Iron Kissed mt-3

by Patricia Briggs

  They were indeed posters, very interesting posters for a security guard who worked for the BFA.

  The first showed a child dressed in a fluffy Easter Sunday dress sitting on a marble bench in a gardenlike setting. Her hair was pale and curly. She was looking at the flower in her hand. Her face was round with a button nose and rosebud lips. Bold letters across the top of the poster said: PROTECT THE CHILDREN. Across the bottom, in smaller letters, the poster announced that Citizens for a Bright Future was holding a meeting the November eighteenth of two years ago.

  Like the John Lauren Society, Bright Future was an anti-fae group. It was a lot smaller organization than the JLS and catered to a different income bracket. Members of the JLS tended to be like Ms. Ryan, the relatively wealthy and educated. The JLS held banquets and golf tournaments to raise money. Bright Future held rallies that mostly resembled the old-fashioned tent revival meetings where the faithful would be entertained and preached at, then passed a hat.

  The other posters were similar to the first, though the dates were different. Three of them were for meetings held in the Tri-Cities, but one was in Spokane. They were slick, and professionally laid out. Stock posters, I thought, printed at the headquarters without dates and places, which could be added later in Sharpie black.

  They must have been meeting here and sending out their mailings. That's why there had been so many people in O'Donnell's house.

  Thoughtfully, I padded into the living room. I think I'd seen so much blood the night before that it wasn't the first thing that struck me, though it was splattered around with impressive abandon.

  The first thing I noticed was that, under the blood and death, I caught a familiar scent that was out of place in this room. Something smelled like the forest fae's home. The second thing I noticed was that whatever it was, it packed a tremendous magical punch.

  Finding it, though, was more problematical. It was like playing "Find the Thimble" with my nose and the strength of the magic to tell me if I was hot or cold. Finally I stopped in front of a sturdy gray walking stick tucked into the corner behind the front door, next to another taller and intricately carved stick, which smelled of nothing more interesting than polyurethane.

  When I first looked at the stick, it appeared unremarkable and plain, though clearly old. Then I realized that the metal cap wasn't stainless steel: it was silver, and very faintly I could see that something was etched into the metal. But it was dark in the room and even my night eyes have limits.

  It might as well have had "A Clue" painted in fluorescent orange down the side. I thought long and hard about taking it, but decided it was unlikely to go anyplace, having survived O'Donnell's murderer and the police.

  It smelled of wood smoke and pipe tobacco: O'Donnell had stolen it from the forest fae's home.

  I left it alone and began quartering the living room.

  Built-in bookshelves lined the room, mostly full of DVDs and VHS tapes. One whole bookshelf was devoted to the kind of men's magazines that people read "for the articles" and argue about art versus pornography. The magazines on the bottom shelf had given up any pretense of art—judging by the photos on the covers.

  Another bookcase had doors that closed over the bottom half. The open shelves at the top were mostly empty except for a few chunks of…rocks. I recognized a good-sized chunk of amethyst and a particularly fine quartz crystal. O'Donnell collected rocks.

  There was an open case for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang sitting on top of the DVD player under the TV. How could someone like O'Donnell be a Dick Van Dyke fan? I wondered if he'd had a chance to finish watching it before he died.

  I think it was because I felt that moment of sorrow that I heard the creak of a board giving way beneath the weight of the house's dead occupant.

  Other people, people who are completely, mundanely human, see ghosts, too. Maybe not as often—or in broad daylight—but they do see them. Since there had been no ghosts at the death sites in the reservation, I'd unconsciously assumed that there would be none here as well. I'd been wrong.

  O'Donnell's shade walked into the living room from the hallway. As some ghosts do, he grew clearer in bits and pieces as I focused on him. I could see the stitching on his jeans, but his face was a faded blur.

  I whined, but he walked by me without a glance.

  There are a very few ghosts who can interact with the living, as much a person as they had been in life. I got caught once talking to a ghost without realizing that's what he was until my mother asked me whom I was talking to.

