Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  “I am a freak, Mercy,” he said, and I snorted.

  “Yeah, such a freak,” I agreed. “That’s why I’ve been drooling over you for years even though I’d sworn off werewolves for life after Samuel. I knew that if I told you being a member of the pack and the bonds and all that were bothering me—it would hurt you. And you are already putting up with . . .” I couldn’t wrap my mouth around the ugly word “rape,” so I softened it as I often did. “With the aftermath of Tim. I thought if I gave myself a little time, figured out how to keep the pack from turning me into your ex-wife, and bought Samuel a little extra time as well . . .”

  Adam leaned against the wall just inside the door—the wall my counter used to block—and folded his arms across his chest.

  “What I’m trying to say,” I told him, “is that I’m sorry. It seemed like a good idea at the time. And, no, I did not engineer this to put some distance between us.”

  “You were trying to keep me from being hurt,” he said, still in that odd voice.

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head slowly—and I noticed that sometime while we’d been talking, he’d lost the wolfish aspect, and his face had returned to normal. Warm brown eyes caught the light from the windows as one side of his mouth quirked up.

  “Do you have any idea how much I love you?” he asked.

  “Enough to accept my apologies?” I suggested in a small voice.

  “Heck no,” he said, and pushed off from the wall, stalking forward.

  When he reached me, he put his hands up and touched the sides of my neck with the tips of his fingers—as if I were something fragile.

  “No apologies from you,” he told me, his voice soft enough to melt my knees and most of my other parts. “First of all, as I already pointed out—you would make the same choices again, right? So an apology doesn’t work. Secondly, you, being who you are, could have made no other choice. Since I love you, as you are, where you are—it hardly makes sense for me to kick about it when you act like yourself. Right?”

  “People don’t always see it that way,” I said, stepping into him until our hip bones bumped.

  He laughed, a quiet sound that made me happy down to my toes. “Yeah, well, I don’t promise I’ll always be logical about it.” He gave a rueful glance to my broken counter and the cash register on its side. “Especially at first.” His smile dropped away. “I thought you were trying to leave me.”

  “I might be dumb,” I told him, putting my nose against his silk tie, “but I’m not that dumb. I’ve gotcha now, and you aren’t getting away.”

  His arms tightened almost painfully around me.

  “So why didn’t you tell Bran about Samuel?” I asked him. “I was sure you’d have to tell him. Aren’t you bound by blood-sworn oaths?”

  “If you’d called me last night and told me what was going on, I’d have called Bran—and shot Samuel myself. But . . . based on what happened this morning, he seems to be holding it together okay. He deserves some time.” His arms, which had loosened a little, pulled me against him even harder. “If something like that happens to me—you call Bran and you stay as far from me as you can get. My wolf is not like Samuel’s.” He gave the counter another look. “If I lose it . . . you just stay away until I’m dead.”

  6

  ONCE MOST EVERYONE ELSE WAS GONE, ADAM TOSSED the fae’s rifle into the backseat of his truck.

  “I’ll see if I can’t find out something from the serial numbers,” he said. “The way she just left it probably means that she doesn’t think we can trace it to her anyway, but it would be stupid not to check.”

  “You will be careful,” I told him.

  “Sweetheart”—he bent down and kissed me—“I am always careful.”

  “What’ll you give me if I watch out for him?” It wasn’t what Ben said; it was the way he’d said it. I have no idea how he made those words sound suggestive, but he managed it.

  Adam shot him a look. Ben grinned unrepentantly and ducked around the side of the truck and hopped in.

  “I was on the way to a job site when I got the call that something was up,” Adam told me. “I’ve got to get back.”

  “No worries,” I said. “I’ll lock up. I don’t think I’ll be doing anything more here today.”

  He opened his door, and stopped with his head turned away from me. “I’m sorry about your counter.”

  I took a couple of steps forward until my nose pressed against his back and wrapped my arms around him. “I’m sorry about a lot of things. But I’m glad I have you.”

