Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson, #12)(38)

I’d run into a demon once, but it hadn’t . . . I didn’t think it had been one of those.

“That’s off topic,” Tad said before I could ask for clarification. “Dad doesn’t know of anything that quite fits your jackrabbit. But it could be something that lived only in Underhill—and he didn’t go there much.”

A spate of German interrupted him.

“Though he says it could be that you just don’t know enough about it yet. Or it could be that he’s forgotten and it will take a while for him to remember. He’ll also ask around. If it is something that was imprisoned in Underhill—and it would be useful to know for certain—maybe Uncle Mike or some of the other fae will remember.”

“It would be useful,” I said. Thanking Zee was safe enough, I was sure, but it worried him that I might forget and thank some other fae. So I tried not to do it.

There was a hesitation and then Tad said, “Did Jesse talk to you about Gabriel’s note?”

“No. Did she talk to you?” I asked.

“She let me read it.” He swallowed. “Look, I think it helped Jesse, but now I’m worried about Gabriel.”

“When did he leave the letter?” I asked.

“He didn’t date it,” he told me. “But some of the things he said made it clear that he put it there the day he moved all of his stuff out.”

“He has a new girlfriend,” I told him. “As of two weeks after he left that letter.” Close to that by my reckoning.

Tad swore softly. “Bastard didn’t waste any time mending his heart.” I guess he wasn’t worried about Gabriel anymore.

“Heartbreak can be like that, boy,” said Zee heavily. “Healthy pain invites healing. Gabriel is a good boy; he’ll be a good man. Not all relationships that end are failures.”

Then his voice became brisk as if he’d embarrassed himself by being too sentimental. “Mercy, you will have to hurry to get the parts here in time for us to fix those cars. Otherwise they will have to wait until morning.”

“I have to hang up before I can get going,” I told them both. “Talk to you soon.”

I disconnected, got in my car, and drove.





6





The shop where the parts had been dropped off was in east Pasco, a couple of miles from Uncle Mike’s Tavern, where the fae tended to congregate. It hadn’t been a bad drive from the shop or my house when the Cable Bridge had been up and running. But a troll, with the help of one of the Gray Lords of the fae, had destroyed it.

Construction had begun just a few days ago on a new bridge—by popular demand, a copy of the old bridge, which had been something of a landmark. It would be a year or more before it was functional, though, and in the meantime the shortest way to Pasco was over the Blue Bridge.

For everyone.

Before the Cable Bridge had been destroyed, I’d avoided the Blue Bridge as much as possible because of the heavy traffic. Now it was miserable, but my options were that or driving all the way through Kennewick and crossing the river on the interstate bridge and driving all the way back through Pasco.

I took the Blue Bridge and crossed it, with all the rest of the traffic, at a walking pace. Not too bad, considering.

Once I turned off onto Lewis Street, the main east-west artery in this part of Pasco, traffic returned to normal speeds. I wondered, briefly, if I should stop in and see if Uncle Mike would talk to me about our jackrabbit. We still weren’t sure it was the creature that Aiden thought it might be—we weren’t even sure that it was an escapee from Underhill. We were just operating on best guesses.

I decided half a block before the turn that would take me to Uncle Mike’s not to go. If that old fae knew something, he was more likely to talk to Zee than he was to me. So I stayed on Lewis and headed toward Oregon Avenue, where a host of industrial businesses were located: heavy farm and construction machinery sales and services, metalworks, industrial fasteners, agricultural irrigation—and the auto shop where the people had dropped off our parts.

A block or so before Oregon Avenue, a collection of train tracks crossed Lewis—and all other east-west traffic in Pasco. The trains were active here and stopped traffic on a regular basis.

Lewis Street was the major thoroughfare on the east side of Pasco because of the short tunnel that dropped under the railroad tracks to allow the free flow of traffic from the city to Oregon Avenue.

The tunnel itself, built around World War II, was . . . odd. Lewis Street narrowed from four lanes to two lanes and dropped below ground level before burrowing under the tracks with pedestrian walkways on either side. That narrowing was the root cause of the accidents that happened around the tunnel.

The pedestrian walkways in the tunnel were creepy. They were unlit, and the decorative concrete barricades with pillars that kept the walkways safe from traffic also kept them safe from light. Even on the brightest summer day, those walkways were an invitation to trouble.

The weirdest thing about the tunnel was the way it was just plopped into the middle of the intersection with South Tacoma Street. On the south side of the old intersection, South Tacoma took an awkward ninety-degree turn to parallel the tunnel traffic and rejoin Lewis, where it broadened to four lanes again.

On the north side, South Tacoma dead-ended at the tunnel—which wasn’t too surprising. However, the dead end was announced by shabby but movable wooden barricades flanked by orange cones—after seventy years of not being a through street. It was as though they put in the tunnel and then forgot about finishing the project so that it looked like it belonged there—forgot about it for decades.