Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson #10)(36)

Very pleased.

He was glad that she’d agreed to come, too.

His beast, his heart, and the abused pack magic all subsided eventually. He opened his eyes to see that, outside of the witch, they were all still gathered in the smaller of the airplane’s little sitting areas.

Honey sat on his left, Stefan on his right. Marsilia and Honey were in the facing seats, Elizaveta’s empty one in the middle. The goblin sat on his heels in the walkway and looked perfectly comfortable doing so.

With the shades pulled, the quiet rumble of the engines was the only real indication that they were in an airplane. This plane had been built to shepherd captains of industry, sheiks, and princes. The floor was carpeted, and the seats were creamy leather and polished walnut.

“Adam,” said Marsilia after a moment, her voice oddly gentle. She asked, “Are you all right? Did you speak with her?”

He rubbed his face and moved to the edge of his seat. “I did.” He gave his comrades a genuine smile. “You know Mercy. She escaped and is now traveling somewhere in the luggage compartment of a bus. How does that change our game?”

“He will be furious,” said Marsilia. She smiled, a surprisingly sweet expression on such a dangerous woman. “Somehow, when she is destroying other people’s carefully laid plans, she is not so annoying.”

“Fabulous,” said the goblin. “Such a clever coyote is your Mercy.”

Mercy had seemed frayed, but Adam would never admit that in the present company. “Never admit weakness before your enemies” had been his mantra long before he’d been Changed, and he wouldn’t betray Mercy’s, either. He’d just met the goblin—and Marsilia was not a fan of his wife.

“Do we continue to Milan?” Adam asked. “Or divert to another country and try to find Mercy before he finds her?”

“Milan,” said Stefan. “This isn’t an isolated incident—something he can only do once. Next time, he might make a more lethal move.”

“What if the fae threw in with us?” Honey asked. “Would that be enough to back him off?”

The goblin, who went by the human name of Larry Sethaway, shook his head. “Never happen,” he said. “The fae would rather watch the battle, then pick at the corpses like the carrion crows they are.” He grinned briefly, fully aware that in the supernatural world, it was the goblins who were looked upon as scavengers. “Can’t hardly get them all pointed in one direction if they were all dying of thirst and there was only one place to get water. I don’t mind them as noncombatants, but I’d just as soon keep them off the field. You don’t know who they’ll decide to kill first, your enemies or you.”

The goblins didn’t consider themselves fae, though the reverse wasn’t true. Most of the fae looked upon the goblins as sort of lowborn, weak, stupid cousins. Some of the fae looked upon them as food—and the goblins never forgot that.

Larry could pass for human, though some of his kind could not. When he’d met them at the airport, he’d been wearing dark glasses to cover his yellow-green eyes, and leather driving gloves to hide his four-fingered hands. Here in the plane, he’d left off both.

“I agree,” said Marsilia. “Both with Larry and with Stefan.” She smiled a little, a cat’s smile. “Let’s not tell him we know she’s gone. Let’s see what he chooses to do now that he’s lost her.”

“Will he believe we don’t know?” asked Honey. “She’s Adam’s mate.”

“The only reason we know she escaped is because Elizaveta was able to use their bond to work her own magic,” Marsilia answered.

Stefan nodded. “And Wulfe told him that your mate bond is erratic. If you act as if you don’t know, he’ll probably believe it.”

“He might just tell us that she escaped,” Marsilia said. “But I don’t think he will. It betrays a weakness, a mistake. He doesn’t like admitting to real mistakes, only pretend ones.”

“Like if he killed her,” murmured Stefan. “Oops. I accidentally killed your wife, poor thing. I hope you didn’t care for her too much. I just don’t know my own strength.”

“Would he have done that?” asked Honey. “If she hadn’t gotten away?”

Stefan glanced at Marsilia, who glanced surreptitiously at Adam.

“I am very glad Mercy managed to get away,” Marsilia said finally. Adam knew diplomacy when he heard it.

“What would you have done with me,” said Adam very quietly, “if he had killed her while you were trapped in here with me?”

She met his gaze with her own. “Died with everyone else if you lost control or destroyed this plane,” she said. “But you wouldn’t have given Iacopo—Jacob,” she corrected herself with a cool smile. “You wouldn’t have allowed him such an easy victory as that. I know you too well. But Mercy is not dead.”

She leaned forward. “I have not lied to you about the danger we face. I do think that we may come out of here with nothing worse than an unplanned trip to Europe. But there is an equal chance that he will start killing—and if he does, all of us will die.”

Larry leaned his head in the direction of the cockpit. “Including our pilot and copilot? Such a shame. He is quite beautiful for one of our kind.” The pilot, he meant. The copilot was a werewolf, though not Charles.