Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  “It’s Sam,” I told Kyle dryly. And even though I knew it would just stir up trouble, I had to warn him again because I really liked him. “You need to be careful about whom you flirt with among the wolves—you might get more than you bargain for.”

  Kyle could sometimes have a real chip on his shoulder—getting disinherited, then living in a conservative community has had that effect on more than one gay man—and Kyle could take flaming (and bitchy) to an art form when he thought it would make someone who disapproved of him uncomfortable. Luckily, he chose to take my warning in the spirit it was offered.

  In an entirely different kind of voice, he said, “Love you, too, Mercy.” He dropped the flirtatious act with a speed and completeness that many an Oscar winner would envy. “Hey, Samuel. Sorry, didn’t recognize you with all the fur.” He looked at what I held. “You want to put a towel in my safe?”

  “It’s a very special towel,” I told him as I ducked around him and into the house. “Dried Elvis’s hair on the day of the last concert.”

  “Oooh,” he said, stepping back so Sam could follow me. He shut the door and, almost as an afterthought, turned the dead bolt. “In that case, you certainly need it someplace secure. You want the big safe with all the electronics or something better hidden?”

  “Better hidden would be cool.” I didn’t think that electronics were going to work against the fae.

  He led the way through the house, up the stairs, and past his library—one side filled with beautiful leather- clad law books, the other with tattered paperbacks that included Nora Roberts’s complete works. I took two steps and stopped, backed up, and looked in the library again.

  If the fae were after the book, and they had some way of tracking it—certainly they would already have it. Instead, it had spent the better part of two days in my Rabbit wrapped in a towel.

  Kyle came back and looked at the library, too. “It’s a book, is it? You’re thinking of hiding it in plain sight?” He shook his head. “We can do that, but if someone is looking for a book, the first place they’ll look—after the big safe—is the library. I have a better idea.”

  So I followed him to a bedroom. It was painted dark blue with black splatters, and the twin-sized bunk beds had comforters with Thomas the Tank Engine chugging around on his track—not exactly something I expected to ever see in Kyle’s house. I knew that he never had family visit, so it couldn’t be for a nephew. Kyle continued into the bathroom so I did, too. Sam’s claws clicked on the slate floor.

  Thomas continued to rule the bathroom, too. A plastic toothbrush holder in the shape of a train sat next to the sink, and a set of towels embroidered with Thomas and his friends hung from towel racks shaped like train tracks.

  Kyle opened a cupboard next to the sink to reveal two empty shelves and one filled with towels of various colors.

  “Give me that,” he said, so I handed him the book.

  He knelt on the floor and unfolded the towel, repositioned the book, and folded the towel in the same way as all the other towels. He handed it back to me, and I put it on the bottom of one of the stacks.

  Kyle looked at my work and straightened the stack. The book towel looked just like the ones around it.

  One thing pretending to be another.

  For some reason I thought about the incident with the bounty hunter this morning. The bounty hunter—and the fae armed with a plastic gun loaded with silver bullets just like Kelly Heart’s gun had been. Because he’d been hunting werewolves.

  Maybe . . . maybe that was not what the fae had been hunting. Adam had suggested the silver ammunition might have been used only to match Kelly Heart’s, that the shooter might have been after any of us and not just a werewolf. I’d thought he was just trying to draw the spotlight off himself and keep me from worrying about him. But what if he was right? What if the fae had been after me?

  I was probably being paranoid. The world didn’t revolve around me, after all. Just because this past year I’d had vampires, fae, and werewolves try to kill me at various times didn’t mean someone was after me at present. The old woman in the bookstore hadn’t known who I was. Surely, if the fae were trying to kill me, she’d have recognized my face. Maybe the fae were willing to kill for the book I’d just hidden in my friend’s home. Warren wasn’t always here, and Kyle was just human. Maybe I shouldn’t leave it here. Maybe I was paranoid and seeing conspiracies where there were none.

  “Hey, Kyle?” I said.

  He looked at me.

  “You don’t risk anything for that book,” I told him. “If someone comes and threatens you—just give it to them.”

