Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  “Let’s say that, like you, I once had a friend I wished to help, and I kept him out of sight of my father in a place he could do no harm. It would have been kinder to kill him from the first.”

  My fingers sank into Sam’s fur.

  “How long do we have?”

  “My friend was old, but not as old as Samuel. He lost his humanity over a few days, became sick and lethargic toward the end of that. I thought he was just fading—but he went into a frenzy.” He stopped speaking for a moment. “Then just dropped dead. Less than a week. I have no idea how long Samuel will last.”

  “If he’d lost it when the wolf took over?” I asked. “Like the new wolves do? He’d have been better off?” I’d been so happy that he’d been different.

  “Then he’d have lived until our father caught up with him—but you would have died along with the people in the hospital where you found him. This is better, Mercedes. But do not trust him, too much.”

  “Do you have any suggestions how I can help him?”

  “The first is to convince the wolf to allow Samuel back in the driver’s seat, if only for a short period of time.”

  “He wants to survive,” I told them both. “That’s why he took over from Samuel in the first place. If that means letting Samuel back in, he’ll do it.” I sounded much more convinced of that than I felt, but Sam sighed and gave me a tired, faint whine.

  “And then you have to convince Samuel that he wants to survive.”

  “And if I can’t? If the wolf lets Samuel out, and he still wants to kill himself?”

  “Then the wolf will have to fight for control again—or my brother dies.” Charles let out a breath of air. “All things die, Mercedes. Some just take longer than others.”

  7

  I TOOK SAM WITH ME TO THE BOOKSTORE THAT NIGHT, which was inconvenient.

  I suppose we both could have stayed home, but I wanted in to look at Phin’s bookstore. The woman had been searching for something; maybe I could figure out what it had been. Maybe I’d find Phin there, happy and healthy. Maybe I wouldn’t sit home all night, worrying about things I couldn’t change.

  I couldn’t leave Sam by himself, not after my little talk with Charles. But he wasn’t the best partner to bring with me to break into the store.

  People would overlook a woman wandering around the Uptown mall in Richland even after most of the stores were closed. It wasn’t that late, a little after nine at night. The crime rate is relatively low in Richland—and most of what crime there is tends to be committed by gang members or teenagers. Sam . . .

  I imagined the hypothetical conversation as I drove down the interstate.

  Officer: “Tell me, did you see anything unusual last night?”

  Random witness: “There was this big white dog. Huge. And really white, stood out in the darkness like a beacon.”

  Yep. Sam made matters more difficult. So I would just act like I knew what I was doing and hope no one ever called the police to investigate.

  “I don’t know what I hope to discover in the bookstore,” I said. “There is hardly going to be a note telling me where Phin is, right? Still, it’s a start. If we don’t find anything, maybe we’ll go break into his apartment. It’s better than sitting around at home, right?”

  And the pack was meeting at Adam’s house that night. I knew why he’d called the meeting. He wanted to find out who’d been playing games with me. He’d called me to tell me what he was doing—and asked me to stay away because he hadn’t had a chance to show me how to defend myself from pack members crawling around in my head.

  I should have gone over anyway, confronted my enemies. But it was different when all your enemies could do was kill you.

  “I don’t want to stay home knowing how much of a coward I am,” I told Sam. “I should have gone to Adam’s when I saw them all arrive.”

  He grunted.

  “But the thought of them being able to make me do something I would never . . .”

  I was pretty sure that it hadn’t just been lack of opportunity that kept Adam from teaching me how to protect myself. He’d said that if he’d known what was happening at the time when whoever it was started influencing me, he could have discovered their identity. I think he planned on trying to force a confession tonight—and if he couldn’t, he would wait until they tried it again. If that was his motivation, I approved in spirit, but at the same time, I really didn’t want to wait around until someone tried to make me do their bidding again.

  I parked in the corner of the Uptown parking lot where an all-night restaurant was located. There weren’t a lot of cars there but enough that the Rabbit didn’t stand out.

