Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  There was a movement to my right, and I snuck a quick glance to see Zee and Gabriel coming out the garage door. They must have gone back around. Zee had a crowbar in one hand and held it like another man might hold a sword. Gabriel had—

  “Zee,” I squeaked. “Tell him to put the torque wrench back and grab something that won’t cost me five hundred dollars if he hits someone with it.”

  “Won’t cost five hundred,” said Zee, but as I glanced over again, he nodded at the white- faced Gabriel, who looked at what he held as if he’d never seen it before. The boy slipped back into the garage as Zee said, “It wouldn’t break it—you’d just have to get it recalibrated.”

  “We have a whole garage worth of tools—pry bars, tire irons, and even a hammer or two. There’s got to be something better than my torque wrench he could have grabbed.”

  “Listen, lady,” Kelly Heart said in a calm, soothing voice. “Let’s take a deep breath and discuss this a moment. I didn’t mean to scare anyone. That little girl was about to get mauled by a werewolf.”

  Truth.

  It didn’t surprise me. Talking to Zee had steadied me, and I’d had a moment or two to think.

  There might be a TV reality star somewhere who would point a gun at a cute little girl, but not while he was being filmed. The man behind him had been his cameraman—I could see the camera on the ground where it had been dropped when Heart landed on the second man with all his two-hundred-plus pounds of muscle.

  If he’d come here hunting werewolves, he’d have figured out what Sam was right away. There’s a bit of wolf magic that encourages humans to see a dog instead of a wolf, but it is only a little bit of magic, and if someone is looking—they’ll see a wolf and not a dog.

  So. How much to admit. I’d already paused too long to deny what Sam was. “He likes kids,” I said instead. “Gentle as a puppy.”

  Sylvia had been murmuring to her kids, but her voice stopped at my words. There was a short silence, then the littlest one went off like a fire truck, a high- pitched fire truck. At a guess, Sylvia had just snatched her daughter away from the big bad wolf.

  “I have a warrant for him,” continued Heart, wincing a little. I couldn’t tell if it was the volume that bothered him or the pitch, which was approaching ultrasonic.

  I raised my eyebrows and indicated the gun with a jerk of my chin. “Wanted dead or alive?”

  Samuel wasn’t out. And the only one I was worried about coming after Samuel would never send a bounty hunter. It would be Bran who killed him, when and if the time came. Heart’s warrant couldn’t be for Samuel.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out what werewolf people would expect to find around my place of work: Adam.

  How a bounty hunter got a warrant for him, when, to my knowledge, Adam was in good standing as a law-abiding citizen, I didn’t know. I was vague on bounty- hunter lore, but I was pretty sure that they mostly hunt down people who are wanted for bail-skipping, and then the bail bondsmen pay them a percentage of the bail money they would have otherwise lost.

  The Kennewick Police Department wasn’t very far away. Even so, the first vehicle in my parking lot was Adam’s. He parked his truck in front of the van, blocking it where it was.

  “You’re mistaken,” I told Kelly Heart, Bounty Hunter, keeping my eyes on him no matter how much I wanted to look at the man who had just closed the door of his new truck. “There aren’t any werewolves around here who have a warrant out for their arrest.”

  “I’m afraid you’re wrong,” Kelly told me kindly. Against my will, I was impressed by him. He was calm and cool while lying on his back like a turtle—on top of his cameraman, who was scared out of his mind and focused on the mouth of the gun I held.

  Another truck door opened and closed—Adam had someone with him. The wind didn’t favor me, so I couldn’t tell who it was. And I wasn’t going to be stupid and look. Not that I really thought the bounty hunter was a threat anymore. At least, not a threat to the children behind me.

  I could hear the woman in the T- shirt saying in a frantic voice, “Don’t make her shoot again, Kelly. Forty bucks. Forty bucks those cost. Each.”

  “Don’t worry,” I called to her. “You can dig them out, and they’ll look just about like what they do now. You might even be able to reuse them.” Silver doesn’t deform as easily as lead, which makes it a lousy ammunition—unless you’re shooting at werewolves.

