Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  He had a good handshake, a politician’s handshake—firm and dry.

  “Call me Mercy,” I said. “Everyone does.”

  He nodded. “Mercy, this is my friend and client Jim Blackwood. Jim—Mercy Thompson, my wife’s friend who is visiting us this week.”

  Jim was talking to Amber and took just an instant to turn his attention back to Corban and me.

  Jim Blackwood. James Blackwood. How many James Black-woods were there in Spokane, I wondered in dumb panic. Five or six? But I knew—even though the strong cologne he wore kept me from scenting vampire—I knew I wasn’t going to be lucky.

  He’d think I smelled like I had dogs, Bran had assured me. And even if he didn’t, even if he knew what I was—I was just visiting. He couldn’t take offense at that, right?

  I knew better. Vampires could take offense at anything they liked.

  “Mr. Blackwood,” I greeted him, when he looked away from Amber. Keep it simple. I didn’t know if vampires could sense lies like the wolves could, but I wasn’t going to say, “It’s very good to meet you,” or something similar when I was wishing myself a hundred miles away.

  I did my best to keep a social smile on my face while stupid thoughts began to pile up. How was he going to eat with us? Vampires didn’t. Not that I’d ever seen. What were the chances of a vampire’s showing up and it not being some plot of Marsilia’s?

  Blackwood hadn’t sounded like a vampire who would do anyone’s bidding.

  “Call me Jim,” he told me, just a hint of a British accent shading his voice. “I’m sorry to intrude on your visit, but we had some urgent business this afternoon, and Corban insisted on bringing me home.”

  His round face was merry, and his handshake was even more practiced than Corban’s had been. If it weren’t for that little talk I’d had with Bran, I’d never have known what he was.

  “Shall we go eat now?” Amber suggested, calm and in control now that the preparations were finished. “It’s ready and not going to get better if it sits around. I’m afraid I kept it simple.”

  Simple was pepper steak over rice with salads and fresh rolls followed by homemade apple pie. Somehow, the food disappeared from the vampire’s plate. I never saw him eat or touch his plate—though I kept half an eye on it with morbid fascination. Maybe a little hope. If I’d seen even a single bite go in his mouth, then I’d have believed him to be just what he seemed.

  I stayed quiet while the men talked business—mostly contract language and 401(k)s—and I was very happy to stay unnoticed. Amber slipped in a sentence here and there, just enough to keep the conversation going. I heard Chad sneak by the dining room and into the kitchen. After a while he left again.

  “Very good meal as always,” the vampire told Amber. “Beautiful, charming—and a fine cook. As I keep telling Corban, I am going to steal you one of these days.” I felt a chill go down my spine—he wasn’t lying—but Corban and Amber just laughed as if it were an old joke. Just then, he looked at me. “You’ve been awfully quiet tonight. Corban tells me you went to school with Amber and you’re from Kennewick. What is it you do there?”

  “I fix things,” I mumbled to my plate.

  “Things?” He sounded intrigued, just the opposite of what I’d hoped.

  “Cars. Meet Mercedes the VW mechanic,” said Amber with a touch of the sharpness that had been her trademark in the old days. “But I bet I can still get her going on the royal families of Europe or the name of Hitler’s German shepherd.” She smiled at James Blackwood, the Monster who kept his territory free of vampires or anything else that might challenge him. A coyote wouldn’t be much of a challenge.

  Amber chatted on ... almost nervously. Maybe she thought I’d jump up and tell her husband’s valuable client that they’d brought me over to catch a ghost in the act. She wouldn’t be worried about it if she knew what he was. “You’d have thought with her background—she’s half-Blackfoot ... or is that Blackfeet? ... Anyway, she never studied Native American history, just the European stuff.”

  “I don’t like wallowing in tragedy,” I told her, trying desperately to sound uninteresting. “And that’s what Native American history is mostly. But now I just fix cars.”

  “Blondi,” said Corban, “was the name of the dog.”

  “Someone told me she was named after the comic strip Blondie,” I added. That supposition had led to many arguments among the Nazi trivia buffs I knew. I was hoping the conversation would devolve to Hitler. He was dead and could do no more harm—unlike the dead man in the room.

