Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  But I wasn’t worried about the chewed sections anymore.

  “It’s broken,” I said, kneeling in the deep snow. In front of me the rope came to an abrupt ending, as if sliced by a sharp knife. I’d thought that the reason I hadn’t been able to feel Adam was still the overload from when he’d thought I was dead. Though it had been recovering from that, hadn’t it? When had I lost the connection?

  It hurt to know that it was broken.

  “Now, that,” Bran growled, “was cut by black magic.”

  His voice was so strong in my right ear that I turned—and got a glimpse of something huge and awful that didn’t look anything at all like Bran in any form I’d ever seen.

  “I couldn’t see how it would be possible until Samuel told me there was a witch involved. Between the witch and the queen, they found a weakness and broke it,” he told me. And then, in a curiously amused tone, he said, “And I don’t scare you a bit, do I?”

  “Why would I be afraid of you?” I asked—but my focus was on the broken rope. Would I hurt Adam if I touched it?

  “Go ahead,” said Bran. “He would give anything for you to touch it again.”

  “Mine,” I said. “Mine.”

  But I still didn’t touch it.

  With that superior humor he occasionally used, which made me want to hit him every time, Bran said, “I’m sure he can find someone else who wants it.”

  I grabbed it with both hands—and not because I was worried there would be someone else, no matter what Bran thought. But because we belonged together, Adam bound to me, me to him. I loved it when he let me make him laugh—he was a serious man by nature and weighed down by the responsibility he held. I knew he would never leave me, never let me down—because the man had never abandoned anything in his long life. If I hadn’t taken the gold rope of our bond, I knew Adam would have sat on me and hog-tied me with it. I liked that. A lot.

  “Mercy!” This voice wasn’t Bran’s. This voice was demanding and half-crazed. A short pause, then much more controlled, Adam said, “About damned time. Found you. Mercy, we’re coming to get you. Just sit tight.”

  I wrapped his voice around me and held on tighter to the rope between us until it settled into my bones, and I didn’t have to hold on anymore. “Adam,” I said, happily. And then added, because he’d know I was teasing, “Took you long enough. You were waiting for me to get myself out?”

  I looked around my field of snow, by then littered with cheery garland and glowing rocks. I closed my eyes and wrapped the feel of pack around me like a warm cloak. I felt the fairy queen’s magic touch the golden rope I shared with Adam—and this time it was the queen’s magic that shattered.

  MY GAZE WAS LOCKED WITH THAT OF THE TRAPPED forest lord. He blinked, and I jerked my eyes down—and saw that my arm was still dripping blood. From the amount I’d lost, I hadn’t been out of it for more than a few seconds.

  “There,” said the fairy queen. “Now you are mine.”

  I blinked at her and tried to mold my features into the stupid expression I’d seen on the other thralls as she cut the ropes that held me to the chair.

  “Go to the kitchens and get something to wipe the blood off the floor,” she told me.

  I stood up and started walking. She quit paying attention to me, because I wasn’t interesting anymore. I started walking a little faster because I saw my gun on the floor by one of the benches, where someone must have kicked it. I suppose that made sense. There weren’t many fae who could have picked it up without hurting themselves. None of the thralls would dream of using it—but I could see that the fae might hesitate to have a thrall dispose of it.

  I picked it up and turned around. Slowly, so as not to attract the attention of the fae in the room—who were all looking at the fairy queen and not at her new thrall. The queen was leaning over the arm of her throne, talking to her witch. I shot the queen three times in the heart. The witch was watching me and smiled as I pulled the trigger.

  “Huh,” said a voice right next to me. I turned my head and had to look down at a human-seeming child who appeared to be no more than eight or nine years old.

  She smiled at me. “And they were afraid something would happen to you if we waited until everyone could come to the party. Just like a coyote to spoil the fun for everyone.”

  The last time I’d seen this fae, she’d been playing with a yo-yo in the front yard of a murder scene she was guarding. I didn’t know her name, just that she was plenty powerful, people were scared of her, and she was a lot older than she looked.

