Silver Borne

by Patricia Briggs

Chapter 3

 

  I DROVE MY TRUSTY RABBIT TO KGH AND PARKED IN the emergency lot. It was still hours before dawn when I walked into the building.

  The trick to going wherever you want unchallenged in a hospital is to walk briskly, nod to the people you know, and ignore the ones you don't. The nod reassures everyone that you are known, the brisk pace that you have a mission and don't want to talk. It helped that most of the people in triage knew me.

  Through the double doors that led to the inner sanctum, I could hear a baby crying - a sad, tired, miserable sound. I wrinkled my nose at the pervading sour-sharp smell of hospital disinfectant, and winced at the increase in both decibels and scent as I marched through the doors.

  A nurse scribbling on a clipboard glanced up at my entrance, and the official look on her face warmed into a relieved smile. I knew her face but not her name.

  "Mercy," she said, having no trouble with mine. "So Doc Cornick finally called you to take him home, did he? About time. I told him he should have gone home hours ago - but he's pretty stubborn, and a doctor outranks a nurse. " She made it sound like she didn't think that should be the proper order of things.

  I was afraid to speak because I might thrust a hole into whatever house of cards Samuel had constructed to explain why he had to go home early. Finally, I managed a neutral, "He's better at helping people than asking for help. "

  She grinned. "Isn't that just like a man? Probably hated to admit he trashed that car of his. I swear he loved it like it was a woman. "

  I think I just stared at her - her words made no sense to me.

  Trashed his car? Did she mean he had a wreck? Samuel had a wreck? I couldn't picture it. Some werewolves had trouble driving because they could be a little distractible. But not Samuel.

  I needed to get to Samuel before I said something stupid.

  "I better - "

  "He's just lucky he didn't get hurt worse," she said, and turned her eyes back to whatever she was writing. Apparently she could carry on a conversation at the same time, because she continued. "Did he tell you how close he came? The policeman who brought him in said that he almost fell into the water - and that's the Vernita bridge, you know, the one on Twenty-four out in the Hanford Reach? He'd have died if he made it over - it's a long way down to the river. "

  What the heck had Samuel been doing all the way out at the bridge on the old highway north of Hanford? That was clear on the other side of the Tri-Cities and then some, and nowhere near any possible route between our house and the hospital. Maybe he'd been running out in the Reach, where people were scarce and ground squirrels plentiful. Just because he hadn't told me that he was going out hunting didn't mean he hadn't. I wasn't his keeper.

  "He didn't say anything about danger to him," I told her truthfully and followed it with a small lie designed to lead her into telling me more details. "I thought it was just the car. "

  "That's Doc Cornick," she snorted. "He wouldn't let us do anything other than get the glass out of his skin - but just from the way he's moving, you can tell he did something to his ribs. And he's limping, too. "

  "Sounds like it was worse than he told me," I commented, feeling sick to my stomach.

  "He went all the way through the windshield and was hanging on to the hood of the car. Jack - that's the policeman - Jack said he thought that Samuel was going to fall off the hood before he could get there. The wreck must have dazed Doc because he was crawling the wrong way - if Jack hadn't stopped him, he'd have gone over. "

  And then I understood exactly what had happened.

  "Honey? Honey? Are you okay? Here, sit down. "

  She'd pulled out a chair when I wasn't watching and held it behind me. My ears were ringing, my head was down between my knees, and her hand was on my back.

  And for a moment, I was fourteen again, hearing Bran tell me what I'd already known - Bryan, my foster father, was dead - his body had been found in the river. He'd killed himself after his mate, my foster mother, had died.

  Werewolves are too tough to die easily, so there aren't many ways for a werewolf to commit suicide. Since the French Revolution pretty much unpopularized the guillotine in the eighteenth century, self-decapitation just isn't all that easy.

  Silver bullets have some difficulties, too. Silver is harder than lead, and the bullets sometimes blow right through and leave the wolf sick, in pain, and alive. Silver shot works a little better, but unless rigged just right, it can take a long time to die. If some busybody comes along and picks all the shot out - well, there's all that pain for nothing.

  The most popular choice is death by werewolf. But that wouldn't be an option for Samuel. Very few wolves would take up his challenge - and those that would . . . Let me just say I wouldn't want to see a fight between Samuel and Adam. Even odds aren't what suicidal people are looking for.

  Drowning is the next most popular choice. Werewolves can't swim; their bodies are too dense - and even a werewolf needs to breathe.

