Chapter Text
“Remind me again,” Helen said, settling on the couch and pulling a blanket over her legs, “Why aren’t we laying on the beach and watching you build some kind of giant elaborate sand fortress?”
“Beach vacations are overdone,” Blanc said vaguely from where he was crouched in front of the cabin’s fireplace. He prodded dubiously at a large, smoldering log.
“Not the real reason,” Marta called from the kitchen, her voice warm and amused. Helen raised an eyebrow and Blanc’s face of baffled concentration melted into something much more sheepish.
“I do not enjoy sand,” he admitted. “Or saltwater. Or sunburns. There are, altogether, quite a few terrible textures to experience at the beach.”
“Okay, yes,” Helen conceded. “However, the bitter cold of a fresh snowstorm doesn’t make the top of my list of positive experiences either. Especially in June.”
“The snow is an unexpected development, admittedly,” Blanc said. “I did not expect the weather to be so… temperamental.”
The door burst open, allowing in a swirl of cold air and snowflakes. Jud bustled in, face red and eyes glittering.
“Wow,” he said. “It’s really pretty out there. I brought firewood?” The split logs in his arms were distinctly smaller than the enormous log in the fireplace, and Blanc glanced over at him with obvious relief.
“Oh, wonderful,” he said. “A moment, please.”
“Hot drink?” Phillip asked. Marta gestured at the supplies the two of them had spread out on the counter. “We have tea, cocoa, apple cider, hot buttered rum, and…” he gave the concoction in his hands a solemn look. “Lemonade. Because I had optimistically imagined summer conditions.”
“But pessimistically included the ingredients for the rest,” Blanc called, muffled from where he’d stuck his entire torso into the fireplace to drag out the oversized log. “Don’t let him fool you.” Helen laughed but got up to help, avoiding the patches of still-hot embers as the two of them manhandled the enormous lump of wood back into the iron firewood cradle.
“I think that might have been decorative,” Phillip added, eying the soot-dusted log.
“It was suspiciously inflammable,” Blanc agreed, his lips twitching. “Here, son.” He took the firewood from Jud’s arms, freeing him to shrug out of the heavy leather jacket he was wearing.
“How was the drive up?” Marta asked, taking a seat at the heavy carved dining table.
“Oh, fine,” Jud said. He moved to peruse the drinks selection, picking up a thick ceramic mug and looking around appreciatively. “Thank you.”
Teasing (and temperature) aside, Helen could appreciate the beauty of the cabin. It wasn’t small, with three bedrooms in addition to the large sitting and dining rooms, which probably put it out of cabin territory and into the category of ‘house’, but it was rustically decorated and located in a beautiful evergreen forest.
There was central heating, but it had been struggling against the driving snowstorm outside. Helen and Marta had claimed one of the bedrooms, drawing the curtains and shutting the doors firmly in the hope of it retaining some amount of heat before bedtime.
“Not too much trouble in the snow?” Phillip asked. Jud shrugged.
“I got an Uber,” he said. “I didn’t think my bicycle would cut it.”
“Probably smart,” Helen said, rapping her knuckle against a windowpane with about eight inches of snow drifted against it.
“Well, it’s nice to hang out like this,” Marta said.
”Even if it will never last,” Helen added with a chuckle. Jud’s head snapped up.
“What?” he said. “Why?”
“Oh, I forgot,” she said, lowering her voice. “This is your first vacation with Blanc. You’ll see. They’re never exactly what you might call ‘restful’.”
“Aha!” Blanc crowed, sudden flickering light throwing his shadow across the room. For a moment, the fire threw his face into ominous relief.
“He does try,” Marta said quietly, leaning in. “He’s just got the most incredibly strange luck.”
“Come and be warmed!” Blanc called, beaming at them across the room.
“Coming!” Phillip said, gingerly picking up two mugs of steaming hot chocolate.
Helen opted to refill her mint tea, putting the kettle back on the rickety stove.
“There’s a bunch more firewood outside,” Jud said. “Blanc sounded kind of panicked when he called and asked me to pick it up, so I figured I’d play it safe.”
