Chapter Four

Donata’s room turned out to be a cheerful, sunlit space with the same polished plank floors and handcrafted furniture as the rest of the house she’d seen so far. The double bed was covered with a patchwork quilt in blues and greens, and matching curtains hung over the single window. There was a small dresser, a rocking chair sat in one corner with a crocheted throw tossed over it, and a rag rug was placed next to the bed. A few simple paintings—all of them with a nature theme—decorated the walls, but mostly the room was just plain and comfortable.

“There is a shared bathroom next door,” Magnus said as he put her bags down inside the door. “And I’m right across the hall in case you need anything. Anything at all.” He winked at her. She ignored both the wink and the way it made something flutter inside her belly.

No more men, she reminded herself. Two disasters in six months were enough for any girl, especially her. She was there to get a job done, and that was it. Magnus couldn’t afford to get distracted and neither could she. Thankfully, it sounded like he’d be gone most of the time doing his Ulf training. Of course, that meant she’d be alone with his family. Great.

“Thanks,” she said. “The room is nice. In fact, the whole house is charming, and so is your mom.”

“Unlike the rest of my relatives, you mean,” Magnus said, not sounding as though he was disagreeing with her.

“Oh, I don’t know, the kids seem pretty harmless.” She sighed. “What’s with all the antagonism from your father and your sister, though?”

Magnus leaned against the door frame. “My bringing you here wasn’t exactly a unanimous decision. The Ulfhednar aren’t very good, on the whole, at accepting help or playing well with others. Hell, we rarely play well with each other. There was a certain amount of resistance to the idea of bringing in an outsider, but we’ve been trying for months to deal with the problem ourselves and getting nowhere, so a majority of the Assembly finally agreed to my suggestion. The others will come around once they get to know you.”

Donata wasn’t so sure, but in all the time she’d known Magnus, he had very rarely been wrong about anything important, so she decided to take his word for it for now. Besides, what was she going to do? Take a bus back to the city? She’d promised to try to help, and she always kept her promises. Mind you, she wasn’t sure how far she was going to get if no one wanted to talk to her.

“Why don’t you get washed up for dinner and put your things away, and I’ll come get you and escort you to the dining room when it’s time,” Magnus suggested.

“Are you escorting me to protect me from them, or them from me?” Donata asked, giving him a crooked grin.

“Yes,” he said, and blew her a kiss on the way out the door.

Everyone else was already seated at the table by the time Magnus led Donata back down the hallway, through the foyer, and past the huge kitchen, which looked like it had been built to feed a cast of hundreds. Luckily, there weren’t that many sitting around the massive, scarred, oval oak table: Halvor at the head, with his wife opposite him on the other end, Kari and a man Donata assumed was her husband placed on the right side with the hellions (as she now thought of them) in between them, and two young men in their late teens who were obviously twins and just as obviously related to the rest of the family on the left side, closest to Halvor. Two empty seats between them and Astrid were waiting for Magnus and Donata.

Magnus pointed to the boys and said, “Donata, you haven’t met Enar and Erik yet. They’re cousins who live here. Guys, this is my friend Donata. Try and be nice to her, will you?” He pulled out the seat next to Enar, or maybe it was Erik, and held it for Donata, then sat down in the chair next to his mother.

“Hey,” said Erik (probably). “We’re always nice. Especially to pretty women.” He grinned at Donata. “No wonder Kari is so crabby about having you here. She hates not being the best-looking one in the room.”

“Erik, be nice,” Astrid scolded. Then muttered under her breath just loud enough for Donata to hear, “As if that is ever going to happen.” She shook her head and pointed across the table. “And this is Lars, Kari’s husband.”

“Who always thinks she is the prettiest woman in the room,” Lars said with a shy smile aimed at his wife, who actually turned pink, much to Donata’s surprise. It was good to know that Kari wasn’t horrible to everyone. Just the special cases, like her.

Halvor cleared his throat meaningfully and raised the metal goblet in front of his plate. The rest of the family lifted their glasses, so Donata did too. “We give thanks to Odin for this food and for his protection,” he said, then drank. Everyone else followed suit.

Astrid raised an eyebrow in his direction, and he added begrudgingly, “And we welcome our guest to our table.”

“Thank you,” Donata said, and they all started to pass around huge platters of meat, bread, cheese, and roasted vegetables. Apparently all Ulfhednar had very healthy appetites, not just Magnus. Donata wasn’t exactly tiny, but in the midst of all these blond giants, she felt almost dainty. She didn’t like it much.

