Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  He pulled away again, and this time she let him go. Free, he retreated to the damaged door that separated my office from the garage. “I’m a werewolf.”

  Ariana nodded and took two steps forward. “I did notice that when you killed the hounds who had come for me.” There was a hint of humor in her voice. Good, I thought. Any woman I’d allow to have Samuel would have to have a sense of humor. “The fangs gave it away—or maybe the tail. You saved me again—and then you left, and all I knew was your first name.”

  “I scared you,” he said starkly.

  She gave him a half smile, but clenched her hands. “Well, yes. But it seems I scared you worse because you ran away for . . . a very, very long time, Samuel.”

  He looked away from her gaze—the most dominant werewolf in the Tri-Cities, and he couldn’t meet her gaze. Didn’t he see that even if he scared her, she still wanted him?

  She tried to take another step toward him and stopped. I could smell her terror, sharp and sour. She backed away from him with a little sigh.

  “It is very good to see you again, Samuel,” she said. “Because of you I am whole and here all these centuries after my father would have destroyed me. Instead, his body long ago fed his beasts and the trees of his forests.”

  Samuel bowed his head and, to the floor, he said, “I’m glad you are well—and apologize for causing your panic attack today. I should have stayed out . . .”

  “Yes. Panic attacks. They can be pretty . . .” She looked at Zee, who was back in his chair looking as relaxed as if he’d spent the last ten minutes watching a very boring soap opera. “Did I hurt anyone, Siebold?”

  “No,” he said, folding his arms. “Just true- named our wolf, and told Mercedes and Jesse the story of the Silver Borne.”

  She looked at me, then at Jesse, maybe to see how frightened we were. Whatever she saw reassured her because she gave a shy smile.

  “Oh, that’s good. Good.” Her shoulders relaxed, and she turned her attention back to Samuel. “I don’t have them often anymore. Not at all with mortal canines. It’s just the fae dogs, the magic ones—black dogs and hounds—that set me off. Only when I am overcome with—” She bit her lip.

  “Fear?” Samuel suggested, and she didn’t answer. She also had left off werewolves, I noticed.

  “I am glad to see that your magic has returned,” he said. “You thought it was gone.”

  She took a deep breath. “Yes. And for a while I was glad of it.” She looked at me. “And that has bearing on the present situation. You are Samuel’s friend, Mercedes?”

  “And mate of the local Alpha werewolf—Jesse’s father,” I told her. I could hardly tell her that Samuel was single—that was a little too obvious. I saw that it mattered to her that Samuel didn’t belong to me.

  “You were going to—” I was so caught up in matchmaking that I almost flubbed it then and there. I shut my mouth and grabbed Jesse’s hand.

  “—help us find Gabriel.” Jesse completed my sentence for me.

  Ariana didn’t move like a human at all when she came back to where we sat, with her chair in hand; she moved like a . . . wolf, bold and graceful and strong. Without a glance at Samuel, she sat down.

  “Ask her about the thing the fairy queen wants,” I told Jesse.

  “Zee said she wants the Silver Borne,” Ariana said. “That is the object of power I built for my father—although it never quite worked as the one who commissioned it would have liked. For many years I thought I had destroyed all my magic by making it.” She closed her eyes and smiled. “I lived as a human, except for my long life span. I married, had children . . .” She glanced at Samuel, who was looking over our heads and out the window. His face was composed, but I could see the pulse beating fast in his throat.

  Ariana continued her story quickly. “It took me nearly a century to make the connection between my lack of magic and the Silver Borne.”

  She gave me a wry smile. “I know. I had no magic anymore, and the last thing I made was something that was supposed to eat magic. You’d think I’d have made the connection. But all I knew was that it wasn’t finished . . . and I couldn’t remember how far I’d gotten when my father called the wolves. After a while it was not as important to me—it was only a broken thing that did nothing. Someone stole it, and I thought, good riddance. I left it to them, and after a few months my magic returned. It was then that I first understood I’d succeeded, in part. It does consume fae magic—but mostly just the magic of the person who currently possesses it.”