  I opened Sam’s door and he sniffed the air carefully.

  “Are you scenting for the fae woman who was here today?” I asked.

  He didn’t give me any kind of answer, just shook himself and looked at me expectantly—as if he really were the dog we were pretending he was. Was he slower? Did his tail droop more than usual? Or was I letting Charles’s words make me paranoid?

  I glanced at him and was pretty sure it was both. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you aren’t right. He wasn’t quite as responsive, either, as if it took him a moment to translate words into meanings.

  I didn’t notice anyone who seemed to be watching us as we crossed the parking lot—but we were out where people could see us. All I could do was act as if I weren’t breaking into the shop. It took me two full minutes to crack the lock on the door of the bookstore, which was about one and a half minutes longer than I was comfortable standing there with my back to the parking lot and the busy street beyond. I was hopeful that someone from the street couldn’t tell that I was playing with my lockpicks instead of fumbling with a stiff lock. There was a bar that was still open about three stores over, but no one had come or gone while I struggled. Sheer good luck, something I couldn’t always count on. I was going to have to get some practice in if I kept having to break into buildings.

  The door handle turned, and I started to move on to the dead bolt, when I realized that the door had popped open when I’d unlocked the handle. Someone hadn’t engaged the dead bolt.

  I held the door for Sam, then slipped inside myself. He couldn’t shut the door—and if there was something unfriendly in the store, he was better able to deal with it.

  I turned the dead bolt and looked around. My eyesight is good in the dark, so we didn’t need to attract even more attention by turning on the light. It was darker in the store than it was outside and the windows were already tinted, so it would be hard for anyone looking to see anything but the reflection of the outside lights.

  At first I observed a neat and tidy store that smelled of incense and old books. Paper holds the memory of any strong scent, so in a used bookstore, it wasn’t uncommon to get little trickles of food, tobacco, and perfume. I took a deep breath to see if I could find anything that stood out.

  Blood and fear and rage are a little out of the ordinary.

  I stopped where I was and sucked in several deep breaths. Each time the smell grew stronger and stronger.

  Fae glamour—a type of illusion—is strongly effective on sight, sound, taste, and touch. I’m told it is sufficient for a human sense of smell, but mine is better than that. By the third breath I smelled the sharp smell of broken wood, and the ammonia- like scent that fae magic sometimes leaves behind.

  I closed my eyes, bowed my head, and let my nose be right. My ears cleared with a pop, and when I looked up, the tidy bookcases filled with tidy books had disappeared, leaving destruction in their place.

  “Sam.” I kept my voice down, though I don’t think anyone outside would have heard me if I’d shouted. It was a reflex thing—we were sneaking around, so I needed to be quiet. “Do you smell it? The blood? There’s a glamour here. Can you break it, too? Do you see the mess the fae left behind when they searched the place?”

  He cocked an ear at me, then looked around. With a movement swifter than thought, he tu
rned and sank his teeth into my arm.

  Maybe if I’d thought there was a chance of him attacking me, I could have gotten out of the way or defended myself somehow. Instead, I stared at him dumbly as his fangs slid through skin and into flesh. He released me almost immediately, leaving behind two clean marks that could have been a vampire bite except that they were too far apart and too big. Vampires have smaller fangs.

  Blood trickled out of one mark, then the other, dribbling down my forearm. Sam licked it clean, mostly, ignoring my surprised squeak and the way I backed away from him.

  He looked around the shop again. I clamped my arm to my mouth—I didn’t want to be bleeding anywhere in enemy territory. Witches can use blood and hair and other body parts to do nasty things. I didn’t think the fae worked quite the same way, but I didn’t want to chance it.

  I checked under the counter for tissues and found something better—a first-aid kit. It wasn’t as good as the one I had, but it was good enough to have gauze and an Ace bandage.

  Wrapped and no longer in danger of dripping bits of myself all over, I walked back to Sam. He was still where I’d left him, staring as hard as he could at something I could no longer see.

