story house looked nearly as big as the Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone. A covered portico one story high and at least three cars wide sheltered the front entrance, but the two vehicles parked in the gravel driveway. Three men and two women awaited their arrival on the front steps when they all climbed out of their vehicles.

  The attorney, whose name was James Rieucheaux, motioned Lina over and spoke in very rapid French to the workers. Without her realizing it, Jan stepped in behind her. He started whispering a translation into her ear. The attorney was introducing her and the others, and informing them that they were, under no circumstances, to take any orders from Andel. Andel looked indignant and perturbed at that, but he kept his mouth shut.

  Crap. No telling when I’ll get my Rosetta Stone stuff.

  “Ask him how far away the hotel is,” she snarked.

  He shook his head. “We’re staying here. That’s what he just told them. Frankly, I think it’s a good idea. We can protect you better here, plus no telling how long it’ll take to find the tablet.”

  She tipped her head back to look up at the house. “This is all mine? Seriously?”

  Jan laughed. “Yes, sweetheart. All yours.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Very ugh.”

  The staff showed them all to their rooms. They didn’t bat an eye over her and Jan and Rick sharing a room, or over Zack and Kael. Apparently the house had twenty bedrooms, and the one Lina and her men were given was the largest and on the second floor, but it wasn’t the one Bertholde had used, much to Lina’s relief. Despite the age of the house, modern IKEAesque furniture decorated their room. Sleek, honey-colored wood dressers and matching bed frame and end tables formed the center of the scheme. A matching armoire held a large flat-screen TV, DVR, and cable box.

  “Cable? We have cable?” Lina turned on the TV, disappointed to quickly realize most of the programming was in French.

  “Crap.”

  Rick laughed. “Sorry, sweetie. Don’t worry, we’ll be too busy for TV most of the time anyway.”

  “And he doesn’t even mean sex,” Jan added. “Between finding what we came here for and looking into matters, we’ll be busy.” Lina hadn’t missed that Jan didn’t specifically mention the tablet.

  “Who says I don’t mean sex?” Rick said as he pulled her into his arms.

  “Watch it, buster. I’m crampy and crabby.”

  He kissed her on the nose and released her. “Your wish is my command, love.”

  The attorney stepped into the room and got Jan’s attention. They spoke briefly, then the attorney left. “Your presence is requested on the first floor, madam,” he playfully said. “He wants to open Bertholde’s room.”

  “What do you mean open it?”

  “It was sealed.”

  They assembled downstairs in a hallway outside a door. Not only was it locked, but the keyhole had been covered with red wax and sealed with the same seal on the letter Bertholde had sent Lina.

  She fought the urge to tear up. “She knew,” she softly said. “She did this before she left for Yellowstone.” She reached out and touched the wax.

  Jan translated for the attorney. The man nodded. “Oui,” he said, handing her a brand-new, sharp utility scraper. He motioned for her to break the seal.

  She did. He handed her a key, and after taking a deep breath Lina unlocked the door and opened it.

  The light was dim. Heavy curtains had been pulled across the large windows. When Rick went to open them, he laughed. “Hey, look at this.” He pointed at the window sills. Bertholde, apparently wanting to make sure no one could get in unnoticed, had also placed several drops of wax at various locations on the windows.

  All of them looked intact.

  Lina sadly smiled. “Smart lady. She wanted us to know for sure we were the first ones in here since she left.”

  Andel glanced around and turned to the attorney, then spoke to him in French. This time, Rick translated the exchange for her. Andel wanted to know when the will would be read, and the attorney assured him it would be in a few minutes, and that Bertholde had indicated that Lina had a message for him from her.

  Lina looked startled. “I do?”

  Jan turned, an eyebrow arched at her. “The scroll and the letter?”

  “Oh.” She dug into her messenger bag and pulled them out, then let Andel read them. First, his face grew red as he read the letter, then he exploded in laughter and had to sit down.

  He shook his head. “I loved her very much,” he said when he composed himself. “She put up with a lot of grief from me when I was young.” As he smiled, Lina patted him on the shoulder and felt the wave of melancholy and grief from him. No, he didn’t have anything to do with his aunt’s death. She’d bet her life on it.

  She also still felt that grey fog around him that she’d first noticed when they were in Yellowstone.

  He looked up at her and smiled after reading the scroll. “Very well, this is her wish. As you are our Seer, I defer to you.” He looked at the attorney and spoke to him in French. She didn’t need a translator to interpret the relieved smile and nod the attorney gave Andel in reply.

  He’d obviously told the attorney he would offer no more objections to the proceedings.

  Lina looked around the room, which definitely felt like Bertholde. No nonsense, nothing frilly or froufrou about it. But warm and inviting nonetheless. Soft, deep-blue carpeting covered the floor. The double bed was made up with several decorative pillows and a warm, fluffy comforter. One corner of the room was a reading nook, with floor-to-ceiling shelves full of a variety of books in several languages. This room had a fireplace, as well as vents for modern central heating and air-conditioning. She walked over to one shelf, where pictures and knickknacks shared space with still more books. On one shelf holding a collection of carved stone knickknacks, she saw an open gap. Closer inspection revealed four clean spots in the light coating of dust that no doubt would perfectly match the four little carvings tucked into her purse.