  “She doesn’t seem too worried about you,” I told Kelly with mock sympathy as Adam walked toward us. “I guess silver bullets are harder to find than bounty hunters who look good in black leather.”

  He smiled. “She thinks so. Look, can I get up? I promise not to try anything, but I outweigh Joe here by a hundred pounds. If I lie on him much longer, he might stop breathing.”

  “Go ahead and put up the gun, Mercy,” said Adam. “Get it out of sight before the police are here. It’ll be easier that way. We might even get out of this without anyone getting arrested.”

  My will broke at the sound of his voice, and my head turned with as much inevitability as a sunflower turning its face to the sun.

  Adam was in a three- piece suit with a Mickey Mouse tie his daughter had bought him for Christmas—and he managed to look much, much more dangerous than the man on the ground. I’d known he would come, even after this morning’s conversation.

  I’d hurt him, and still he’d come when the security cameras he had posted all over the place at my garage told him I was in trouble. I’d never doubted for a minute that he would come; Adam is staunch and true, like the tin soldier in the old children’s story. Stauncher and truer than I, who’d pushed him away to save Samuel.

  “Sylvia called Tony. The police might already know about the gun.”

  “Even so,” said Adam. “People make mistakes when there are guns about.”

  Kelly didn’t want to take his eyes off me while I was holding a gun on him, but he was caught up in the same spell everyone in Adam’s sphere found themselves in. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the bounty hunter’s face turn to Adam, who’d come up from the side so as not to put himself in my line of fire if Kelly had popped up and started running.

  “Right,” the bounty hunter said. “Just put down the gun, Ms. Thompson. As this gentleman suggests.” Maybe he thought Adam would be more reasonable than I was. Kelly Heart wouldn’t understand what the bright gold flecks in Adam’s eyes meant.

  “I came here to bring in a werewolf I have a warrant for,” he told Adam, and I could tell he believed it. “I saw the werewolf with the kid and thought there would be trouble.”

  He was telling the truth—he’d told the truth to me, too. I fumbled a little, putting the safety on the unfamiliar gun. With Adam here, who needed a gun?

  Zee came up and held out his hand. “I’ll take it and make it disappear,” he told me.

  Heart rolled off his cameraman, keeping his hands up as he eased himself to the side. He was still mostly paying attention to me, as if I were the threat and not Adam. I ratcheted my estimate of his intelligence downward.

  Adam slipped on a pair of sunglasses—but he kept his gaze on the bounty hunter as Heart came to his feet. Adam took a step back when Heart offered a hand to his cameraman, and his foot crunched on something.

  Adam knelt, a graceful movement, over in a moment. When he stood up, he was holding the camera.

  “I’m afraid this didn’t survive the fall.”

  The cameraman made a moaning sound as if someone had hit him. He snatched the camera and tucked it against his belly as if that could somehow make it better.

  Adam looked at the cameraman, then beyond him to the van, where Heart’s people were frantically conferring. He glanced at Ben. When he had the other werewolf’s attention, he motioned toward the van with his chin. As simply as that, he let Ben know that he wanted him to go keep tabs on Heart’s crew. Adam didn’t leave things to chance, and he wouldn’t ignore possible hostiles on the other side of the parking lot.

&nbs
p; “I am sorry for scaring you,” Kelly told me, sincerely. This time he was lying. “And for upsetting the children.” He wasn’t worried about that either. I wondered how many people actually believed that sincere act.

  A pair of police cars, followed by Tony’s truck, pulled into the parking lot.

  “No sirens,” said Adam. “Probably Tony didn’t tell them about the gun.”

  Sam stepped around me, making me bump into the door. I dropped one hand and wrapped it in the ruff of his neck—no way was I stupid enough to grab his collar. My touch was a request, not an order . . . but Sam had already stopped beside me. He surveyed the approaching police from the top of the steps, a position that was higher than theirs.

  Sam, Heart paid attention to. He glanced longingly at Zee—because the gun was out of sight—and took a step away from the werewolf.

  “This is a misunderstanding,” he said in a voice designed to carry to the approaching police. “My fault.”