  It hadn’t been a hard bite, and I wouldn’t let myself be afraid of Sam. My foster father’s SIG was in its holster across my shoulder, full of regular ammunition that generally worked just fine on fae—and did nothing to werewolves but make them mad. I tuned out Charles’s warning voice and put the hand of my uninjured arm on Sam’s neck. I refused to believe he was regressing into a vicious killer. A bite did not a killer make.

  “Damn it all, Sam, why’d you bite me?” If I yelled at him, I couldn’t be afraid of him. So I yelled at him.

  Sam glanced at me, then knocked one of the fallen books aside with one paw. It was a cloth-bound copy of Felix Salten’s Bambi’s Children. In the glamour version of the shop, there had been no books on the floor. He’d bitten me on purpose—hadn’t I asked him if he could break the glamour, too? Evidently, the bite was his answer. My blood must have allowed him to see what I did, some sort of sympathetic magic or something.

  “Cool,” I said. “That’s cool.” Pushing out of my head the knowledge that neither Samuel nor Sam, my friend, would have bitten me so casually, I turned my attention to the bookstore.

  I have a pretty good memory for scents, and I picked up Phin’s without any trouble. If I’d been looking for purely human assailants, I’d have been in trouble. This was a bookstore and had had a lot of people running through it. There weren’t many fae aside from Phin, who barely qualified to my nose. However, several of the fae had been here recently, without many people in to cover up their trail.

  “I’ve got Phin, the old woman from this afternoon, and three other fae,” I told Sam.

  Sam raised himself on the edge of one of the dominoed bookcases and put his nose against the back, moving and sniffing until he’d found what he wanted. He stepped back in obvious invitation.

  Without touching it, I bent until my nose was nearly touching the wood. I smelled it, too, right where someone had put their magic-laden hand on the wood and pushed the bookcase over.

  “That’s one of them,” I told Sam. “Some kind of woodland fae, I think—air and growing things.”

  I followed Sam’s lead and sniffed and crawled and sniffed some more until we had a handle of sorts on what had happened here. I’d have done it easier if I took coyote form. But if someone came upon us, I’d have a better chance of explaining myself and keeping things calm if I was human. Calm was good, because I didn’t want Sam eating anyone he shouldn’t.

  I told myself all these good reasons to keep my human shape on because they were good reasons. But I knew the real reason was because that bite had made me concerned that Sam would forget that I was his friend if I were running around as a coyote instead of a human who could remind him of it.

  “So,” I told him, my hand on my hips as I surveyed a patch of blood belonging to Phin. “They came in the door, and the last one locked it behind him. Let’s call him Fishy Boy, because he’s a water fae of some sort. He seems to be the one running the show because all the damage to the store was done by the other two.”

  Sam’s icy gaze speared me, and I looked down and away—like the salute of a fencer. Acknowledging his state as the big bad wolf without submitting to it. It must have been enough, because he didn’t act any more aggressive.

  Again with the dominance stuff, it wasn’t something Sam usually indulged in unless he was really upset or meeting a wolf for the first time. When you are the top dog for long enough, I guess you don’t feel like you have to rub people’s noses in it.

  If he hadn’t bitten me, I’d have just dropped my eyes, but that didn’t feel safe anymore. Not after he bit me. I needed to remind him that I was an Alpha’s mate, predator and not prey.

  A week, Charles had said, based on one example who had been a lot younger than Samuel was. I was starting to worry that he’d been optimistic—which is something I’ve never felt compelled to accuse Charles of being. How much time did Sam have?

  “So Fishy Boy grabs Phin, and says, ‘We know youse got it, see.’ ” I used my best Jimmy Cagney voice as I recited the scene as I had pieced together. “And then he nods to his minions—Jolly Green Giants One and Two, because they both smell like green beans to me. Giant One, she pushes over a bookcase that topples a few more.” I couldn’t always tell the sex of the person whose scent trail I was following, but Giant One was definitely female, though not necessarily big. “Two, he’s a little stronger. He gets some loft on his and tosses it about halfway across the room, taking down a couple of more bookcases along the way in a much more destructive fashion.”