  Other ghosts repeat the habits of a lifetime. Sometimes they react, too, though I usually can't talk to them. There is a place near where I was raised where the ghost of a rancher goes out every morning to throw hay to cows who are half a century gone. Sometimes he saw me and waved or nodded his head as he would have responded to anyone who'd approached him in life. But if I tried to converse with him, he'd just go about his business as if I weren't there at all.

  The third kind are the ones born in moments of trauma. They relive their deaths until they fade away. Some dissipate in a few days and others are still dying each day even centuries later.

  O'Donnell didn't see me standing in front of him so he wasn't the first, most useful kind of ghost.

  All I could do was watch as he walked to the shelves that held the rocks and touched something on the top shelf. It clicked against the fake wood shelf. He stood there for a moment, his fingers petting whatever he touched, his whole body focused on that small item.

  For a moment I was disappointed. If he was just repeating something he'd done every day, I wouldn't learn anything from him.

  Then he jerked upright, responding, I thought, to a sound I could not hear and he walked briskly to the front door. I heard the door open with his motions, but the door, more real than the apparition, stayed closed.

  This was not a habitual ghost. I settled in, prepared to watch O'Donnell die.

  He knew the person at the door. He seemed impatient with him, but after a moment of talk, he took a step back in invitation. I couldn't see the person who came in—he wasn't dead—or hear anything except the creaks and groans of the floorboards as they remembered what had happened here.

  Following O'Donnell's attention, I watched the path of the murderer as he walked rapidly to a place in front of the bookcase. O'Donnell's body language became increasingly hostile. I saw his chest move forcefully and he made a cutting gesture with one hand before storming over to confront his visitor.

  Something grabbed him around the neck and shoulder. I could almost make out the shape of the murderer's hand against the paleness of O'Donnell's form. It looked human to me. But before I could get a good look, whoever it was proved that they were not human at all.

  It was so fast. One moment O'Donnell was whole and the next his body was on the floor, jerking and dancing, and his head was rolling across the floor in a lopsided, spinning gyre that ended not a foot from where I stood. For the first time, I saw O'Donnell's face clearly. His eyes were becoming unfocused, but his mouth moved, forming a word he no longer had breath to say. Anger, not fear, dominated his expression, as if he hadn't had time to realize what had happened.

  I'm not a terrific lip reader, but I could tell what he'd tried to say.

  Mine.

  I stayed where I was and shook for minutes after O'Donnell's specter faded. It wasn't the first death I'd witnessed—murder is one of those things that tend to produce ghosts. I'd even cut someone's head off before—that being one of the few ways you can make sure that a vampire will stay dead. But it hadn't been as violent as this, if only because I'm not strong enough to rip someone's head off.

  Eventually, I remembered that I had things to do before someone realized there was a coyote running free in a crime scene. I put my nose down on the carpet to see what it could tell me.

  Distinguishing any scents at all here proved difficult with O'Donnell's blood soaking into couch cushions, walls, and carpet. I caught a hint of Uncle Mike's scent i
n one corner of the room, but it faded quickly, and though I searched the corner for a while, I never caught it again. The Cologne Man had been in the living room, along with O'Donnell, Zee, and Tony. I hadn't realized Tony had been one of the arresting officers. Someone had been sick just inside the front door, but it had been wiped up and left only a trace.

  Other than that, it was like trying to pick up a trail in the Columbia Center Mall. There had simply been too many people in here. If I was trying to pick out a scent, I could do that—but trying to distinguish all the scents…it just wasn't going to work.

  Giving up, I went back to the corner where I'd scented Uncle Mike just to see if I could pick him up again—or figure out how he managed to leave only the barest trace for me to find.

  I don't know how long it was there before I finally looked up and saw the raven.

