Mercedes Thompson 03: Iron Kissed

by Patricia Briggs

  “It must be Nemane then.” There was satisfaction in his voice.

  “This is a good thing?”

  “Very good,” he said. “There are some of the Gray Lords who would just as soon kill everyone until the problems go away. Nemane is different.”

  “She doesn’t like to kill.”

  Tad sighed. “Sometimes you are so innocent. I don’t know of any fae who doesn’t enjoy spilling blood at some level—and Nemane was one of the Morrigan, the battle goddesses of the Celts. One of her jobs was delivering the killing blow to the heroes dying in the aftermath of a battle to end their suffering.”

  “That doesn’t sound promising,” I muttered.

  Tad heard. “The thing about the old warriors is that they have a sense of honor, Mercy. Pointless death or wrongful death is an anathema to them.”

  “She won’t want to kill your father,” I said.

  He corrected me gently. “She won’t want to kill you. I’m afraid that, except to you, my father is an acceptable loss.”

  “I’ll see what I can do to change that.”

  “Go get that book,” he said, then coughed a bit. “Stupid geas.” There was real rage in his voice. “If it cost me my father, I’m going to have a talk with Uncle Mike. Get that book, Mercy, and see if you can’t find something that will give you some bargaining room.”

  “You’ll stay there?”

  “Until Friday. If nothing breaks by then, I’m coming home.”

  I almost protested, but said good-bye instead. Zee was Tad’s father—I was lucky he agreed to wait until Friday.

  The Uptown Mall is a conglomeration of buildings cobbled together into a strip mall. The stores range from a doughnut bakery to a thrift store, plus bars, restaurants, and even a pet store. The bookstore wasn’t hard to find.

  I’d been there a time or two, but since my reading tastes run more to sleazy paperbacks than collectibles, it wasn’t one of my regular haunts. I was able to park in front of the store, next to a handicapped space.

  I thought for a moment it had already closed. It was after six and the store looked deserted from the outside. But the door opened easily with a jingle of mellow cowbells.

  “A minute, a minute,” someone called from the back.

  “No trouble,” I said. I took in a deep breath to see what my nose could tell me, but there were too many smells to separate much out: nothing holds smells like paper. I could detect cigarettes and various pipe tobaccos, and stale perfume.

  The man who emerged from the stacks of bookcases was taller than me and somewhere between thirty-five and fifty. He had fine hair that was easing gracefully from gold to gray. His expression was cheerful and shifted smoothly into professional when he saw that I was a stranger.

  “What can I help you with?” he asked.

  “Tad Adelbertsmiter, a friend of mine, told me you could help me with a problem I have,” I told him and showed him the stick I was carrying.

  He took a good look at it and paled, losing the amiable expression. “Just a moment,” he said. He locked the front door, changing the old-fashioned paper sign to CLOSED and pulling down the shades over the window.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Mercedes Thompson.”

  He gave me a sharp-eyed look. “You’re not fae.”

  I shook my head. “I’m a VW mechanic.”

  Comprehension lit his face. “You’re Zee’s protégé?”

  “That’s right.”

  “May I see it?” he asked, holding out his hand for the stick.

  I didn’t give it to him. “Are you fae?”

  His expression went blank and cold—which was an answer in itself, wasn’t it?

  “The fae don’t consider me one of them,” he said in an abrupt voice. “But my mother’s grandfather was. I’ve just enough fae in me to do a little touch magic.”

  “Touch magic?”

  “You know, I can touch something and have a pretty good idea how old it is, and who it belonged to. That kind of thing.”

  I held up the staff to him.

  He took it and examined it for a long time. At last he shook his head and gave it back. “I’ve never seen it before—though I’ve heard of it. One of the fairy treasures.”

  “If you’re a sheep farmer, maybe,” I said dryly.

  He laughed. “That’s the one, all right—though sometimes those old things can do unexpected things. Anyway, it’s a magic they can’t work anymore, enchanting objects permanently, and they hold those things precious.”

  “What did Tad think you could tell me about it?”