  “You are Native American?” asked the vampire. Had he tried to catch my eyes?

  I was very good at keeping my gaze from meeting other people’s unless it was on purpose—a useful skill around the wolves. I looked at his jaw, and said, “Half. My father. I never knew him, though.”

  He shook his head. “I’m very sorry.”

  “Old news,” I said. Deciding that if Hitler wasn’t going to distract him from me, maybe business would. It always worked with my stepfather. “I take it Corban is keeping your company safely out of the courts?”

  “He’s very good at his job,” said the vampire with a pleased and possessive smile. “With him beside me, Blackwood Industries will stay afloat for a few more months, eh?”

  Corban gave a hearty, and heartfelt, laugh. “Oh, I think a few months at the least.”

  “To making money,” said Amber, holding up her glass. “Lots of it.”

  I pretended to sip the wine with the rest of them and was pretty sure that my idea of making money was several orders of magnitude less than theirs.

  HE LEFT AT LAST IT HADN’T BEEN AS HORRIBLE AS I’D feared. The Monster was charming and, I hoped, unaware that I was anything except a not-very-interesting VW mechanic. Except for that one moment, I’d mostly avoided notice.

  Almost euphoric at my near escape, I didn’t worry about ghosts at all while I changed. Then I went back downstairs to help Amber with the cleanup.

  She must have been worried or something, too, because she was nearly as giddy as I was. We had an impromptu water fight in the kitchen that ended in a draw when her husband stuck his head in the doorway to see what the noise was all about, and nearly got a sponge in the face for his trouble.

  Discretion suggested that having escaped detection once, I should head home in the morning. But Amber was a little drunk, so I decided that conversation could wait until later. Dishes clean, clothes wet and soapy, I left Amber necking with her husband in the kitchen.

  I opened the bedroom door to find Chad in the middle of my bed, his arms crossed over his chest. I could smell his fear from the doorway.

  I closed the door behind me and took a good look around the room. “Ghost?” I mouthed.

  He glanced around the room, too, then shook his head.

  “Not here? In your room?”

  He gave me a cautious nod.

  “How about we go in your room, then.”

  Terror breathing out of every pore, he slipped off the bed and followed me to his room: brave kid. He opened his bedroom door cautiously—and then pushed it open, being very careful to keep his feet in the hallway.

  “I assume you don’t usually keep that bookcase facedown on the floor,” I told him.

  He gave me a dirty look, but he lost some of his fear.

  I shrugged. “Hey, my boyfriend has a daughter”—boyfriend was such an inadequate word—“and I had a pair of little sisters. None of them keeps a clean room. I had to ask.”

  Except for the bookcase, it was hard to tell what part of the mess was a normal boy’s habitat and how much the ghost had caused. But the bookcase, one of those half-sized things people put in kids’ rooms, was easy to fix. I squeezed past Chad and into the room. The bookcase was even lighter than I’d thought.

  When I started reshelving his books, he knelt beside me and helped. He read a little of everything—and not entirely limited to things I’d think a kid would read: Jurassic Park, Interview with the Vampire, and H. P
. Lovecraft sat next to Harry Potter and Naruto manga numbers one through fifteen. We worked for about twenty minutes to put everything to rights, and by the time we finished, he wasn’t scared anymore.

  I could smell it, though. It was watching us.

  I dusted my hands off and looked around. “You usually keep your room this neat, kid?”

  He nodded solemnly.

  I shook my head. “You need help. Just like your mom. My little sister kept fossilized lunches under her bed for the dust bunnies she raised there.”

  I picked up a game from the neat stack. “Want to play some Battleship?” I wasn’t leaving him alone with that thing in there.

  Chad armed himself with a notebook, and we went to war. Historically, war has often been used as a distraction for problems at home.

  Both of us lay on our bellies on the floor facing each other and fired our missiles. Adam called, and I told him he’d have to wait—battle must take precedence over romance. He laughed, wished me good night and good luck, just like that old war correspondent.

