Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  I would not choose Samuel. Not because I didn’t trust him, but because I could trust him absolutely. He would love me and care for me, until I chewed off my arm to be free—and I wouldn’t be the only person I’d hurt. Samuel had been damaged enough without me adding to it.

  When I told him how I felt, he would leave.

  I hoped he would still be gone, but his car was parked next to my rust-colored Rabbit. I stopped in the driveway, but it was already too late. He’d know I was outside.

  I didn’t have to tell him today, I thought. I wouldn’t have to lose him today. But soon. Very soon.

  Warren and Honey were right. If I didn’t do something soon, blood would flow. It was a testament to the control both Adam and Samuel had, that there had been no fighting up until now. I knew in my heart of hearts, if it ever came down to a real fight between them, one of them would die.

  I could bear losing Samuel again if I had to, but I could not bear being the cause of his death. And I was certain that it was Samuel who would die in a fight with Adam. Not that Adam was a better fighter. I’d seen Samuel in a fight or ten, and he knew what he was doing. But Adam had an edge of ruthlessness that Samuel lacked. Adam was a soldier, a killer, and Samuel a healer. He would hold back until it was too late.

  The screen door of the house creaked and I looked up into Samuel’s gray eyes. He wasn’t a handsome man, but there was a beauty to his long features and ash brown hair that went bone deep.

  “What put that look on your face?” Samuel asked. “Something wrong at Adam’s house?”

  “A couple of bigoted kids beat up on Jesse,” I told him. It wasn’t a lie. He wouldn’t know that I was just answering his second question, not his first.

  For an instant anger flew across his face—he liked Jesse, too. Then his control reasserted itself, and Dr. Cornick was on the spot and ready for action.

  “She’s all right,” I told him before he said anything. “Just bruises and hurt feelings. We were worried for a bit that Adam was going to do murder, but I think we’ve got him settled down.”

  He came down off the porch and touched my face. “Just a few rough minutes, eh? I’d better go check Jesse over anyway.”

  I nodded. “I’ll get something on for supper.”

  “No,” he said. “You look like you could use some cheering up. Adam in a rage and Zee locked up, both in one day, is a little much. Why don’t you get cleaned up and I’ll take you out for pizza and company.”

  The pizza place was stuffed full of people and musical instrument cases. I took my glass of pop and Samuel’s beer and went looking for two empty seats while he paid for our food.

  After Tumbleweed shut down on Sunday night, their last night, all the performers and all the people who’d put it on apparently gathered together for one last hurrah—and they’d invited Samuel, who’d invited me. They made quite an impressive crowd—and didn’t leave very many empty seats.

  I had to settle for an already occupied table with two empty chairs. I leaned down and put my lips near the ear of the man sitting with his back to me. It was too intimate for a stranger, but there was no choice. A human ear wouldn’t have picked up my voice in this din from any farther away.

  “Are those seats taken?” I asked.

  The man looked up and I realized he wasn’t as much of a stranger as I thought…on two levels. First, he was the one who had complained about Samuel’s Welsh, Tim Someone with a last name that was Central European. Second, he had been one of the men in O’Donnell’s house, Cologne Man, in fact.

  “No problem,” he said loudly.

  It could be coincidence. There could be a thousand people in the Tri-Cities who wore that particular cologne; maybe it didn’t smell as bad to someone who didn’t have my nose.

  This was a man who knew Tolkien’s Elvish and Welsh (though not as well as he thought he did, if he was critical of Samuel’s). Hardly qualifications for a fae-hating bigot. He was more likely one of the fae aficionados who made the owner of the little fae bar in Walla Walla so much money, and had turned the reservation in Nevada into another Las Vegas.

  I thanked him and took the seat nearest the wall, leaving the outside one for Samuel. Maybe he wasn’t one of O’Donnell’s Bright Future crowd. Maybe he was the killer—or a police officer.

  I smiled politely and took a good look at him. He wasn’t in bad shape, but he was certainly human. He couldn’t possibly have beheaded a man without an ax.

