Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

He was right. I hadn’t realized it until he said it.

  “Sam,” I asked again, trying not to sound demanding, “what have you done with Samuel?”

  “He’s here, but I cannot let him out. If I do, he’ll never let me get the upper hand again—and then we will die.”

  “Cannot” sounded like “never.” “Never” was bad. “Never” would get him killed as surely as suicide—and maybe . . . probably a lot of other people along the way.

  “If not Bran, what about Charles’s mate, Anna? She’s Omega; shouldn’t she be able to help?”

  Omega wolves, as I understand them, are like Valium for werewolves. Samuel’s sister-in-law, Anna, is the only one I’ve ever met—I’d never heard of them before that. I like her, but she doesn’t seem to affect me the way she does the wolves. I don’t want to curl up in a ball at her feet and let her rub my belly.

  Samuel’s wolf looked wistful . . . or maybe he was just hungry. “No. If I were the problem, if I were ravaging the countryside, she might help. But this is not impulse, not desperation. Samuel just feels that he no longer belongs, that he accomplishes nothing by his existence. Even the Omega cannot fix him.”

  “So what do you suggest?” I asked helplessly.

  Anna, I thought, might be able to put Samuel back in the driver’s seat, but, like the wolf, I was afraid that might not be a good thing.

  He laughed, an unhappy laugh. “I do not know. But if you don’t want to be trying to extract a wolf from the emergency room, it would be good to leave very soon.”

  Sam rocked forward to get up and stopped halfway with a grunt.

  “You’re hurt,” I said as I scrambled up to give him a hand.

  He hesitated but took it and used me to give him better leverage so he could get all the way to his feet. Showing me his weakness was a sign of trust. Under normal circumstances, that trust would mean I was safer with him.

  “Stiff,” Sam answered me. “Nothing that won’t heal on its own now. I drew upon your strength to heal enough that no one would know how bad the injuries were.”

  “How did you do that?” I asked, suddenly remembering the fierce hunger that had resulted in a rabbit-and-quail dinner on top of the salmon I’d had with Adam. I’d thought it had been someone in Adam’s pack—for the very good reason that borrowing strength was one of those things that came with a pack bond. “We aren’t pack,” I reminded him.

  He looked directly at me again, then away. “Aren’t we?”

  “Unless you . . . Unless Samuel’s been conducting blood ceremonies when I was asleep, we’re not.” I was starting to feel panicky. Claustrophobic. I already had Adam and his pack playing with my head; I didn’t particularly want anyone else in there.

  “Pack existed before ceremonies,” Sam said, sounding amused. “Magic binds more obviously, more extensively, but not more deeply.”

  “Did you mess with my head on my date with Adam?” I couldn’t keep the accusation out of my voice.

  “No.” He tilted his head, then snarled, “Someone hurt you?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s nothing.”

  “Lies,” he said.

  “Right,” I agreed. “But if it wasn’t you who did it, the incident is something for Adam and me to handle.”

  He was still a moment. “For now,” he said.

  I held the door open for him, then walked beside him through the emergency room.

  As we moved through the walkway and out the door, Sam kept his eyes on me, and his regard had a weight to it. I didn’t protest. He did it so that no one would see the change in his iris color—but also because when a werewolf as dominant as Samuel meets someone’s gaze with his wolf in the fore, even humans bow their knees. That would be pretty awkward and hard to explain. At this point, we were operating with the hope that it would matter to Samuel that he could come back and practice medicine here again.

  I helped him into the backseat of the Rabbit—and noticed that the towel-wrapped book was still there. I wished that getting it back to its owner was the extent of my troubles. I grabbed it and put it in the far back, out of harm’s reach. Hopping in the front, I drove out from under the parking- lot lights as soon as I could. It was still the wee small hours, but Samuel was a big man, and it would be hard to miss him stripping in the back of my little car.

  It didn’t take him long to dispose of the clothes and begin his change. I didn’t look, but I could tell when he started because the noises turned from shredding fabric to pained whines. What the wolves go through when they change is one of the many reasons I am very grateful to be what I am instead of a werewolf. For me, the change from coyote to human or back is virtually instantaneous. The side effects are nothing more annoying than tingles. For a werewolf, change is painful and slow. From the grunts he was making, he hadn’t yet fully finished his shift by the time I drove into my driveway.

