Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  I remembered that I had something else to talk to Uncle Mike about, too. “And that walking stick showed up in my car tonight, again.”

  I started to get up to get the phone, but my legs had had enough and I fell back. “Darn it.”

  “What’s wrong?” The tired relaxation left Samuel between one heartbeat and the next—I gave him an exasperated glance.

  “I told you, I’m fine. Nothing some stretches, Icy Hot, and a good night of sleep won’t cure.” I thought of all the little cuts and decided to do without the Icy Hot. “Can you throw me the phone?”

  He plucked it off its base on the table next to the couch and tossed it to me.

  “Thanks.” I’d been calling him so often the past few days that I had Uncle Mike’s number memorized. It took me a few minutes of wading through minions before Uncle Mike himself got on the phone.

  “Could Fideal have killed O’Donnell?” I asked without ceremony.

  “Could have, but didn’t,” answered Uncle Mike. “O’Donnell’s body was still twitching when Zee and I found him. Whoever killed him did it while we were still standing on the doorstep. The Fideal’s glamour isn’t good enough to hide himself from me if he were that close. And he’d have bitten O’Donnell’s head off and eaten it, not just torn it off.”

  I swallowed. “So what was Fideal doing at the Bright Future meeting and why wasn’t his scent at O’Donnell’s?”

  “The Fideal went to a couple of meetings so he could keep an eye on them. He told us that they were more talk than action and mostly quit attending meetings. When O’Donnell was killed, he was asked to take another look. And he found himself a nosy coyote with a death sentence on her head—a nice evening snack.” Uncle Mike sounded irritated, and not with Fideal.

  “And when did the coyote end up with a price on her head and why didn’t you warn me?” I asked, feeling indignant.

  “I told you to leave it alone,” he said, his voice suddenly cold with power. “You know too much and you talk too much. You need to do as you are told.”

  Maybe if he’d been in the room, I’d have felt intimidated. But he wasn’t, so I said, “And Zee would be convicted of murder.”

  There was a long pause, which I broke. “And then he’d be summarily executed as called for by the fae laws.”

  Samuel, whose sharp ears had no trouble hearing both sides of the phone conversation, growled. “Don’t try throwing this on Mercy, Uncle Mike. You knew she wouldn’t leave it alone—especially if you told her to. Contrary is her middle name and you played her into looking further than you could. What did the Gray Lords do? Did they order you and the rest of the fae to stop looking for the real killer? Excepting only Zee’s capture, they really have no quarrel with the person who killed O’Donnell, do they? He was the one killing the fae and got killed in return. Justice is served.”

  “Zee was cooperating with the Gray Lords,” said Uncle Mike. The apology that had replaced the anger told me not only was Samuel right—Uncle Mike had wanted me to continue investigating—but also Uncle Mike’s ears were as sharp as the werewolf’s. “I didn’t think they would send anyone else to enforce the punishment and the fae here I have some control over. If I’d known they were sending Nemane, I’d have warned you. But she’s issued a stay of execution.”

  “She’s an assassin,” growled Samuel.

  “You wolves have your own assassin, don’t they, Samuel Marrokson?” snapped Uncle Mike. “How many wolves has your brother killed to keep your people safe? Do you begrudge us the same necessity?”

  “When they come after Mercy, I do. And Charles only kills the guilty, not the inconvenient.”

  I cleared my throat. “Let’s not get diverted from the point. Could Nemane have killed O’Donnell?”

  “She’s better than that,” Uncle Mike said. “If she’d killed O’Donnell, no one would have known it wasn’t an accident.”

  Once more I was left without a suspect.

  Any of the werewolves could have done it, I thought, remembering the speed that ripped O’Donnell’s head from his body. But they had no reason to, and I hadn’t smelled them at O’Donnell’s house. The vampires? I didn’t know enough about them—though I knew more than I wanted to. I knew they could hide their scents from me if they thought about it. No, O’Donnell’s killer had been one of the fae.

  Well, if Uncle Mike wanted me to investigate, maybe he’d answer some questions.

