Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  “Which means?”

  I patted the sleek fender and grinned at him. “It only goes twenty miles per hour forward, but can break one hundred backward if you use all four gears.”

  He laughed. “Cute car.” He stared at it for a minute and the smile fell away from his face. “Listen. Can I take you out to lunch? Business, so I’ll foot the bill.”

  “Kennewick PD needs a mechanic?” I asked.

  “No. But I think you can help us.”

  I washed up, changed out of my work clothes and met him back in the office. Honey looked up when I came in. Last week, her second week of guard duty, she’d turned up in jeans (pressed) with a folding chair, small desk, laptop and cell phone. Working out of my office was almost as good, she claimed, as working out of her own. Ever since the incident with Black, we’d been treating each other with cautious friendliness.

  “I’m going to lunch with Tony,” I announced. “I’ll be back in an hour or so. Gabriel, would you call Charlie about his Opel, and tell him the price we got on that used Mazda RX7 engine? The cost won’t make him happy, but the RX will fit.”

  Honey looked up at me, but she didn’t protest me leaving, as I half expected her to.

  “I hope you don’t mind if we walk,” Tony said as we stepped out into the sweltering heat. “I think better when I’m moving.”

  “Fine with me.”

  We took the shortcut into downtown Kennewick, over the train tracks and through a couple of empty lots. Honey trailed behind us, but she was good enough that I don’t think Tony spotted her.

  Downtown is one of the older sections of town, small businesses in old buildings surrounded by Craftsman and Victorian houses, mostly built in the twenties and thirties. Efforts had been made to make the shopping area look inviting, but there were a few too many empty shops for it to look prosperous.

  I expected him to talk to me while we were walking, but he didn’t. I held my peace and let him think.

  “It’s pretty hot for walking,” he said finally.

  “I like the heat,” I told him. “And the cold. I like living somewhere that actually has all four seasons. Montana has two. Nine months of winter, three months where it almost warms up, then back to winter. Sometimes the leaves actually get to turn colors before the first snow hits. I remember it snowing on the Fourth of July once.”

  He didn’t say anything more, so I supposed he hadn’t been trying to make small talk—but I didn’t know what else he could have been trying for with his comment, either.

  He took me to a small coffee shop where we ordered at the counter and then were escorted into a dark, cool room filled with small tables. The atmosphere the owners had been trying for was probably an English pub. Never having been to England, I couldn’t tell how close they’d gotten, but it appealed to me.

  “So what am I here for?” I asked him finally, after soup and a largish sandwich appeared before me, and the waitress left us alone. It was late for lunch and early for dinner so we had the room to ourselves.

  “Look,” he said after a moment. “That sour old guy who used to be your boss, the one who still comes in once in a while—he’s fae, right?”

  Zee had publicly acknowledged his heritage for a long time, so I nodded my head and took a bite of sandwich.

  He took a gulp of water. “I’ve seen Hauptman, the werewolf, at your garage at least twice.”

  “He’s my neighbor,” I said. The sandwich was pretty good. I was betting they made their own bread. I’d had better soup, though, too much salt.

  Tony frowned at me and said intensely. “You’re the only one who always knows who I am, no matter what disguise I wear.” Tony was an undercover cop with a talent for changing his appearance. We’d become acquainted after I’d recognized him and almost blown his cover.

  “Mmm?” My mouth was full on purpose because I didn’t want to say anything more until he got to his point.

  “The fae are supposed to be able to change their appearance. Is that how you always know me?”

  “I’m not fae, Tony,” I told him after I swallowed. “Zee is. The fae change their appearance by magic—glamour, they call it. I’m not entirely sure that the fae can see through each other’s glamour—I certainly can’t.”

  There was a short silence as Tony adjusted what he had been going to say.

  “But you know something about the fae. And you know something about the werewolves?”

  “Because Hauptman is my neighbor?”

  “Because you were dating him. A friend of mine saw you at a restaurant with him.”