  For an instant I almost saw something completely different standing beside me, then she smiled at me, and said, “Not my glamour you don’t, Mercedes.”

  The other fae in the room didn’t move, frozen in the moment of the fairy queen’s death.

  Yo-yo Girl walked forward to the dead queen, and I followed her. The witch had grabbed the body and was taking handfuls of the queen’s blood and painting it over the silver thrall necklace around her neck.

  “I don’t think so,” said Yo-yo Girl. She bent and touched the remains, and said something that might have been a word. The queen’s body turned to dust.

  Yo-yo Girl started to back away—and then saw the forest lord in his chains beyond the throne. Somehow I don’t think that she’d seen him before reducing the queen to so many ashes.

  The silver ring popped off the witch’s neck—only to be replaced by small fingers. I heard only the echo of a whisper, then the witch was dust, too. Yo- yo Girl took a handful of the resultant gray mass, lifted it to her mouth, and licked it like an ice-cream cone.

  “Yum,” she said to me. Her hands, her clothes, and her mouth were covered with ashes. “I love witches.”

  “I’ll take chocolate, if it is all the same to you,” I told her.

  “Mercy!” roared Adam from somewhere beyond the hall.

  “Uh-oh,” said Yo-yo Girl. “Someone missed out on all the killing.”

  “Here!” I called. “We’re okay.”

  And then it was true. Because Adam was there and he had his arms around me and that made everything all right.

  I KICKED THE SNOW AND STUBBED MY TOE ON THE kitchen sink. It was the night of the big rescue, and everyone was partying over at Adam’s house. I’d been hugged and fussed over until I decided that it was a good time to go check out the remains of my home.

  The snow hid a lot, and the pack had cleaned it up. They’d had the whole month that I’d been missing to do it. I suppose I was lucky it hadn’t been a year or a century.

  They hadn’t been able to find the Elphame after Zee had been forced to let his door close. Apparently, as Zee explained it to me, the Elphame moved in relation to the reservation, and Ariana hadn’t been able to find me.

  It was only when the bond between Adam and me reconnected that they were able to locate the Elphame. While Zee worked to make another entrance, they’d sent Yo-yo Girl ahead to make sure I was safe. She apparently didn’t need anything as crude as an entrance to find her way to the Elphame. She probably had a name besides Yo-yo Girl, but the fae are funny about names, and no one wanted to give her a real one.

  The fae who had belonged to the fairy queen were being housed in the reservation temporarily. Some of them had no memory of how they’d come to follow the fairy queen. Some of them were angry that I’d killed her, but not so angry they’d made any move against me. Zee said that the Gray Lords were torn between anger at the way the fairy queen had used a forest lord and a black witch, and triumph at the proof that Underhill was returning some power to all of the fae.

  There wasn’t much left of my trailer except for a small pile of things that might be reused. I hadn’t lost the pole barn with my Vanagon inside. I hadn’t lost Medea or Samuel.

  The first time I’d seen the place, there had been a coyote hiding under the porch, and I’d taken it as an omen. When I’d finally bought it, I’d felt like I had a home for the first time in my life. A home no one could take away from me.

&n
bsp; “Saying good-bye?”

  I hadn’t heard the Marrok, but Bran was like that.

  “Yeah.” I smiled at him so he’d know I didn’t mind his presence.

  “I meant to thank you for Samuel,” Bran said.

  I shook my head. “It wasn’t me. It was Ariana—have you seen them together? Aren’t they cute?” Ariana wasn’t at Adam’s house, though Samuel was. She wasn’t quite up to bearing a pack of werewolves celebrating madly. Samuel had talked about her for twenty minutes, though.

  Ariana hadn’t managed to touch Samuel when he was a wolf—yet, Samuel had told me. But she didn’t have any trouble with Samuel the man, and she didn’t have panic attacks around any of the werewolves—as long as they were calm and approached her one at a time in human form. She’d just needed a reason to work on her phobias, he’d explained with great pride. Bran had smiled when Samuel said that, the smile that said the Marrok had been up to something. So he might have had something to do with her finding her way among the wolves. Or maybe he just wanted me to think that. I’ve found that I do better when I don’t worry too hard about what Bran can and can’t do.

