Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson, #7)(102)

It took us three days to find the Jaguar—and then only because someone called the police and reported an abandoned car in their vineyard.

I gave the sword back to Tad as soon as I saw him again, a couple of days after our adventure.

“What did you do to it?” he asked me. “It feels . . .”

“Frightened?” I suggested.

He grimaced. “Subdued.”

“Wulfe—you know the crazy vampire? Wulfe used it to kill another vampire.”

He grimaced. “That would do it. You should ask Dad about Wulfe sometime. It’ll give you nightmares.”

Tad was living at his father’s house still, but he quit being a hermit. He’s helping me at the shop again. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed working with someone I liked. I might still have to close down the shop eventually, but not for a while.

Peter’s funeral, held as soon as we could manage, had taken place in sunshine, though it was still cold. The pack mourned, as was fitting. It was a quiet affair without the usual speeches because Honey didn’t want them. I agreed with her; speeches weren’t necessary. We all knew what we had lost.

Asil went home directly afterward. As did Agent Armstrong, who had stayed for the funeral, though he’d never met Peter.

“It is a good thing to remember the victims,” he told me at the grave site. “It gives me perspective.”

Adam made Honey stay with us for a couple more days before moving back to her house. Mary Jo planned on giving up her apartment in the next few weeks and moving in with her. Mary Jo, firefighter, and Honey, princess, seem to me a disaster in the making—but neither of them like me for a lot of reasons that boil down to my being a coyote and not a werewolf. Maybe that will give them enough in common to let their roommate situation work out.

The last of the flames under the Rabbit died down just as the snow began to fall in earnest.

“Come inside,” Adam suggested. “Everyone’s gone except Jesse, and she’s asleep.”

His gruff tone and the touch of his lips on my ear told me that he had something more in mind than sleep.

“I am,” I told him, as we walked back to the house, “feeling very lucky tonight.”

“Oh? Because you didn’t die in the crash, when the assassin attacked you, or when you fought the vampire?” His voice had sharpened.

“You’ve yelled at me enough about that,” I warned him. “Your quota is now full. Besides, that’s not what makes me lucky.”

After we had left the burnt-out winery and the vampires behind us, we went home—to our home. It was battered (the front door was so bad they had to replace the frame and resurface part of the house), but the bad guys were all dead.

I tracked blood, mud, and ash across the white carpet and up the stairs. I used to feel bad when I bled all over that carpet—but tonight I didn’t care so much. Besides, Adam, still in wolf form, was even dirtier than I was.

“I’m going to shower,” Asil said. “Then I’ll sleep in the living room where I can keep an eye on the doors, just in case.”

“There’s a shower in the bathroom in the basement,” I told him. “Get something to eat. There’s food in the kitchen.”

He smirked. “Yes, Mom.”

Honey hopped onto the living-room couch with a sigh. It was white, like the carpet, but it was leather, so we could clean off anything that got on it. Probably.

Adam trailed beside me, up the stairs.

“You should eat, too,” I told him.

He gave me a look, and I let it lie. If he really needed food, he’d get some. As soon as we made it into the bedroom, he started to change back to human. He was tired, and there was no urgency, so the change was very slow.

I peeled off everything I was wearing and threw it into the dirty clothes. Then I walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. It took a long time to get clean. The ash clung with surprising tenacity, and since at least some of that ash had once been a person—a zombie person—I had to get it all off.

When I finally came out, Adam was stretched out on the bed, naked and asleep. He was clean, and his hair was wet, so he’d used the other upstairs shower.

I watched him while I towel dried my hair. Peter joined me. Dead or alive, he was a werewolf, he didn’t care that I was naked, so I didn’t bother covering up.

“He’s a good man,” he told me, looking at Adam.

“Yes,” I agreed.

Peter tilted his head down to look me in the eye, and he smiled. “You know he doesn’t believe that. He thinks he is a monster.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “What he thinks doesn’t change the facts.”

“I told him where you were,” Peter said. “You sent me away. Sent me here. But I found Adam, and I told him where you were and what the vampires had you doing.”

“You left before I knew what they were going to ask me to do.”

“You’re a walker,” he said. “And they were facing a necromancer who could bind the dead. Of course they wanted you.”

See, even a dead man was smarter than I was.

“Peter,” I said, “it’s time for you to go. I know how to fix what Frost did to you.”

Asil had given me back my necklace in the car.

“Good,” Peter said. “But I would like to sleep beside her one more time.”