  “Why would a fairy queen want it, then?” I asked, then added a belated, “Jesse?”

  “It eats fae magic, Mercy,” said Zee. “How easy to change a formidable opponent to someone more vulnerable than a human—at least a human knows he has no power. Dueling is still allowed among the fae.”

  “Or maybe she doesn’t really understand what it does,” suggested Ariana. “She could believe it does as it was built to do: take power from one fae and give it to another. I’ve heard the stories—and I do not bother to correct them. Now I have answered a question, I have one for you. Mercy, did Phin give that book to you?”

  I took in a breath to answer, and Jesse clamped her hand over my mouth and jumped in. “It would work better if you ask me,” she said. “Then it would be less likely that Mercy breaks her word.” She dropped her hand. “Did Phin give you the book?”

  “But what does the book have to do with it?”

  “Glamour,” said Samuel suddenly. “By all that’s holy, Ari, how did you manage to do that? You disguised that thing as a book, and you gave it to your grandson?”

  “He is mostly human,” she answered him without looking his way. “And I told him to keep it locked away so it wouldn’t eat the magic he has.”

  “What if he’d sold it?” I asked. “Jesse?”

  “It is my blood that it was born in,” Ariana said. “It finds its way back to me eventually. Jesse, please ask her. Did Phin give you the book?”

  “No. I might have bought it if I could have afforded—” I stopped talking because she slumped down and put both hands over her face.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Ariana said, hiccuping and wiping her face with her hands. Samuel surged toward her, then stopped where he was. She’d flinched, just a little.

  “It’s just been such a . . . I was so sure Phin was dead—that they’d killed him trying to get it, and it would be my fault.” She wiped her eyes again. “I’m not usually like this, but Phin is . . . I adore Phin. He is so much like my son who I lost a long time ago . . . And I thought he was dead.”

  “Now you know he lives?” Samuel asked.

  “In fire or in death,” Jesse said, understanding it before any of the rest of us did. “That’s what the fairy queen said. That if she killed Mercy, or if they burned it, it would reveal itself. But if it still belongs to Phin . . .”

  “If they had killed him, the Silver Borne would have revealed itself to them,” Ariana agreed. “They wouldn’t still be looking for it.”

  “Why did you make it that way?” asked Jesse.

  Ariana smiled at her. “I didn’t. But things of power . . . evolve around the limits they are given. That’s why, even though I thought it did nothing, I kept it with me. Because even unfinished, it was a thing of power.”

  “How did you figure out that it . . . Oh.” There was comprehension in Jesse’s voice.

  “Right. It’s a very old thing, and many of its owners have died in various ways. The fire thing came later.” Her face grew contemplative. “And quite spectacularly.”

  “Aren’t you its owner?” Jesse asked.

  “Not if I want to keep my magic—I’m only its maker. That’s why it’s called the Silver Borne.”

  “Ariana means silver in Welsh.” Samuel sat down on the floor and leaned against the end of the nearest metal shelving unit. He’d had a rough couple of days, too—but I hoped that Ariana’s obvious fear of him wouldn’t send him sliding back into despair.

&nb
sp; “Jesse,” I said. “Ask her how we find Gabriel.”

  “What did you bring me that belongs to this young man?” Jesse handed her a white plastic bag. “It’s a sweater he loaned me when I was cold.”

  “Phin told me that his magic was that he could sometimes feel things from objects,” I said. “Things like how old an object is. Psychometry.”

  “Something he inherited from me.” Ariana pulled the sweater out and put it against her face. “Oh dear. This won’t work.”

  “Why not?” Samuel asked. “It is his. I can smell his scent on it from here.”

  “I don’t work off scents,” she told him, her eyes on the sweater. “I work off ties, the threads that bind us to those things that are ours.” She looked at Jesse. “This sweater means far more to you, as a gift of love, than it did to him when he wore it. So I can use it to find you, but not him.” She hesitated. “Does he feel the same way about you?”

  Jesse blushed and shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Give me your hand,” said the fae woman.

