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Victor squinted into the driving wind. “There.”

The cold drove into my bones, rattling my teeth and chilling my blood. As a dragon, I definitely preferred basking under warm sunlight.

“Adam?”

“Yeah, I’m good. Just w-wasn’t expecting snow.” I brushed my arms, trying to friction some heat into them as snowflakes pattered against my face and the cold bit into my lips and ears.

Victor grabbed my hand and led me up the crunchy sidewalk toward the three blurry figures up ahead. After a few steps, Zee’s horned silhouette gave him away, but as we trudged closer, it seemed as though the two people he stood with weren’t moving at all.

“Zee!?” I called over the gusting wind.

“Kitten?” He hurried over, shielding his eyes from the buffeting snowflakes. His shirt flapped in the wind and his damp, snow-dusted hair fluttered around his horns. “Before you say anything, they were like it when I got here.”

“Like what?” Victor asked, then broke from my grasp and strode the rest of the way to the two motionless figures.

Zee’s face was grim, with no sign of his signature smirk. I already sensed what I’d find, but ventured ahead anyway.

The two men from the bar stood on the sidewalk, clutching each other, their last moments of fear frozen on their faces. Literally . . . frozen. Ice crystals sparkled on their lashes and in their hair, and snow had gathered in the creases of their clothing.

Zee reached out, pinched a lock of frozen hair and snapped it clean off, then quickly tossed it away. “Ick.”

Oh dear.

CHAPTER 3

A snow storm couldn’t freeze two people solid like that, could it? “What h-happened?” I asked, fighting my chattering teeth. I’d clamped my arms around myself, but the frigid temperature drove deep into my veins.

Victor studied the two frozen men, his hair and clothes whipped by the brutal wind.

“I dunno. I found them like this—” Zee hunkered down against a sudden gust. “Two human popsicles.”

“Didn’t you follow them outside just a f-few minutes ago?” I asked, raising my voice over the wind’s growing howls.

“Yeah, but I lost ’em in the snow. Went the other way.” He pointed down the sidewalk, past the hotel entrance. Snow swirled around streetlights, coming down harder with every passing second, and we couldn’t see much of the main street now, just halos of light in the falling blizzard. “When I came up here they were already frozen.”

“D-did you s-see anyone else?” I stammered.

“Nah, nobody.”

“We need to get Adam back inside where it’s warm. We’ll inform the authorities,” Victor said. “We must not involve ourselves.”

After stumbling back down the slushy sidewalk, we pushed through the hotel’s front doors and back into its stifling warmth. As soon as the doors swung shut behind us, the sound of the wind and the bitter cold vanished, sealing us in a perfect bubble of party atmosphere.

At least fake Zee’s warbling had stopped.

“Both of you, wait here.” Victor planted my shivering self in a chair beside a radiator and crossed the foyer to the front desk. Larimer greeted him with his typical scowl and nodded along as Victor’s lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what was said. Did they have the SSD in northern Minnesota? Finding two frozen people wasn’t normal; people didn’t freeze solid in just minutes.

Something supernatural had to be involved . . . but we definitely did not need to be.

Victor returned. “The manager is going to contact the local police.”

“Should we collect the bodies?” Zee asked, keeping his voice down. “I feel kinda bad leaving ’em out there.”

Victor leaned against the wall and muttered under his breath. “We do not need to involve ourselves any more than necessary. It’s best we stay out of it entirely and act as though nothing untoward has taken place.”

I could do that. Acting normal in a crisis was an everyday event at the SOS Hotel. “Normal. Right, okay.”

This time, we wouldn’t be dragged into solving the murders or be blamed for them. All we had to do was keep our heads down, get a good night’s sleep, and be on our way in the morning. Easy. “What could do that, though?” I asked, looking up at them. “Turn two people to ice?”