  He hugged my arms. “Me, too.”

  “Get a room,” said Ben from inside the truck.

  “Stuff it.” Adam turned around, kissed me, and hopped in the truck.

  Sam and I watched him drive away.

  I STOPPED AT A SANDWICH SHOP AND BOUGHT TEN subs with double meat and cheese. Then I drove the Rabbit to the park on the Kennewick side of the river to eat. There wasn’t any snow yet, but it was a cold and dreary day so, other than some distant joggers and a serious-looking biker, we had the place to ourselves. I ate half a sandwich and drank a bottle of water. Sam ate the rest.

  “Well, Sam,” I asked, when we were both finished, “what do you want to do today?”

  He looked at me with interest, which didn’t help much.

  “We could go run,” I told him as I threw our garbage into a can next to where I’d parked the Rabbit.

  He shook his head with emphasis.

  “Hunting not a good idea?” I asked. “I’d think it would help you to relax.”

  He lifted his lips to display his fangs, then snapped his teeth five times, each snap faster, more savage, than the one previous to it. When he stopped, he was perfectly calm—except that I could see that he was breathing harder, and there was a deep hunger in his eyes even though he’d just eaten nine and a half feet of loaded submarine sandwiches.

  “Okay,” I said after a pause to make sure my voice wasn’t shaking, “hunting is a bad idea. I get it. Something peaceful.”

  I opened the passenger door to let him in and saw the towel-wrapped bundle on the backseat.

  “Want to help me return a book?” I asked.

  THE UPTOWN WAS BUSTLING WITH SATURDAY SHOPPERS, and I had to park a good distance away from the bookstore. I opened the door for Sam. He hopped out, then froze. After a second, he dropped his nose to the ground—but whatever he was looking for he didn’t find because he stopped and drew in a deep breath of air.

  My nose is better than a normal human’s, if not as good as it is in my coyote shape. I took in a deep breath, too, but there were too many people, too many cars, for me to figure out what had set Sam off.

  He shook himself, gave me a look I couldn’t fathom, and hopped back into the Rabbit. He flattened himself on the seat, stretching across the gap between and lowered his muzzle to the driver’s side seat.

  “You’re staying here, I take it?” I asked. It must not be anything dangerous, or he wouldn’t let me go on my own—Sam with his wolf ascendant had always been even more protective of me than Samuel himself had.

  Maybe one of the other werewolves was nearby. It would make sense for Sam to avoid them. I took another deep breath. I still didn’t scent anyone I recognized, but Samuel’s nose was better than mine outside of coyote shape.

  I moved his tail out of danger and shut his car door. I opened the back door to get the book—and reconsidered. Phin’s neighbor might have been fae and faintly creepy, but that didn’t mean there was anything wrong. But there could be, and with Sam in the car, the book was just as safe here. If Phin was at the bookstore, I’d just come back and get it. If his neighbor or someone other than Phin was around instead, I’d regroup.

  “I’m going to leave the book in the backseat,” I told Sam. “I should be right back.”

  In the short time since we’d left the park, the temperature had dropped, and the wind had picked up. My light jacket wasn’t quite up to the wind and the damp. I gave the gray s
kies a good look—if it rained tonight and the temperature dropped much from here, we might have a good, hard freezing rain. Montana may have steep, windy roads that are nasty when covered with snow and ice, but those are nothing compared to the Tri-Cities when the freezing rain turns the pavement into a polished ice-skating rink.

  I trotted through the parking lot and narrowly avoided getting run over by a Subaru that was backing out without looking. I kept an eye out for other idiots, and so it wasn’t until I stepped onto the sidewalk and looked up into the window of the bookstore that I saw a gray- haired woman behind the counter. I felt a frizzle of relief: she wasn’t the creepy neighbor.

  I reached for the door and saw that the closed sign was still up—with an addition. Someone had taped a piece of white paper with UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE printed in thick black Sharpie.

