Miss Frost Solves A Cold Case: A Nocturne Falls Mystery (Jayne Frost Book 1) (29 page)

Just like I’d done. “Why do it here? Why not do this at your inn?”

Cookie stared at me, her mouth quirking up slightly. “This is a lot more private. And so convenient. And soundproof.” She leaned in. “Sometimes there’s screaming. And I can’t have my neighbors snooping, now can I?”

Screaming? That sent a new chill through me. I had to get out of here.

She twirled my silver bracelet around her finger. “Not sure why you were hiding your light under a bushel.”

Cookie obviously didn’t realize I was the Winter Princess. But that’s what happened to elves who left the NP and didn’t bother to educate themselves on their own culture.

She continued, “You make the rest of them look practically human. Which they technically are now.”

With their elven magic stripped, the workers essentially became human. She wasn’t just taking their magic, she was taking their identities. No wonder Will hadn’t known his name when I’d questioned him at the B&B.

Even worse, Cookie had turned him into slave labor. Like grandfather like granddaughter, apparently. I scowled at her. “You are never going to get away with this. You or your grandfather, because I don’t believe for a cold second he’s only bringing you employees.”

She laughed. “I’ve been getting away siphoning magic off the employees for years. And my grandfather has no idea what I’m doing down here.”

“You expect me to believe you built this contraption?”

Anger flashed in her eyes. Good. I wanted to make her angry. “I don’t care what you believe, but I built it. It’s based on one of his toy ideas that went horribly wrong, but I fixed that.”

“It’s still horribly wrong.”

“Not from my side of things. The money I make on these crystals beats what I made running that wretched B&B any day.”

My hands were at my sides, but still too far away to reach my phone. And I could feel that crystal draining me. The urge to close my eyes and give in was strong. “Let me go and we can still make this right.”

“You might as well save your breath.” She stepped back and glanced at the crystal again. “I might get four or five out of you. Most of them give me two. Occasionally three. I should see if Grandpa Featherstone can get more like you.”

While she was distracted, I pointed my fingers in her direction and called the power remaining in my veins. Ice needles shot forward. Most ricocheted off the bars, but some hit their target and buried themselves into Cookie’s upper thigh.

She yelped out a curse and limped backward. She glared at me before checking her leg. It was too dark for me to tell how much damage I’d done. “That’s enough of that.” She pulled a fragment of blue crystal from her pocket, stuck it into the lock and turned.

The glow from the crystal above me traveled down over the cage to the floor, sealing me inside the cage with the blue light. I lifted my fingers to give her a second dose of ice, and she shook her head.

“You’re just wasting your power.”

I let another bolt of ice out anyway. The shards hit the blue glow and hissed into vapor.
Snowballs.
This was not looking good.

“Told you.” She clucked her tongue. “The fight will go out of you by the second crystal anyway. Just relax. Being human’s not so bad. I’ve got a room already for you at the B&B, and in a couple of months, you’ll be settled into your new identity.”

“Is that what you did to the other workers? Like Franny?”

“Franny’s name is Leah now, and she’s very happy in her new job as manager of my cleaning business. Speaking of, I could use another toilet scrubber.” She grinned like that was the funniest thing ever. “You’ll see. You won’t remember that you ever were an elf, either.”

“You’re a disgrace to our people.” I had to think of something. The urge to sleep grew stronger every second.

She rolled her eyes. “This conversation is over. I’ll be back in a couple of hours when you’re too weak to open your pie hole.”

Light burst into the room as the door opened, outlining two silhouettes in its frame. “Lilibeth?”

I’d never been so happy to hear Cooper’s voice. Judging by the shape of the second silhouette, Greyson was with him. Relief washed through me. “Over here. Under the blue glow.”

Cookie swung around and lifted her hands, sending shards of ice hurtling through the air like bullets. Whoa. Unexpected. Cooper threw his hands up and met the ice with a wall of heat in return. The shards disappeared in little hisses of steam.

Cookie started round two as Greyson appeared at the side of the cage. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, but I won’t be for much longer.”

Cookie flung a hand toward him, and shot a blast of cold at Greyson, turning him into a vampire popsicle.

I had to do something. I glanced at the crystal, then at the cage holding me, and an idea began to form. I started generating every ounce of cold I could muster.

With the cage sealed by the blue glow, the temperature inside began to drop. It wouldn’t affect me, though. Outside, the ongoing battle raged between Cooper and Cookie. She’d no doubt helped herself to some of the power she’d drained off the workers, because there was no way she should be that strong.

Fortunately, Cooper’s firepower was fairly impressive. He returned every one of her blasts of ice with bolts of fire.

At the first metallic whine, I glanced up. The metal struts were stressing under the intense cold. Just a little bit more now. I pushed harder, closing my eyes and dropping the temperature even lower. My head throbbed with pain. The effort of fighting the crystal’s drain while producing this much cold was taking its toll. The head wound wasn’t helping either. My breath puffed out of my mouth in clouds of vapor and turned into tiny snowflakes that whirled around on the freezing currents I was creating.

Almost nothing was visible beyond the foggy blue haze of the cage’s confines now. One of the bars creaked like it might snap.

Cold enough.