  I looked at him and then pointedly around the restaurant.

  He got it. “He said it looked like you two were pretty hot and heavy.”

  Defeated, I conceded. “I went out with him a couple of times.”

  “Are you still?”

  “No.” I’d put too much emphasis on it.

  I’d made a point to stay out of Adam’s way since I’d almost made out with him in his garage. Remembering that made me feel like a coward. I didn’t want to talk about Adam if I could help it. Truth was, I didn’t know what to do about him.

  “I’m not fae.” I decided not to eat the rest of the soup, but I opened the crackers and munched on them. “I’m not a werewolf.”

  He looked like he didn’t want to believe me, but he chose not to confront my answer directly. “But you know some of them. Some fae and some werewolves.”

  “Yes.”

  Tony set down his spoon and gripped the edge of the table with both hands. “Look, Mercy. Violent crime always goes up in the summer. The heat makes tempers shorter. We know that. But I’ve never seen anything like this. It started with that murder-suicide in the Pasco hotel a few weeks ago, but it didn’t stop there. We’re working double shifts trying to handle the load. Last night I took in a guy I’ve known for years. He has three kids and a wife who adores him. Yesterday he came home from work and tried to beat her to death. This just isn’t normal, not even in the middle of a heat wave.”

  I shrugged, feeling as helpless as I doubtless looked. I knew things were bad, but I hadn’t realized how bad.

  “I’ll ask Zee, but I don’t think it’s anything the fae are doing.” I had to quash any hint of that—it might be dangerous for Tony if he started poking around. The fae don’t like the police prying into their business. “The last thing they want is to frighten the general population. If one of them were doing something like this, the whole community would search them out and take care of it.”

  I hadn’t talked to Zee for a few days. Maybe I ought to call him and suggest that the police were looking toward them for answers to the outbreak in violence—without using Tony’s name. I didn’t know what they could do against a vampire who was also a sorcerer. The fae weren’t very organized, and tended to ignore other people’s problems. They knew about Littleton—because Zee knew—but they seemed to be content to let the vampires and wolves search him out. But if the situation started to put a little pressure on them, maybe they’d help find him—Warren and Stefan hadn’t been making much headway. The trick would be to make certain that the fae applied their efforts against the villain, and not against the police.

  “What?” asked Tony sharply. “What were you thinking?”

  Whoops. “I thought that it might be a good idea to let Zee know what you just told me. Just in case there’s something they can do about it.” I can lie, but living among werewolves, many of whom can smell a falsehood, had made me pretty adept at using the truth to my advantage.

  “And the werewolves?”

  I shook my head. “Werewolves are pretty simple creatures—that’s why they make good soldiers. If there were a rogue werewolf out here, there might be dead”—I found a hasty substitute for bodies—“animals, but not regular people going berserk for no good reason. The wolves aren’t magical like the fae are.”

  I slapped my hands lightly on my thighs and leaned forward. “Listen, I am happy to help you with what little I know about fae
and werewolves. I will make a point of talking to Zee—but, as you said, we’re in the middle of a heat wave. We’ve been in the three digits for a long time with no sign of cooler weather. It’s enough to make anyone crazy.”

  He shook his head. “Not Mike. He didn’t lose his temper when his wife wrecked his ’57 T-Bird. I tell you I know this guy. I played basketball in high school with him. He doesn’t have a temper to lose. He wouldn’t just lose it and beat up his wife because his AC frizzed out.”

  I hate guilt. Hate it worse when I know that I have nothing to feel guilty about. I was not responsible for Littleton.

  Still, how would it be to hurt someone you loved? I could see his friend’s situation was eating at Tony—and I had a strong surge of sympathy, and guilt. I couldn’t do anything either.

  “Get your friend a good lawyer—and get him and his family to see a therapist. If you need names, I have a friend who is a divorce lawyer—I know he has a couple of counselors he recommends to his clients.”