  While I hesitated, the woman inside gave me a cheery smile and walked up to the door, turning the dead bolt so she could open it. Her movements were surprisingly brisk and sprightly for a woman of her grandmotherly roundness and wrinkles.

  “Hello, dear,” she said. “I’m afraid we’re closed today. Did you need something?”

  She was fae. I could smell it on her—earth and forest and magic with a touch of something burning, air and salt water. I’d never smelled the like, and I’ve met two of the Gray Lords who rule the fae.

  Most fae smell to me like one of the elements the old alchemists claimed made up the universe—earth, air, fire, and water. Never more than one. Not until this woman.

  Her faded hazel eyes smiled into mine.

  “Is Phin around?” I said. “Who are you? I haven’t seen you here before.” I wasn’t a regular customer; maybe she worked with Phin all the time. But I was betting she didn’t. If she’d helped often, I’d have smelled her in the store the first time I’d come here. I would have remembered if I’d caught her scent.

  Lots of things scare me—like vampires, for instance. Since I’ve become more intimately acquainted with them, they scare me even more than they used to. I know that they can kill me. But I’ve killed one and helped to kill two others.

  The fae . . .

  In the most terrifying horror films, you never see what is killing people. I know that’s because the unknown is far scarier than anything some makeup or special-effects person can come up with. The fae are like that, their true faces concealed behind other forms—and designed to blend in with the human race and hide what they truly are.

  This sweet-faced person who looked like someone’s grandmother might be one of those who ate children who were lost in the woods, or drowned young men who trespassed in her forest. Of course, it was possible that she might be one of the lesser or gentler fae—just as she looked. But I didn’t think so.

  I’m smarter than Snow White: I wouldn’t be eating any apples she gave me.

  She ignored my questions—fae don’t give out their true names—and said, “Are you a friend of his? You’re shivering. I don’t suppose it would hurt anything if you came in and sat down a bit to warm up. I’m just helping straighten out the books while Phin is gone.”

  “Gone?” I wasn’t going into that shop alone with her. Instead, I pounded her with the kind of questions any customer . . . okay, any obsessive customer would ask. “Where is he? Do you know how I can get in touch with him? Why isn’t the store open?”

  She smiled. “I don’t know where he is at the moment.” Another evasion. She might know that he was in the basement, for instance, but not exactly where he was standing. “He’ll probably let me know when he gets a chance to call me. Who should I tell him came asking after him?”

  I looked into her guileless eyes and knew that Tad had been right to be worried. All I had was Phin’s unresponsive phone, a nasty neighbor, and the store closed—but my instincts were clamoring. Something had happened to Phin, something bad.

  I didn’t know him well, but I liked him. And, going by the phone call Tad had received, whatever had happened to him was tied to the book he’d loaned to me. Which made it my fault. Maybe if I hadn’t kept it to read this past month, he’d still be safe in his store.

  I smiled back at her, a polite smile. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll stop in another time.”

  She snapped her fingers. “Wait just a minute. My grandson told me that he’d loaned a nice young woman a rather valuable book that she should be returning soon.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Right now I’m interested in a first British edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.” Not really a lie. It would be interesting, and I didn’t tell her I was trying to buy one. I don’t know if the fae can figure out if someone is lying as well as the werewolves can, but any group that has a prohibition against lying that is as stringent as the fae’s probably has a method to detect when it happens.

  “He didn’t tell me about anything like that,” she said suspiciously, as if he would have normally.

  But she had lost the chance to convince me that she was Phin’s assistant when she allowed my comment that she was a stranger to his store to stand.

  “I suspect it’ll take him a while,” I told her. “I just stopped by to check in with him. I’ll come back another time.” I stopped the “thanks” that was on the tip of my tongue and substituted “Bye, now” and a casual wave.

  I felt her eyes on my back until I was hidden behind rows of cars, and I was glad I’d parked the car a long way from the mall. Sam moved his head off my seat without raising any part of his body enough that he might be seen through the windows. He was hiding.

