Page 14 of Secrets of the Frostbound Cottage

‘I guess this is the way we’re going, then, Pooch,’ I said.

Something told me she wasn’t going to sit quietly in the car, and I didn’t want to waste any more time. Besides, I didn’t want her to attract unwanted attention by barking if I left her alone. It looked like she was coming with me. I tried to pretend it was my decision.

The track was narrow but went straight through the flowers; it reminded me forcefully of my earlier thoughts, when I’d wished for a crime scene in a meadow. Well, lucky me: perhaps I’d manifested a nicer location for suspicious activity.

I looked around at the eerie sight. There was definitely something going on here. The flowers were so bright and luscious that even if ithadbeen summer, I would’ve expected them to be growing in a greenhouse. Even so, the beautiful setting made it hard to feel the same sense of foreboding I had when I stepped into a dark warehouse or a dimly lit alley.

At the end of the orchid field stood the quintessential English thatched cottage, the kind of picture-perfect house you’d find on a postcard or a chocolate box. It was so picturesque that it was almost impossible to believe that something bad could have happened here yet, as the dog bolted towards it, that was what my gut told me.

I called her back in as quiet a whisper as I could manage. ‘Not yet. Hold on! I need to check something first.’

Thankfully she listened, ran back and sat obediently by my feet. So far she’d seemed obedient – as long as my orders happened to coincide with her wishes. I praised her nonetheless. Wasn’t that how you trained a dog?

I patted her. ‘Good girl. Now, we need to move slowly and carefully otherwise we could get into trouble. No barking. Stealth is the name of the game.’

She looked at me like she understood me, and I had a brief flicker of hope that my abysmal magical skills were growing. Maybe my empathy meant she reallycouldunderstand me?

When my magic hadn’t flourished as it should have done, my parents had been determined that wouldn’t be a barrier to me assuming my inherited role as guardian in Witchlight Cove. As a Stonehaven, it was my birthright, and when my parents had passed it had become my duty. One I’d promptly abandoned.

My parents had tried to imbue me with as much knowledge and moral fibre as possible, but evidently they’d failed.

I pushed down the old hurts and looked around. This wasn’t aboutmyparents; this was about Orla’s. I had to find them, and my gut said they were here. If, like so many others in my position, I couldn’tfeelwhere magic was taking place I’d have to rely on spotting signs of it.

If anything untoward was going on here, the trees were the best place to look for clues. Scanning the area, I spotted a large oak and walked towards it. I was still three feet away when I saw a sign that made my stomach twist. ‘Honey fungus,’ I muttered darkly.

The dog tilted her head, but I didn’t bother explaining what the fungus meant; she wasn’t going to use the information – but I could.

Honey fungus is invasive, spreading beneath the surface of the soil and affecting everything in its path. The yellow-coloured growth occurs in the non-magical community, too; it is a parasite, feeding off dying trees and accelerating their demise. But in the magical community its growth was strongly associated with black magic – and this amount of it was definitely not a good sign.

‘Well then.’ I glanced first at the dog and then at the cottage. ‘Shall we see who’s home?’

Chapter Eleven

As I wasn’t sure what we were about to face, walking up to the door and introducing myself didn’t seem like the best idea. Instead, I walked to the windows which, unlike the ones at the warehouse, were at normal height. Unfortunately their height was about the only thing thatwasnormal.

‘What the hell?’ I whispered in disbelief.

If the orchids had seemed out of place for the climate, the inside of the cottage was equally unusual – but in the opposite way. As far as I could see, the place was completely filled with ice. Frost patterns covered the glass, while the floor appeared to be slick and glossy like a frozen pond. Long icicles were hanging from the ceiling.

There were several windows offering different views onto the ground floor. Hoping to gain a little more information, I moved as quietly as I could to the next one. The pup stayed at my heels, not making a sound; if I hadn’t known better, I would have assumed she’d made perimeter checks before. Or maybe she was just quiet because of the thunderous noise she’d been born andraised in, like a person from a family with ten kids who grew into a quiet adult.

The second window gave us a different aspect of the same room, but as I peered through a third window at the back of the house I stifled a gasp. There, bound at the wrists and ankles, their skin so pale it was almost translucent, weren’t just the two elves I was seeking buteightof them.

Their eyes were closed; had it not been for the shallow plumes of breath rising into the air as they exhaled, I wouldn’t have believed that they were even alive. Still, I couldn’t imagine they had long left in temperatures like that, and I had no idea how I was going to get them out. They were frozen, locked in an icy hold.

I was a good fighter, but only when I had my feet on solid ground. Like any person who kicks and punches, I used friction; I needed it to harness the force to overpower my opponents, not to mention change direction and move fast. But a place covered in ice would have no friction, no stability and no advantage. I’d be no better than Bambi on the frozen pond.

As far as I could tell, the only positive was that the culprit responsible for all this didn’t appear to be downstairs. I’d already spotted a staircase through the second window, so there was a good chance the kidnapper was asleep upstairs. If that was the case, I needed to act fast. But how? I couldn’t carry Orla’s parents with ice like that on the floor; I needed to melt it either by destroying whatever spell had caused it, or in some other way.

As I stepped back from the house, I thought through my options. If this had been a human issue, I would have called Dean or Gazza, or any number of my police contacts because they’d know someone local who could help. But this situation was as magical as they came, and the nearest magical community was hours away. I could have called Yanni, butshe was also hours away. I kept visualising those slow puffs of breath; some of those elves didn’t have hours left.

Maybe a little of Maddie’s ink would have helped, but I’d used it all in the warehouse on that friggin’ demon. However, I had picked up something else while I was there…

I reached into my pocket, suddenly grateful that I’d forgotten to give Gazza his contraband back. My fingers found the small metal lighter; it wasn’t much, but it could start a fire, right? And fire could melt ice. The only problem was that I needed something to accelerate it. I had something that could work – but it could potentially burn down the whole damned cottage around the frozen elves’ ears.

I weighed the risks and made a decision; it was possibly a hasty one, but my parents hadn’t raised a quitter.

Never give up.I didn’t intend to.

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