  “Ariana is a gift,” said Bran. “But if it hadn’t been for what you did, Samuel wouldn’t have been around to receive it.”

  “That’s what friends are for,” I told him. “Lift you when you’re down—and kick you in the rump when you need it. Adam helped. Speaking of friends, thank you for the Pack Magic 101 that kept me from being Zombie Mercy.”

  He smiled, an expression that made him look about sixteen. If you didn’t know him, it would be hard to believe that this young man with the diffident expression was the Marrok.

  “Did you get all of that?” he asked. “I wasn’t sure how much made it through.”

  I looked at his innocent expression. “How much did you get back?”

  He gave me wide eyes, then grinned. “I think that we both were getting a bit of a boost from an interested party.”

  “Who?”

  “Zee had no trouble freeing the forest lord from his chains. He’s a charming fellow, by the way, very gracious as well as powerful. She kidnapped him from his own place in northern California about a year, year and a half ago. His wife and family were very glad to hear that he’ll be coming home soon. Daphne, the fairy queen, apparently visited the reservation and decided this would be a good place to roost. She enthralled a nasty witch and used her to grab the forest lord—because she didn’t have enough power to enthrall him.”

  “You think he helped us?”

  “Someone did. I’d just about given up.” He looked around at the remnants of my home. “I have a more probable answer, but I’m having a little trouble wrapping my head around it. Have you decided what you are going to do with this yet?”

  “It was insured,” I told him. “I might as well replace it.” Gabriel might need to live somewhere.

  He and Zee had kept the shop going for the month I’d been missing. His mother wasn’t happy with his doing that, so he was living at Adam’s house. In the basement—as far from Jesse’s bedroom as Adam could manage.

  “Look,” said Bran. “Your oak tree didn’t burn down.”

  “Yeah,” I said, pleased. “Scorched a bit, but I think it’ll be okay.” I took a step toward it, and my foot caught something and moved it. I thought at first it was a broom handle, but when I bent down to retrieve it, it turned out to be my old friend the walking stick.

  “Ah,” said Bran. “I wondered where that had gotten off to.”

  I gave it a thoughtful look. “You’ve seen it?”

  “It was sitting on the couch in Adam’s basement,” he said. “When I picked it up—suddenly all my efforts bore fruit at last, and I found you among the pack bonds as if you had never been missing.”

  I gave him a wry smile. “It does seem to show up at interesting moments.”

  “So,” he said, “have you given any thought to raising sheep?”

  “Not at the present time,” I replied dryly. “No.”

  We walked a little more in companionable silence.

  “I have some photos,” Bran said abruptly. “Of Bryan and Evelyn.” My werewolf foster family. “Some of your old school pictures, too, if you want them.”

  “I’d like that,” I said.

  He looked back toward Adam’s house, and I saw that someone else was headed over.

  “Looks like you’ve been missed. I’ll leave you alone.” He kissed my forehead and jogged off.

  He met Adam at the barbed-wire fence, and Adam said something I couldn’t quite hear that made Bran laugh.

  “Hey,” I said, as Adam approached me. His response was a blast of warmth that had me blushing.

  “Do you have keys to your van?” he asked, his voice a dark caress that gave me goose bumps. He smelled of need and impatience.

  “They’re in the van.”

  “Good,” he said, taking my arm and walking briskly toward the pole barn that had survived the fire without a scorch mark. “If I had to go get my truck, someone might notice us leaving. I have keys to Warren’s apartment. He said the guest room has clean sheets.”

  He stopped at the van. “I need to drive.”

  Normally, I’d have argued with him just on general principle, but sometimes, especially with Adam so intense that he was ready to explode, it was just better to give Alpha males their way. Without a word, I headed toward the passenger side of the van.

  He didn’t speed and he didn’t talk. We made it to Richland without hitting a red light, but there our luck ran out.