  Home wasn’t the safest place to bring him. No werewolf who saw him would miss what had happened, and Adam’s house—visited often by members of his pack—was just behind my back fence. But I couldn’t think of anyplace better.

  Eventually, we’d have to tell Bran—I knew it, and I suspected that Samuel . . . Sam knew it, too. But I’d give him what time I could—assuming he didn’t go on a rampage and start eating people.

  That meant keeping him out of sight of Adam and his pack.

  My pack. My mate and my pack.

  It felt wrong to hide things from him. But I knew Adam, and one thing he was very good at was honor and duty. It was one of the reasons I’d grown to love him—he was a man who could make the hard choice. Duty and honor would force him to call Bran. Duty and honor would force Bran to execute Samuel. Samuel would be dead, and two good men would suffer as well.

  Luckily for all of them, my sense of duty and honor was more flexible.

  I got out of the car and turned in a slow circle. I caught Ben’s scent, fading. Otherwise, we were alone with the more mundane creatures of the night: bats, mice, and mosquitoes. The light was on in Adam’s bedroom, but it went dark as I was watching. Tomorrow, I’d need to come up with a better place for Sam.

  Or a good reason to avoid the pack.

  I opened the back door of the Rabbit, keeping it between Sam and me in case he came out of the change in a bad mood. The pain of the change does not make for a happy wolf—and Sam was already hurt when he started. But he seemed okay. When he hopped out, he waited politely for me to close up the car, then followed me to the door.

  He slept on the foot of my bed. When I suggested he might be more comfortable in his room, he regarded me steadily with ice-colored eyes.

  Where does a werewolf sleep? Anywhere he wants to.

  I thought it would bother me, thought it would scare me. It ought to have bothered me. But somehow I couldn’t work up the energy to be too worried about the big wolf curled up on my feet. It was Sam, after all.

  MY DAY STARTED OUT EARLY DESPITE MY LATE NIGHT.

  I woke up to the sound of Sam’s stomach growling. Keeping him fed had attained a new priority level, so I bounced up and cooked him breakfast.

  And then, because cooking is something I do when I’m upset or nervous—and because it sometimes helps me think, especially if the cooking involves sugar—I indulged myself with a spate of cookie baking. I made a double batch of peanut butter cookies, and while they were in the oven, I made chocolate chip, for good measure.

  Sam sat under the table, where he was out of my way, and watched me. I fed him a couple of spoonfuls of dough even though he’d eaten several pounds of bacon and a dozen eggs. He had shared the eggs with my cat, Medea. Maybe that was why he was still hungry. I fed him some of the baked cookies.

  I was in the middle of putting cookies into baggies when Adam called.

  “Mercy,” he said. His voice was fuzzy with fatigue, his tone flat. “I saw the light was on. Ben told me what you said. I can help you with that.”

  Usually, I follow Adam’s conversations just fine, but I’d had less than three hou
rs of sleep. And I was preoccupied with Samuel, which he could not know anything about. I rubbed my nose. Ben. Oh. Adam was talking about how the pack had screwed up our date. Right.

  I had to keep Adam away. Just until I figured out some brilliant plan to keep Samuel alive . . . And here before me was the perfect excuse.

  “Thank you,” I said. “But I think I need a break for a few days—no pack, no . . .” I let my voice drift off. I couldn’t tell him I needed space from him when it wasn’t true. Even over the phone he might pick up the lie. I wished he was here. He had a way of making things black-and-white. Of course, that meant that Samuel should be killed for the good of the wolves. Sometimes gray is the color I’m stuck with.

  “You need some distance from the pack—and me,” Adam said. “I can understand that.” There was a small pause. “I won’t leave you without protection.”

  I looked down. “Samuel’s off for a couple of days.” I needed to call before heading to work and get him time off, but that didn’t change the fact that he wasn’t going to be at work for the next couple of days. The wreck made a convenient excuse. “I’ll keep him with me.”