  He raised a well-groomed eyebrow. “Why don’t you give it to them? Whoever ‘them’ is.”

  I sorted through a number of answers, but finally said, “That’s just it. I don’t really know who ‘them’ is or why they want that book. Or really if they want the book.” Probably I was overreacting to the whole thing, and Phin would call me in a couple of days and ask for his book back. Probably the bounty- hunter incident was just what everyone thought it was—a publicity-hungry producer. And the armed fae was . . . My imagination failed me. But there could be an explanation that had nothing to do with me or the book.

  I couldn’t really see someone just killing me outright like that for the book. Wouldn’t they at least approach me first? Ask me for it? Tell me that if I didn’t give it to them, they’d kill Phin?

  Unless they’d already killed Phin.

  “You okay, Mercy?” Kyle asked.

  “Fine. I’m fine.”

  WE WERE ON OUR WAY DOWN THE STAIRS BEFORE I finally gave in to curiosity. “Okay. Who’s the Thomas the Tank Engine fan—you or Warren?”

  Kyle threw back his head and laughed. “Maybe we should have hidden it in the bathroom of the Princess room. Then you could have asked which one of us likes to sleep with a pink canopy over his head.” The grin died down. “I have guests, Mercy. Mostly divorces are messy and hurtful for everyone involved. All that hurt can explode on the wrong people. Sometimes people need a place to be safe for a while—and if there’s a pool and a hot tub in the backyard, so much the better.”

  Kyle hid people in his home, children who needed to be safe.

  Sam growled.

  I reached down and rested my hand on his head, but Kyle didn’t seem to recognize that Sam’s reaction was a little extreme even from a wolf who loved children. No one was being hurt here and now.

  “Yes”—Kyle started down the stairs—“I agree, Samuel. Those are the men I really love sticking it to in court.” He paused. “And women, too, sometimes. Abuse and violence goes both ways. Did I ever tell you about the client I had who took a contract out on her husband?”

  “You mean a killing-for-hire type contract?”

  He nodded. “It was a first for me, too. Who’d have thought it would happen in our little town? Killer took him out with a single shot. They’d been married for thirty-two years, and he took up with their grandson’s girlfriend. Apparently she decided divorce and the lovely settlement I’d gotten her weren’t enough. She turned herself in that afternoon. Seemed pretty happy to do so.” He paused at the kitchen. “Would you like something to eat?”

  “I think I’d better go,” I told him. “I’d rather no one realized I stopped by here.”

  “Weren’t you carrying that walking stick of yours? Did you leave it in the bathroom?”

  It was gone. I’d been carrying it, and I hadn’t noticed when it left. “Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “It’ll show up again when it wants to.”

  He gave me a delighted smile. “That’s right. That’s what Warren said. The thing just follows you around like a puppy?”

  I shrugged.

  “Pretty cool.”

  At the door, he hugged me and kissed my cheek. Sam gravely raised one paw like a well-trained dog, and Kyle shook the lion-sized foot without flinching.

  “You take care of Mercy,” he told Sam. “I don’t know what she’s gotten hersel
f into this time—but danger seems to be her new middle name.”

  “Hey,” I objected.

  Kyle looked down his nose at me. “Broken arm, concussion, sprained ankle, stitches, kidnapped . . .” He let his voice trail off. “And that’s not the end of the list, is it? You keep Samuel or someone next to you until this blows over. I don’t want to be attending your funeral, darling.”

  “Fine,” I said, hoping that he wasn’t right. “I’ll be careful.”

  “You just let Warren or me know if we can give you any more help.”

  I DROVE TO THE BIG MALL IN KENNEWICK BECAUSE I felt a strong desire not to park somewhere isolated—and I wanted to call Tad. I had to park in Outer Mongolia because on a Saturday, that was the only place with parking spaces. But I was as far from alone as it was possible to be. Then I called Tad.

  “Hey, Mercy,” he answered. “Dad told me that you were nearly involved in a shoot-out at the OK Corral in East Kennewick this morning.”

  “That’s right,” I told him. “But let me tell you about the whole day and see what you think.”