I rocked back and forth, getting some momentum going. Finally, the chair tipped back. The silver threads snapped, and the wooden chair shattered as it landed. The cage disintegrated. I threw my arms over my face as it came down in pieces around me. Something thumped hard against my belly. I peeked through my arms. The crystal had fallen onto my stomach. I lay there for a moment, a little stunned by the impact.

Then my senses returned. I grabbed the crystal and stuck it in the pocket of my hoodie. Greyson had started to thaw, thanks to the blasts of heat Cooper was battling Cookie with.

Enough already. She needed to go down.

I built a baton of ice in my hands then whacked Cookie on the head with it. Probably the same thing she’d done to me, but I doubted she’d enjoyed it as much as I just had.

She went down hard and lay very still. I crouched down and checked the pulse in her neck. “Not dead.”

Cooper walked over, staring at me like he’d seen a ghost. Which I guess technically I was. The ghost of girlfriends past. “Jayne? What the hell are you doing here?” He looked around. “Where’s Lilibeth?”

Oh boy. “Long story. Lilibeth’s fine. Look, I’ll be happy to explain later, but first can you defrost the vampire?”

Four hours, three sheriff cars, two ambulances, and one very unhappy vampire later, the ordeal was over.

I’d gotten away with a check-up on site. My head wound had already healed, and the goose egg left behind got smaller every minute, thanks to my supernatural healing abilities.

Greyson had been carted off to the hospital to be checked over by a supernatural doc. Freezing to death couldn’t really happen when you were already dead, but apparently he needed a serious infusion of blood to make him right. Once that happened, I knew Greyson would probably show up at my door.

Cookie and Toly were in holding cells at the sheriff’s station. Juniper and Buttercup were at the hospital with Owen, who was never going to be fully elf again, and the shop was closed with a note on the door that said we were doing inventory.

Cooper and I, however, were back in my apartment. I was exhausted, but Cooper deserved an explanation. First, though, I owed him an apology. “I’m sorry I swiped your keycard.”

“You’re lucky I realized pretty quickly that you’d taken it. And that I ran into Greyson. You wouldn’t be you anymore.” He glared at me. “Not that you’ve been you since you got here.”

Cooper’s eyes held a storm of irritation. Which I deserved. “I didn’t have a choice.”

He just grunted.

I shifted the ice bag I was holding against my head. I could have frosted up my hand and used that, but the ice bag was much more dramatic and a few sympathy points from Cooper wouldn’t hurt. “I’m really glad you two showed up when you did.”

He sighed. “Are you going to be okay?”

I nodded. “I’ve already re-absorbed the magic that was drained from me.” It was as simple as holding the crystal and calling the magic back into my system.

“And Owen? And the rest of the employees?”

The sigh that escaped my lips wasn’t a happy one. “They’ve undergone physical changes that can’t be undone. Might be possible to return some of their magic to them, but the crystals Cookie already sold, that magic is gone for good.”

He was silent a few moments. “You were right about something bad going on.”

“I just wish I’d figured it out sooner.”

“You could have told me who you really were.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

I explained the whole thing from start to finish. And I apologized again for stealing his keycard. He still looked majorly ticked off, all arms crossed and brows knit in that judgy way of his I remembered so well.

I put the ice pack in the sink. “It’s not like I came here to seduce you into my plan. Or lie to you on purpose. I didn’t even know you lived in this town. That was just an unfortunate coincidence.”

“I’ll say,” he snorted. “Too bad about Lilibeth. I was really starting to like her.”

If I rolled my eyes any more today, I was risking permanent blindness. “I
am
Lilibeth. It is my middle name, you know. And you used to love me.”

“Used to. Before you decided I wasn’t good enough to meet your parents.”

I stared at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re the one who told me you didn’t want anything to do with me or my family.” Not to mention the other things he’d said about me all those years ago.

“Because
you
didn’t want anything to do with
me
. I heard all about how you were so worried that I’d embarrass you in front of your parents.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Back up. I never said those things. Never. I was excited to take you home and introduce you. You were the first guy who ever liked me for me, not because I was heir to the Winter Throne. And I was crazy about you.” My thought process screeched to a halt. “Wait. What do you mean you
heard
about that?”

His eyes were steely. “Your buddy Lark told me all about it. That’s why I broke things off with you before you could do the same to me.”

I sat on the couch, feeling slightly ill. “And Lark told me you were joking in front of your friends about how you were just doing the princess so you could spend winter break at the palace.” The memories came rushing back, as ugly as they had ever been. I couldn’t look at him. “How you couldn’t wait to see how lux your Christmas present was going to be.”

He swore softly. “Jay, I never said any of that.”

I risked a glance. He looked horrified. “Then why did Lark tell me all that? She was my best friend. Still is.”

He barked out a harsh laugh. “Lark? Some best friend. She tried to sleep with me the day after you and I broke up.”

“What? That can’t be. The day after we broke up, I went home for winter break and Lark…” I swallowed. The room seemed to get a little darker. The air a little harder to breathe. “Lark stayed behind. I remember now. She said she had to have a meeting with one of her professors because of a grading error.”

He shook his head. “The only meeting she had was with me. I came back to my dorm that day and she was waiting for me. I made her get dressed then I kicked her out. Never saw her again after that.”

“That’s because a week after she came home for winter break she decided to ‘find herself’ in Europe. That was the last I saw of her too, for a long while. I think she’s been back three times in the last ten years.”