  Chad’s two-point boat was devilishly well hidden, and he destroyed my navy while I hunted it fruitlessly.

  “Argh!” I cried with feeling. “You sank my battleship!”

  Chad’s face lit with laughter, and someone knocked at the door. I supposed I hadn’t needed to make so much noise since Chad couldn’t hear me anyway.

  “Come in,” I said. Reading my lips, Chad looked suddenly horrified, and I reached over and patted his shoulder.

  The door popped open, and I rolled halfway over and looked back over my feet as if to see who it was. Most people would have needed to look, so I did, but I’d heard him coming—and Amber had never stalked angrily in her life. Stomp, yes. Stalk, no. Trust me—any predator knows the difference.

  “Isn’t it after bedtime?” Corban said. He was wearing a pair of sweats and an old Seattle Seahawks shirt. His hair was rumpled as if he’d been to bed. I supposed I’d woken him up.

  “Nope,” I told him. “We’re playing games and waiting for the ghost to show up. Want to join us?”

  “There isn’t a ghost,” he said to his son, out loud and in sign.

  I’d started to like Corban over dinner, he had seemed like a decent guy. But he was being a bully now.

  I rolled up until I was facing him. “Isn’t there?”

  He frowned at me. “There are no such things as ghosts. I am very happy you’ve come here to visit, but I don’t approve of encouraging nonsense. If you tell them there isn’t one here, they’ll believe you. Chad has enough to deal with without everyone thinking he’s crazy.” He’d continued to sign, even though he was talking to me. I didn’t know if he left out the bit where I was supposed to tell Chad and Amber there weren’t any ghosts.

  “He’s a damn fine naval commander,” I told Corban. “And I think he’s too smart to make up ghosts.”

  He signed my reply, too. Then he said, “He just wants attention.”

  “He gets attention,” I said. “He wants to stop being scared because someone he can’t see or hear is making a mess in his room. I thought you were the one who suggested I come check it out. Why did you do that if you don’t believe in ghosts?”

  There was a loud bang as the car on the top of Chad’s chest of drawers made a suicide run off its perch, zoomed three feet across the room to hit the bookcase, and fell onto the floor. I’d been watching it roll back and forth, just a little bit, out of the corner of my eye for the last fifteen minutes, so I didn’t jump. Chad couldn’t hear it, so he didn’t jump. But Corban did.

  I got up and picked the car up. “Can you do that again?” I asked, setting the car back on the top of the bookcase.

  I knelt beside Chad and looked at him so he could see my mouth. “It just made that car fall off. We’re all going to watch and see if it can do it again.”

  Silenced by the car’s fall, Corban sat down next to Chad and put a hand on his shoulder—and we all watched the car turn slowly in place then fall off the back of the bookcase.

  Then the bookcase fell facedown on the floor, right on top of Chad’s plastic ocean fleet. I caught a glimpse of someone standing there, hands up, then nothing—and the sweet-salt smell of blood that I’d been smelling since I first entered the room faded away.

  I stayed where I was while Corban checked the bookcase and the car for devices or strings or something. Finally, he looked back at Chad.

  “Are you all right sleeping in here?”

  “It’s gone,” I told them both, and Corban obliged me by signing it.

  Chad nodded, and his hands flew. At the end of it, Corban grinned. “I guess that’s true.” He looked at me. “He told me the ghost hasn’t killed him yet.”

  Corban hefted the bookcase upright again, and I looked down at the mess of books and game pieces.

  I waited until Chad glanced my way. Then I pointed at his two-hole destroyer, plainly visible, surrounded by white, useless missile pegs. “So that’s where you hid it, you little sneak.”

  He grinned. Not a full-fledged grin, but enough that I knew he’d be fine. Tough kid.

  I left them to their manly nighttime rituals and went back to my room, all thoughts of going home tomorrow shelved. I wasn’t going to abandon Chad to the ghost. I still had no idea how to get rid of it, but maybe I could help him live with it instead. He was already halfway there.

  Corban knocked at my door a few minutes later, then cracked it open.