  I saw the moment the first officer on the scene recognized him because his eyes rounded, and his voice was a little awed as he told the older patrolmen who followed him, “It’s all right, Holbrook, Monty. It’s Kelly Heart, the bounty hunter from TV.”

  Monty was probably Tony, whose last name was Montenegro. That would make the older cop Holbrook.

  “Green,” said the older man quietly—I don’t think any of us were supposed to hear him. “It’s not all right until you find out what’s going on. I don’t care if the president himself is in front of you.” But then Holbrook took a good look at us, all standing with our hands plainly visible and in the relaxed fashion of people who had not almost killed each other five minutes before. We, all of us, were pretty good at lying with our bodies. “Now, go call it in and tell them situation under control.”

  Green turned without argument, leaving Tony and Holbrook to approach us alone.

  “Mercy?” Unlike the other officers, Tony wasn’t in uniform. He was wearing a dark jacket over black jeans, and he wore diamond studs in his pierced ears and looked more like a drug dealer than a cop. “What happened?”

  “He came into the office and saw my friend here.” I rested my hand on Sam’s head. I couldn’t call him by name. Tony knew Dr. Samuel Cornick, knew he was my roommate—and wouldn’t have any trouble connecting him with a wolf named Sam. And calling him Snowball at this juncture was only going to draw attention to the fact that I was hiding his identity. “And assumed that any werewolf was a danger.”

  “That’s a werewolf?” asked the older cop, who suddenly looked a lot more wary. His hand crept to his holster.

  “Yes,” I agreed steadily. “And as you can see—despite Heart’s precipitous actions”—I didn’t tell them what his precipitous actions had been, though Tony’s mouth tightened, so I was pretty sure he knew about the gun—“my friend here kept his head. If he hadn’t, there would be bodies.” I looked at Heart. “Some people might learn from his example of self-control and good judgement.”

  “He’s dangerous,” said Kelly. “I wouldn’t have sh—” He suddenly decided to leave the gun out of it, too, and switched tactics without bothering to finish his sentence. “I have a warrant authorizing the apprehension of the werewolf.”

  “No, you don’t,” I told him confidently. No way did he have a warrant for Sam.

  “What?” said Tony.

  “A werewolf?” said the older cop. “I don’t remember hearing anything about a warrant on a werewolf.”

  He whistled and waved, catching the attention of the young cop who was walking briskly back toward us.

  “Green,” he said, “you hear anything about a warrant out for one of our local werewolves?”

  The young man’s eyes widened. He looked at me, looked at Sam, and came to the right conclusion. Sam wagged his tail, and the police officer straightened up, his face going impersonal and professional. I recognized the look—this one had been in the armed forces.

  “No, sir,” he said. He wasn’t afraid, but he was watching Sam closely. “I would have remembered something like that.”

  “I have proof,” the bounty hunter said, nodding toward the van. “I have the warrant in the van.”

  Tony’s eyebrow went up, and he glanced at the other cops. “I can tell you for certain that we haven’t had any werewolves arrested and let out on bail. Since when does our department give arrest warrants to bounty hunters? I’m inclined to agree with Mercy—you must be mistaken.”

  Holbrook kept his attention on Sam, but Green and Tony both showed better sense.

  “Officer Holbrook,” I said, “you could make things a lot easier on my friend here if you didn’t look him in the eye. He won’t do anything.” I hoped. “But the wolf instincts tell him that direct eye contact is a challenge.”

  Holbrook looked at me. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said. “I appreciate the information.”

  “The warrant’s in the van,” said Heart. “I can have my assistant bring it here.”

  While the police were talking to Heart and me, Adam, Zee, and Gabriel had been doing their best to fade into the background. But I caught motion out of the corner of my eye: Zee, catching Adam’s attention. When he had it, he tilted his head toward the storage yard across the street.

  Like Adam, I followed Zee’s gesture with my eyes and spotted it right away. On top of the nearest storage unit was something that blended in with the red metal roof. With enough glamour, a fae can take on the appearance of any living thing, but something inanimate—like a roof—is harder. I couldn’t see what he or she was, just that something was there. It took less than an instant, and I pulled my eyes away quickly so as not to alert the fae creature of our notice.