  Jesse reached out and Ariana held it—and smiled like a wolf scenting her prey. “Oh yes, you are a lodestone.” She turned to look at Zee. “With her I can find him. He is that way.” She pointed toward the back of the garage.

  WE LOADED INTO ADAM’S TRUCK BECAUSE ZEE’S TRUCK wouldn’t hold us all—and Zee drove. Ariana sat in the front and Samuel sat behind Zee, as far as he could get from her in the big truck.

  The sound of the big engine brought a smile to Zee’s face; he appreciates modern technology more than I do.

  “Adam has good taste,” was all he said.

  Looking for Gabriel was frustrating because it took us a while to figure out that we had to cross the river, and the roads didn’t always lead where she was pointing. Adam had a map in his jockey box, and Samuel used it to figure out how to work our way around to the most likely destinations.

  We ended up in an empty, flat meadow up a winding dirt road (not marked on Adam’s map) that might have been an hour’s drive from the Tri-Cities if we’d known where we were going in the first place. There was a fence around the field we’d all had to climb over. Maybe ten years ago it might have held in livestock, but the barbwire drooped and T posts were tipped over. Near where we’d parked the car were the remnants of someone’s old cabin.

  Ariana, looking out of place in her cardigan and stretch-knit pants, stopped in the middle of the field between a thatch of bunchgrass and a couple of sagebrush.

  “Here,” she said, sounding worried.

  “Here?” Jesse said incredulously.

  I took advantage of our halt to start picking cheatgrass out of my socks. If I’d realized we’d be running around out there, I’d have worn boots—and a thicker jacket.

  “The fairy queen has set up her Elphame,” Zee observed soberly.

  “That’s bad?” I asked.

  “Very bad,” he said. “It means she is stronger than I thought—and probably she has more fae at her command than we suspected if she still has the ability to build a home.”

  “How could she have done that here?” asked Ariana. “She must be able to tap into Underhill to create her own land. The gates to the Secret Place have been lost to us for centuries—and Underhill never was in this land.”

  I looked at Zee. I couldn’t help it because I’d been to Underhill—and then sworn to silence.

  “Underhill was wherever it chose to be,” Zee said. “The reservation is no more than ten miles away as the crow flies. Most of the fae who live there aren’t the powerful among the fae—but there are a lot of us, more than appear on the government’s rolls. There is power in that kind of concentration.” He was careful not to say that the reservation had reopened a path or two to Underhill.

  Ariana held her hand out, palm down, and closed her eyes briefly. “You’re right, Zee. There is power here that tastes of the Old Place. I had wondered why she bothered to keep Phin alive when killing him would have been the most logical path for her to take. She outsmarted herself when she took him to Elphame.”

  “Fairy queens follow rules,” agreed Zee. “Mortals who are taken to the Elphame cannot be killed or permanently harmed—it’s part of the magic of building a place apart.”

  Ariana gave him a little smile. “My Phin must be too human for her to kill. I wonder if she knew that when she took him to her lair? If he is human, she cannot, of her own volition, release him for a year and a day.”

  “Does that mean she can’t kill Gabriel?” Jesse rubbed her arms to keep warm. “And that we can’t get him for a year and a day either?”

  “She can’t kill Gabriel either.” It was Samuel who answered. “That doesn’t mean she won’t hurt or enthrall them. Fairy prisoners can be rescued by stealth, by battle, or by bargaining.”

  “Bargaining? Like in the song ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’ but with a fairy?” I asked. It seemed to me that I’d heard a similar tale with fairies in it.

  “Right,” Samuel agreed. “It can be a contest—usually musical, because fairy queens tend to be musically talented. But there are stories of footraces or swimming contests. My father has a wonderful old song about a young man who challenged a fairy to an eating contest and won.”

  “How do we get in?” asked Jesse.

  “The only way I know of getting into Elphame is by following the queen in,” Ariana said.

  “I might be able to open a way,” said Zee. “I think I can manage to keep her from knowing what I’ve done. But I’ll have to stay here and hold the door open—and I won’t be able to keep it open forever. An hour at most and you have to be out. If the door closes . . . As it does in Underhill, time passes differently in Elphame. If the door closes, even if you manage to escape, there is no telling how much time will have passed when you get out.”