  CHAPTER 5

  It watched me from the hall doorway, as if it had simply found the open back door and flown in. But ravens are not night birds despite their color and reputation. If there had been nothing else, that alone would have told me that there was something off about this bird.

  But that wasn't the only thing. Or even the first.

  As soon as I caught the glitter of the moon's light in the shine of its feathers, I smelled it—as if it hadn't been there until then.

  Ravens smell of the carrion they eat overlaying a musty sharp scent they share with crows and magpies. This one smelled of rain, forest, and good black garden soil in the spring. Then there was its size.

  The Tri-Cities has some awfully big ravens, but nothing like this bird. It was taller than the coyote I was; easily as big as a golden eagle.

  And every hair on my body stood up to attention as a wave of magic swept through the room.

  It took a sudden hop forward, which moved its head into the faint light that trickled through the windows. There was a spot of white on its head, like a drop of snow. But what caught most of my attention were its eyes: bloodred, like a white rabbit's, they glittered eerily as it stared right at me…and through me, as if it were blind.

  For the first time in my life I was afraid to drop my eyes. Werewolves put great value on eye contact—and I'd blithely used that all my life. I have no trouble dropping my eyes, acknowledging anyone's superiority and then doing whatever I please. Among the werewolves, once dominance was acknowledged, the dominant werewolf could, by custom, do no more than cuff me out of his way…while I then ignored him or plotted how to get back at him as I chose.

  But this wasn't a werewolf, and I was consumed with the conviction that if I moved at all, it would destroy me—though it was not making any sign of aggression.

  I value my instincts, so I stayed motionless.

  It opened its mouth and gave a rattling cry, like old bones shaken roughly in a wooden box. Then it dismissed me from its notice. It strode to the corner and knocked the walking stick to the floor. The raven took the old thing into its mouth and without so much as a glance over its shoulder took flight through the wall.

  Fifteen minutes later, I was well on the way back home—in human shape and driving my car.

  Being not exactly human myself and raised by werewolves, I'd thought I'd seen just about everything: witches, vampires, ghosts, and a half dozen other things that aren't supposed to exist. But that bird had been real, as solid as me—I'd seen its ribs rise and fall as it breathed and I'd touched that walking stick myself.

  I'd never seen one solid object go through another solid object—not without some pretty impressive CGI graphics or David Copperfield.

  Magic, despite Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, just doesn't work like that. If the bird had faded, become immaterial or something before it hit the wall, I might have accepted that as magic.

  Maybe, just maybe, I'd been like the rest of the world, accepting the fae at their face value. Acting like they were something familiar, that they were constrained by rules I could understand and feel comfortable with.

  If anyone should have known better, it would be me. After all, I well understood that what the public knew about the werewolves was just the polished tip of a nasty iceberg. I knew that the fae were, if anything, worse about secrecy than the wolves. Though Zee had been my friend for a decade, I knew very little about the fae side of his life. I knew he was a Steelers fan, that his human wife had died of cancer shortly before I met him, and that he liked tartar sauce on his fries—but I didn't know what he looked like beneath his glamour.

  There were lights on at my house when I pulled the Rabbit into the driveway and parked it next to Samuel's Mercedes and a strange Ford Explorer. I'd been hoping Samuel would be home and awake, so I could use him as a sounding board—but the SUV put paid to that idea.

  I frowned at it. It was two in the morning, an odd time for visitors. Most visitors.

  I took in a deep breath through my nose, but couldn't catch a whiff of vampire—or anything else. Even the night air smelled duller than usual. Probably just a leftover from the shift from coyote to human. My human nose was better than most people's but quite a bit less sensitive than the coyote's, so changing to human was a little like taking out a hearing aid. Still…

  Vampires could hide their scent from me if they chose to.

  I shivered in the warm night air. I think I would have stayed out there all night, except that I heard the murmur of guitar. I couldn't see Samuel playing for Marsilia, the mistress of the vampire seethe, so I climbed up the steps and went in.