  He shook his head. “If you already know the story about it, I suppose you know as much as I do.”

  “So what did touching it tell you?”

  He laughed. “Not a darn thing. My magic only works on mundane things. I just wanted to hold it for a bit.” He paused. “He told you I could find you information on it?” He looked me over keenly. “Now this wouldn’t have any bearing on that trouble his father is in, could it? No, of course not.” His eyes smiled slyly. “Oh, I expect that I know just exactly what Tad wants me to find for you, clever boy. Come back here with me.”

  He led me to a small alcove where the books were all in locking barrister’s bookcases. “This is where I keep the more valuable stuff—signed books and older oddities.” He pulled up a bench and climbed on it to unlock the topmost shelf, which was mostly empty—probably because it was difficult to reach.

  He pulled out a book bound in pale leather and embossed in gold. “I don’t suppose you have fourteen hundred dollars you’d like to pay for this with?”

  I swallowed. “Not at the moment—I might be able to scrape it up in a few days.”

  He shook his head as he handed the book down to me. “Don’t bother. Just take care of it and give it back when you’re finished. It’s been here for five or six years. I don’t expect that I’ll have a buyer for it this week.”

  I took it gingerly, not being used to handling books that were worth more than my car (not that that was saying very much). The title was embossed on front and spine: Magic Made.

  “I’m loaning this to you,” he said slowly, considering his words carefully, “because it talks a little about that walking stick…” He paused and added in a “pay attention to this part” voice, “And a few other interesting things.”

  If the walking stick had been stolen, maybe more things had disappeared, too. I clutched the book tighter.

  “Zee is a friend of mine.” He locked the bookcase again and then got off the bench and put it back where it had been. Then in an apparent non sequitur he said casually, “You know, of course, that there are things that we are forbidden to discuss. But I know that the story of the walking stick is in there. You might start with that story. I believe it is in Chapter Five.”

  “I understand.” He was giving me all the help he could without breaking the rules.

  He led the way back through the store. “Take care of that staff.”

  “I keep trying to give it back,” I said.

  He turned and walked backward a few steps, his eyes on the staff. “Do you now?” Then he gave a small laugh, shook his head, and continued to the front door. “Those old things sometimes have a mind of their own.”

  He opened the door for me and I hesitated on the threshold. If he hadn’t told me that he was part fae, I’d have thanked him. But acknowledging a debt to a fae could have unexpected consequences. Instead I took out one of the cards that Gabriel had printed up for me and gave it to him. “If you ever have trouble with your car, why don’t you stop by? I work mostly on German cars, but I can usually make the others purr pretty well, too.”

  He smiled. “I might do that. Good luck.”

  Samuel was gone when I got back, but he’d left a note to tell me he had gone to work—and there was food in the fridge.

  I opened it and found a foil-covered glass pan with a couple of enchiladas in it. I ate dinner, fed Medea, then washed my hands and took the b
ook into the living room to read.

  I hadn’t expected a page that said, “This is who killed O’Donnell,” but it might have been nice if each page of the six-hundred-page book hadn’t been covered with tiny, handwritten words in old faded ink. At least it was in English.

  An hour and a half later I had to stop because my eyes wouldn’t focus anymore.

  I’d turned to Chapter Five and gotten through maybe ten pages of the impossible text and three stories. The first story had been about the walking stick, a little more complete than the story I’d read off the Internet. It also had a detailed description of the stick. The author was obviously fae, which made it the first book I’d ever knowingly read from a fae viewpoint.

  All of Chapter Five seemed to be about things like the walking stick: gifts of the fae. If O’Donnell had stolen the walking stick, maybe he’d stolen other things, too. Maybe the murderer had stolen them in return.

  I took the book to the gun safe in my room and locked it in. It wasn’t the best hiding place, but a casual thief was a little less likely to run off with it.

  I washed dishes and mused about the book. Not so much about the contents, but what Tad had been trying to tell me about it.

  The man at the bookstore had told me that the fae treasure things like the walking stick, no matter how useless they are in our modern world.