  Tony jerked his head in a motion I took to be a nod, and we finished lunch in silence. I took a couple of dollars out of my pocket and tucked them under my plate for a tip. They were damp with sweat, but I expect the waitresses were used to dealing with that this summer.

  As soon as we exited the restaurant, I could smell a werewolf—and it wasn’t Honey. I glanced at the people around us and recognized one of Adam’s wolves looking in the window of a secondhand store. Since he didn’t look the type to be really interested in the display of old baby buggies, he must be guarding me. I wondered what had happened to Honey.

  “What’s wrong?” Tony asked as we walked past my security detail.

  “Stray thought,” I told him. “I guess the heat’s making me crabby, too.”

  “Listen, Mercy,” he said, “I appreciate you coming out with me like this. And I’d like to take you up on your offer to help us. Seattle and Spokane have specialists who deal with the fae for them—some of those cops are fae. We don’t have anyone like that. We don’t have any werewolves either”—they did, at least the Richland PD did, but if they didn’t know that, I wasn’t going to tell him—“and it would be good not to be wandering around totally in the dark for a change.”

  I hadn’t meant to offer to help the police—that would be too dangerous. I opened my mouth to say so, and then stopped.

  The trick to staying out of trouble, Bran had told me, is to keep your nose out of other people’s business. If it became known that I was consulting with the police, I could find myself in big trouble.

  Adam I could deal with, it was the fae I worried about, them and the vampires. I knew too much and I didn’t expect that they would trust me to judge how much to tell the police.

  Still, it didn’t seem fair that the police were responsible for keeping the peace when they only knew the things that the fae and the werewolves wanted them to know. There were too many ways that could prove deadly. If something happened to Tony or one of the good guys and I could have prevented it, I’d never sleep a night through again. Not that I’d been doing particularly well at sleeping lately anyway.

  “Fine,” I said. “Here’s some free advice. Make sure that none of your co-workers starts stirring up the fae over this.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  I took my first step out into the abyss, and told him something that might get me in real trouble. I glanced around, but if the werewolf was still tailing us, he was doing a really good job. Since Adam’s people were usually more than competent, I dropped my voice to a bare whisper. “Because the fae aren’t as gentle or powerless as they try to let on. It would not be a good thing if they decided someone was looking their way for this rise in violence.”

  Tony missed a step and almost tripped over a railroad tie. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean never put yourself in a position where harm to you would make the fae community here safer.” I gave him a reassuring smile. “It is not in their best interest to harm anyone—and they usually police themselves so that you don’t have to. If one of them is breaking the law, he will be taken care of. You just need to be careful not to make yourself a threat to them.”

  He absorbed that for half a block. “What can you tell me about dealing with the werewolves?”

  “Here?” I asked waving my hand vaguely at the city around us. “Talk to Adam Hauptman before you try to question someone you think might be a werewolf. In another city, find out who’s in charge and talk to them.”

  “Get permission from their Alpha before speaking to them?” he asked a little incredulously. “You mean like we have to talk to parents before questioning a minor?” Bran had let the public know about Alphas, but not exactly how rigid the pack structure really is.

  “Mmm,” I looked at the sky for inspiration. None came, so I tried to muddle through it on my own. “A child can’t rip your arm off, Tony. Adam can see to it that they answer your questions without hurting anyone. Werewolves can be…volatile. Adam can help with that.”

  “You mean they’ll tell us whatever he wants us to hear.”

  I took a deep breath. “This is important for you to believe: Adam is one of the good guys. He really is. That’s not true of all pack leaders, but Adam’s on your side. He can help you, and as long as you don’t offend him, he will. He’s been pack leader here for a long time because he’s good at his job—let him do it.”

  I don’t know if Tony decided to believe me or not, but thinking about it kept him occupied until we stopped next to his car in my lot.

  “Thanks, Mercy.”

  “I didn’t help.” I shrugged. “I’ll talk to Zee. Heck, maybe he knows someone who can give us a break in the weather.” Not likely. Weather was Great Magic, not something that most fae had the power to alter.