  Uncle Mike sat on the overstuffed chair Samuel had replaced my old flea-market find with. Samuel was half-stretched out on the couch like a mountain lion. He played idle bits of music on his guitar. He might look relaxed, but I knew him too well. The cat who was purring on the back of the couch, just behind Samuel's head, was the only relaxed person in the room.

  "There's hot water for cocoa," said Samuel, without looking away from Uncle Mike. "Why don't you get yourself some, then come tell us about Zee, who put you on the scent of their murderer so they could go kill him. Then tell me what you've been doing tonight that would leave you smelling of blood and magic?"

  Yep, Samuel was ticked at Uncle Mike.

  I riffled through the cupboards until I found the box of emergency cocoa. Not the milk chocolate with marshmallow kind, but the hard stuff, dark chocolate with a bit of jalapeño pepper for flavor. I wasn't really upset enough now to need it, but it kept me busy while I thought about how I might keep matters peaceable. Real cocoa needs milk, so I put some in a sauce pan and began heating it up.

  I'd left Samuel and the other werewolves this morning knowing only that Zee was in jail and needed a lawyer. Obviously, someone had filled Samuel in a bit since then. Almost certainly not Uncle Mike.

  Probably not Warren, who would know everything from the lawyer's meeting—I'd told Kyle to go ahead and tell him what I'd told the lawyer. Warren could keep secrets.

  Ah. Warren wouldn't keep secrets from his pack Alpha, Adam. Adam would see no reason not to tell Samuel the whole story if he asked.

  See that's the thing about secrets. All you have to do is tell one person—and suddenly everyone knows. Still, if I disappeared, I'd like to know that the werewolves would come looking for me. Hopefully the fae (in the person of Uncle Mike) understood that, and I wasn't likely to just disappear: if the Gray Lords would arrange a suicide for Zee, one of their own who was of some value, they certainly wouldn't hesitate to arrange something to happen to me as well. The pack would make that a little more difficult.

  A cup of liquid doesn't take long to heat. I poured it into a mug; took the first sip, bittersweet and biting; then rejoined the men. My deliberations in the kitchen led me to the couch, where I sat with a whole cushion between me and Samuel so I wouldn't be assumed (by Samuel) to be taking a side in the antagonism that was stirring in my living room like the inky surface of Loch Ness just before the monster erupts. I didn't want any eruptions in my living room, thank you. Eruptions meant repair bills and blood. Growing up with werewolves had
left me hyperaware of power struggles and things unspoken.

  With another werewolf, a show of support might put the likelihood of violence down a few notches, because he would feel more confident. Samuel didn't need more confidence. He needed to know that I felt that Uncle Mike had done the right thing by calling me in, no matter what Samuel's opinion on the matter was.

  "I found a good lawyer for Zee," I told Uncle Mike.

  "She is a member of the John Lauren Society." Uncle Mike seemed much more himself than he'd sounded on the phone. That meant that his "cheerful innkeeper" guise was in full swing. I couldn't tell if he was unhappy with my choice of lawyers or not.

  "Kyle—" I stopped myself and backed up. "I have a friend who is among the best divorce attorneys in the state. When I called him, he suggested this Jean Ryan from Spokane. He told me she was a barracuda in the courtroom, and says that her membership in a fae hate group will actually help. People will think that she must be absolutely convinced of Zee's innocence to take this case."

  "Is that true? She believes him innocent?"

  I shrugged. "I don't know, but both Kyle and she say it won't matter. I did my best to convince her." I took a sip of cocoa and told them everything Ms. Ryan had told me, including her warning that I keep my nose out of police business.

  Samuel's lips quirked at that. "So how long did you wait before going to O'Donnell's after she told you not to?"

  I gave him an indignant look. "I wouldn't have done it before dark. Too many people would have been calling Animal Control if they saw a coyote that far into town, collar or not. I can't do much investigating from the animal shelter, and they've already picked me up once this summer."