I didn’t think, upon reflection, that the Salases were even a little bit safe while that witch knew where they were. If they were witchborn and didn’t know it, that would explain why the witch singled them out. It also meant that, like any other white witches, they were prey.
I picked up my phone and called Mary Jo.
She listened while I explained everything.
“You want me to protect them?” she asked.
“I want you to find another two wolves and go keep watch. Call us—me, I suppose, because Adam is in another freaking long meeting—if you notice anything awry. Do not engage unless it can’t be helped. But this man’s whole family has a target painted on their backs.”
“You have any objection to me grabbing Sherwood and Joel?” she asked.
I hesitated. “Only if you don’t force Sherwood,” I said finally. “Accept no for an answer.”
“Done,” she said and disconnected.
* * *
• • •
The billboard on Chemical Drive was new. Don’t let the monsters win in our city was sprawled menacingly over a picture of a cute little girl with a terrified expression on her face, down which slid a single tear. A shadow of a wolflike creature fell over her white dress. In case I was in any doubt of who funded the billboard, eight-foot-tall letters on the right-hand corner proclaimed the website address for the John Lauren Society.
The Citizens for a Bright Future were more active in the Tri-Cities, so I was more familiar with their tactics. Bright Future’s focus was more protest marches, graffiti, and vandalism. My builder had spent a lot of time and money (for which I was billed) keeping them away from the garage. Now that the garage was rebuilt, Hauptman Security had run people off twice in the last two weeks. I had killed one of Bright Future’s members a while back. It had been self-defense, but they didn’t intend to let it go. Not as long as his cousin ran the local chapter, anyway.
The John Lauren Society was a different enemy altogether. They had money and their attacks were better planned. The billboards that had begun springing up all over town after the incident with the troll and the bridge were the first hint we’d had that they were interested in the Tri-Cities. Two of the signs on the farmer’s field this morning had been smaller versions of JLS billboards.
It was good, I thought as I drove past the billboard, to remember that not everyone was enamored of living in a city under the protection of a werewolf pack.
I wondered what the JLS would think about witches.
* * *
• • •
Hordes of hungry werewolves were awaiting the food I brought. Okay, it was only Lucia, Aiden, George, and Honey—and only some of them were werewolves. But they were hungry.
I threaded my way past the destruction between the front door and the kitchen, then passed out the cold food and ate myself, one hip on a counter, and caught up with everyone’s day.
“Cookie is gone,” Aiden told me sadly.
I looked up at Lucia, who nodded. “The brother of a friend of mine took her. She has a nice family now, and another shepherd to play with.”
Aiden sighed. “And there are too many people coming in and out of here for her. I know.”
Lucia tilted her head. “We can find another dog who needs our help. Maybe one who would enjoy all the commotion?”
“That’s where you were when the zombie wolf tried to destroy the house?” I asked.
She nodded. “Cookie saved my life.” She didn’t sound worried. Lucia was one of the most confident people I’d ever met. If she were a werewolf, she might give Bran a run for his money.
“And you saved hers,” said Aiden, sounding happier. “Balance.”
Aiden had spent a long time in Underhill. We were working on things like generosity and charity. He was more comfortable with bargains.
It was early when I headed to bed, but it had been a long day and I was tired. I took a long, hot shower that loosened my sore muscles, then took my battered body and tucked it into our big bed.
In my dreams I was wandering down a dark road with Coyote. We were talking about . . . water, I think. Then suddenly Coyote stopped, turned to me, grabbed me by my hands, looked into my eyes, and said, “Her name is Death.”
I woke up gasping in panic, and Adam’s voice from the bathroom said, “It’s all right, sweetheart, it’s just me.”
“It’s just I,” I told him, more pedantic than usual because I was scared.
“Good to know,” he said, unperturbed. “I’d hate to think that someone else was in my bed.”
“How did your meeting go?” I asked, shaking off the ugly feeling that had accompanied my nightmare.
He grunted without pleasure. “It would be so much easier if I could kill a few of them. Then I wouldn’t have to argue for an hour to get them to see common sense. I have one more meeting tomorrow afternoon before the show is ready to start. Can you break free? They want to meet you and tell you that you don’t have any real power, they just need you to be the figurehead and play messenger.”
“When?” I asked.
“Two in the afternoon,” he said.
If Zee didn’t mind working in the shop again, it would be no trouble. “I can do that, I think. Where?”
He turned out the light in the bathroom and pulled back the covers. He looked at me. “I’ll pick you up,” he said absently.
And then ripped the covers all the way off.
I squeaked and ran. He caught me without much effort because he was my Adam, and I didn’t really want to run away from him. I was laughing when he dragged me (not ungently) by one leg to the bed.
He picked me up and set me on the mattress.
“You are so beautiful,” he told me.
He was wrong, but he wasn’t lying. I can hit pretty, but beautiful was a long way off. Christy, his ex-wife, was beautiful. Honey was beautiful. But if Adam thought I was beautiful, I wasn’t going to argue with him.
“Back atcha,” I said—and he snorted.
