Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  “He thinks that’s also why there are more vampires, ghosts, and whatnot around the Tri-Cities than, say Spokane, which is a larger city.”

  “I try to stay out of the other species’ business,” I told him. “I can’t avoid the werewolves, not with Adam living right next door, but I try. The only fae I associate with are Zee and his son Tad.”

  “The fae are willing to talk to you.” Samuel stretched his legs out and clasped his hands behind his neck, sticking his elbows out like wings. “Adam says your old boss is one of the oldest of the fae—and, just so you know, the metalsmiths—gremlins—are not included with the lesser fae. Also, Warren told me that Stefan the vampire visits you quite often. Then there’s this human police officer. Drawing the attention of the police is dangerous.”

  It did sound as if I had my finger in all sorts of pies.

  “Zee was forced public by the Gray Lords,” I said. “So someone considers him to be one of the lesser fae. Stefan loves his bus, and I let him help me fix it.”

  “You what?”

  I forgot he’d never met Stefan. “He’s not like most vampires,” I tried to explain. Even though Stefan was the only vampire I’d ever met, I knew how they were supposed to act: I went to movies just like everyone else.

  “They are all like most vampires,” Samuel said darkly. “Some of them are just better at hiding it than others.”

  It wouldn’t do any good to argue with him—especially since I agreed with him in principle.

  “And the police officer wasn’t my fault,” I muttered, taking my exit into Pasco. It seemed like a good time to change the subject, so I said, “The Fairy Mound in Walla Walla is the bar where tourists go to see the fae. The fae who don’t want to be gawked at mostly hang out at Uncle Mike’s here in Pasco. Zee says there’s a spell on it that makes humans avoid it. It doesn’t affect me, but I don’t know about werewolves.”

  “You aren’t going in without me,” he said.

  “Fine.” Never argue with werewolves before you need to, I reminded myself.

  Uncle Mike’s was across the Columbia River from my garage, which put it near Pasco’s Industrial Park. The old building had once been a small warehouse, and there were warehouses on either side, both heavily tagged by the local kids. I wasn’t sure if magic kept the kids away, or someone with a lot of paint and a brush, but Uncle Mike’s exterior was always pristine.

  I pulled into the parking lot and turned off my lights. It was about seven, still a little early for the regular crowd, and there were only four other cars in the lot, one of which was Zee’s truck.

  Inside, the bar was dark enough that a human might stumble over the stairs that led from the entry to the bar proper. Samuel hesitated in the doorway, but I thought that it was a tactical thing and not a reaction to a spell. The bar took up all of the wall to our right. There was a small dance floor cleared in the center of the room, with clusters of small tables scattered around the outside.

  “There they are,” I told Samuel, and headed for the far corner, where Zee sat looking relaxed next to a moderately attractive woman in conservative business dress.

  I’ve never seen Zee without his glamour; he told me he’d worn it so long that he was more comfortable in human guise. His chosen form was moderately tall, balding, with a little potbelly. His face was craggy, but not unattractively so—just enough to give it character.

  He saw us coming and smiled. Since he and the woman already had the defensive seats, setting their backs against the wall, Samuel and I sat across from them. If having the rest of the room behind him, mostly empty as it was, bothered Samuel, I couldn’t tell. I hitched my chair around until I could at least get a glimpse of the rest of the room.

  “Hey, Zee,” I said. “This is Dr. Samuel Cornick. Samuel, meet Zee.”

  Zee nodded, but didn’t try to introduce his companion. Instead, he turned to her, and said, “These are the ones I told you about.”

  She frowned and tapped the table with long, manicured nails. Something about the way she used them made me think that beneath the glamour she might have claws. I’d been trying to pin down her scent, but finally was forced to conclude that either she didn’t have one or that she smelled of iron and earth just like Zee.

  When she looked up from contemplating her nails, she spoke to me and not to Samuel. “Zee tells me there is a child missing.”

  “She’s fifteen,” I said, wanting to be clear. The fae don’t like it if they think you’ve lied to them. “The local Alpha’s human daughter.”