  “O’Donnell was taking things from the people he killed, wasn’t he?” I asked. “The walking stick—which is in my Rabbit, parked off Finley Road over by Two Rivers, Uncle Mike—was one of those. But there were others, weren’t there? The first fae killed, Connora, she was a librarian—she’d have had some of the artifacts, wouldn’t she? Small things because she was not powerful enough to keep anything anyone else wanted. The walking stick came from the house of the fae with a forest for a backyard. I could smell him on it. What else was stolen?”

  I’d been reading Tad’s friend’s book. There were a lot of things that I wouldn’t want in just anyone’s hands. There were some things I wouldn’t want in anyone’s hands.

  There was a long pause, then Uncle Mike said, “I’ll be over in a few minutes. Stay there.”

  I tossed Samuel the phone and he hung it up. Then I got to my feet, and retrieved the book I’d borrowed out of the gun safe in my room.

  There were actually several walking sticks—one that would lead you home no matter where you roamed, one that allowed you to see people for what they were, and the third, the one that had been following me, was the stick that multiplied the farmer’s sheep. None of them sounded bad until you read the stories. No matter how good they seemed, fae artifacts had a way of making their human owners miserable.

  I’d found Zee’s knife, too. The book called it a sword, but the hand-drawn illustration certainly depicted the weapon I’d twice borrowed from Zee.

  Samuel, who’d left the couch to kneel beside my chair as I paged through the section I’d read, hissed between his teeth and touched the illustration: He’d seen Zee’s knife, too.

  Uncle Mike came in without knocking on the door.

  I knew it was him by the deliberate sound of his footsteps and by his scent—spice and old beer—but I didn’t look up from the book when I asked, “Was there something that allows the murderer to hide from magic? Is that why you had to call me in to identify the murderer?”

  There were a couple of things in the book that would protect someone from the fae’s anger or make them invisible.

  Uncle Mike shut the door, but stayed just in front of it. “We retrieved seven artifacts from O’Donnell’s house. That’s why Zee didn’t have time to hide from the police—and why I left him to take the blame alone. The things we found were items of small power, nothing important except that they existed—and fae power in human hands is not usually a good thing.”

  “You missed the walking stick,” I said, looking up. Uncle Mike looked more wrinkled and tired than his T-shirt and jeans.

  He nodded. “And there was nothing we found that could have prevented us from finding O’Donnell—so we have to believe that the murderer left with at least one more item.”

  Samuel, like me, had refrained from looking at Uncle Mike when he’d entered—a small power play that subtly put us in charge. That Samuel had done it told me that he, too, didn’t entirely believe Uncle Mike was on our side. Samuel came to his feet before he turned his attention from the book to the fae. He used his extra inches of height to stare down at Uncle Mike.

  “You don’t know what O’Donnell took?” he asked.

  “Our librarian was trying to compile a list of everything our people had. Since she was the first one to die…” He shrugged. “He stole the list and there are no copies that I know of. Maybe Connora gave one to the Gray Lords.”

  “Was O’Donnell looking for the artifacts when he started to date her?” I asked.

  He frowned at me. “How did you know they were dating?” He shook his hea
d. “No. Don’t tell me. It’s best I don’t know if you’ve fae who are talking to you.”

  He was trying to keep Tad out of it, I thought.

  Uncle Mike flopped on the couch, closing his eyes, giving in to the exhaustion that he was obviously feeling—and giving Samuel the upper hand without a fight.

  “I don’t think he planned the thefts to start with. We’ve talked to her friends. Connora chose him. He thought he was doing her a favor—she thought he deserved what she planned to do with him.” He looked at me. “Our Connora could be kind, but she despised humans, especially anyone connected to the BFA. She played with him awhile before tiring of her game. The day before she died, she told one of her friends she was dropping him.”

  “So why did you need Mercy?” Samuel asked. “He was the obvious suspect.”