  The original bookcase Two had tossed was in pieces, having broken apart when it hit. I could see the action running like a film through my head; the steps had been laid out before my nose, and eyes—with a little imagination thrown in. I wasn’t sure even a werewolf could have picked up a bookcase stuffed full of books.

  “But Phin doesn’t tell right away,” I told Sam.

  I thought about Tad, my morning visitor- with-gun, and the dried blood on the floor. “So Fishy Boy continues working on Phin while the Giant Twins go looking for it in the store. They’re pretty convinced it is here because they took apart everything. I’m thinking that the ripped-up books might just be frustration—because it wasn’t done in a methodical way. I suppose, even so, it could be that they are looking for something that is not a book.” I looked around. “Maybe it could be hidden in a book or behind a book. They stopped because Phin started talking.”

  Sam sneezed a quick agreement—or maybe it was just dust. I was worried it was just dust.

  “Did he know they were coming and call Tad to warn me?” I asked. “Or did they make him call Tad, and he managed to leave a vague warning instead? Either way, isn’t it interesting that he didn’t say what it was I’d borrowed?”

  I tapped my fingers on a bookcase that was still upright. “So maybe they don’t know it was a book, and he was afraid they could hear him—or they could read Tad’s message.”

  Sam sneezed again. I glanced at him and saw the intelligent gleam that told me he was listening—and made me realize that he hadn’t been just a few minutes ago.

  “Maybe they really are after something entirely different. It could even be that Phin got clever and sent them after me to throw them off the trail. He does know that I have more protection than most people.”

  I let go of the bookcase so I could start pacing. “And this is where I’m going to be adding one and one and getting fifty—but bear with me.” I walked twice around the shop and came to a halt where I’d started in the first place.

  “Assume that at some point yesterday, Phin breaks down and tells them exactly who I am: things like who I’m dating and how many people would be angry if they just came after me. This next part is the weakest part of my story, Sam, but my instincts are screaming at me that the incident with K
elly Heart this morning and what happened to Phin are connected—it’s that fae waiting up on the roof that makes me certain of it. I just don’t know exactly why they wanted me dead.”

  Sam growled.

  “Think about it,” I told him, as if I were sure that he was growling at the threat to me. “This isn’t the work of the Gray Lords. If it were, I’d be dead. We know there are at least three of the fae. Four if the woman on the roof of the storage building wasn’t Giant One . . . Five if the old woman I saw here earlier today, who may or may not be Phin’s grandmother, is one of them. But still, I don’t think it’s a huge group. It wouldn’t be a happy thing for them if the werewolves went out hunting them. So they set up an incident, and Kelly Heart’s producer is encouraged—by charm or by harm, as Zee would say—to send Kelly to my garage to find Adam.”

  I stopped and looked out past the parking lot to the headlights of the cars driving by.

  “If they were after Adam, there are better ways to find him than coming to my garage. He’s not hard to find. He goes to work six days a week, and his home address is a matter of public record. I had put it down to Heart’s producer looking for the best drama . . .”

  I took a deep breath and gauged Sam for his reaction.

  Sam’s stance—intent on my words—told me that he was making the leap with me. Or at least his wolf was. Just how smart was the wolf half of the werewolf?

  “But things didn’t go quite as they planned. I disarmed Heart right off the bat. They could hardly shoot me while I held the gun I was supposed to be shot with, right? But when Adam showed up, then the police, they decided to try to create a little chaos: a feeding frenzy fueled by magic. But Zee took care of that—and spotted their shooter. They had to run from Ben and leave the field.”

  I rubbed my damp palms on my thighs. “It sounds far-fetched, I know. But there is the book and the phone call to Tad that ties me to the fae who came into Phin’s bookshop and destroyed it. They beat Phin until he bled, then took off with him. Violence and fae—just like this morning. And the only common factor is me. Coincidences happen, I know. Maybe I’m just egocentric, thinking it’s all about me.”