  “Adam,” I said gently, “if you break my steering wheel, we’ll have to walk the rest of the way to Warren’s house.”

  He loosened his hands but didn’t look at me. I put a hand on his thigh, and it vibrated under my palm.

  “If you want to make it to Warren’s,” he said, his voice almost guttural, “you’ll have to keep your hands to yourself.”

  There is something incredibly arousing about being wanted. I pulled my hand back and sucked in a deep breath. “Adam,” I said.

  The light turned green at last. I had the whimsical thought that my time in Elphame had completely skewed my internal clock, because I could have sworn we were there for hours instead of seconds.

  Warren lived in an A house, one of a group of “Alphabet Houses” built during World War II to accommodate the exploding population of nuclear-industry workers in Richland. The one he lived in was still a duplex. Both sides were dark—and the other duplex had a FOR RENT sign on the window.

  Adam parked the van and slid out without looking at me. He closed the door with exquisite gentleness that said a lot about his state of mind. I got out and didn’t even bother to worry about whether my prized Vanagon Syncro was locked—which I suppose said equally as much about my state of mind.

  Adam unlocked the door of Warren’s apartment and held it open for me. As soon as we were both inside, he closed the door and locked it.

  When he turned to face me, his eyes were bright gold and his cheeks were flushed. “If you don’t want this,” he told me, as he had since the . . . incident with Tim, “you can say no.”

  “Race you to the bedroom,” I said, and started for the stairs.

  He caught my arm in a very careful grip before I took more than two steps. “Running . . . would not be a good idea right now.” He was ashamed of his lack of control; maybe someone else would have missed it in his voice. Maybe I would have, too, if it weren’t for the bond between us.

  I put my hand over his and patted it. “Okay,” I said. “Why don’t you take me to bed?”

  I hadn’t been ready for him to grab me and pick me up that fast or I wouldn’t have squeaked.

  He froze.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  He took me at my word and carried me to the stairs. I halfway expected him to run, but instead his pace was deliberate, his step almost heavy. The stairs were narrow and steep, and he was careful not to bang my head or feet.

&n
bsp; He set me down just inside the guest bedroom and closed the door. He stood there, his back to me, breathing heavily.

  “A month,” he said. “And neither Zee nor any of the fae we knew could tell us if we’d ever get you back. Samuel’s woman couldn’t find you—everything you had burned up in the fire. Neither the van nor the Rabbit worked as a close enough tie. She tried to approach me to see if she could use me, but she couldn’t even walk into the same room as me—not half-crazed as I was. Touching me was out of the question. I thought I had lost you.”

  I remembered feeling Mary Jo and Paul hunting me. “You looked for me.”

  “We did,” he agreed. Abruptly he turned and hauled me against him. He was shaking, and he hid his face in my hair. It was useless, if he was trying to prevent me from understanding what he was feeling. I had a Technicolor view through our bond.

  I hugged him as hard as I could so he’d know I was real, that I didn’t mind him holding me hard. “I’m here,” I said.

  “I couldn’t find you either,” he told me, his voice a bare whisper. “Our bond was broken, and I couldn’t tell if you’d done it on purpose, if the queen had managed it—or if you were dead. We could feel you in the pack bonds, but that’s been known to happen when people die. Bran came and he couldn’t find you either. Then yesterday, Darryl was feeding us lunch and dropped the pan on the floor.”

  I’d heard about that already, from various people, but I didn’t interrupt.

  “Darryl thought someone was messing with Auriele, and stormed halfway up the stairs—only to be met by Auriele, who was worried about him for the same reason. That’s when Bran came up from the basement and said . . .” He stopped speaking.

  “He said, ‘I’ve done the hard part, Alpha. Now tell us where your mate is,’ ” I said. “And he was holding the walking stick in his hand.”

  “And there you were,” Adam told me. “Inside of me, just where you belonged.”

  He drew back, moving his hands to my cheeks. The heat of his skin felt precious to me, his hot amber eyes feeding the fires in my heart—and my body.