But he was intent on other things than words. And it didn’t take long before I was, too. I bathed myself in him, the silken skin of his shoulders and the rougher skin of his hands, his distinctive smell, the weight of his body.
After the first time, I was in the mood to play. I tortured the both of us (in the best sense of the word) until sweat gathered on his forehead and his wolf looked out from his eyes. His hands dug into my hips harder than he’d be happy with, but he didn’t force me to stop teasing. Adam would never use his strength against me.
I ratcheted us both up until we hung on that edge, like being on the top of the first hill on a wooden roller coaster. I held us both suspended, hearts pounding but bodies still. The muscles stood out on his flat belly and I put one hand there. He shuddered and our eyes met. I felt butterflies take flight in my veins as he smiled, a wolf’s smile, joyous and hungry.
We fell together. And it was glorious.
Adam fell asleep afterward. But energized by good sex, I thought about motivation. After a few minutes, I poked him.
“I have a theory,” I said when he grunted.
“This is going to be one of those nights when all I want to do is sleep, and you’re wound up like a spinning top, isn’t it?” he said.
I ignored him. “There are two possibilities to explain the witches’ arrival. The first is that they found out that Sherwood is here—we’ve been getting a lot of press and Sherwood was in at least one of the pictures that hit the AP.”
“Sleep, that blessed state . . .” intoned Adam, but he was listening to me.
“Sherwood is witchborn, I think, though his magic feels a little more wild than theirs. Still, they used him as a power source for who knows how long.” No one had actually told me that, but what else would they have been doing with him? “Maybe they want him back. That would explain most of the re
st.”
“I listened to your messages,” Adam said. “Thank you for doing that, by the way. I find it reassuring that after you escape near death, I can always expect a phone message from you. That way I only panic if I don’t hear from you.”
I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. Probably because he wasn’t sure, either.
“You’re welcome,” I said with dignity. “The witch last night very kindly informed us that the witches are staging a takeover. And we—Marsilia included—are expected to sit quietly and take it. But she also mentioned that she expects us to remove ourselves from helping with the meeting between the fae and the humans.”
“Yes,” said Adam.
“So maybe today”—I glanced at the clock, which read two A.M.—“yesterday, I mean, had more to do with that.”
“Okay,” Adam said. “Can I go to sleep now?”
I thought about it a minute. “Nudge,” I said.
He growled and lunged.
* * *
• • •
Meetings are boring.
Meetings in which my whole job was to show up and let everyone get a good look at me, then sit down and shut up while they talked, were more than boring. Okay, first they told me it would be my job to find a venue for the big meeting. But they didn’t actually ask me anything or give me a chance to talk.
We met in a hotel boardroom that looked a lot like a lot of other hotel boardrooms I’d been in. Maybe I’d have been more impressed by the people—all men—who represented so much governmental power if the last boardroom I’d been in hadn’t held five Gray Lords of the fae.
The only person who made an impression on me was Tory Abbot, the assistant of the Senate majority whip, Jake Campbell, a Republican from Minnesota. Tory was a sharp-faced man about ten years older than I was and had a decisive manner that demanded people listen when he spoke. Which he did—quite a lot. And he said not very much, which has always seemed to me to be a quality much prized in a politician.
Most of the reason he was interesting had nothing to do with the man himself. I’d been informed (by him) that he would be my liaison with the government. And the man he worked for, Senator Campbell, was the senator that the rogue Cantrip agents had tried to force Adam to assassinate.
About forty minutes into the meeting, which was mostly an endless debate about where to hold the meeting, I started playing solitaire on my phone. The other pack members—Adam, Paul, Kelly, and Luke (the latter three all clad in Hauptman Security shirts)—were more disciplined. They simply waited, seated around the conference table, while no one talked to them.
Finally, Tory Abbot looked at me. “Do you have any suggestions about where to hold this meeting?”
I looked over my shoulder as if there might be someone there whom he was talking to.
“Smart aleck,” murmured Kelly in a voice too soft for the humans to hear. Kelly’s day job was working at a plant nursery, but like a lot of the wolves, he moonlighted for Adam when needed. His bright blue eyes were looking away from me, so no one would see that he was talking to me. He was a sneaky hunter.
“Ms. Hauptman,” Abbot said, a little impatiently, though he was careful to stay on the far side of the room from me.
“None of the places you talked about will do,” I said. “The fae won’t come to the city and sit in iron and cement walls to discuss peace with the enemy.”
“We’re sure as fuck not going to go out to the reservation and talk with them,” said Abbot.
“That’s my wife you’re swearing at,” growled Adam, and the whole room came to a silent stillness. “Don’t do that again.” There was a lot more threat in his voice than there had been when he’d said the same thing to Sherwood yesterday.
“I wouldn’t suggest going to the reservation,” I said, as smoothly as if Adam hadn’t spoken. “I doubt they’d let you in anyway. Or out, if they did let you in. What you need is a place big enough to hold everyone and their entourages as well as the fae delegation, one that also has a small room nearby where the principals can talk. Somewhere in our territory, but not actually in town, where the fae feel at a disadvantage.”