  I even knew why he'd chosen the location he had. The Columbia is the biggest river in the area, more than a mile wide and deep, but the three biggest bridges over it - the Blue Bridge, the suspension bridge, and the interstate bridge - all have two heavy-duty guardrails. There is also a fair bit of traffic on those, even in the middle of the night. Someone is sure to see you go over and attempt a rescue. It takes a few minutes to drown.

  The bridge he'd chosen instead was not as heavily traveled and had been built before bridges were designed so that even morons would have a hard time driving off of them. The river is narrower at that point - which means deeper and faster - and the drop-off is . . . impressive.

  I could see it, Samuel on the nose of the car and the police officer running up. It had been sheer dumb luck that the only other vehicle on the road was a police car. If it had been an ordinary bystander, he might have been too fearful of his own safety to attempt a rescue, and would have let Samuel drown. But a policeman might just follow him in and try to rescue him. Might put his life at risk for Samuel.

  No, Samuel wouldn't have fallen once the police officer found him.

  No matter how much he wanted to.

  My dizziness was fading.

  "You be happy," he'd told me when I'd left on my ill-fated date. A wish for my life and not for the date.

  The jerk. I felt the growl rise in my throat and had to work to swallow it.

  "He's all right," the nurse assured me. I pulled my head out from between my knees and noticed on the way up that her name tag read JODY. "We got the glass out, and though he's moving stiffly, he hasn't broken anything major or he wouldn't have lasted this long. He should have gone home, but he didn't want to - and you know how he is. He never says no, but sends you on your way without ever saying yes either. "

  I knew.

  "I'm sorry," I told her, standing up slowly so as to give the appearance of steadiness. "It just caught me off guard. We've known each other a long time - and he didn't tell me it was anywhere near that bad. "

  "He probably didn't want to scare you. "

  "Yeah, he's considerate like that. " My aching butt he was considerate. I'd kill him myself - and then he wouldn't have to worry about suicide.

  "He said he was going to find a quiet place and rest for a minute," Nurse Jody said, looking around as if he ought to appear from thin air.

  "He said I could find him in the X-ray storage room. "

  She laughed. "Well, I guess it is quiet in there. You know where it is?"

  I smiled, which is tough when you're ready to skin someone.

  "Sure. " Still smiling, I walked briskly past curtained-off rooms that smelled of blood and pain, nodding to a med tech who looked vaguely familiar. At least the baby's cries had muted to whimpers.

  Samuel had tried to commit suicide.

  I knocked on the storage-room door, then opened it. White cardboard file boxes were piled up on racks with a feeling of impos
ed order - as if somewhere there was someone who would know how to find things here.

  Samuel sat on the floor, his back against a stack of boxes. He had a white lab coat on over a set of green scrubs. His arms rested across his knees, hands limp and hanging. His head was bowed, and he didn't look up when I came in. He waited until I shut the door behind me to speak, and he didn't look at me then either.

  I thought it was because he was ashamed or because he knew I was angry.

  "He tried to kill us," Samuel said, and my heart stopped, then began to pound painfully in my chest because I'd been wrong about the bowed head. Very wrong. The "he" he was talking about was Samuel - and that meant that "he" was no longer in charge. I was talking to Samuel's wolf.

  I dropped to the ground like a stone and made damned sure my head was lower than the werewolf's. Samuel the man regularly overlooked breaches of etiquette that his wolf could not. If I made the wolf look up at me, he'd have to acknowledge my superiority or challenge me.

  I change into a thirty-odd-pound predator built to kill chickens and rabbits. And poor silly quail. Werewolves can take out Kodiak bears. A challenge for a werewolf I am not.

  "Mercy," he whispered, and lifted his head.

  The first thing I noticed was hundreds of small cuts all over his face, and I remembered Jody the nurse saying that they'd had to get the glass out of his skin. That the wounds weren't healed yet told me that there had been other, more severe damage his body had to address first. Nifty - just a little pain and suffering to sweeten his temper.

  His eyes were an icy blue just this side of white, hot and wild.

  As soon as I saw them, I looked at the floor and took a deep breath. "Sam," I whispered. "What can I do to help? Should I call Bran?"

  "No!" The word left him in a roar that jerked him forward until he was crouched on both hands, one leg knee up, one leg still down on one knee.

  That one knee on the ground meant that he wasn't, quite, ready to spring on me.