  I looked at him and glanced at the bookstore as I cruised past it on the way out of the parking lot. The woman was back behind the counter going over something that looked like an account book.

  Coincidences happen a lot less often in real life than they do in the movies.

  “Sam,” I said, “are you staying out of sight of a fae? One that smells like all the elements at once?”

  He raised his chin and dropped it.

  “Is she one of the good guys?” I asked.

  He made a gesture that was neither yes nor no.

  “Trouble?”

  He snorted affirmative.

  “Damn it.”

  I pulled over at a gas station, parked the car, and called Warren, Adam’s third in the pack and my friend.

  “Hey, Warren,” I said when he answered. “Does Kyle have a safe in that monstrosity he lives in?” I could put the book in Adam’s safe—and if it weren’t fae who were looking for it, I’d feel relatively confident with it hidden and surrounded by werewolves. But Warren’s human boyfriend’s house would be a much less likely spot to leave it and nearly as safe.

  “Several.” Warren’s voice was dry. “I’m sure he’d be delighted to loan you one. You storin’ blackmail material now, Mercy?” There were noises in the background of his phone, people and the kind of echoing you get in a really big building.

  “Wouldn’t that be something,” I said. “How much do you suppose Adam would pay to keep an X-rated video of him off the Internet?”

  Warren laughed.

  “Yeah,” I said sadly, “that’s what I think, too. So no riches in my future, and no blackmail either. Can you or Kyle meet Sam and me at Kyle’s house sometime soon?”

  “I’m on guard duty right now, but I bet Kyle is home. He doesn’t always answer the house phone. Do you have his cell number?”

  Warren worked for his boyfriend—I know, it’s an awkward thing, but Warren hadn’t exactly been making rent at the Stop and Rob he’d worked at before. Kyle’d shaken a few trees, bribed a few officials (probably) and maybe blackmailed more, and gotten Warren a private detective’s license. Warren guarded clients and did quiet investigations for Kyle’s law firm.

  “I have it,” I told him. “Are you at Wal-Mart?”

  “Nope, grocery store. Wal-Mart was an hour ago.”

  “Poor baby,” I said sympathetically.

  “Nope,” he said, his voice soft. “I’m doin’ something usef
ul. This lady deserves to feel safe—though lots of folks seem to think I’m responsible for her black eye.”

  “You’re tough,” I said unsympathetically. “You can handle a few nasty looks.” Being a gay werewolf for a hundred years gave Warren a skin so thick it might as well be armor. Not much ruffled his feathers except for Kyle.

  “I’m kinda hoping her soon-to-be-ex shows up,” he said softly; I thought so she wouldn’t hear him. “I’d like to get the opportunity to introduce myself to him.”

  KYLE BROOKS’S HOUSE IS IN THE WEST RICHLAND HILLS, where the rich folks live. Huge and yet somehow delicately designed, it settles in among its neighbors like a sly cat among poodles. The size is right, but it’s more graceful and comfortable in the desert light than the rest of them. Divorce lawyering, at least in Kyle’s case, pays very well.

  I parked the Rabbit on the street, let Sam out, and got the book . . . and the walking stick that was lying beside it.

  “Hello,” I told it. It didn’t do anything magical or warm in my hands, but somehow, it felt smug.

  I bumped the Rabbit’s door closed with a hip and trotted all the way up to Kyle’s front door. The significance of the book had just entered a whole new dimension, once the old woman at the bookstore had mentioned it. So I held it with both hands and tucked the walking stick under my arm.

  When I got to the front door, I couldn’t ring the bell.

  Sam saw my dilemma and caught the doorbell with a gentle nudge of one claw. Kyle must have been right by the door, as he’d promised when we talked, because when he opened the door, he was face-to-fang with Sam.

  He didn’t even flinch. Instead, he cocked a hip, made a kissy face, then smiled seductively, turning an ordinary pair of jeans and a purple wifebeater into brothel-wear.

  “Hey, darling,” he told Sam. “I bet you’re gorgeous in man shape, hmm?”