  “All right.” There was an awkward pause, and Adam said, “I’m sorry, Mercy. I should have noticed there was something wrong.” He swallowed. “When my ex-wife decided I’d done something she didn’t like, she’d give me the silent treatment. When you did it . . . it threw me.”

  “I think that was the point someone was aiming for,” I said dryly, and he laughed.

  “Yeah. I didn’t stop and consider how unlikely a tactic that was from you,” he agreed. “Sneak attacks, guerilla warfare, but not silence.”

  “Not your fault,” I told him, before I bit my lip. If I didn’t need to keep him away from Sam, I’d have said more. A lot more, but I needed time for Samuel to fix himself. “I didn’t figure it out until we were almost home.”

  “If I’d realized something was up while it was still happening, I could have found out who it was,” said Adam, a growl in his voice. He took a deep breath and let it out. When he spoke again, his voice was calmer. “Samuel will know how to stop them, too. While he’s escorting you around, why don’t you ask him to teach you how to protect yourself? Even when it’s not deliberate—” He had to stop again. “The needs and desires of the pack can influence you quite a bit. It’s not too hard to block if you know how. Samuel can show you.”

  I looked at the white wolf sprawled out on the kitchen floor with Medea cleaning his face. Sam looked back at me with pale eyes ringed in black.

  “I’ll ask him,” I promised.

  “See you,” he said, but continued in a rush. “Is Tuesday too soon?”

  It was Saturday. If Samuel wasn’t better by Tuesday, I could cancel. “Tuesday would be really good.”

  He hung up, and I asked Sam, “Can you teach me how to keep the pack out of my head?”

  He made a sad noise.

  “Not without being able to talk,” I agreed. “But I promised Adam I’d ask.” So I had three days to fix Samuel. And I felt like a traitor for . . . I hadn’t really lied to Adam, had I? Raised among werewolves, who are living lie detectors, I’d long ago learned to lie with the truth nearly as well as a fae.

  Maybe I had time to make brownies, too.

  My cell phone rang, and I almost just answered it, assuming it was Adam. Some instinct of self-preservation had me hesitate and glance at the number: Bran’s.

  “The Marrok is calling,” I told Samuel. “Think he’ll wait three days? Me either.” But I could delay him a little by not answering the phone. “Let’s go work on some cars.”

  SAM SAT IN THE PASSENGER SEAT AND GAVE ME A sour look. He’d been mad at me since I put his collar on—but the collar was camouflage. It made him look more like a dog. Something domesticated enough for a collar, not a wild animal. Fear brings violence out in the wolves, so the fewer people who are scared of them, the better.

  “I’m not going to roll the window down,” I told him. “This car doesn’t have automatic windows. I’d have to pull over and go around and lower it manually. Besides, it’s cold outside, and unlike you, I don’t have a fur coat.”

  He lifted his lip in a mock snarl and put his nose down on the dashboard with a thump.

  “You’re smearing the windshield,” I told him.

  He looked at me and deliberately ran his nose across his side of the glass.

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh, that was mature. The last time I saw someone do something that grown-up was when my little sister was twelve.”

  AT THE GARAGE, I PARKED NEXT TO ZEE’S TRUCK, AND as soon as I got out of the car, I could hear the distinctive beat of salsa music. I have sensitive ears, so it was probably not loud enough to bother anyone in the little houses scattered among the warehouses and storage units that surrounded the garage. A little figure at the window waved at me.

  I’d forgotten.

  How could I have forgotten that Sylvia and her kids were going to be cleaning the office? Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have been a problem—Samuel would never hurt a child, but we weren’t dealing with Samuel anymore.

  I realized that I’d gotten used to him, that I was still thinking of him as though he was only Samuel with a problem. I’d let myself forget how dangerous he was. Then again, he hadn’t killed me yet.

  Maybe if he stayed with me in the garage . . .

  I couldn’t risk it.

  “Sam,” I told the wolf, who’d followed me out of the car, “there are too many people here. Let’s—”

  I’m not sure what I was going to suggest, maybe a run out somewhere no one would see us. But it was too late.