  I could see that. For a fae, having something that held the remnant of magic lost to them was power. And power in the fae world meant safety. If they had a record of all the fairy-magicked items, then the Gray Lords could keep track of them—and apportion them as they chose. But the fae are a secretive people. I just couldn’t see them making up a list of their items of power and handing it over.

  I grew up in Montana, where an old, unregistered rifle was worth a lot more than a new gun whose ownership could be traced. Not that the gun owners in Montana are planning on committing crimes with their unregistered guns—they just don’t like the federal government knowing their every move.

  So what if…what if O’Donnell stole several magic items and no one knew what they were, or maybe what all of them were. Then some fae figured out it was O’Donnell. Someone who had a nose like mine—or who saw him, or maybe tracked him back to his house. That fae could have killed O’Donnell to steal for himself the things O’Donnell had taken.

  Maybe the murderer had timed it so Zee would be caught, knowing the Gray Lords would be happy to have a suspect wrapped up in a bow.

  If I could find the killer and the things O’Donnell had stolen, I could hold those things hostage for Zee’s acquittal and safety.

  I could see why a fae would want the walking stick, but what about O’Donnell? Maybe he hadn’t known exactly what it was? He’d had to have known something about it, or else why take it? Maybe he’d intended to sell it back to the fae. You’d think that anyone who’d been around them for very long would know better than to think you’d survive long selling back stolen items to the fae.

  Of course, O’Donnell was dead, wasn’t he?

  Someone knocked on my door—and I hadn’t heard anyone drive up. It might have been one of the werewolves, walking over from Adam’s house. I took a deep breath, but the door effectively blocked anything my nose might have told me.

  I opened the door and Dr. Altman was standing on the porch. The seeing eye dog was gone—and there was no extra car in the driveway. Maybe she’d flown here.

  “You’ve come for the walking stick?” I asked. “You’re welcome to it.”

  “May I come in?”

  I hesitated. I was pretty sure the threshold thing only worked on vampires, but if not…

  She smiled tightly and took a step forward until she was standing on the carpet.

  “Fine,” I said. “Come in.” I got the old stick and handed it to her.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked.

  I deliberately misunderstood. “Because it’s not my stick—and that sheep thing won’t do me any good.”

  She gave me an irritated look. “I don’t mean the stick. I mean why are you pushing your nose into fae business? You are undermining my standing with the police—and that may be dangerous for them in the long run. My job is to keep the humans safe. You don’t know what is going on and you’re going to cause more trouble than you can handle.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “You and I both know that Zee didn’t kill O’Donnell. I just made sure that the police were aware that someone else might be involved. I don’t leave my friends out to swing in the wind.”

  “The Gray Lords will not allow someone like you to know so much about us.” The aggressive tension she’d been carrying in her shoulders relaxed and she strode confidently across my living room and sat in Samuel’s big, overstuffed chair.

  When she spoke again, her voice had a trace of a Celtic lilt. “Zee’s a cantankerous bastard, and I love him, too. Moreover, there are not so many of the iron kissed left that we can lightly lose them. At any other time I would be free to do what I could to save him. But when the werewolves announced themselves to the public, they caused a resurgence of fear that we cannot afford to make worse. An open-and-shut case, with the police willing to keep mum about the condition of the murder victim, won’t cause too much fuss. Zee understands that. If you know as much as you think you do, you should know that sometimes sacrifices are necessary for the majority to survive.”

  Zee had offered himself up as a sacrifice. He wanted me to get mad enough I’d leave him to rot because he knew that otherwise I’d never give up, I’d never agree to leave him as a sacrifice no matter what the cost to the fae.

  “I came here tonight for Zee,” she told me earnestly, her blind eyes staring through me. “Don’t make this harder on him than it already is. Don’t let this cost you your life, too.”

  “I know who you are, more or less, Nemane,” I told her.

  “Then you should know that not many get a warning before I strike.”

  “I know that you prefer justice to slaughter,” I told her.