  “Ben,” Adam said very quietly.

  “What did you say?” asked Tony.

  Ben was leaning against the van and chatting up Tanya-the-Bounty-Hunter’s-Woman, Leather Boy (Heart’s too-handsome sidekick), and Tech-Girl. They all must have had really bad instincts, because they were flushed and smiling. When Adam spoke, Ben looked over to his Alpha. The van would hide him from the fae on the rooftop—but it would also hide the fae from him.

  “Nothing important,” Adam said, while he made a few unobtrusive gestures with his right hand, about hip level. Ben made a gesture in return, and Adam closed his fist, then opened it.

  “Who are you, anyway?” asked Heart.

  “You were going to show us this warrant?” asked Tony, changing the subject.

  By the van, Ben smiled. He ducked his head, said something to the people he was talking with that had them all looking our way, then walked casually around the end of the van. I couldn’t see him as he crossed the street because of the van, but I saw the fae notice him and drop off the far side of the warehouse.

  Heart said, “Bring it on over, sweetheart.” I understood then that they had some sort of mic system that allowed her to hear everything we said. Probably recorded it, too. I supposed that was okay.

  Ben hopped the tall chain-link fence without touching it—if any mundane saw him, there would be no question that he wasn’t human. But the police, including Tony, were watching the famous TV star.

  No one but Adam, Zee, and me—as far as I could tell—noticed anything. Gabriel was gone. I realized that I’d seen Gabriel go back through the garage when his sister had cried out—because Sylvia had pulled her away from the werewolf.

  Paying attention, I could hear him talking in Spanish, his voice sharp with anger as he and his mother argued about something—and my name was definitely a part of the discussion.

  I tuned them out as the bounty hunter’s tech-girl came running over with a thick folder that she handed over to Heart. He leafed through the pages tucked into a pocket of the notebook and produced an official-looking document that he handed over to Tony.

  “He has a warrant,” Tony told me, carefully not looking at Adam. “And you’re right. It’s not for this werewolf.” He handed the paper to Holbrook.

  The older man took one look at it and harrump
hed. “It’s a fake,” he said, absolute certainty in his voice. “If you’d have told me the name, I could have told you it was a fake—without even looking at the elegant signature that looks less like Judge Fisk’s than mine does. No way there’s a warrant out for Hauptman and it’s not all over the station.”

  “That’s what I thought,” agreed Tony. “Fisk’s signature is barely legible.”

  “What?” There was enough honest indignation in Kelly’s voice that I was pretty sure it was genuine.

  Tony, who was watching the bounty hunter pretty closely, seemed to have the same opinion as I did. He handed the warrant to the youngest cop. “Green, go call this in and see if it’s real,” he said. “Just for the bounty hunter’s sake.”

  Like Tony, Green very carefully didn’t look at Adam. “I haven’t heard about this,” he said. “And I’d have remembered if we had a warrant for him. We know our local Alpha. I can sure as heck tell you that he hasn’t jumped bail.” Green looked at Tony. “But I’ll go call it in.” And he strode briskly back to his patrol car.

  “My producer told us that the police department didn’t want to take on a werewolf and had asked for our help,” said Heart, though he didn’t sound nearly as certain.

  Holbrook snorted indignantly. “If we had a warrant to pick up a werewolf, we’d pick him up. That’s our job.”

  “Your producer told you we didn’t want to take on a werewolf,” said Tony thoughtfully. “Did your producer give you the warrant?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does he have a name? We’d like contact information for him, too.”

  “Her,” Kelly said. “Daphne Rondo.” I wondered if he knew that his heart was in his voice when he said her name. He reached into his back pocket—slowly—and took out his wallet and extracted a card.

  “Here.” He held it a moment when Tony reached out to take it. “You know this guy, right? That’s how you knew this wolf was the wrong one.” Then comprehension lit his face, and he let go of the card and looked at Adam. “Adam Hauptman?”