“Smart,” Helen said, with a chuckle. “Yeah, it wasn’t bad until a few hours after we got here. Then it blew up out of nowhere.”
“Colorado weather, I guess,” Marta said, pointing at a sign on the wall.
Don’t like the weather! Wait five minutes! It cheerfully proclaimed.
“Well, in case of continued foul weather,” Blanc said, giving the fireplace a warning look before retreating to the couch. “There is a world-famous hot spring in the vicinity we could venture in search of.”
Phillip sat next to him, and Blanc accepted his hot chocolate from him with a pleased little grumble. Helen had to cover her smile with one hand. Sometimes it was hard to believe this was the same man as the one who’d pressed a small explosive into her hand and sat outside smoking while Miles Bron’s arrogance burned down his mansion and the world’s most famous painting.
He saw her looking as he took a sip of the hot chocolate. He smiled softly at her, and leaned against his husband's side.
Helen, Marta and Jud found their own seats near the fire and Helen shoved her thawing feet closer. The warmth was noticeable immediately, warming her cheeks and sending smoke spiralling up the chimney.
“At least I remembered to open the damper this time,” Blanc said, nudging Phillip in the side. “Remember-“
“Oh, yes. Where was that?” Phillip asked. “That wasn’t the old house, was it?”
“Dolly’s place,” Blanc said.
“He nearly burned the place down!” Phillip said, turning to the rest of them.
“I never!” Blanc protested. “I merely set off all the fire alarms with the smoke. The actual fire stayed contained in the fireplace, I’ll have you know.”
“Dolly who?” Helen asked. Phillip looked suddenly coy. “Not Dolly Parton? You didn’t almost burn down Dolly Parton’s house?”
“A gentleman never…” Blanc trailed off, the resulting phrase a stretch even for his usual delivery.
“Commits arson & tells?” Marta suggested.
“It wasn’t arson, nothing outside the fireplace was on fire!” Blanc objected again. He didn’t seem to mind the teasing, his eyes bright and his free hand loosely tangled in Phillip’s sweater
“I guess I’m the only firebug in this group,” Helen said, and Blanc’s gaze darted over her for a searching second before he smiled again and relaxed.
“To be fair,” he said easily. “There are few people who deserve some well-aimed arson as much as he did.”
Jud, to her amusement and probably his credit, took the no-context story at face value and just nodded along. Helen was briefly torn between giving him the full story and making him guess what they were talking about.
“We have as long as we’d like to catch up,” Phillip said. “But don’t forget, the entire back half of our room is full of board games.”
“I’m not playing Go against Marta,” Helen said immediately. Marta’s expression turned briefly evil and she gave Helen a smug look. Jud glanced over and she smoothed her expression hastily back into an inviting smile.
“I think I remember the rules to Go,” he said quietly. “If you want to play.” It was probably bad form to sacrifice the priest to Marta’s unstoppable Go run, but Helen quickly decided it was worth it.
“I’ll play with you before Phillip and I play our usual game,” Marta said. Jud smiled.
“Thanks!” he said. Helen and Blanc shook their heads in silent, shared sympathy.
“Codenames?” Phillip suggested. Blanc bristled. “Don’t worry, I’ll explain the rules again.”
Blanc’s inability to focus on or retain board game rules bordered on the supernatural, though he did tend to prefer word games.
Helen took a sip of her tea, setting it aside on an end table and immediately being drawn into a debate with Marta on the approved use of body language in Codenames. Phillip handed the rules booklet to Blanc, and Jud listened with rapt attention as Marta made a case for requiring a deadpan during play.
The fire burned warm and steady at the end of the room as they laughed and chatted. Outside, the wind battered uselessly at the cabin, then hurled itself along the mountain canyons instead. Snow whispered against the thick windows, and the warm, earthy smell of simmering stew began to fill the room.
“Okay,” Helen said, sinking into the hot water until it came up to her chin. “This is nice.”
“Mmmm,” Marta said, floating past. “The indoor pool is especially good.”
