Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson, #12)(54)

“Huh,” said George. “That would explain the power problem it has. I have never noticed that the fae have trouble powering their own magic. Maybe it has an artifact it’s using? All you have to do is figure out what it is and take it away.”

That sounded like an interesting plan. I wished I had the book Ariana, a powerful fae I knew, had written about her people. It had a whole section on artifacts—but I didn’t remember any of them operating quite like that. If Zee had known of one (or built one), he would have told me. The book was gone, but I would call Ariana and see if she knew of something like this. Last I had heard from her, she was somewhere in Africa with her mate, Samuel, and communication was tricky.

George had moved on. “Are we sure this is fae? You said her magic—its magic—didn’t smell fae.”

I shrugged. “I haven’t run into it before. There are a lot of fae; maybe this one is like the platypus—or the goblins, for that matter. It doesn’t quite fit in.”

“What else did Beauclaire say?” asked George, half closing his eyes, which was what he did when he was thinking hard.

“That we’re unlikely to be able to kill it”—and Beauclaire hadn’t mentioned an artifact—“and that trick it has of transforming itself to smoke makes it hard to capture. He then said that Underhill had imprisoned it because of a bargain it made. And that there is a story about that bargain I should find. Then Baba Yaga shut him up and told me that the key to the smoke weaver’s undoing is to be found in his basic nature.” Huh. “His basic nature,” I said again.

“So we have a start,” said George. “That’s more than we knew when Ben got bitten. I have a few contacts that might know something about artifacts. Even if they’re locked up in Fairyland, cell phones still work. I’ll do some sleuthing.”

“I’d appreciate that.” I hopped off the desk and opened the door.

“I need to go put some signs up at my garage,” I told George. “I’m trusting you to keep Ben from killing anyone—or himself—while I’m gone.”

“He doesn’t seem suicidal,” George said. “He ate a hearty breakfast—muffin with bacon, eggs, and cheese—all off a paper plate without even so much as a fork or spoon. He’s not exactly cheery—but Ben isn’t usually a cheery sort of guy.”

Hmm. Ben was usually pretty cheery around me. Foul-mouthed and sarcastic, maybe, but cheerful enough. For sure he hadn’t started out that way. Maybe he was grumpier around other people—or they avoided him so much that they didn’t know he’d changed.

“So you played cook this morning?” I asked. George didn’t strike me as the homemaker type. Toast and eggs maybe, but not a better-than version of a fast-food staple.

“Adam cooked it up for all of us.” George frowned at me. “He was cooking when I got here at five—and Darryl said you didn’t get to sleep until the wee hours. You look like you could use another eight hours to sleep. You both need to get more rest or you aren’t going to be any good for anything.”

“News at eleven,” I said dryly, and he grinned.

“Telling you things you already know is the job of all of your friends,” he said, and headed down to the basement.

When had George become my friend?

I had a smile on my face when I opened the fridge, but it dropped away when I saw the deconstructed breakfast sandwich on the large plate with assembly instructions written out in Adam’s handwriting.

The sandwich was for me. And another time I would have taken it as a thoughtful love-note kind of thing. But we weren’t in that place right now, so that limited the reasons for this gesture. Apologies or guilt—which were both kind of the same thing.

I thought, just then, of waking up in the middle of the night knowing there was a predator watching me with hostile eyes. Of reaching out and finding Adam in wolf form.

I don’t trust myself, he’d said. I’ve been a werewolf for longer than you’ve been alive and it’s been decades since I’ve had trouble with it. But now I wake up and I’m in my wolf’s shape—without remembering how I got there.

Could that hostile presence have been Adam?

Shaken, I microwaved the things that needed to be microwaved and toasted the English muffin. Adam had said he didn’t know what had caused his problem controlling his shapeshifting—but his wolf had blamed the witches.

Adam was smart, but beyond that he was perceptive. He didn’t usually have blinders on when he was looking at people, even if he was looking into a mirror.

I bit into the sandwich.

He was, in fact, overly harsh when looking into a mirror. He still thought he was a monster. I swallowed and considered that. Could it be that the witches had done something to him and he thought it was his own inner demons breaking free? That the wolf was right and Adam was wrong?

And what the freak could I do about that? Find another witch? I thought of Elizaveta, who had been our pack’s witch for decades before Adam had had to kill her. I didn’t know that there was a witch I would trust Adam to. Maybe I should talk to Bran? That was an idea with some merit.

I finished the sandwich and punished myself with a glass of orange juice for health. Followed that up by punishing myself with a cup of coffee to stay awake for the day. Coffee I found nearly as vile as orange juice, but hopefully both of them would do their jobs.