Storm Cursed (Mercy Thompson #11)(14)

And he trotted off to the dark building, whistling lightly under his breath.

“I like him,” I said at the same time Mary Jo said—in affectionate tones—“Weirdo.”

We looked at each other—and she broke first. “Okay,” she said. “Maybe I’ll see if he’s willing to give us another try. Anyone who is excited about the prospect of a goblin head might be able to deal with a girlfriend who is a werewolf.”

“Always a good sign when they don’t run screaming,” I agreed.

She tilted her head at me. “Maybe if you hadn’t decided to become Adam’s mate, I might like you.”

“Maybe if you weren’t such a backstabby puppy, I might like you, too,” I told her.

“Backstabby puppy?” Her voice rang with indignation. Then she grinned. “That shoe might fit.” She sobered. “I wanted someone human for him.”

“Him” was Adam, my mate.

“No coyotes allowed,” I murmured.

Mary Jo’s expression hardened. “He deserves someone who will take care of him, who doesn’t bring him more trouble.”

I raised my eyebrows. I’d thought we’d gone through all of this.

She waved a hand, her tough face giving way to sadness.

“He needs a Christy,” she told me honestly. “Someone worthy of him.”

Christy was Adam’s first wife. She was a cold, self-involved, manipulative bitch and I hated her. And I couldn’t express my opinion about why I hated her without causing a civil war in Adam’s pack, most of whom were her willing slaves.

“Why on earth would you want to do that to him?” I heard myself say. “Wasn’t once enough?”

Her mouth opened and then closed.

“She encouraged him to hate what he is,” I told her hotly. “Werewolf and man, both. Even back at the beginning, when I first met them, met him, when I still disliked him for being the control-freaky dominant that he is—even then I just wanted to smack her when she would look at him with big eyes and say, ‘You’re scaring me, Adam.’” I knew I’d done a passable imitation of Christy’s voice from Mary Jo’s widening eyes. “Do you know how long it took me to get him to express even mild anger after she left him?” He still occasionally waited for me to wince or back away from him when he was in a temper.

And I had exposed his pain to Mary Jo, who had no right to it.

That bit of shame finally put a guard back on my tongue. I ran my hands over my face a couple of times. “And I don’t know where that came from. He’s been divorced for a long time and she is, finally, in Eugene again, moved to her own damned town, and it is almost far enough away.” I’d really hoped that she’d find the man of her dreams in the Bahamas. The Bahamas were a lot farther away than Eugene. “Mary Jo, do you hate Adam so much you’d wish another Christy on him?”

Mary Jo’s mouth curled up. “Tell me how you really feel about her, Mercy.”

I growled at her and her smile grew, then faded back. “I’d forgotten that,” she said. “Forgotten how she’d cringe from him. From all of us.” Before I could read the expression on her face, her eyes went to the building and I knew Renny had returned.

“Showtime,” I said.



* * *



? ? ?

After leading us up a set of stairs and through a couple of locked doors, long hallways, and the main office, Renny brought us into a room that I presumed to be a conference room—because that was what the sign next to the door read. It was bigger than I expected, big enough for six or eight people to sit around the table comfortably.

He’d dealt with the head himself, loading it, tarp and all, into the big black garbage bag. It had dripped more than a little. I felt a twinge of Lady Macbeth—“who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” The upside was that the mess made my decision as to whether to get new carpet throughout the car pretty easy.

He put the head on the table, steadying it when it rocked a little. He hadn’t looked at the head itself—I didn’t blame him. I didn’t want to see it again.

“Properly,” he told us, “you should have called the coroner in and this wouldn’t be a problem at all.” He glanced at Mary Jo. “You should know that much about procedures.”

She shrugged and gave him a nod. “I do, and you’re right. It’s just that La—the goblin king told us what to do. It didn’t occur to me that we might have made smarter choices until just before I called you.”

I still didn’t think Larry had done anything magical to influence me. Maybe I was fooling myself, but I thought I’d have noticed if he’d tried anything like that. But given that Mary Jo had done the same thing I’d done—maybe if the king of the goblins tells you to do something, you do it. Something like the way an Alpha wolf can make people, even people not in his pack, follow his command. I’d say “his or her command,” but so far as I knew, there were no female Alpha werewolves.

Renny was frowning at Mary Jo. “Having never seen a goblin king, I’ll take your word for that. I’ll give that explanation a toss at the captain and see if it floats with him, too.”

He looked around. “Take a seat. Anything substantial you’ve got to say should wait for the captain. Can I get you something to drink?”