  “I don’t need to come in,” he said. He stared at me grimly. “Tell me you didn’t engineer that somehow. I checked for wires and magnets.”

  I raised my eyebrow at him. “I didn’t engineer anything. Congratulations. Your house is haunted.”

  He frowned. “I’m pretty good at sniffing out lies.”

  “Good for you,” I told him sincerely. “Now I’m tired, and I need to go to sleep.”

  He backed away from my doorway and started down the hall. But he hadn’t gotten two steps before he turned back. “If it is a ghost, is Chad safe?”

  I shrugged. Truthfully, the smell of blood bothered me. Ghosts, in my experience, tend to smell like themselves. Mrs. Hanna, who used to visit my shop sometimes—both when she was alive and after she died—smelled like her laundry soap, her favorite perfume, and the cats who shared her home with her. I didn’t think the blood was a good sign.

  Still, I gave him the truth as I knew it. “I’ve never been hurt by a ghost, and I only know of a few stories where someone was hurt, mostly only bruises. The Bell Witch supposedly killed a man named John Bell in Tennessee a couple of centuries ago—but it was probably something other than a ghost. And old John died of poison that the Witch was supposed to have put in his medicine, something more mundane hands could have done as well.”

  He stared at me, and I returned it.

  “You date a werewolf,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “And you say there are ghosts.”

  “And fae,” I told him. “I work with one. After werewolves and fae, ghosts aren’t such a leap now, are they?”

  I shut my door and went to bed. After a few long minutes, he retreated to his bedroom.

  I usually have a hard time sleeping in strange places, but it was very late (or really early), and I hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep the night before either. I slept like a baby.

  When I woke up the next morning there were two puncture marks, complete with a nifty purple bruise, on my neck. They were a lovely addition to the stitches in my chin. And my lamb necklace was gone.

  I stared at the bite in the bathroom mirror and heard Samuel tell me that I shouldn’t count upon Stefan still being my friend ... and Stefan making it clear that he needed to feed in order to avoid detection. I knew there were consequences to being bitten, but I wasn’t sure what they were.

  Of course I’d met another vampire last night. For a moment I hoped it was him. That Stefan hadn’t bitten me while I slept. Then I really thought about being bitten by James Blackwo
od, who scared the things that scared me. And I hoped it was Stefan.

  Stefan would have needed an invitation into the house, though. Had I asked him in, and he’d somehow erased the memory? I hoped so. It seemed the lesser of two evils.

  The bathroom door popped open—I’d just come in to brush my teeth, so it wasn’t locked. Chad stared at my neck, then looked at me, eyes wide.

  And I hoped it was Stefan, because I was going to stay here until I helped ... somehow.

  “No,” I told Chad casually, “I wasn’t lying about the vampires.” I thought I wouldn’t mention I’d received it last night if he didn’t think of that himself. He didn’t need to be worrying about vampires as well as ghosts.

  “I shouldn’t have told you about it,” I said. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell your folks. The vampires like it better if no one knows they’re around. And they take measures to ensure that is true.”

  He looked at me for a moment. Then he zipped an imaginary zipper across his lips, locked an invisible lock, and threw the key behind his back: some things are universal.

  “Thank you.” I put the cap on my toothbrush and packed up my bathroom kit. “Any more trouble last night?”

  He shook his head and wiped a wrist across his forehead to wipe off imaginary sweat.

  “Good. Do you get much activity from your ghost during the day?”

  He shrugged, waited a moment, then nodded.

  “So I’ll talk to your mom and maybe go for a jog.” No running in coyote form in the city, especially when my efforts to stay out of James Blackwood’s way had already failed so spectacularly. But if I didn’t run most days, I started to get cranky. “And then we can stake out your room for a while. Is there anywhere else the ghost visits?”

  He nodded and mimed eating and cooking.

  “Just the kitchen, or the dining room, too?”

  He held up two fingers.

  “Fine.” I checked my watch. “Meet you here at eight sharp.” I went back to my room, but I didn’t catch Stefan’s scent or anything out of the ordinary. Nor was there any sign of my necklace. Without it, I had no protection against vampires. Not that it had done me much good last night.