  “This could be trouble for me,” she said. “But I have talked to Zee, and what I have to tell you has nothing to do with the fae, and so I am at liberty to share it. I would not usually help the wolves, but I do not like those who take their battles to the innocents.”

  I waited.

  “I work at a bank,” she said at last. “I won’t tell you the name of it, but it is the bank that the local seethe of vampires uses. Their deposits follow a regular pattern.” Meaning that most of their victims’ payments were monthly. She sipped her drink. “Six days ago, there was an unexpected deposit.”

  “Visitors paying tribute,” I said, sitting up straighter in my chair. This sounded promising. A single fae or wolf or whatever wouldn’t have paid a tribute high enough to catch anyone’s eye.

  “I took the liberty of speaking to Uncle Mike himself before you came,” said Zee quietly. “He’s heard of no new visitors, which means these people are keeping very quiet.”

  “We need to talk to the vampires,” said Samuel. “Adam will know how to do it.”

  “That will take too long.” I took out my cell phone and dialed Stefan’s number. It was early for him to be up, but he’d called me not much later than this.

  “Mercy,” he said warmly. “Are you back from your trip?”

  “Yes. Stefan, I need your help.”

  “What can I do for you?” Something changed in his voice, but I couldn’t worry about that.

  “Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, a group of people including out-of-territory werewolves kidnapped the Alpha’s daughter. She’s a personal friend of mine, Stefan. Someone told me that your seethe might know of a visiting pack.”

  “Ah,” he said. “That’s not in my area of responsibility. Do you want me to inquire for you?”

  I hesitated. I didn’t know much about the vampires except that smart people avoid them. Something about the formality of his question made me think it was a bigger question than it sounded.

  “What does that mean, exactly?” I asked suspiciously.

  He laughed, a cheerful unvampire-like sound. “Good for you. It means that you are appointing me your representative and that gives me certain rights to pursue this that I might not otherwise have.”

  “Rights over me?”

  “None that I will take advantage of,” he said. “I give you my word of honor, Mercedes Thompson. I will force you to do nothing against your will.”

  “All right,” I said. “Then yes, I would like you to inquire for me.”

  “What do you know?”

  I glanced at the woman’s expressionless face. “I can’t tell you everything—just that I’ve been told that your seethe knows of visitors to the Tri-Cities who might be the group I’m looking for. If that group doesn’t have any werewolves, then they’re the wrong ones. They might be doing something experimental with medicines or drugs.”

  “I’ll inquire,” he said. “Keep your cell phone at hand.”

  “I’m not certain that was wise,” said Zee, after I hung up.

  “You said she deals with the werewolves.” The woman curled her upper lip at me. “You didn’t tell me she also deals with the undead.”

  “I’m a mechanic,” I told her. “I don’t make enough money to pay off the vampires in cash, so I fix their cars. Stefan has an old bus he’s restoring. He’s the only one I’ve ever dealt with personally.”

  She didn’t look happy, but her lip uncurled.

  “I appr
eciate your time,” I said, narrowly skirting an outright thank you—which can get you in trouble. The wrong kind of fae will take your thanks as an admission that you feel obligated to them. Which means that you must then do whatever they ask. Zee had been very careful to break me of that habit. “The Alpha will also be happy to recover his daughter.”

  “It is always good for the Alpha to be happy,” she said; I couldn’t tell if she was being honest or sarcastic. She stood up abruptly and smoothed down her skirts to give me time to move my chair so she could exit. She stopped by the bar and spoke to the bartender before she left.

  “She smells like you,” Samuel said to Zee. “Is she a metalsmith, too?”

  “Gremlin, please,” said Zee. “It may be a new name for an old thing, but at least it is not a bad translation. She is a troll—a relative, but not a close one. Trolls like money and extortion, a lot of them go into banking.” He frowned at me. “You don’t go into that nest of vampires alone, Mercy, not even if Stefan is escorting you. He appears better than most, but I have been around a long time. You cannot trust a vampire. The more pleasant they appear, the more dangerous they are.”