  "Our father will kill us," Sam said, his voice slow and thick with Welsh intonation. "I . . . We don't want to make him do that. " He took a deep breath. "And I don't want to die. "

  "Good. That's good," I croaked, suddenly understanding just exactly what his first words to me had meant. Samuel had wanted to die, and his wolf had stopped him. Which was good, but left us with a nasty problem.

  There is a very good reason that the Marrok kills any werewolves who allow the wolf to lead and the man to follow. Very good reasons - like preventing-mass-slaughter sorts of reasons.

  But if Samuel's wolf didn't want them to die, I decided it was better he was in charge. For a while. Since he didn't seem to want to kill me yet. Samuel was old. I don't know exactly how old, but sometime before the Mayflower at least. Maybe that would allow his wolf to control himself without Samuel's help. Maybe. "Okay, Sam. No calls to Bran. "

  I watched out of the corner of my eye as he tilted his head, surveying me. "I can pretend to be human until we get to your car. I thought that would be best, so I held this shape. "

  I swallowed. "What have you done with Samuel? Is he all right?"

  Pale ice blue eyes examined me thoughtfully. "Samuel? I'm pretty certain he'd forgotten I could do this: it has been so long since we battled for control. He let me out to play when he chose, and I left it to him. " He was quiet a moment or two, then he said, almost shyly. "You know when I'm here. You call me Sam. "

  He was right. I hadn't realized it until he said it.

  "Sam," I asked again, trying not to sound demanding, "what have you done with Samuel?"

  "He's here, but I cannot let him out. If I do, he'll never let me get the upper hand again - and then we will die. "

  "Cannot" sounded like "never. " "Never" was bad. "Never" would get him killed as surely as suicide - and maybe . . . probably a lot of other people along the way.

  "If not Bran, what about Charles's mate, Anna? She's Omega; shouldn't she be able to help?"

  Omega wolves, as I understand them, are like Valium for werewolves. Samuel's sister-in-law, Anna, is the only one I've ever met - I'd never heard of them before that. I like her, but she doesn't seem to affect me the way she does the wolves. I don't want to curl up in a ball at her feet and let her rub my belly.

  Samuel's wolf looked wistful . . . or maybe he was just hungry. "No. If I were the problem, if I were ravaging the countryside, she might help. But this is not impulse, not desperation. Samuel just feels that he no longer belongs, that he accomplishes nothing by his existence. Even the Omega cannot fix him. "

  "So what do you suggest?" I asked helplessly.

  Anna, I thought, might be able to put Samuel back in the driver's seat, but, like the wolf, I was afraid that might not be a good thing.

  He laughed, an unhappy laugh. "I do not know. But if you don't want to be trying to extract a wolf from the emergency room, it would be good to leave very soon. "

  Sam rocked forward to get up and stopped halfway with a grunt.

  "You're hurt," I said as I scrambled up to give him a hand.

  He hesitated but took it and used me to give him better leverage so he could get all the way to his feet. Showing me his weakness was a sign of trust. Under normal circumstances, that trust would mean I was safer with him.

  "Stiff," Sam answered me. "Nothing that won't heal on its own now. I drew upon your strength to heal enough that no one would know how bad the injuries were. "

  "How did you do that?" I asked, suddenly remembering the fierce hunger that had resulted in a rabbit-and-quail dinner on top of the salmon I'd had with Adam. I'd thought it had been someone in Adam's pack - for the very good reason that borrowing strength was one of those things that came with apack bond. "We aren't pack," I reminded him.

  He looked directly at me again, then away. "Aren't we?"

  "Unless you . . . Unless Samuel's been conducting blood ceremonies when I was asleep, we're not. " I was starting to feel panicky. Claustrophobic. I already had Adam and his pack playing with my head; I didn't particularly want anyone else in there.

  "Pack existed before ceremonies," Sam said, sounding amused. "Magic binds more obviously, more extensively, but not more deeply. "

  "Did you mess with my head on my date with Adam?" I couldn't keep the accusation out of my voice.

  "No. " He tilted his head, then snarled, "Someone hurt you?"

  "No," I said. "It's nothing. "

  "Lies," he said.

  "Right," I agreed. "But if it wasn't you who did it, the incident is something for Adam and me to handle. "

  He was still a moment. "For now," he said.

  I held the door open for him, then walked beside him through the emergency room.