I had been listening and thinking. I can do all that and play solitaire at the same time—it’s a gift.
“Okay,” said Abbot warily. “Where do you suggest?”
“How about one of the Red Mountain wineries? They are still in our territory.” With a sweeping hand I included Adam and the other wolves. “They are built to hold company meetings and retreats—and they are situated among growing things.”
I stopped speaking before I could tell them about the connections between the fae and alcoholic beverages—beer and mead more than wine, to be sure. But the wine would be something that would make the fae feel more at home.
“Security-wise that might be a good choice,” said a man. I was pretty sure he was Secret Service or something like that because they hadn’t told me what he did—and he’d been sitting on the sidelines like the rest of us while the others talked. “The wineries are pretty isolated, so we can keep nonparticipants away. I can go scout some out tonight and bring back suggestions.”
And the talks resumed.
I looked at the time on my phone for the third time in five minutes and Adam said, breaking easily into a heated argument about the appropriateness of holding a governmental meeting at a winery, “Gentlemen. We should excuse my wife, who needs to get back to her work.” He took the SUV key off his key ring (it was a diesel; diesels still had keys rather than fobs) and tossed it. “Paul, take my rig. I’ll catch a ride back with Luke and Kelly.”
Paul grabbed the key out of the air and saluted Adam. He opened the door for me to precede him.
I would have preferred either Kelly or Luke. Paul was one of the wolves who would rather I were not his Alpha’s mate. When Adam had told the pack he would no longer tolerate anyone dissing me, Paul had been very quiet around me. Paul had gotten a divorce a couple of months ago—and that hadn’t sweetened his temperament even a little bit. I wasn’t afraid of Paul, but he wasn’t someone I wanted to hang out with, either. That was probably why Adam had sent him with me, to force us to deal with each other.
“At least you didn’t suggest Uncle Mike’s,” Paul said acerbically when we were far enough down the hall that Adam wouldn’t hear him.
Before I could respond, we turned a corner and found ourselves in the middle of a wild rumpus of the first order. A tourist bus had evidently arrived while we’d been twiddling our toes in the boardroom. The check-in desk and the surrounding room were full of dozens of well-to-do retirees, a pizza delivery guy with a big box, and four people from a local flower shop pushing in carts of bright-colored mini-bouquets in small clear vases.
I dropped back to let Paul take point. He was a big man and people moved to let him through. I trailed in his wake through the crowd and out the revolving door into the fresh air.
“Don’t worry,” said Paul as we cleared the hotel, “I won’t attack you or anything.”
I rolled my eyes. “As if you could.”
He started to say something, shook his head, and muttered, “Let me try this again.”
“Try what?” I asked.
Instead of answering me, he stopped dead and turned in a slow circle. “Do you smell that?”
Having sharp senses is one thing. Paying attention to them so they do some good is another. I inhaled. The hotel was in the middle of town; there were a lot of scents in the air. One of those scents just didn’t belong.
“Gunpowder?” I asked. “Why are we smelling gunpowder?”
I looked around but there weren’t any people outside the hotel who were near enough that the scent could be coming off them even if they’d spent the morning out shooting—even if they had rolled in gunpowder.
Paul focused on the cars, which made more sense because they were closer.
The silver bus purred at rest, her big luggage doors open to expose the belly of the beast. I took two steps toward her, but as soon as I did, the smell of her diesel engine overpowered the smell of gunpowder.
The diesel, being a volatile organic, would travel farther than the gunpowder. If I was smelling gunpowder outside the range of the diesel, it could only be because the gunpowder smell was coming from somewhere other than the bus.
Meanwhile, Paul had examined the first of the minivans. He shook his head at me and took a step toward the little battered car with a local pizza sign on the roof. Frowning, he tilted his head.
I ran up to him and got hit in the face with a wash of garlic, tomatoes, cheese, pepperoni—the usual. He looked at me and shrugged; his stomach rumbled. He grinned, a boyish expression he’d never turned on me before, then shook his head.
We both tried the second minivan, but it smelled of flowers and baby’s breath. The baby’s breath made Paul sneeze.
He gave half a growl, stalked back to the pizza car, and pulled open the driver’s-side door. He stuck his head in.
“Pizza is strong, but it shouldn’t smell like gunpowder,” he said to me. But by then I could smell it, too, wafting out of the open door. I saw him in my mind’s eye, the pizza delivery boy carrying one of those big vinyl pizza bags designed to carry multiple boxes of pizzas.
Paul and I both ran, leaving the door of the pizza car open.
When two people run into a crowded room, a lot of drama happens—shouts and shuffling and people with mouths agape. One of the things that doesn’t happen is a miraculous clearing of pathways. Paul did that all by himself.
I hoped that the old woman he shoved to the ground would be okay, but I didn’t hesitate when I jumped over her. Time enough to apologize and feel guilty after we hunted down the threat.
We ran for the boardroom. Once out of the crowd, I was faster than Paul, so I was in front when we turned the last corner.
Storm Cursed (A Mercy Thompson Novel) Page 15