  Uncle Mike sighed. “We had just set our sights on him when the second victim turned up dead. It took a while before anyone would talk to us about her affair. For a fae to take up with a human is encouraged. Half-breeds are better than no children at all. But O’Donnell—all the guards really are the enemy. And a fae doesn’t consort with the enemy…especially when they are someone like O’Donnell.”

  “She was slumming,” I said.

  He considered it. “If one of your friends was consorting with a dog, would it be considered slumming?”

  “So he thinks he’s doing her a favor and she tells him what she really thinks of him—and he kills her.”

  “That’s what we think. When the second victim was found—we thought it was unlikely that a human could have killed her so we didn’t look at O’Donnell again. It wasn’t until the third murder that we realized that the motive was theft. Connora had a few items, but no one thought to check if any were missing. She also must have had something else, something that allowed him to hide from our magic. Something much more powerful than anything someone like her should have had.”

  He looked at me and gave me a tired smile. “We are a secretive people, and even the risk of disobeying the Gray Lords’ orders is not worth giving up all of our secrets. If something you possess is too powerful, They will confiscate it. If They had known that she had something of power, she’d have been forced to give it to someone who could take care of it.”

  “So O’Donnell gets it instead.” I closed the book and set it beside me.

  “And the list she had compiled for the Gray Lords, of the items they wanted recorded.” He spread his hands. “We aren’t sure that she had a copy in her house. One of her friends saw it, but Connora might have turned it over to the Gray Lords without keeping a copy.”

  That didn’t sound like the woman whose house I’d searched. A woman like that would have kept a copy of everything. She loved the storage of knowledge.

  “So O’Donnell takes that list,” I said. “After playing with whatever toys he stole from Connora, he decided he wanted more. He looks at the list and goes after the things he wants.” My sample size was limited, but—“It seemed to me that he was killing the least powerful, Connora, to the most, the forest fae who was last killed. Is that right?”

  “Yes. She might have told him or maybe she had the list organized that way. He didn’t get it quite right, by the way, but close enough. I suppose whatever items he stole allowed him to kill people he would otherwise never have been able to touch.”

  “Do you have any idea at all what things O’Donnell’s killer might have?” Samuel growled.

  Uncle Mike sighed. “No. But he doesn’t either. The list said things like ‘one walking stick’ or ‘a silver bracelet,’ but it didn’t explain what they were. Mercy, the walking stick wasn’t in your car. The Fideal says that he didn’t touch it. I suspect it will show up again—it has been persistent in following you.”

  “It is the walking stick that would make all my ewes have twins, isn’t it?” I asked, though I was almost certain. The stories about the others had worried me enough to be grateful the stick was useless to me.

  He laughed. It started from his belly and worked its way to his eyes, until they twinkled merrily. “You have some ewes you plan on breeding?”

  “No, but I’d like to be able to travel more than five miles from home without finding myself on my own doorstep—or worse, be able to see all the faults in the people around me without any of the goodness.” Not that any of that had been happening, but for all I knew, the stick had to be activated somehow in order to work.

  “Not to worry,” he said, still grinning. “If you decide to be a sheep farmer, all of your sheep would have healthy twins until the stick decided to roam again.”

  I let out a sigh of relief and turned back to what I needed to know. “When O’Donnell was killed, were you and Zee the only ones who knew he was the killer?”

  “We hadn’t told anyone else.”

  “Were you the only ones who knew the murderer was stealing artifacts?” I caught a whiff of something magical and tried to keep my face from showing my sudden alertness.

  “No. It wasn’t talked about, but as soon as we discovered that Connora’s list had been taken, we started asking around. Anyone would have made the obvious connection.”

  Beside me, Samuel nodded in happy agreement. Not that he should have objected to anything Uncle Mike said but…

  “Quit that,” I told Uncle Mike. I noticed that the tiredness I’d seen in him when he came was gone and he once more appeared to be a kindly man who made his living making people happy.

  “What?”

  I narrowed my gaze at him. “I don’t like you right now, and no fae magic is going to change that.” Samuel jerked his head toward me. Maybe he hadn’t caught that Uncle Mike was using some kind of charisma magic—or maybe he smelled that I was lying. I did like Uncle Mike, but Uncle Mike didn’t need to know that. He’d be easier to pry information out of as long as I could keep him feeling guilty.

