“That would be fine,” Maggie said. “I’m really not particular.” She held up her bag. “This is all my luggage, and I won’t take up much space.”
Shedidn’tmind, she told herself. She’d had nice things in the past, most of them stolen. What she had now was exactly as much as she deserved.
“Well, let me see if I can find anything else at all. Maybe employee housing ...” She flipped some pages. “Though we’re full up there, too.”
“What will I be doing?” Maggie asked. “When we talked about it before, you said you aren’t sure what you needed yet.”
“And you said you’d be willing to fill in anywhere.” Hester tapped the pen thoughtfully against the desktop as she went on scanning ledger pages. “We could really use some extra kitchen help. How do you feel about that?”
That didn’t sound so bad, Maggie told herself. She had waited tables as a young woman, before things took off for her—and might do it again, now that it had all come crashing down. “Yes, of course. That would be fine. I said I’d work where you put me, and I meant it.”
“I have another condition.” Hester gave her a flat, serious look. “While you’re here, I need you to promise not to shift. Not ever, not for any reason. Do you agree?”
This was harder; she could already feel her magpie protesting, like a flutter of phantom wings in her chest. Wanting to get out and fly in these beautiful, interesting, snow-covered trees. Wanting to look for shiny things around the lodge, which had so many interesting shiny things last time ...
No, Hester was right. She could not trust her magpie yet. Not here, in this place where she had hurt people before.
“I promise I won’t,” Maggie agreed. “Human only.”
“I’m taking a big risk on you. Don’t let me down.”
“I won’t. I swear.”
Hester’s only acknowledgement was to flip another page of the ledger. “We’ve got a few rooms that might come open this evening if the booking parties don’t show up. I can put you on a wait list—oh no, wait.” Her eyebrows went up. “That’s right. I forgot about the Gustavsons. It looks like we do have a room, alast-minute cancellation. I can give it to you tonight, but we will need to move you tomorrow if a paying guest needs the space.”
“That’s fine,” Maggie said eagerly. It was better than sharing a room with Mauro and Hester, who she knew didn’t like her very much. “I’ll take anything.”
“We have more than just anything.” For the first time since Maggie had started talking to her, a slight smile twitched the edge of Hester’s mouth. “How do you feel about staying in the honeymoon suite?”
SAM
“Parkour!!”
The cry echoed down the mountainside, ringing through the clear, cold air of a stunning winter day. The sky was sapphire blue above steep peaks and pine trees covered in snow. On this particular stretch of road, the hillside had been blasted to make a steep road cut, revealing a cross section of cliff that was raggedly patched with snow and cascades of ice from hidden springs.
Beneath a chill but diamond-brilliant midwinter sun, all that snow and ice was dazzling. Sam had pulled over at the request of the one person he could never refuse, and now his SUV sat on the shoulder of the road, winter tires sunk in the snow, engine pinging quietly as it cooled. Sam stood with his hands shoved in the pockets of his winter coat, wishing he’d thought to grab the knit cap from the backseat as he squinted up the cliff through his aviator shades.
“You sure about this, Charlie?” he called up.
“Yes, Dad,” the exasperated female voice echoed back down. “I’ve got this. I’ve done this a million times.”
“Never on anything this steep, though.”
“Bombs away!” was the only answer, and a moment later, a bundle of clothing tied together in a pink and silver girl’s coatcame bouncing down the hillside. Sam sighed and scooped it up. Now she was naked in the below-freezing winter cold, so she’d better be right about this.
A moment later, she came into view, bouncing weightlessly from one ledge to the next.
His daughter was a leggy teenage mountain goat. Her coat was white and fluffy as a sheep’s, except for occasional patches of gray where her baby fur was still shedding. She was graceful and wild and shockingly fast, switching from rock to rock, from protruding ledge to clump of brush, with speed that dazzled him.
Then, in one awful instant, she hit a patch of ice and her foot skidded.
For an instant, her body twisted in midair, forty feet above the road. Sam caught himself in the act of taking a panicked step forward. Like he could do anything; his shift form would break a leg if it tried even a fraction of the things Charlie was doing. He couldn’t help her. He could only watch.
But she caught herself with flexible teenage grace, bounced off another ledge, and hurtled down the last stretch of the cliff in a weightless series of bounds. She hit the snow, leaped to the middle of the road as momentum carried her onward, and shifted back with one last delighted bounce.
“Did you see me! Did you see!”
“Everyone’s going to see you,” Sam said, tossing the bundle of clothes to her.