  As we moved through the walkway and out the door, Sam kept his eyes on me, and his regard had a weight to it. I didn't protest. He did it so that no one would see the change in his iris color - but also because when a werewolf as dominant as Samuel meets someone's gaze with his wolf in the fore, even humans bow their knees. That would be pretty awkward and hard to explain. At this point, we were operating with the hope that it would matter to Samuel that he could come back and practice medicine here again.

  I helped him into the backseat of the Rabbit - and noticed that the towel-wrapped book was still there. I wished that getting it back to its owner was the extent of my troubles. I grabbed it and put it in the far back, out of harm's reach. Hopping in the front, I drove out from under the parking-lot lights as soon as I could. It was still the wee small hours, but Samuel was a big man, and it would be hard to miss him stripping in the back of my little car.

  It didn't take him long to dispose of the clothes and begin his change. I didn't look, but I could tell when he started because the noises turned from shredding fabric to pained whines. What the wolves go through when they change is one of the many reasons I am very grateful to be what I am instead of a werewolf. For me, the change from coyote to human or back
is virtually instantaneous. The side effects are nothing more annoying than tingles. For a werewolf, change is painful and slow. From the grunts he was making, he hadn't yet fully finished his shift by the time I drove into my driveway.

  Home wasn't the safest place to bring him. No werewolf who saw him would miss what had happened, and Adam's house - visited often by members of his pack - was just behind my back fence. But I couldn't think of anyplace better.

  Eventually, we'd have to tell Bran - I knew it, and I suspected that Samuel . . . Sam knew it, too. But I'd give him what time I could - assuming he didn't go on a rampage and start eating people.

  That meant keeping him out of sight of Adam and his pack.

  My pack. My mate and my pack.

  It felt wrong to hide things from him. But I knew Adam, and one thing he was very good at was honor and duty. It was one of the reasons I'd grown to love him - he was a man who could make the hard choice. Duty and honor would force him to call Bran. Duty and honor would force Bran to execute Samuel. Samuel would be dead, and two good men would suffer as well.

  Luckily for all of them, my sense of duty and honor was more flexible.

  I got out of the car and turned in a slow circle. I caught Ben's scent, fading. Otherwise, we were alone with the more mundane creatures of the night: bats, mice, and mosquitoes. The light was on in Adam's bedroom, but it went dark as I was watching. Tomorrow, I'd need to come up with a better place for Sam.

  Or a good reason to avoid the pack.

  I opened the back door of the Rabbit, keeping it between Sam and me in case he came out of the change in a bad mood. The pain of the change does not make for a happy wolf - and Sam was already hurt when he started. But he seemed okay. When he hopped out, he waited politely for me to close up the car, then followed me to the door.

  He slept on the foot of my bed. When I suggested he might be more comfortable in his room, he regarded me steadily with ice-colored eyes.

  Where does a werewolf sleep? Anywhere he wants to.

  I thought it would bother me, thought it would scare me. It ought to have bothered me. But somehow I couldn't work up the energy to be too worried about the big wolf curled up on my feet. It was Sam, after all.

  * * *

  MY DAY STARTED OUT EARLY DESPITE MY LATE NIGHT.

  I woke up to the sound of Sam's stomach growling. Keeping him fed had attained a new priority level, so I bounced up and cooked him breakfast.

  And then, because cooking is something I do when I'm upset or nervous - and because it sometimes helps me think, especially if the cooking involves sugar - I indulged myself with a spate of cookie baking. I made a double batch of peanut butter cookies, and while they were in the oven, I made chocolate chip, for good measure.

  Sam sat under the table, where he was out of my way, and watched me. I fed him a couple of spoonfuls of dough even though he'd eaten several pounds of bacon and a dozen eggs. He had shared the eggs with my cat, Medea. Maybe that was why he was still hungry. I fed him some of the baked cookies.

  I was in the middle of putting cookies into baggies when Adam called.

  "Mercy," he said. His voice was fuzzy with fatigue, his tone flat. "I saw the light was on. Ben told me what you said. I can help you with that. "

  Usually, I follow Adam's conversations just fine, but I'd had less than three hours of sleep. And I was preoccupied with Samuel, which he could not know anything about. I rubbed my nose. Ben. Oh. Adam was talking about how the pack had screwed up our date. Right.

  I had to keep Adam away. Just until I figured out some brilliant plan to keep Samuel alive . . . And here before me was the perfect excuse.