  “Mercy,” said a high-pitched voice as the office door popped open with a roar of bongos and guitars, and Gabriel’s littlest sister, Maia, bounced down the short run of steps and sprinted toward us. “Mercy, Mercy, guess what? Guess what? I am all grown-up. I am going to pretty school, and I—”

  And that was when she caught a glimpse of Sam.

  “Ooo,” she said, still running.

  Samuel is not bad-looking in his human form—but his wolf is pure white and fluffy. All he needed was a unicorn’s horn to be the perfect pet for a little girl.

  “Pretty school?” I asked, stepping forward and to the side, so I was between the werewolf and Maia. Maia stopped instead of bumping into me, but her eyes were on the wolf.

  The next-oldest girl, Sissy, who was six, had emerged from the office a few seconds after her sister. “Mamá says you can’t run out of the office, Maia. There might be cars who wouldn’t see you. Hi, Mercy. She means preschool. I’m in first grade this year—and she is still just a baby. Is that a dog? When did you get a dog?”

  “Pretty school,” repeated Maia. “And I’m not a baby.” She gave me a hug and launched herself at Sam.

  I would have caught her if Sam hadn’t bounded forward, too.

  “Pony,” she said, attacking him as if he weren’t a scarily huge wolf. She grabbed a handful of fur and climbed on top of him. “Pony, pony.”

  I reached for her, but froze when Sam gave me a look.

  “My pony,” Maia said happily, oblivious to my terror. She thumped her heels into his ribs hard enough I could hear the noise. “Go, pony.”

  Maia’s sister seemed to understand the danger as well as I did. “Mamá,” she shrieked. “Mamá, Maia’s being stupid again.”

  Well, maybe not as well.

  She frowned at her sister and—while I stood frozen, afraid that whatever action I took would be the one that sent Sam over the edge—told me, “We took her to the fair and she saw the horses—now she climbs on every dog she sees. She almost got bitten by the last one.”

  Sam, for his part, grunted the fourth or fifth time Maia’s heels hit his side, gave me another look—one that might have been exasperation—and started toward the office, for all the world as if he were a pony instead of a werewolf.

  “Mercy?” Sissy said.

  I suppose she’d expected me to sa
y something—or at least move. Panic left me with cold fingers and a pounding heart—but as it faded, something else took its place.

  I’ve seen any number of werewolves whose wolf had superseded the man. Usually, it happens in the middle of a fight—and the only thing to do is to lie low until the man takes back control. The other time it often occurs is with the newly Changed wolves. They are vicious, unpredictable, and dangerous even to the people they love. But Sam hadn’t been vicious or even unpredictable—except in the best sense of the word—when Maia had hopped up to play Wild Horse Annie.

  For the first time since I’d walked into that damned hospital storeroom last night, I felt real hope. If Sam the wolf could keep to civilized manners for a few days, maybe I would have a chance to persuade Bran to give us a little more time.

  Sam had reached the office door and stood patiently waiting for me to let him in while Maia patted him on the top of his head and told him he was a good pony.

  “Mercy? Are you okay?” Sissy looked in my car—I often brought cookies. I’d brought the ones I made this morning out of habit. I usually make a lot more cookies than any one person can eat, so when I have a baking fest, I bring the cookies for customers. She didn’t say anything when she spotted the bags sitting on top of the book I still needed to deliver to Phin, but she got a big smile on her face.

  “I’m fine, Sissy. Want a cookie?”

  WHEN I OPENED THE OFFICE DOOR, WHICH WAS A FADING orangish pink and needed to be repainted, the blaring music was overwhelmed by “Mercy” and “Look, dog!” And what seemed like a hundred small bodies piled on us.

  Sissy put her small fists on her hips, and said in a picture-perfect imitation of her brother, “Barbarians.” And then she took a bite of the cookie I’d given her.

  “Cookie!” shrieked someone. “Sissy has a cookie!”

  Silence fell, and they all looked at me like a lion might look at a gazelle in the savanna.

  “You see what happens?” asked Gabriel’s mother, not even glancing up from scrubbing the counter. Sylvia was about ten years older than I, and she wore those years well. She was a small woman, delicate and beautiful. They say Napoleon was small, too.