  “I prefer,” she said, “that my people survive. If I have to eliminate a few innocents or—stupidly obtuse people—in the meantime, that will not live long on my conscience.”

  I didn’t say anything. I wouldn’t give up on Zee, couldn’t give up on Zee. If I told her that, she’d kill me right now. I could feel her power gathering around her like a spring thunderstorm. Layer upon layer it built as I stared at her.

  I wouldn’t lie and the truth would get me killed—and leave no one to help Zee.

  Just then a car turned into the gravel of the driveway. Samuel’s car.

  I knew then what I could do, but would it be enough? What would it cost?

  “I know who you are, Nemane,” I whispered. “But you don’t know who I am.”

  “You’re a walker,” she told me. “A shapeshifter. Zee explained it to me. There aren’t many of the native preternatural species left—so you belong nowhere. Neither fae nor wolf, vampire or anything else. You are all alone.” Her expression didn’t change, but I could smell her sorrow, her sympathy. She was alone, too. I don’t know if she meant me to understand that, or if she was unaware how much I could glean from her scent. “I don’t want to have to kill you, but I will.”

  “I don’t think so.” Thank goodness, I thought, thank goodness that I had told everything to Samuel. He wouldn’t have to play catch-up. “Zee told you part of who I am.” Maybe because he thought it would make her hesitate to kill me, knowing that I was alone. “You’re right, I don’t know any other people like me, but I’m not alone.”

  Samuel opened the door on cue. His eyes were bloodshot and he looked tired and grumpy. I could smell the blood and disinfectant on him. He paused with the door open, taking in Dr. Altman’s appearance.

  “Dr. Altman,” I said pleasantly, “may I introduce you to Dr. Samuel Cornick, my roommate. Samuel, I’d like you to meet Dr. Stacy Altman, police consultant, the Carrion Crow. The fae know her as Nemane.”

  Samue
l’s eyes narrowed.

  “You’re a werewolf,” said Nemane. “Samuel Cornick.” There was a pause. “The Marrok is Bran Cornick.”

  I kept my gaze on Samuel. “I was just explaining to Dr. Altman why it would be inadvisable for them to eliminate me even though I’m sticking my nose in their business.”

  Comprehension lit his eyes, which he narrowed at the fae.

  “Killing Mercy would be a mistake,” he growled. “My da had Mercy raised in our pack and he couldn’t love Mercy more if she were his daughter. For her he would declare open war with the fae and damned be the consequences. You can call him and ask, if you doubt my word.”

  I’d expected Samuel to defend me—and the fae could not afford to hurt the son of the Marrok, not unless the stakes were a lot higher. I’d counted on that to keep Samuel safe or I’d have found some way to keep him out of it. But the Marrok…

  I’d always thought I was an annoyance, the only one Bran couldn’t count on for instant obedience. He’d been protective, still was—but his protective instinct was one of the things that made him dominant. I’d thought I was just one more person he had to take care of. But it was as impossible to doubt the truth in Samuel’s voice as it was to believe that he’d be mistaken about Bran.

  I was glad that Samuel was focused on Nemane, who had risen to her feet when Samuel began speaking. While I blinked back stupid tears, she leaned on the walking stick and said, “Is that so?”

  “Adam Hauptman, the Columbia Basin Pack’s Alpha, has named Mercy his mate,” continued Samuel grimly.

  Nemane smiled suddenly, the expression flowing across her face, giving it a delicate beauty I hadn’t noticed before.

  “I like you,” she said to me. “You play an underhanded and subtle game—and like Coyote, you shake up the order of the world.” She laughed. “Coyote indeed. Good for you. Good for you. I don’t know what else you’ll run into—but I’ll let the Others know what they are dealing with.” She tapped the walking stick on the floor twice. Then, almost to herself, she murmured, “Perhaps…perhaps this won’t be a disaster after all.”

  She raised the staff up and touched the top end to her forehead in a salute. Then she took a step forward and disappeared from the reach of any of my senses between one moment and the next.