  "Thank you," I said. "But I think I need a break for a few days - no pack, no . . . " I let my voice drift off. I couldn't tell him I needed space from him when it wasn't true. Even over the phone he might pick up the lie. I wished he was here. He had a way of making things black-and-white. Of course, that meant that Samuel should be killed for the good of the wolves. Sometimes gray is the color I'm stuck with.

  "You need some distance from the pack - and me," Adam said. "I can understand that. " There was a small pause. "I won't leave you without protection. "

  I looked down. "Samuel's off for a couple of days. " I needed to call before heading to work and get him time off, but that didn't change the fact that he wasn't going to be at work for the next couple of days. The wreck made a convenient excuse. "I'll keep him with me. "

  "All right. " There was an awkward pause, and Adam said, "I'm sorry, Mercy. I should have noticed there was something wrong. " He swallowed. "When my ex-wife decided I'd done something she didn't like, she'd give me the silent treatment. When you did it . . . it threw me. "

  "I think that was the point someone was aiming for," I said dryly, and he laughed.

  "Yeah. I didn't stop and consider how unlikely a tactic that was from you," he agreed. "Sneak attacks, guerilla warfare, but not silence. "

  "Not your fault," I told him, before I bit my lip. If I didn't need to keep him away from Sam, I'd have said more. A lot more, but I needed time for Samuel to fix himself. "I didn't figure it out until we were almost home. "

  "If I'd realized something was up while it was still happening, I could have found out who it was," said Adam, a growl in his voice. He took a deep breath and let it out. When he spoke again, his voice was calmer. "Samuel will know how to stop them, too. While he's escorting you around, why don't you ask him to teach you how to protect yourself? Even when it's not deliberate - " He had to stop again. "The needs and desires of the pack can influence you quite a bit. It's not too hard to block if you know how. Samuel can show you. "

  I looked at the white wolf sprawled out on the kitchen floor with Medea cleaning his face. Sam looked back at me with pale eyes ringed in black.

  "I'll ask him," I promised.

  "See you," he said, but continued in a rush. "Is Tuesday too soon?"

  It was Saturday. If Samuel wasn't better by Tuesday, I could cancel. "Tuesday would be really good. "

  He hung up, and I asked Sam, "Can you teach me how to keep the pack out of my head?"

  He made a sad noise.

  "Not without being able to talk," I agreed. "But I promised Adam I'd ask. " So I had three days to fix Samuel. And I felt like a traitor for . . . I hadn't really lied to Adam, had I? Raised among werewolves, who are living lie detectors, I'd long ago learned to lie with the truth nearly as well as a fae.

  Maybe I had time to make brownies, too.

  My cell phone rang, and I almost just answered it, assuming it was Adam. Some instinct of self-preservation had me hesitate and glance at the number: Bran's.

  "The Marrok is calling," I told Samuel. "Think he'll wait three days? Me either. " But I could delay him a little by not answering the phone. "Let's go work on some cars. "

  * * *

  SAM SAT IN THE PASSENGER SEAT AND GAVE ME A sour look. He'd been mad at me since I put his collar on - but the collar was camouflage. It made him look more like a dog. Something domesticated enough for a collar, not a wild animal. Fear brings violence out in the wolves, so the fewer people who are scared of them, the better.

  "I'm not going to roll the window down," I told him. "This car doesn't have automatic windows. I'd have to pull over and go around and lower it manually. Besides, it's cold outside, and unlike you, I don't have a fur coat. "

  He lifted his lip in a mock snarl and put his nose down on the dashboard with a thump.

  "You're smearing the windshield," I told him.

  He looked at me and deliberately ran his nose across his side of the glass.

  I rolled my eyes. "Oh, that was mature. The last time I saw someone do something that grown-up was when my little sister was twelve. "

  * * *

  AT THE GARAGE, I PARKED NEXT TO ZEE'S TRUCK, AND as soon as I got out of the car, I could hear the distinctive beat of salsa music. I have sensitive ears, so it was probably
not loud enough to bother anyone in the little houses scattered among the warehouses and storage units that surrounded the garage. A little figure at the window waved at me.

  I'd forgotten.

  How could I have forgotten that Sylvia and her kids were going to be cleaning the office? Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't have been a problem - Samuel would never hurt a child, but we weren't dealing with Samuel anymore.

  I realized that I'd gotten used to him, that I was still thinking of him as though he was only Samuel with a problem. I'd let myself forget how dangerous he was. Then again, he hadn't killedme yet.

