The Witch and the Huntsman Read Online Free Page A

became a two-lane road that led to the Lodge. In fact, I might have been all alone in the world.
    That illusion lasted for about two more minutes. Then I crested a long curve and saw lights and a sign directing me to turn right onto a long one-way La Chasse access drive, which was lined with parked cars, some half-buried in snow. Outdoor lights glowed everywhere like snow lanterns, and the historic main lodge, looking nothing like its movie self, was dazzlingly lit up like a Christmas tree surrounded by boxy brick service buildings masquerading as presents. Right now, my worst problem wasn’t fighting off any evil emanating from them—it was finding a place to park.
    To make matters worse, I was sideswiped into a snowbank by a delivery van pulling out of one of the brick boxes. It had ‘ Jaeger Specialty Game Meats and More... ’ painted on its side panels.
    The little Kia’s all-weather radials spun and whined, but finally I skidded out of the snowbank and drove around to the main lot, which was about the size of a football field and had plenty of spaces free. But from there, I had a long, freezing walk I totally wasn’t dressed for, hauling my suitcase across the parking lot where a famous Hollywood director once had his head chopped off by a helicopter, according to Google.
    If I’d been my vampire friend Samantha Moon, I could have stopped and maybe had a chat with the director’s ghost, because Sam sees spirits everywhere. I can see Millicent, even feel her physically sometimes—and there was the embarrassing fact that I’d hung with her son Peter several times without even realizing he was a ghost and not a real living person. And, okay, I’d seen demons, too—but so far, no other dead souls.
    Of course, if I were Sam, I wouldn’t have been shivering with the cold, either, because she’s always cold, as I can testify. However, at that moment I wouldn’t have minded if some otherworldly figure—a ghostie or even Bigfoot himself—had popped up out of the surrounding fir trees to warn me what I was about to find inside.
    They’d given away my room.

 
    Chapter Four
     
    “ I’m very sorry, ma’am,” said the European girl at the front desk when I tried to check in—and, grrrrr , how I hate being ma’amed. “But it is after six o’clock, and as you can see, we’re very full.”
    By ‘full,’ I guess she meant crowded, which seemed to be true; there were aristocratic-looking people in ski sweaters crowded as thick as termites even inside the main lobby, which was built of thick stone and huge redwood beams and featured a massive six-sided fireplace in the middle.
    “ We do have one more room I could let you have,” she said, tapping on the laptop that looked totally out of place on the tacky liquor-store casing and mismatched wood panels of the front desk. I guess you had to be really, really rich to afford rustic authenticity like this. I wasn’t really, really rich. I wasn’t even a little bit rich. I was now borderline broke.
    “ How much?”
    “ Only $690,” she said. With a straight face. I guess that comes easier when you’re Ukrainian or Romanian or whatever.
    “ What ? ” I’d max my sole remaining credit card if I stayed even two nights here at those prices. “Seriously?”
    “ It’s a fireplace room with all-original art, ma’am.”
    I said no thanks and dragged my suitcase away. Great. Now I would have to drive all the way back to Sandy in the dark and hope the Best Western there still had a vacancy. But the point wasn’t to be a guest at this weird-ass little Duck Dynasty snob resort—it was to find out what had happened to Marisa somewhere out there in the cold, white pine forest. I didn’t need to actually stay here to do that. But it might help.
    So I went back to the desk clerk with my tail between my legs.
    “ Yes?” No more ma’aming now.
    “ Actually, I kinda sorta forgot to mention it, but a friend of mine is staying here, and she said I could maybe bunk