  “My apologies, lass,” he said, sounding as appalled as he looked. “I’m tired and it’s a reflex thing.”

  That might be true, it might be reflex, but he didn’t say he wasn’t doing it deliberately either.

  “I’m tired, too,” I said.

  “All right,” he said. “Let me tell you what we are going to do right now. It is agreed among us that the Fideal offered first offense. It is agreed among us that your death would cost the fae more than it would gain us—you can thank Samuel and Nemane for that.”

  He leaned forward. “So here is what we can offer you. As it seems important to you that Zee be proven innocent, we can work on that—so you don’t cause even greater problems for us. We are allowed to aid the police—except that we cannot tell them about the stolen things. They are powerful, some of them, and it is better if the mortals don’t have any idea that they might exist.”

  Cool relief flowed down my spine. If the Gray Lords were willing to accept the time and notoriety of an investigation, then Zee’s chances had risen exponentially. But Uncle Mike hadn’t finished speaking.

  “…So you may leave the investigation to us and to the police.”

  “Good,” said Samuel.

  Now it was true I had no idea where to look for O’Donnell’s killer. Perhaps it had been Fideal, or another of the fae, maybe someone who cared for one of the victims, who had somehow discovered O’Donnell was the killer. If it were one of the fae, which at this point was probable, I didn’t have a chance of finding out anything. So maybe if Samuel hadn’t said “Good,” my response to Uncle Mike would have been different—but probably not.

  “I’ll make sure and keep you informed when I find out anything interesting,” I told them gently.

  “It is too dangerous,” Uncle Mike said, “even for heroes, Mercy. I don’t know what relics the killer has, but the things we recovered were lesser items, and I know that Herrick—the forest lord—was a guardian of some greater items.”

  “Zee is my friend. I’m not going to leave his life in the hands of people who were willing for him to die for this because it was more convenient for t
hem.”

  Uncle Mike’s eyes glittered with some strong emotion, but I couldn’t tell what it was. “Zee seldom forgives trespasses, Mercy. I have heard he was so angry that you betrayed his trust that he will not speak to you.”

  I paid close attention to that “I have heard.” “I have heard” wasn’t the same thing as “Zee is angry with you.”

  “I’ve heard the same,” I told him. “But I am Zee’s friend anyway. If you’ll excuse me, I need to get to bed now. Work starts bright and early.”

  I heaved myself out of the chair, tucked the book under my arm, and waved at both of the disapproving males as I limped out of the living room on my sore feet. I closed the bedroom door on them and did my best not to listen to them discussing me behind my back. They weren’t very polite. And Samuel, at least, should know me better than to think I could be persuaded to sit back and leave Zee to fae hands.

  chapter 11

  I called Tim the next morning before I went to work. It was early, but I didn’t want to miss him. He’d caught me off guard last night, but I had no business dragging a human into my mess of a love life—even if I liked him that way, which I didn’t.

  Maybe I couldn’t live with Adam—but it looked like I was going to try. If I went to Tim’s, it would hurt Adam and give Tim the wrong impression. It had been stupid not to just refuse yesterday…

  “Hey, Mercy,” he said as he picked up the phone. “Listen, Fideal called me last night—what did you do to tick him off? Anyway he told me that you came to our meeting to do some investigating into O’Donnell’s death. He said you knew the suspect they have in custody.”

  There was absolutely no anger in his voice, which pretty much meant that he must have been speaking the truth when he said he wasn’t interested in a romantic entanglement. If he’d been interested in me, he’d have felt used.

  Good. He wouldn’t feel bad when I told him I couldn’t go.

  “Yes,” I said cautiously. “He’s an old friend. I know that he didn’t do it, which is more than anyone else investigating can say.” Zee’s name was still being withheld from the press, as well as his being a fae. “Since no one else was doing anything, I’ve been poking around.”