  Maybe if he stayed with me in the garage . . .

  I couldn't risk it.

  "Sam," I told the wolf, who'd followed me out of the car, "there are too many people here. Let's - "

  I'm not sure what I was going to suggest, maybe a run out somewhere no one would see us. But it was too late.

  "Mercy," said a high-pitched voice as the office door popped open with a roar of bongos and guitars, and Gabriel's littlest sister, Maia, bounced down the short run of steps and sprinted toward us. "Mercy, Mercy, guess what? Guess what? I am all grown-up. I am going to pretty school, and I - "

  And that was when she caught a glimpse of Sam.

  "Ooo," she said, still running.

  Samuel is not bad-looking in his human form - but his wolf is pure white and fluffy. All he needed was a unicorn's horn to be the perfect pet for a little girl.

  "Pretty school?" I asked, stepping forward and to the side, so I was between the werewolf and Maia. Maia stopped instead of bumping into me, but her eyes were on the wolf.

  The next-oldest girl, Sissy, who was six, had emerged from the office a few seconds after her sister. "Mama says you can't run out of the office, Maia. There might be cars who wouldn't see you. Hi, Mercy. She means preschool. I'm in first grade this year - and she is still just a baby. Is that a dog? When did you get a dog?"

  "Pretty school," repeated Maia. "And I'm not a baby. " She gave me a hug and launched herself at Sam.

  I would have caught her if Sam hadn't bounded forward, too.

  "Pony," she said, attacking him as if he weren't a scarily huge wolf. She grabbed a handful of fur and climbed on top of him. "Pony, pony. "

  I reached for her, but froze when Sam gave me a look.

  "My pony," Maia said happily, oblivious to my terror. She thumped her heels into his ribs hard enough I could hear the noise. "Go, pony. "

  Maia's sister seemed to understand the danger as well as I did. "Mama," she shrieked. "Mama, Maia's being stupid again. "

  Well, maybe not as well.

  She frowned at her sister and - while I stood frozen, afraid that whatever action I took would be the one that sent Sam over the edge - told me, "We took her to the fair and she saw the horses - now she climbs on every dog she sees. She almost got bitten by the last one. "

  Sam, for his part, grunted the fourth or fifth time Maia's heels hit his side, gave me another look - one that might have been exasperation - and started toward the office, for all the world as if he were a pony instead of a werewolf.

  "Mercy?" Sissy said.

  I suppose she'd expected me to say something - or at least move. Panic left me with cold fingers and a pounding heart - but as it faded, something else took its place.

  I've seen any number of werewolves whose wolf had superseded the man. Usually, it happens in the middle of a fight - and the only thing to do is to lie low until the man takes back control. The other time it often occurs is with the newly Changed wolves. They are vicious, unpredictable, and dangerous even to the people they love. But Sam hadn't been vicious or even unpredictable - except in the best sense of the word - when Maia had hopped up to play Wild Horse Annie.

  For the first time since I'd walked into that damned hospital storeroom last night, I felt real hope. If Sam the wolf could keep to civilized manners for a few days, maybe I would have a chance to persuade Bran to give us a little more time.

  Sam had reached the office door and stood patiently waiting for me to let him in while Maia patted him on the top of his head and told him he was a good pony.

  "Mercy? Are you okay?" Sissy looked in my car - I often brought cookies. I'd brought the ones I made this morning out of habit. I usually make a lot more cookies than any one person can eat, so when I have a baking fest, I bring the cookies for customers. She didn't say anything when she spotted the bags sitting on top of the book I still needed to deliver to Phin, but she got a big smile on her face.

  "I'm fine, Sissy. Want a cookie?"

  * * *

  WHEN I OPENED THE OFFICE DOOR, WHICH WAS A FADING orangish pink and needed to be repainted, the blaring music was overwhelmed by "Mercy" and "Look, dog!" And what seemed like a hundred small bodies piled on us.

  Sissy put her small fists on her hips, and said in a picture-perfect imitation of her brother, "Barbarians. " And then she took a bite of the cookie I'd given her.

  "Cookie!" shrieked someone. "Sissy has a cookie!"

  Silence fell, and they all looked at me like a lion might look at a gazelle in the savanna.

  "You see what happens?" asked Gabriel's mother, not even glancing up from scrubbing the counter. Sylvia was about ten years older than I, and she wore those years well. She was a small woman, delicate and beautiful. They say Napoleon was small, too.