  So, not a Bright Futurean, nor a killer. He was either just a man who shared poor taste in cologne with someone who was in O’Donnell’s house, or a police officer.

  “I’m Tim Milanovich,” he said, all but shouting to get his voice over the sound of all the other people talking, as he extended his arm carefully around his beer and over his pizza. “And this is my friend Austin. Austin Summers.”

  “Mercedes Thompson.” I shook his hand—and the other young man’s hand as well. The second man, Austin Summers, was more interesting than Tim Milanovich.

  If he’d been a werewolf, he’d have been on the dominant side. He had the same subtle appeal of a really good politician. Not so handsome that people noticed it, but good-looking in a rugged football player way. Medium brown hair, several shades lighter than mine, and root beer brown eyes completed the picture. He was a few years younger than Tim, I thought, but I could see why Tim was hanging around him.

  It was too crowded for me to get a good handle on Austin’s scent when he was sitting across the table, but impulsively, I managed to move the hand I’d used to shake his against my nose as if I had an itch—and abruptly the evening turned into something besides an outing to keep my mind off my worries.

  This man had been at O’Donnell’s house—and I knew why one of Jesse’s attackers had smelled familiar.

  Scent is a complicated thing. It is both a single identification marker and an amalgam of many scents. Most people use the same shampoo, deodorant, and toothpaste all the time. They clean their houses with the same cleaners; they wash their clothes with the same laundry soap and dry them with the same dryer sheets. All these scents combine with their own personal scent to make up their distinctive smell.

  This Austin wasn’t the man who’d attacked Jesse. He was too old, a couple of years out of high school at least, and not quite the right scent—but he lived in the same household. A lover or a brother, I thought, and put money on the brother.

  Austin Summers. I would remember that name and see if I could come up with an address. Hadn’t there been a Summers boy that Jesse had had a crush on last year? Before the werewolves had admitted to their existence. Back when Adam had just been a moderately wealthy businessman. John, Joseph…something biblical…Jacob Summers. That was it. No wonder she was so upset.

  I sipped my pop and glanced up at Tim, who was eating a slice of pizza. I’d have bet my last nickel that he wasn’t a police officer—he had none of the usual tells that mark a cop and he wasn’t in the habit of carrying a gun. Even if they are unarmed, police officers always smell a little of gunpowder.

  The odds of Tim being Cologne Man had just made it near a hundred percent. So what was a man who loved Celtic folk songs and languages doing in the house of a man who hated the largely Celtic fae?

  I smiled at Tim and said sincerely, “Actually, Mr. Milanovich, we sort of met this weekend. You were talking to Samuel after his performance.”

  There were places where my Native American skin and coloring made me memorable, but not in the Tri-Cities, where I blended in nicely with the Hispanic population.

  “Call me Tim,” he said, while trying frantically to place me.

  Samuel saved him from continued embarrassment by his arrival.

  “Here you are,” he said to me after murmuring an apology to someone trying to walk through the narrow aisle in the opposite direction. “Sorry it took me so long, Mercy, but I took a minute to stop and talk.” He set a little red plastic marker with a black 34 on top of the table next to Tim’s pizza. “Mr. Milan
ovich,” he said as he sat down next to me. “Good to see you.”

  Of course Samuel would remember his name; he was like that. Tim was flattered to be recognized; it was written all over his earnest face.

  “And this is Austin Summers,” I yelled pleasantly, louder than I needed to, since Samuel’s hearing was at least as good as mine. “Austin, meet the folksinging physician, Dr. Samuel Cornick.” Ever since I heard them introduce him as “the folksinging physician,” I’d known he hated it—and I’d known I had to use it.

  Samuel gave me an irritated look before turning a blandly smiling expression to the men we shared the table with.

  I kept a genial expression on my face to conceal my triumph at irritating him while Samuel and Tim fell into a discussion of common themes in English and Welsh folk songs; Samuel charming and Tim pedantic. Tim spoke less and less as they continued.