“So Kari tells me you’re going to try and get to the bottom of our ghost problem,” Lars said in a cheerfully disbelieving tone. Unlike the rest of the people at the table, Lars was only a little more than average height, and muscular without looking as though he could wrestle an ox and win. His hair was light brown and his expression pleasant and slightly haggard, as might be expected from someone raising two small hellions.

Donata shrugged. “Magnus is an old friend and he asked for my help. I do talk to ghosts for a living, but this particular situation is a little outside my normal purview. I’ll do what I can.”

“It’s really true?” Enar said. “You can actually talk to dead people? Cool.”

“It’s not as much fun as it sounds like,” Donata said. “Especially since the ones I usually contact have all been the victims of some kind of crime. Still, at least that makes them eager to talk to me, mostly. We’ll have to see if your ghosts are that cooperative.”

“It seems unlikely,” Halvor said, his expression grim. “So far they have only appeared to those undergoing the Ulf training. It is extremely disruptive, but I fail to see how your interrupting those who are involved is going to be any less disruptive.”

“I will do my best not to get in the way,” Donata said, “but I’m not sure I understand the importance of having as many Ulf as possible. Does it really matter if some of those working on it this year don’t finish until next year?”

“You never explained this to her?” Astrid said to Magnus with surprise. “I thought you said you were close.”

Magnus grinned. “We had better things to talk about at the time.”

Donata blushed and kicked him under the table. She knew perfectly well that when they’d been going out, the Ulfhednar life he’d left behind him had been a sore subject, and he hadn’t wanted to discuss it in any detail, but she figured that it probably wouldn’t help to point that out to the family who had turned their backs on him when he’d refused to finish his Ulf training years before.

“Initially, it was a matter of survival,” Kari explained. “The Ulf are strong warriors and hunters, and the more a clan had, the more likely their people were to triumph in battle and survive through the harsh winters of our homeland. Only a few Ulfhednar are born with the gene that enables them to make the transformation into a true Ulf, although many attempt the training and rituals that will get them to the point where they can undergo the final trial.” She glanced around the table with pride. “Our family has historically had a much larger percentage of those possessing the gene than the average Ulfhednar.”

“But if it isn’t necessary for survival anymore, why is it still so important?” Donata asked. “I mean, clearly it is, but I don’t see why.”

“That is because you are not Ulfhednar,” Halvor said.

“Or maybe it is because no one has bothered to enlighten her,” Astrid said, passing a bowl of potatoes in Donata’s direction with a sympathetic smile. “These days the Ulf are partially a matter of status, but there is also a political component. The clan with the most Ulf at the time of the winter solstice chooses one of their people to lead all the clans for the coming year.”

“The Bear clan has been victorious for the last ten years,” Erik said, eyes gleaming. “Our people make the best leaders. If we have the most Ulf this year, our fa– I mean, Uncle Halvor may be chosen to act as Chieftain.”

Halvor glared down the table. “Let’s not have any bragging, boy. If we are fortunate enough to triumph at the solstice, the clan will choose whomever they feel will do the best job for all the Ulfhednar.” In a milder tone, he said to Donata, “Different clans have different ideas of what the future path for our people should be. While I do not believe that the Bear clan will maintain control forever, now might be a bad time for some of the other clans to gain leadership.”

Donata glanced down at her plate to hide a smile. She was pretty sure Erik had almost called Halvor “father.” Cousins, my ass.

“Ah,” she said. “That makes things clearer, thank you. I guess I’ll start in the morning by trying to talk to the men and women who have had unwelcome visitations, and also just try and get a feel for the area. Sometimes when there is a sudden upsurge in spectral activity, it is due to some kind of disturbance in the local environment.”

“There has been nothing like that here,” Kari said. Her lips thinned. “The Ulfhednar, unlike Humans and some other races, have respect for nature and the world we live in.”

“Besides,” Enar added with a perverse kind of cheerfulness, “nobody is going to talk to you. Fa– Uncle Halvor told Magnus that before he went to fetch you.”

Donata put her fork down slowly, feeling her appetite slip away. “Really? And why is that?”

Enar either missed the sudden silence around the table or purposely ignored it. “Because everyone thinks you’re a spy for the Alliance Council, of course.”