  "You spoil them," she told me in a dismissive tone. "So it is your problem to deal with. You must pay the price. "

  I pulled the two bags of cookies from where I'd hidden them in my jacket. "Here," I gasped, holding them out over the horde's reaching hands toward their mother. "Take them quick before the monsters get them. Protect them with your life. "

  Sylvia took the bags and tried to hide her smile as I wrestled with little pink-clad bodies that squealed and squeaked. Okay, there weren't a hundred of them; Gabriel had five little sisters. But they made enough noise for ten times that many.

  Tia, whose name was short for Martina, the oldest girl, frowned at us all. Sam, sitting beside her, had been abandoned for the possibility of a cookie. He seemed amused, more amused when he caught my wary glance.

  "Hey, we're doing all the work," Rosalinda, the second-oldest said. "You chicas start scrubbing right this moment. You know you won't get cookies until Mama says. "

  "Sissy got one," Maia said.

  "And that is all anyone will get until it is clean," proclaimed Tia piously.

  "You're no fun," Sofia, the middle girl, told her.

  "No fun," agreed Maia with her bottom lip sticking out. But she couldn't have been too upset because she bounced away from me to crawl back onto Sam, her fingers clutching his collar. "My puppy needs a cookie. "

  Sylvia frowned at Sam, then at me. "You have a dog?"

  "Not exactly," I told her. "I'm watching him for a friend. " For Samuel.

  The wolf looked at Sylvia and wagged his tail deliberately. He kept his mouth closed, which was smart of him. She wouldn't be happy if she got a good look at his teeth - which were bigger than any dog's I've ever seen.

  "What breed is it? I've never seen such a monster. "

  Sam's ears flattened a bit.

  But then Maia kissed him on the top of his head. "He's cute, Mama. I bet I could ride him in the fair, and we would win a ribbon. We should get a dog. Or a pony. We could keep it in the parking lot. "

  "Uhm, maybe he's a Great Pyrenees mix?" I offered. "Something big. "

  "Abominable Snow Dog," suggested Tia dryly. She rubbed Sam briskly under one ear.

  Sylvia sighed. "I suppose if he hasn't eaten them yet, he won't. "

  "I don't think so," I agreed cautiously. I looked at Sam, who seemed perfectly fine, more relaxed than I'd seen him since I walked into the storeroom at the hospital.

  Sylvia sighed again, theatrically, her dramatically large eyes glittering with fun. "Too bad. It would be much less trouble if I had a few less childre
n, don't you think?"

  "Mama!" came the indignant chorus.

  "There aren't as many as there seem to be when they are running around shrieking," I told her.

  "I've noticed. When they are asleep, they are a little bit cute. It's a good thing, or none of them would have survived this long. "

  I looked around. They'd already been working for a while. "You know, people are going to walk in - and turn around and walk back out because they won't recognize the place. Are Gabriel and Zee in the shop?"

  "Si, yes, they are. Thank you for the use of your car. "

  "No troubles," I told her. "I don't need it right now. And you can do me a favor and tell me about anything you notice is wrong with it. "

  "Besides the steering wheel popping off?"

  I grimaced. "Yep. "

  "I will do so. Now you and that . . . elephant you brought . . . need to go into the shop so my little monsters can get back to work. "

  Obediently, I lifted Maia off the wolf. "Let's go to work," I told him.

  Sam took two steps with me, then lay down in the center of the office with a grunt. He stretched out on his side and closed his eyes.

  "Come on, S - " I bit my lip - what was the name Samuel kept on his collar? Right. "Come, Snowball. "

  He opened a single white eye and stared at me.

  I swallowed. Arguing with dominant wolves could have unpleasant results.

  "I will watch the puppy," declared Maia. "We can play cow-girls, and I will teach him to fetch. We shall have a tea party. " She wrinkled her nose. "And then he won't get all dirty playing with the greasy cars. He doesn't like being dirty. "

  Sam closed his eye as she patted him on the nose.

  He wasn't going to hurt her.

  I took a deep breath. "I think he likes the music," I told Sylvia.

  She huffed. "I think you want him out of your way. "

  "Maia wants to babysit," I said. "It'll keep her occupied. "

  Sylvia looked at Sam thoughtfully. She shook her head at me but didn't fuss when I left him lying there.

  Zee had shut the door between the office and the shop - he's not fond of Latin music. So when I went in, I closed it behind me, too.