  “It used to be the library,” Jan interpreted for the attorney. “She got tired of climbing stairs.”

  Lina turned her attention from the shelf. A doorway opened into a large bathroom. It was obvious from the newer style of door and framing that it had been added later, after she’d decided to turn the room into her master suite. Another door, which from its location Lina assumed led to the hallway, was locked with a sliding bolt from the inside. No way someone could have snuck in that way, especially since the hinges were on the inside of the door.

  Lina turned. “Let’s get this done,” she said. “I want to get the will read, then I need to eat and sleep.”

  “The staff is preparing brunch for us now,” Rick said.

  The attorney led them into what appeared to be the new library from the quantity of books lining the walls. They sat. As Rieucheaux started to read the will, with Jan translating for Lina, a wave of aggravation overcame Lina.

  “I can’t believe I can do all this shit, and I can’t understand a fucking word he’s saying!”

  She froze as she found herself in Baba Yaga’s kitchen.

  “Holy fucking crap on a cracker, are you kidding me?” Lina screamed.

>   Baba Yaga, in her matron form, was sitting on her couch and sipping something out of a mug while watching Dirty Jobs on TV.

  “What?” the matron asked. “I happen to like Mike Rowe.”

  Lina let out another frustrated screech.

  “What exactly is the problem, Goddess?”

  “I didn’t ask to come here! I was sitting there listening to the attorney read Bertholde’s will. All I said was I couldn’t believe with all my powers that I can’t understand French!”

  “But you can.”

  Lina blinked.

  Then she blinked again. “Huh?”

  Baba Yaga smiled. “What have I been telling you?”

  “Can you just tell me, because if I have to sit here and recite everything, it’ll be all damn day, and frankly I’m too fucking jet-lagged and crampy to think about it right now.” Her stomach chose that moment to grumble. “And I’m hungry, too!”

  Apparently, Baba Yaga either had a DVR or was watching a DVD. She picked up her remote, hit pause, and Mike Rowe froze just as he was taking a step into something that looked horribly disgusting.

  “I’ll simplify it for you. Your answers are in your past.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve spent several of your lives speaking either French or an older style of French. You’ve spoken many languages. German, Dutch, Japanese, Mandarin—shall I continue?”

  “So?”

  “So, sit down, clear your mind for a moment, with Zachary guiding you if necessary, and think back. You’ll no doubt be rusty at first, but I’ll bet if you open your mind, you’ll soon see you do understand French.”

  Lina jabbed her finger at Baba Yaga and started to yell at her when she found herself standing in the library, shouting at the corner.

  Everyone else let out a startled exclamation. She took a deep breath, turned around, and said to Rieucheaux, “Excuse me for a moment.” She grabbed Zack by the shoulder of his shirt as she passed where he was sitting, and he barely had time to get to his feet and follow her.

  She shut the library door behind her and leaned against it.

  “Okay, sweet cheeks. What happened? Another Baba Yaga interlude?”

  “Yeah. Get this, she says I can understand French. And a bunch of other languages. She’s flipped!”

  Instead of agreeing with her immediately, he stroked his chin. “Well,” he finally said, “that does make sense. Some of my languages are rusty, like I haven’t spoken Vietnamese in over two hundred years, but we were in France in the late 1900’s.”

  As exhausted and stressed as she was, Lina felt tears of frustration spring to her eyes. “Help me, please? She said you might be able to.”

  “Oh, sweetie. Come here.” He enveloped her in a hug as she sobbed against him.

  “I’m sooo tired. I’m worried about all of…all of this, whatever this is. I’m hungry and I just want a bath and want to go to bed after I eat and that bitch is driving me crazy, and—”

  He stroked her hair. “Honey, shhh, it’s okay. We’ll figure it out.” He sat on a nearby loveseat and pulled her into his lap. “Relax.” He held her so her forehead rested against his. “Close your eyes and listen to me…”

  He took her on a journey to the past, telling her some of their life together, their younger days growing up in a small village outside of Lyon. Of how their parents were best friends, how they grew up together.

  “I called you mon ange,” he said.

  “My angel,” she whispered.

  “Very good.” His voice grew softer as he told her stories. In a few minutes, he said, “Est-ce que l'aide?”

  She smiled. “Oui. Oh, holy crap! I understood that!”

  He laughed and helped her up, out of his lap. “Let’s go in and test you, kiddo.”

  Everyone went quiet as they returned. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Je regrette.”

  “Holy crap!” Rick and Jan said together.

  She smirked. “Yeah, I now remember how to speak French. I think. Let’s get this over with.”

  The attorney warily eyed her, but continued speaking in French. This time, Lina understood nearly everything he said. If there was something she didn’t understand, she had one of the men translate it into English for her.

  The reading of the will didn’t take long. Everything—the house, all its contents, and all her assets—went to Lina. There was a sealed letter for Andel, which the attorney handed over to him.

  And that was it.

  “Are there any other questions or concerns?” the attorney asked.