  I noticed that Austin watched his friend and Samuel with the same pleasantly interested expression that I’d adopted, and I wondered what he was thinking about that he felt he had to conceal.

  A tall man stood up on a chair and gave a whistle that would have cut through a bigger crowd than this one. When everyone was silent, he welcomed us, said a few words of thanks to various people responsible for the Tumbleweed.

  “Now,” he said, “I know that you all know the Scallywags…” He bent down and picked up a bodhran. He sprayed the drumhead with a small water bottle and then spread the water around with a hand as he spoke with a studied casualness that drew attention. “Now the Scallywags have been singing here since the very first Tumbleweed—and I happen to know something about them that you all don’t.”

  “What’s that?” someone shouted from the crowd.

  “That their fair singer, Sandra Hennessy, has a birthday today. And it’s not just any birthday.”

  “I’ll get you for this,” a woman’s voice rang out. “You just see if I don’t, John Martin.”

  “Sandra is turning forty today. I think she needs a birthday dirge, whatd’ you all think?”

  The crowd erupted into applause that quickly settled into anticipatory silence.

  “Hap-py birthday.” He sang the minor notes of the opening of the “Volga Boatmen” in a gloriously deep bass that needed no mike to carry over the crowd, then hit the bodhran once with a small double-headed mallet. THUMP.

  “It’s your birthday.” THUMP.

  “Gloom and doom and dark despair,

  “People dying everywhere.

  “Happy birthday.” THUMP. “It’s your birthday.”

  Then the rest of the room, including Samuel, started to sing the mournful tune with great cheer.

  There were well over a hundred people in the room, and most of them were professional musicians. The whole restaurant vibrated like a tuning fork as they managed to turn the silly song into a choral piece.

  Once the music started, it didn’t stop. Instruments came out to join the bodhran: guitars, banjos, a violin, and a pair of Irish penny whistles. As soon as one song finished, someone stood up and started another, with the crowd falling in on the chorus.

  Austin had a fine tenor. Tim couldn’t sing on pitch if his life depended upon it, but there were enough people singing that it didn’t matter. I sang until our pizza arrived, then I ate while everyone else sang.

  Finally, I got up to refill my soda, and by the time I returned, Samuel had borrowed a guitar and was at the far end of the room leading a rousing chorus of a ribald drinking song.

  The only one left at our table was Tim.

  “We’ve been deserted,” he said. “Your Dr. Cornick was summoned to play, and Austin’s gone out to the car to get his guitar.”

  I nodded. “Once you get him singing”—I waved vaguely to indicate Samuel—“you’re in for it for a while.”

  “Are the two of you dating?” he asked, rolling the Parmesan jar between his hands before setting it down.

  I turned to look at Samuel, who was singing a verse alone. His fingers flew on the neck of the borrowed guitar and there was a wide grin on his face.

  “Yes,” I said, though we weren’t really. And wouldn’t now. It was less complicated just to say yes rather than explain our situation.

  “He’s a very good musician,” Tim said. Then, his voice so quiet I knew I wasn’t supposed to hear him, he murmured, “Some people have all the luck.”

  I turned back to him and said, “What was that?”

  “Austin’s a pretty good guitarist, too,” he said quickly. “He tried to teach me, but I’m all thumbs.” He smiled like it didn’t matter, but the skin around his eyes was taut with bitterness and envy.

  How interesting, I thought. How could I use this to pry information from him?

  “I know how you feel,” I confided, sipping my pop. “I was practically raised with Samuel.” Except that Samuel had been an adult several times over. “I can plunk a bit on the piano if someone forces me. I can even sing on key—but no matter how hard I worked at it”—not very—“I could never sound as good as Samuel. And he never even had to practice.” I let a sharp note linger in my voice, a twin to the jealousy he’d revealed. “Everything is so easy for that man.”

  Zee had told me not to help him.

  Uncle Mike told me to stay out of it.

  But then I’d never been very good at listening to orders—ask anyone.

  Tim looked at me—and I saw him register me as a real person for the first time. “Exactly,” he said—and he was mine.