  “I don’t plan on going anywhere,” I told him. “Samuel is right, the wolves don’t pay tribute here. Likely they are people who have nothing to do with taking Jesse.”

  My phone rang.

  “Mercy?”

  It was Stefan, but there was something about his voice that troubled me. I heard something else, too, but there were more people in the bar and someone had turned up the music.

  “Wait a moment,” I said loudly—then lied. “I’m sorry I can’t hear you. I’m going outside.” I waved at Samuel and Zee, then walked outside to the quieter parking lot.

  Samuel came with me. He started to speak but I held up a finger to my lips. I didn’t know how good a vampire’s hearing was, but I didn’t want to risk it.

  “Mercy, can you hear me now?” Stefan’s voice was overly crisp and even.

  “Yes,” I said. I could also hear the woman’s voice that said sweetly, “Ask her, Stefan.”

  He sucked in his breath as if the unknown woman had done something that hurt.

  “Is there a strange werewolf with you at Uncle Mike’s?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, looking around. I couldn’t smell anything like Stefan nearby, and I was pretty certain I’d have noticed. The vampires must have a contact at Uncle Mike’s, someone who could tell Samuel was a werewolf and who knew Adam’s werewolves.

  “My mistress wonders that she was not informed of a visitor.”

  “The wolves don’t ask permission to travel here, not from your seethe,” I told him. “Adam knows.”

  “Adam has disappeared, leaving his pack leaderless.” They spoke together, his words so tight on the end of hers that he sounded like an echo.

  I was relatively certain she didn’t know I could hear her—though Stefan did. He knew what I was because I’d shown him. Apparently he hadn’t seen fit to inform the rest of his seethe. Of course, someone as relatively powerless as I was of little interest to the vampires.

  “The pack is hardly leaderless,” I said.

  “The pack is weak,” they said. “And the wolves have set precedent. They paid for permission to come into our territory because we are dominant to Adam’s little pack.”

  Samuel’s eyes narrowed, and his mouth tightened. The vampire’s contributors were the people who’d killed Mac, the people who had Jesse.

  “So the new visitors have werewolves among them,” I said sharply. “They are not Bran’s wolves. They cannot be a pack. They are less than nothing. Outlaws with no status. I killed two of them myself, and Adam killed another two. And you know I am no great power. Real wolves, wolves who were pack, would never have fallen to something as weak as I.” That was the truth, and I hoped they both could hear it.

  There was a long pause. I could hear murmuring in the background, but I could not tell what they said.

  “Perhaps that is so,” said Stefan at last, sounding tired. “Bring your wolf and come to us. We’ll determine if he needs a visitor’s pass. If not, we see no reason not to tell you what we know of these outlaws who are so much less than pack.”

  “I don’t know where your seethe is,” I said.

  “I’ll come and get you,” said Stefan, apparently speaking on his own. He hung up.

  “I guess we’re going to visit the vampires tonight,” I said. Sometime during the conversation, Zee had come out as well. I hadn’t noticed when, but he was standing beside Samuel. “Do you know vampires?”

  Samuel shrugged. “A little. I’ve run into one a time or two.”

  “I’ll go with you,” the old mechanic said softly, and tossed back the last of the scotch in the shot glass he’d brought out with him. “Nothing I am will help you—metal is not their bane. But I know something of vampires.”

  “No,” I said. “I need you for something else. If I don’t call you tomorrow morning, I want you to call this number.” I pulled an old grocery receipt out of my purse and wrote Warren’s home number on the back of it. “This is Warren’s, the wolf who’s Adam’s third. Tell him as much as you know.”

  He took the number. “I don’t like this.” But he shoved the note into his pocket in tacit agreement. “I wish you had more time to prepare. Do you have a symbol of your faith, Mercy, a cross, perhaps? It is not quite as effective as Mr. Stoker made it out to be, but it will help.”