  “Okay,” said Jesse.

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Not you, Jess. No.”

  “I’ll be the safest person there,” she told me. “I’m strictly a mortal human—they can’t kill me.”

  “They can make you want to be dead,” said Samuel.

  “You need me to find Gabriel.” Jesse set her chin. “I’m coming.”

  I looked at Ariana, who nodded. “The Elphame is entirely under the control of its maker. If we want to find your young man quickly and get him out, we’ll need her to do it.”

  “Then let me call Adam and get the wolves.” I should have stopped at Sylvia’s to pick up something that Ariana could have found Gabriel with that wasn’t living. I didn’t want to cause Adam’s pack any more trouble than I already had—but I wanted even more to get Gabriel and Phin out of the fairy’s hold and still keep Jesse safe.

  Ariana sucked in a quick breath. “I am sorry,” she said. “Samuel is . . . I could not do it with strange werewolves. If it were just fear, I would do it. But the panic attacks can be dangerous to anyone around me.” She looked at Zee. “Could they find them without me, do you think?”

  “No,” said Zee. “If I have to stay out here, then they will need you to keep them from being lost. Moreover, I think that the wolves might be a mistake. Samuel is old enough and powerful in his own right—I think he could resist the will of one such as a fairy queen. But all of the wolves . . . The chances are too great that she would turn our own against us. If she turns you or Jesse, Ariana and Sam can still get you out. If you go in with the pack, even one wolf who turns would mean death.”

  “It’s all right, Mercy,” said Jesse. “I’m not helpless, and I . . . Would you be able to wait out here if it were Dad in there?”

  “No.”

  “Are you ready?” asked Zee.

  “All right,” I said, painfully aware that Adam would not be happy with me, but Jesse was right. She was probably the safest among us. “Let’s get them out of here.”

  “Good,” said Zee—and he dropped his glamour without fanfare or drama.

  One moment he was the tallish skinny old man with a little rounded belly and age spots on his neck
and hands, and the next he was a tall, sleek warrior with skin dark as wet bark. Sunlight tinted his hair gold. It hung in a thick braid that flowed over one shoulder and hung lower than his belt. The last time I’d seen him, his pointed ears had been pierced many times, and he had worn bone earrings in the piercings. There were no decorations at all.

  His was a body that didn’t belong in the jeans and plaid flannel shirt he still wore. The clothing fit him as well in his current shape as they had in the one I was used to. I supposed that made sense because it was the Zee I knew who was the illusion and this man, and his clothes, that were real.

  Zee’s true face was uncanny—beautiful, proud, and cruel. I remembered the stories I’d found about the Dark Smith of Drontheim. Zee had never been the kind of fairy who cleaned houses or rescued lost children. He’d been one to avoid if you could and to treat very, very courteously if you couldn’t. He’d mellowed a little with age and didn’t disembowel anyone who displeased him anymore. Not that I’d seen anyway.

  “Wow,” said Jesse. “You are beautiful. Scary. But beautiful.”

  He looked at her a moment, then said, “I have heard Gabriel say the same of you, Jesse Adamstochter. It was meant as a compliment, I believe.” He turned to Ariana. “You’ll have to leave the glamour behind. The only glamour that works in Elphame is the queen’s, and if you wait until the Elphame rips it from you, it will alert those inside that they have an intruder.”

  She clenched her fists and glanced at Samuel and away.

  “I’ve seen your scars,” he said. “I am a doctor and a werewolf. I saw those wounds when they were new and raw—scars do not bother me. They are the laurels of the survivor.”

  Like Zee, she didn’t bother with theatrics. Without glamour, her skin was a warmer color than Zee’s and several shades lighter. It was beautiful against silver-lavender hair that was no more than a finger-length long anywhere and floated out from her scalp more like plumage than hair—a lot like Jesse’s current hairstyle. Ariana’s clothes altered when her glamour dropped as well, into a simple knee-length dress of an off-white color with a handkerchief hem.