“I kind of enjoyed freezing my hair between pools,” Jud confessed. “I think I had some pretty good spikes going.”
“They were solid,” Helen agreed. “Structural.”
The pool they were in was almost twenty feet long, ten feet wide and just deep enough that she could comfortably stand without her shoulders breaking the surface. There were only two people there besides their party, comfortably far away.
Raised benches lined the sides, where Phillip was lounging and reading through some giant pile of papers. Overhead, the pool was covered by a low clay dome with narrow windows. Steam gathered at the top of the dome and dripped back down as condensation.
“Is he writing a novel?” Jud asked, squinting through the steam at Phillip.
“I bet it’s a part he’s reviewing,” Helen said. “Which means he’s working on vacation, but it’s not like Blanc can complain.” The three of them all swivelled their gazes to where Blanc was sprawled halfway down the pool on a bench, hat pulled low over his face. He was either asleep, or close to it.
“Yeah, he looks really annoyed,” Marta deadpanned, and they all chuckled.
“I have to admit,” Jud said sheepishly. He glanced around, so Helen and Marta leaned in. “It makes perfect sense in retrospect, but I would not have guessed 1900’s bathing outfit.” Helen laughed, caught off-guard by the sudden snark.
“I had sort of wondered if he brought it to Greece because it was a rich person thing.” She glanced at Marta.
“None of the Thrombeys owned something like that,” she said. “I think it’s a him thing. Did you see it has a matching cravat?”
“Do you think I could pull off a cravat?” Helen asked, semi-seriously. Marta and Jud considered her thoughtfully.
“I think so,” Marta said. “Only one way to find out. You know he’d loan you one.”
The next few events happened very fast.
The three of them glanced back at Blanc, just as a sort of muffled dull thud echoed off the walls.
Blanc whipped his hat off and shot upright, blue eyes glinting even in the low light. Behind him, a figure that had been clambering out of the pool collapsed back into the water. At the same second, Helen’s eyes were drawn to a distortion in the heavy steam near the light on the roof. It had started swirling wildly, like something was agitating it.
“What-“ Jud started, which was as far as he got before Blanc yelled.
“Down! Everyone stay in the pool!”
He’d quickly crossed the distance to the man who’d fallen into the pool, and was now pulling him back towards them in a lifeguard’s tow. Helen caught the red swirling in their wake and fought back the dizzy surge of adrenaline.
“Is he-“ Helen heard herself say.
“Oh, God,” Jud added.
“Marta!” Blanc said. He had one arm hooked across the man’s chest, his other arm lost in the stain of blood spreading from the man’s back. The man himself was staring around in dazed confusion. “Blood in the water, how much of a risk?” Blanc asked.
“Low,” she said quickly. “This pool is chlorinated,”
“The shooter might still be out there,” Blanc said.
“They shot through the window,” Helen realized, her eyes going back to the swirling patch of steam - where it was being drawn outside.
“They’re not glass windows,” Jud said hazily. “Some kind of plastic film. I noticed on the way in.”
“Sir?” Marta was asking, trying to get the man in Blanc’s arms to focus on her.
Phillip arrived next to them, the young woman from the other end of the pool in tow.
“How bad?” he asked, low and calm.
“We need an ambulance,” Marta said.
“On it,” Jud said, hoisting himself out of the pool and running for the hook they’d hung their robes on.
“Fath- Jud!” Blanc yelled. “Down!” Jud ducked hastily, sliding up to their stuff and fumbling out a cell phone.
“Okay, we need to get him onto something solid,” Marta said.
“Stay below the windows,” Blanc warned. Helen grabbed the man’s feet and helped Blanc haul him out onto the stone floor.
“Careful!” Marta called. “Put him on his side!”
“What on Earth?” Helen said, staring at the feathered shaft protruding from the man’s back. “He was shot with an arrow?”
“He’s losing consciousness,” Marta said, voice sharply professional.
“Not quite an arrow,” Phillip said. He had ushered the unfamiliar woman out of the pool with them, and had one arm protectively wrapped around her. He looked pale and resigned. “That’s a crossbow bolt.”