  “If you were a real Indian, you could do a rain dance.”

  Tony could tease me because his Venezuelan half was mostly Indian of one sort or other.

  I shook my head solemnly. “In Montana, the Indians don’t have a rain dance, they have a Stop-this-Damned-Wind-and-Snow dance. If you’ve ever been to Browning, Montana, in the winter, you’ll know it doesn’t work.”

  Tony laughed as he got in his car and started it. He left the door open to let the heat out, holding a hand in front of the vent to catch the first trickle of cold air.

  “It’ll probably cool down about the time I get to the station,” he said.

  “Toughen up,” I advised him.

  He grinned, shut his door and drove off. It was only then that I realized Honey’s car wasn’t in the lot.

  Gabriel looked up when I came in. “Mr. Hauptman called for you,” he said. “He said you should check your cell phone for messages.”

  I found the cell phone where I’d left it, on top of a rolling tool chest in the shop.

  “Just picked up Warren,” Adam’s voice had that calm and brisk rhythm he only used when things were really bad. “We’re taking him to my house now. You should meet us there.”

  I called Adam’s house, but the answering machine picked up. So I called Samuel’s cell.

  “Samuel?”

  “I’m on my way to Adam’s house now,” he told me. “I won’t know anything until I get there.”

  I didn’t ask if Warren was hurt. Adam’s voice had told me that much. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Not that it mattered, I thought, pressing the END button. There wasn’t anything that I could do to help.

  I told Gabriel to hold the fort, and to lock up at five.

  “Werewolf troubles?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Warren’s hurt.”

  “You all right to drive?” he asked.

  I nodded again and dashed out the door. I was halfway to my car when I realized that probably no one would have thought to call Kyle. I hesitated. Warren and Kyle weren’t an item anymore—but I didn’t think it was due to lack of caring on either of their parts. So I found Kyle’s office number on my phone’s memory and got in touch with his hyper-efficient office manag
er.

  “I’m sorry,” she told me. “He’s unavailable right now, may I take your name and number?”

  “This is Mercedes Thompson.” It wasn’t easy to buckle in with one hand, but I managed. “My phone number—”

  “Ms. Thompson? Hold on, I’ll patch you through.”

  Huh. Kyle must have put me on his important people list. I listened to classical music in my ear as I turned onto Chemical Drive and put my foot down. I was pretty sure the driver of the green Taurus behind me was the werewolf who had been tailing me.

  “What’s up, Mercy?” Kyle’s soothing voice replaced Chopin before I made it to the WELCOME TO FINLEY sign.

  “Warren’s hurt. I don’t know how badly, but Adam called in the troops.”

  “I’m in my car near Twenty-seventh and 395,” he said. “Where is Warren?”

  Behind me, I saw flashing lights as the police car that usually hid just past the railroad overpass pulled over the Taurus. I put my foot down harder on the gas.

  “At Adam’s house.”

  “I’ll be there shortly.” As he hung up, I heard his Jag’s big V-12 open up.

  He didn’t beat me there, but I was still arguing with the idiot at the front door when he skidded to a stop, splattering gravel all over.

  I pulled out my cell phone and played Adam’s message for the door guard. “He’s expecting me,” I grated.

  The idiot shook his head. “My orders are no one but pack.”

  “She is pack, Elliot, you moron,” said Honey, coming to the door behind the big man. “Adam’s claimed her as his mate—which you very well know. Let her in.” Honey’s hand clamped on Elliot’s arm and dragged him back from the door.

  I grabbed Kyle’s arm and pulled him past the obstreperous moron-guard. There were werewolves everywhere. I knew that there were only about thirty wolves in Adam’s pack, but I’d have sworn there were twice that in the living room.

  “This is Kyle,” I told Honey, leading Kyle to the stairs.

  “Hello, Kyle,” Honey said softly. “Warren’s told me about you.” I hadn’t realized she was a friend of Warren’s, but her smeared mascara told me she’d been crying.