Cameron took a swing at whatever was poking him in the darkness, fairly certain that it wasn’t Neve doing the poking. “Go away,” he mumbled into his pillow, feeling lazy for the first time since he made it through basic training. The bed was warm and the weather sounded nightmarish outside.
Then he realized that Neve wasn’t beside him and sat bolt upright. He blinked blearily at Thom, who stood in the darkness well within arms’ reach in the shadows of the room, just barely visible in the light from the lamp that they always left burning dimly.
“What the hell are you doing in my room?” Cameron asked. “Where’s Neve?”
“With Marin, waiting for the both of us,” Thom said, crossing his arms.
With Marin? When—why would she—? Cameron frowned, shaking his head to clear the last vestiges of sleep. “What’s going on?”
“We need to talk, that’s all.” Thom’s gaze drifted toward the roof. “After we have a look at what the hell it’s doing outside. I think it sounds worse than it actually is.”
Cameron rubbed at his eyes as he groped his way out of bed and into pants and a shirt. “So you’re going to drag me out of a warm bed to go out gallivanting in a raging winter storm? What did I do to upset you?”
Thom sorted a laugh. “Put your coat on. The sooner we get to have a look, the sooner we’re back to the girls and they can stop conspiring against us.” His mirth faded as his gaze grew distant. “Something’s bothering the both of them.”
“They’re pregnant, Thom,” Cameron said, smothering a yawn as he yanked on his boots. “They’re pregnant and they’re highly engaged in whatever…supernatural…shit goes on in the immediate vicinity, and I don’t know about you, but I’d consider the werewolves a pretty supernatural occurrence.”
“They’re perfectly natural,” Thom said, keeping a straight face. “They’re just from an era well beyond our ability to clearly remember.”
“You’ve been spending too much time with Phelan and Thordin,” Cameron decided, getting up and snagging his coat. “You’re starting to sound like them.”
Thom laughed a little and shook his head. “Yeah, maybe. But it’s not bad when they’re right.”
Cameron shivered at how often they seemed to be right. “Yeah, well. Let’s get on with this.” What the hell got Neve up and wandering tonight? What’s going on? Another shiver crept down his spine. I’m not even sure I want to know.
He shouldered his way out the door and into the darkness of the corridor. The wind rattled the planks and shingles above, though it didn’t seem to quite penetrate the tar paper that was sandwiched those shingles and the wooden underpinnings.
“We need more insulation,” Thom said as they walked toward the exit.
“We need a lot of things,” Cameron said. “We can’t live in these sheds like this forever.”
“Come spring and summer, it’ll be different,” Thom said with heartfelt conviction. “We’ll be able to get to work—get some real work done. There’ll be a lot to do, but we’ll have more time to do it. More time to prepare for another season like this one.”
“Must have been hard for you guys here,” Cameron said.
“Easier for us than for you, I think,” Thom said. “I can only imagine how awful it must’ve been on the road.”
“It wasn’t so bad,” Cameron said. “Vaguely horrifying here and there, but if I hadn’t crashed my plane and started hiking, I never would have found Neve.” I wouldn’t have survived.
“Funny how things like that work,” Thom said. “I was supposed to go to Chicago the weekend things went to hell.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
Thom smiled weakly. “I would have missed saying good-bye to Marin if I had and I couldn’t bring myself to do that.”