  I asked him where he’d learned Welsh, and he visibly expanded as he answered.

  Like a lot of people who didn’t have many friends, his social skills were a little lacking, but he was smart—and under all that earnest geekiness, funny. Samuel’s vast knowledge and charm had made Tim close up and turn into a jerk. With a little encouragement, and maybe the two glasses of beer he’d drunk, Tim relaxed and quit trying to impress me. Before I knew it, I found myself forgetting for a while that I had ulterior motives and got into a spirited argument about the tales of King Arthur.

  “The stories came out of the courts of Eleanor of Aquitaine. They were to teach men how to behave in a civilized fashion,” Tim said earnestly.

  A caller with more volume than tone on the other side of the room called out, “King Louie was the king of France before the Revolu-shy-un!”

  “Sure,” I said. “Cheat on your husband and your best friend. The only way to find love is through adultery. All good civilized behavior.”

  Tim smiled at my quip, but had to wait as the whole room responded, “Weigh haul away, haul away Joe.”

  “Not that,” he said, “but that people should strive to better themselves and to do the right thing.”

  “Then he got his head cut off, it spoiled his constitushy-un!”

  I had to hurry to slip in before the chorus. “Like sleep with your sister and beget your downfall?”

  “Weigh haul away, haul away Joe.”

  He gave a frustrated huff. “Arthur’s story isn’t the only one in the Arthurian cycle or even the most important. Parcival, Gawain, and half a dozen others were more popular.”

  “Okay,” I said. We were getting our timing down now and I started to tune out the music completely. “I’ll give you the urge to do heroic deeds, but the pictures they painted of women were right along the lines the Church held. Women lead men astray, and they will betray you as soon as you give them your trust.” He started to say something but I was in the middle of a thought and didn’t pause. “But it’s not their fault—that’s just what women do as a result of their weaker natures.” I knew better actually, but it was fun to rant.

  “That’s a simplification,” he said hotly. “Maybe the popular versions that were retold in the middle twentieth century ignore most of the women. But just go read some of the original authors like Hartman von Aue or Wolfram von Eschenbach. Their women are real people, not just reflections of the Church’s ideals.”

  “I’ll give you Eschenbach,” I conceded. “Bu
t von Aue, no. His Iweine is about a knight who gave up adventuring because he loved his wife—for which he must atone. So he goes out and rescues women to regain his proper manly state. Ugh. You don’t see any of his women rescuing themselves.” I waved my hand. “And you can’t escape that the central Arthurian story revolves around Arthur, who marries the most beautiful woman in the land. She sleeps with his best friend—thereby ruining the two greatest knights who ever lived and bringing about the downfall of Camelot, just as Eve brought about the downfall of mankind. Robin Hood was much better. Maid Marian saves herself from Sir Guy of Gisbourne, then goes out and slays a deer and fools Robin when she disguises herself as a man.”

  He laughed, a low attractive sound that seemed to take him as much by surprise as it did me. “Okay. I give up. Guinevere was a loser.” His smile slowly died as he looked behind me.

  Samuel put his hand on my shoulder and leaned close. “Everything all right?”

  There was a stiffness in his voice that had me turning a little warily to look at him.

  “I came to rescue you from boredom,” he said, but his eyes were on Tim.

  “Not bored,” I assured him with a pat. “Go play music.”

  Then he looked at me.

  “Go,” I said firmly. “Tim’s keeping me entertained. I know you don’t get much chance to play with other musicians. Go.”

  Samuel had never been the kind of person who put on graphic public displays of affection. So it took me by surprise when he bent over me and gave me an open-mouth kiss that started out purely for Tim’s benefit. It didn’t stay there for very long.

  One thing about living a long time, Samuel told me once, it gave you a lot of time to practice.

  He smelled like Samuel. Clean and fresh, and though he hadn’t been back to Montana for a while, he still smelled of home. Much better than Tim’s cologne.

  And still…and still.

  This afternoon, talking to Honey, I’d finally admitted that a relationship between Samuel and I would not work. That admission was making several other things clear.