Frost Burned

them.
    Kyle forgave me the shirt I’d destroyed, and he’d helped us look for his car without a word of complaint. He was, I think, happy we hadn’t found it that night and covered his buttery leather upholstery with soot and blood.
    Warren told me, as we drove through nameless dirt roads through seemingly endless vineyards and orchards, that Adam had just suddenly gotten out of the chair he’d been sitting in at Kyle’s office and sprinted out the door, leaving the rest of them to soothe the reporter who’d lingered to get a few more details.
    Adam had taken off in Kyle’s Jaguar and left the rest of them to call a taxi to get home.
    Adam had explained, a little sheepishly, that all he knew was that I was at the winery with the vampires—but he hadn’t been really certain how to get there. He could feel me, but the roads kept turning the wrong way. Finally, he’d abandoned the car and taken off on four feet.
    It took us three days to find the Jaguar—and then only because someone called the police and reported an abandoned car in their vineyard.
    I gave the sword back to Tad as soon as I saw him again, a couple of days after our adventure.
    “What did you do to it?” he asked me. “It feels . . .”
    “Frightened?” I suggested.
    He grimaced. “Subdued.”
    “Wulfe—you know the crazy vampire? Wulfe used it to kill another vampire.”
    He grimaced. “That would do it. You should ask Dad about Wulfe sometime. It’ll give you nightmares.”
    Tad was living at his father’s house still, but he quit being a hermit. He’s helping me at the shop again. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed working with someone I liked. I might still have to close down the shop eventually, but not for a while.
    Peter’s funeral, held as soon as we could manage, had taken place in sunshine, though it was still cold. The pack mourned, as was fitting. It was a quiet affair without the usual speeches because Honey didn’t want them. I agreed with her; speeches weren’t necessary. We all knew what we had lost.
    Asil went home directly afterward. As did Agent Armstrong, who had stayed for the funeral, though he’d never met Peter.
    “It is a good thing to remember the victims,” he told me at the grave site. “It gives me perspective.”
    Adam made Honey stay with us for a couple more days before moving back to her house. Mary Jo planned on giving up her apartment in the next few weeks and moving in with her. Mary Jo, firefighter, and Honey, princess, seem to me a disaster in the making—but neither of them like me for a lot of reasons that boil down to my being a coyote and not a werewolf. Maybe that will give them enough in common to let their roommate situation work out.
    The last of the flames under the Rabbit died down just as the snow began to fall in earnest.
    “Come inside,” Adam suggested. “Everyone’s gone except Jesse, and she’s asleep.”
    His gruff tone and the touch of his lips on my ear told me that he had something more in mind than sleep.
    “I am,” I told him, as we walked back to the house, “feeling very lucky tonight.”
    “Oh? Because you didn’t die in the crash, when the assassin attacked you, or when you fought the vampire?” His voice had sharpened.
    “You’ve yelled at me enough about that,” I warned him. “Your quota is now full. Besides, that’s not what makes me lucky.”
    After we had left the burnt-out winery and the vampires behind us, we went home—to our home. It was battered (the front door was so bad they had to replace the frame and resurface part of the house), but the bad guys were all dead.
    I tracked blood, mud, and ash across the white carpet and up the stairs. I used to feel bad when I bled all over that carpet—but tonight I didn’t care so much. Besides, Adam, still in wolf form, was even dirtier than I was.
    “I’m going to shower,” Asil said. “Then I’ll sleep in the living room where I can keep an eye on the doors, just in case.”
    “There’s a shower in the bathroom in the basement,” I told him. “Get something to eat. There’s food in the kitchen.”
    He smirked. “Yes, Mom.”
    Honey hopped onto the living-room couch with a sigh. It was white, like the carpet, but it was leather, so we could clean off anything that got on it. Probably.
    Adam trailed beside me, up the stairs.
    “You should eat, too,” I told him.
    He gave me a look, and I let it lie. If he really needed food, he’d get some. As soon as we made it into