  I ran through the whole thing from beginning to end—leaving out only the part where I hid the book.

  When I’d finished, there was a small pause while Tad absorbed what I’d said. Then he asked, “Just what is in that book anyway?”

  “It’s a book written about the fae by someone who was fae,” I told him. “I don’t think there’s anything magical about it—or if there is, I can’t tell, and I usually can. There’s a lot of information in it and a lot of fairy tales retold from the other side.” I had to laugh. “Gave me a whole new perspective on ‘Rumplestiltskin’ and a real aversion to ever reading ‘Hansel and Gretel’ again.”

  “Nothing shocking?”

  “Not that I read. Not a whole lot that isn’t already out in the realm of folklore—though this is more organized. Particularly in regard to the variety of the fae and the fae artifacts. I suppose there could be something shocking in the part I haven’t gotten through yet—or there’s something concealed by magic or a secret code . . . Invisible ink, maybe?” My imagination failed me.

  “Let me tell Dad all of this,” Tad said. “I can’t think that there would be that much interest in that old book. Sure, it’s valuable—and there would be a desire, I think, to keep it out of the hands of the humans. But it wouldn’t be disastrous if there’s nothing in it but fairy tales not that much different from books already available . . . Wait a minute.” He paused. “Maybe that old woman in the shop was Phin’s grandmother.”

  “His grandmother? She was older, but not that old. Phin is . . .” It had been difficult to pin his age, I remembered. But he had been an adult—at least in his thirties, possibly as old as a well-preserved fifty. “Anyway, this woman was maybe early sixties, no older than that.”

  Tad cleared his throat. “If she’s fae, Mercy, it doesn’t matter how old she looks.”

  “Phin doesn’t have much fae in his background,” I said. I was certain of that. “This woman was big-time old-school Gray Lord kind of fae.”

  Tad laughed. “The woman he calls his grandmother is probably more like his great, great, great . . . Add a lot more ‘great’s to the end of it. He told me that one time, when he was a kid, she drove off a bunch of fae who were unhappy that he was so human . . . or maybe that he, a human, had a touch of fae blood at all. After that, she’d drop in now and then until she started to keep up with him just by cell phone.”

  “So she’s a good guy? You think I should talk to her? Tell her about the book and ask her where Phin is?”

  “I don’t know if this piece has any good guys or villains, Mercy,” he said. “And I certainly don’t know if the fae you saw was Phin’s grandmother or a Gray Lord. And if it was . . . there’s no surety that she’s safe to deal with. Fae are not human, Mercy. Some of them could eat their own children without anger or regret. Power motivates them more than love—if they can love. Some of them are so alone . . . You have no idea. I’ll call Dad, then get back to you.”

  He hung up.

  “Well,” I asked Sam, “excitement enough for one day? Do you want to go home?”

  He looked up at me, and I saw that he was tired, too. More tired than a day mostly running around in a car could account for. Sad, I thought suddenly.

  “Don’t worry,” I told him, bending down until my forehead was on the back of his neck. “Don’t worry, we’ll find some answers for you, too.”

  He sighed and wiggled until his muzzle was on my lap. I drove home that way.

  I MADE MEAT LOAF—SAMUEL’S RECIPE, WHICH INCLUDED plenty of jalapeños and several other peppers. Day-old and out of the refrigerator, it could burn the skin off the roof of your mouth if you weren’t careful.

  My phone rang, and I looked at the number. I set the timer on the oven, and it was still ringing.

  “Bran,” I answered.

  “You’re playing with fire,” he said. He sounded tired.

  “How did you know I’m making Samuel’s meat loaf?”

  “Mercedes.”

  “You’re supposed to give us some time,” I told him. My stomach roiled. I needed more time to prove Sam’s ability to keep the peace.

  “I love my son,” Bran said, “but I love you, too.”

  I heard everything that he didn’t say. He’d chosen his son over me before—that was how he saw it. That was how I might have seen it at the time, too.