  “I’m wearing a cross,” Samuel said. “Bran makes us all wear them. We don’t have vampires in our part of Montana, but there are other things crosses are good for.” Like some of the nastier fae—but Samuel wouldn’t mention that in front of Zee—it would be rude. Just as Zee would never mention that the third and fourth bullets in the gun he carried were silver—I made them for him myself. Not that he couldn’t do it better himself, but if he got tangled up with werewolves, I figured it would be because of me.

  “Mercy?” asked Samuel.

  I don’t like crosses. My distaste has nothing to do with the metaphysical like it does for vampires; when I lived in Bran’s pack, I wore crosses, too. I have a whole spiel about how sick it is to carry around the instrument of Christ’s torture as a symbol for the Prince of Peace who taught us to love one another. It’s a good spiel, and I even believe it.

  Really though, they just give me the willies. I have a very vivid memory of going to church with my mother on one of her rare visits when I was four or five. She was poor and living in Portland; she just couldn’t afford to come very often. So when she could come, she liked to do something special. We went to Missoula for a mother-daughter weekend and, on Sunday, picked a church to attend at random—more, I think, because my mother felt she ought to take me to church than because she was particularly religious.

  She stopped to talk to the pastor or priest, and I wandered farther into the building so I was alone when I turned the corner and saw, hanging on the wall, a bigger-than-life-size statue of Christ dying on the cross. My eyes were just level with his feet, which were tacked to the cross with a huge nail. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but someone with talent had painted it true to life, complete with blood. We didn’t go to church that day—and ever since then, I couldn’t look at a cross without seeing the son of God dying upon it.

  So, no crosses for me. But, having been raised in Bran’s pack, I carried around something else. Reluctantly, I pulled out my necklace and showed it to them.

  Samuel frowned. The little figure was stylized; I suppose he couldn’t tell what it was at first.

  “A dog?” asked Zee, staring at my necklace.

  “A lamb,” I said defensively, tucking it safely back under my shirt. “Because one of Christ’s names is ‘The Lamb of God.’ ”

  Samuel’s shoulders shook slightly. “I can see it now, Mercy holding a roomful of vampires at bay with her glowing silver sheep.”

  I gave his shoulder a hard push, aware of the heat climbing up my cheeks, but it didn’t help. He
sang in a soft taunting voice, “Mercy had a little lamb . . .”

  “I’ve been told it’s the faith of the wearer that matters,” Zee said, though he sounded doubtful, too. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever used your lamb against a vampire?”

  “No,” I said shortly, still huffy over the song. “But if the Star of David works, and Bran says it does, then this should, too.”

  We all turned to watch a car drive into the parking lot, but its occupants got out and, after the driver tipped an imaginary hat at Zee, walked into Uncle Mike’s. No vampires in that lot.

  “Is there anything else we should know?” I asked Zee, who seemed to be the most informed of us. All I knew for certain about vampires came under the heading of “Stay Away From.”

  “Prayer doesn’t work” he said. “Though it seems to have some effect on demons and some of the oldest of the dark fae. Garlic doesn’t work—”

  “Except like insect repellent,” said Stefan, just appearing between two parked cars behind Zee. “It doesn’t hurt, but it smells bad and tastes worse. If you don’t irritate one of us, and make sure you bring a friend who hasn’t eaten garlic, it’ll at least put you last on the menu.”

  I hadn’t heard him come, hadn’t seen him or sensed him at all until he spoke. From somewhere, Zee drew a dark-bladed dagger as long as my arm and stepped between me and the vampire. Samuel growled.

  “I’m sorry,” Stefan apologized humbly, as he noticed how badly he’d startled us. “Moving unseen is a talent of mine, but I usually don’t use it on my friends. I’ve just had an unpleasant episode, and it left me with my guard up.”

  Stefan was tallish, but he always seemed to take up less space than he should, so I seldom thought of him as being a big man unless he was standing next to someone else. He was, I noticed, just exactly the same height as Samuel and nearly as broad in the shoulders, though he lacked some of the werewolf’s bulk.

  His face had regular features and in repose he might be handsome, I suppose. But his expressions were so big that I lost the shape of his features for the bright engagement of his grin.