Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson, #12)(17)

She shook her head. “Nah. I needed to get out of this house tonight, so I called some friends and we’re all going out to a movie. One of them has a thing for Tad. It’s doomed, but it’s not my place to tell her that. But that’s why I invited him, too. I’m working on the theory that exposure will cure her of her crush from afar. Anyway, Tad offered to take us all in his new old van.”

Tad had just finished a build on a VW bus; well, mostly finished. Mechanically it was sound and the interior was completely redone, but he hadn’t decided on a paint job yet so it was still primer gray.

“He’s picking me up first,” Jesse told me. “He’ll be by in about fifteen minutes. I’ll have him stop at your house to pick up the letter.”

“Okay,” I said. If Tad couldn’t keep her safe, no one could. He was a good shoulder to cry on, too. “Have fun. Your dad and I are going out to chase rabbits.”

Finding the jackrabbit I’d seen was mostly an excuse to search. Something had hit Dennis with a lot of magic, and Dennis mostly just hung around his house, so whatever had happened had probably occurred nearby.

Jesse snorted; she knew that we weren’t hunting dinner. But she only said, “You two have fun killing cute fuzzy animals.”

I gave her a thumbs-up and headed out.

“Hey, Mercy?”

I stopped in the doorway and turned back.

“Be careful.”

“Always,” I told her—which might not have been entirely true.

Her laughter was a little sharp.

“I always try not to die,” I told her more truthfully.

“Okay,” she said. “And, hey, Mercy? Thanks for not reading Gabriel’s note.” There was an edge of bitterness I didn’t care for in her voice.

“Don’t give me too much credit,” I told her. “Your mother doesn’t willingly talk to me. If she did . . .” I shrugged. “She might have had me checking out his underwear drawer before I knew it.”

“Hah,” Jesse said, pointing at me. “I think you are the only person in this house who is totally immune to her.”

“That’s because I love you and I love Adam,” I told her in all seriousness. “That makes it impossible for me to love Christy.” That was probably more truth than I should have given her, but it had been a long day.

Her mouth turned sad. “Yeah,” she said. “I get that.”



* * *



? ? ?

    I washed up in my bathroom, resting a cold washcloth on my eyes until they weren’t so puffy. I looked in the mirror and decided I was good enough, and headed downstairs.

I could hear Adam talking on the phone; I was pretty sure it was someone from work. Nothing important or he would have shut his office door. But if he was on his phone, then he wasn’t changing to his wolf. That gave me time to go talk to Aiden about the door to Underhill.

Aiden’s room was in the basement, so I just continued down the next set of stairs. He lived in what had previously been the pack’s safe room because Adam and his happy contractor (who said that fixing the damage routinely experienced by our house from a pack of werewolves had already paid for his kids’ college and was working on his grandchildren’s) had decided that it would be the easiest room in the house to fireproof. Aiden tended to have nightmares, and when he did, sometimes he started fires. There was a fire extinguisher in every room of the house and two in the main basement—one of them near the stairs, and the other on the wall next to Aiden’s bedroom.

Construction had begun on another safe room in the far end of the basement. Werewolf safe rooms kept everyone else safe from the occupant (presumably an out-of-control werewolf) instead of the other way around like safe rooms in human houses were intended to do.

A safe room started out as a cage constructed from silver-coated steel bars. Then it would be covered with drywall and turned into a fairly normal-looking room because cages don’t help anyone calm down. Our new safe room was still in the cage stage.

Aiden’s door showed its origins in that it was solid metal, but it no longer locked from the outside. I knocked on it twice.

Aiden opened the door. His hair stuck out in medium-brown swirls as it tended to when he got upset, because he ran his fingers through it and occasionally would grab and twist. Sometime since I’d left the house, he’d changed his clothes and cleaned up.

As soon as he had the door open, Aiden started apologizing.

“I am so sorry, Mercy. I had no idea Tilly was planning on this.”

“Not your fault,” I told him. “When an ancient powerful force of magic decides to do something, people like you and me don’t get much of a say in it.”

He didn’t look as though I’d relieved him of guilt. “If you hadn’t let me stay—”

“We like you,” I told him. “We’ll take you how you come.”

I’d told him that before. He was, I thought, starting to believe it.

He took a breath, then frowned at me doubtfully. “Ancient powerful forces of magic and all?”

“Yup. You’re in good company in this family.” I gave him a rueful smile. “Joel is possessed by a volcano spirit. I have Coyote, who likes to show up and make trouble whenever he chooses. Even Adam comes with Christy baggage that just keeps on giving.”