  “He’s not going to hurt me,” I said, looking into Sam’s white eyes. He stiffened, and I remembered to drop my gaze—though he hadn’t been making me do that after last night. Usually, once the wolf knows you’ve acknowledged he’s the boss, those kinds of things only crop up when the more dominant wolf is upset.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do, actually,” I replied. “I had a gunman break into the garage and point a gun at him, and he didn’t attack because I asked him not to—and because someone, a child, might have gotten hurt in the cross fire.”

  There was a very long pause.

  “I need you to be very clear on what is wrong,” he said.

  But I interrupted him. “No, you don’t. If I tell you that Samuel’s wolf is in charge, you will have to kill him.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Maybe if he weren’t your son, you could afford to be more lenient. Or if you hadn’t used your position as Marrok to force wolves who would rather have stayed hidden out into the open. But that lost you a lot of moral support that you haven’t recovered yet. If you loosen those rules even a little . . . well, you probably won’t lose your position—but there might be a lot of dead bodies on the ground. Maybe more than can be explained away to the humans.” I’d been doing a lot of thinking about this.

  I let that hang in the air for a little while. We needed that week to justify Sam’s reprieve to the other wolves.

  “Stay by the phone,” he said, and hung up.

  Sam looked at me and sighed, then flattened out on the floor on his side like a big fur rug.

  When the phone rang next, it was Charles, Samuel’s brother and Bran’s enforcer. “Mercy?”

  “Right here,” I answered.

  “Tell me about Samuel.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “I won’t know until you tell me, will I?”

  Was he trying to be funny? With Charles, I could never tell. Of all the Marrok’s wolves, his younger son was the most intimidating—at least to me.

  “I meant for Samuel,” I said.

  “I’m under orders,” he said, with a cool smile in his voice, “to keep the contents of our conversation to myself.”

  “All right.” I cleared my throat and took Charles through my discovery that Samuel had tried to commit suicide all the way through Kelly Heart trying to apprehend Adam.

  “He played with the children?” Charles asked.

  “Yes. I told you. Maia got on his back and rode him like a pony. It’s a good thing for him she wasn’t wearing spurs.”r />
  Still flat on the floor, Sam thumped it with his tail twice—otherwise, he might have been asleep.

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” I asked. “It means he has some time.”

  “Maybe,” Charles answered. “Mercy, for werewolves—all of us have different relations with our wolves.” Charles didn’t usually talk a lot, and when he did, his speech was deliberate, as if he thought through everything twice before saying anything out loud. Bran sounded that way on the phone, but Charles did it all the time, even in person.

  “Think of werewolves as conjoined twins. Some of us are quite separate, barely sharing anything at all with our wolves. Just two entities under the same skin—we all start out that way. When our human side is able to take control, wolf and man work out a . . . ‘Truce’ is the wrong word. ‘Balance’ is better. And just as our human soul loses parts of what it was to be human, our wolf loses part of what it means to be wolf.”

  “So Samuel’s wolf isn’t dangerous?”

  “No,” he said quickly, and Sam picked up his head, rolled up to his belly, and took a more sphinxlike stance. “Never think that. He’s not whole anymore—he isn’t equipped to be in charge. Like a conjoined twin, he shares his heart and head with Samuel. And if he succeeds in wresting complete control from Samuel, or if Samuel lets him do it, that heart will quit beating.”

  I dropped to my knees and put a hand on Sam’s shoulder because the pain in Charles’s voice found its echo in mine.

  “I doubt he’ll survive for very long that way—do you hear me, wolf?”

  Sam’s upper lip curled, showing teeth.

  “He does,” I said.

  “He’ll grow tired and more hungry than usual. He’ll slowly lose the chains that Samuel forged to control him, but all that will be left is a ravenous beast. A new wolf, a whole wolf in charge, kills easily and often, but usually there is a reason for it, even if that reason is that he doesn’t like the way his victim smelled. What will be left of Samuel will kill and destroy until he drops dead.”

  “How do you know?” Charles was only a couple of centuries old. He hadn’t ever lived in a place outside of the Marrok’s control, and the Marrok killed the wolves who lost control. But he sounded absolutely certain.