  She glanced at him, then at Andel. “Is he…one of us?” she softly asked him in English.

  Andel smiled. “James is from dragon lineage, if that’s your question.”

  “Ah.” She started to ask Andel something else, but he politely raised a hand to stay her. “Let me read this first, please. Then I will spend all day and night answering anything you wish to ask me.”

  Lina nodded. “Of course.”

  He broke the wax seal on the envelope and withdrew the single page. As he read it, his eyes brimmed with tears. Then he burst into laughter. When he finished, he smiled and returned the letter to the envelope. He produced a handkerchief from his pocket, dried his eyes, and blew his nose. “I’m sorry, my dear.” He looked around. “There is…an object we need to discuss.”

  “The tablet.”

  He looked startled. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to discuss this openly.”

  Daniel arched an eyebrow at him. “Andel, you’re about the only one in this room, with the exception of Perry Mason, here, who hasn’t been in the loop about the tablet.”

  That seemed to confuse him even more. “What?”

  Jocko waved him down. “Relax, Andel. It’s under control. Get comfy, it’ll be a whopper of a story.”

  * * * *

  Lina let the others do most of the talking. She didn’t want to talk. She only wanted to eat and sleep. Sitting still for more than a few minutes in her fairly comfy chair, she found herself dozing off.

  A gentle nudge to her shoulder startled her awake. Callie. “Hey, want to go eat? We’ll let the guys finish up here.”

  Lina wearily nodded and hauled herself out of the chair. They followed the delicious smell of food through the first floor until they found the dining room, where a long sideboard had been covered from one end to the other in chafing dishes and platters full of nommy goodness.

  “They must have told them Wally and the wolves were coming with us,” Callie joked.

  As Lina grabbed a clean plate from the stack at the end of the sideboard, a ridiculously stupid thought hit her.

  She turned to Callie. “You’re Baba Yaga’s sister.”

  A puzzled smile crossed Callie’s face. “Yeah?”

  “Her sister.”

  Callie nodded. “Uh-huh. You okay?”

  Lina blamed it on accumulated stress, exhaustion, jet lag, and her period. “I’ve spent all this time bitching about her, when I’ve got you right here!”

  Callie’s eyebrows arched as she realized where Lina was going with her point. “Ah. Well, I hate to disappoint you, but while yes, I do have powers, my powers are far less than Babs’. On a scale of one to ten, she’s a ninety-seven, and I’m around twenty-five. Now Brighde, our other sister, she’s older than me, but younger than Babs. She’s about a forty-two.”

  Lina blankly stared at her for a moment as the disappointing news sank in. She burst into tears.

  Callie looked alarmed. “Hey, it’s okay.” She put her plate down, took Lina’s from her and put it down as well, and hugged her. “Hey, I’ll help you as much as I can. But this is Baba Yaga’s gig, honey. I can only do so much. I’m also bound by certain laws, anyway. If I went willy-nilly, I’d get slapped down in a big way.”

  “I thought I was so close to answers!” Lina sobbed against her.

  “Hey, believe me, no one has all the answers. Not even Babs. She’s as hamstrung in a lot of ways as any of us are. She’s just…a lot sn
eakier.”

  Without a word, one of the housekeepers brought Lina a cloth napkin and left them alone again.

  Lina laughed and blew her nose. “They’re efficient.”

  Callie laughed. “Seems so. How’s it feel to be the lady of the manor?”

  “I don’t know yet. Ask me in a few weeks, if I haven’t been committed to an asylum.”

  They filled their plates and settled in at one end of the long table. The housekeeper filled their coffee cups and water glasses for them and silently disappeared again.

  “I wonder if I change my hair color,” Callie said, “if it’d spook her?”

  Lina nearly choked on her scrambled eggs as she laughed. “You can do that?”

  Callie snorted and, before Lina’s eyes, went from a curly redhead to straight black hair with purple highlights.

  Lina’s eyes widened. “Holy crap!” she said.

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Ahem.”

  Callie flinched and turned to see Daniel standing in the doorway, a wry expression on his face.

  Lina wondered at the immediate change in Callie’s demeanor. Callie lowered her head. “Sorry, Sir,” she softly said.

  He laughed and walked over to her. Smiling, he gently tipped her chin up so he could lean in and kiss her. “It’s okay,” he said. “I heard Lina’s comment. I know you were just showing her.”

  Relief filled Callie’s face. Her hair immediately changed back to its previous deep-red hue and curly texture. “Thank You, Sir.”

  Lina’s eyes narrowed. “Not that it’s any of my business, but what the hell’s going on here?” She immediately felt protective of Callie. The irony wasn’t lost on her, since Callie was probably far more powerful than Lina could ever hope to be.

  Callie laid her hand over Daniel’s, where it rested on her shoulder. She smiled at Lina. “It’s okay. Do you really think a wolf could do something to me that I didn’t want done?” She looked up at Daniel with love in her eyes. “He’s my Sir. I love Him. He’s the first man in my entire life who understood what I wanted and needed.”

  Lina knew that look. Lovesick puppy. Every man in her house wore that look at one time or another. Hell, she probably wore it a few times herself.