Storm Cursed (Mercy Thompson #11)(15)

While we waited for his captain, I called Adam and told his voice mail everything that had happened, beginning with the fact that we were all safe and Mary Jo and I were sitting in the sheriff’s office with the goblin’s head.

I got a call as I was finishing up the message and wasn’t quite agile enough with the phone to pick up the call. But the Benton County Sheriff’s Office called me back.

I listened for a few minutes, then told them where I was and handed the phone to Mary Jo’s Renny. He got about sixty seconds into the call before an expression very close to ecstasy crossed his face.

“Could you repeat that?” he said. “No, I’m not laughing at you. I heard you just fine. I only want to hear it one more time because I’m pretty sure that I’ll never hear exactly those words together ever again.”



* * *



? ? ?

We left Renny still waiting for his captain with the goblin head. I assured him that I didn’t want the tarp back.

Driving out to meet the Benton County Sheriff’s officer, I looked at the sunny sky and sighed. I called Tad again.

“You are going to be late because why?” asked Tad blearily. Then he sounded more alert. “Didn’t we already have this conversation? Or did I have a nightmare? It was about a dead goblin, right?”

I sighed and said, “It was about a goblin. Now it’s about zombie miniature goats. Or miniature goat zombies. Nigerian dwarf goats. Twenty of them running free all around Benton City, apparently.”

“Miniature zombie goats,” murmured Mary Jo. “I think that sounds the cutest. I can see the newspaper headlines now.”

“Are they dead?” Tad asked.

“That’s what ‘zombie’ means,” said Mary Jo loudly, to make sure Tad heard her. “But we’re on our way to kill them again.”

There was a little pause. Tad said, “Zombie miniature goats. Roaming the countryside. Doing what zombie goats do . . . whatever that is. I think there might be a song in that. Or a movie that is only supposed to be good if you are high on something psychedelic. Okay, Mercy, I’ll see you around lunchtime. Good luck with your mini goat zombies.”

“Thank you,” I said with dignity. “I don’t know about lunch, it depends on how long it takes us to find all of the goats.”

“Do you need help?” he asked.

“Always.” I sighed. “But it is too late for me. You just stood there watching when I went out on that bridge and started blabbing about the TriCities being our territory to guard, when any idiot could have seen that I needed you to shove a gag in my mouth.”

He laughed and hung up. The jerk.



* * *



? ? ?

The outskirts of Benton City, another of the little satellite towns that surrounded the TriCities, were filled with small-acreage farms sprinkled amid orchards and vineyards. I didn’t bother looking for addresses; I just found the house with all the activity.

We turned into a driveway next to a tidy but not beautiful pen that enclosed maybe a quarter of an acre. The side of the fence nearest to the driveway had been cut open.

There were four sheriff’s vehicles parked next to a miniature-goat-sized barn that was painted blue with white trim. Five deputies stood near their cars and watched me drive in. About twenty yards from the deputies was a small and well-kept house with a big, friendly wraparound porch. There were four people on the porch: a woman, a child, a man, and a giant-sized man who looked as though he ate locomotives for lunch.

I parked in between the house and the sheriff’s cars.

“Face-off,” said Mary Jo before she opened her door and got out.

She was right. It was impossible to miss the implied hostility in the empty space between the deputies and the people on the porch. For that matter, there was some hostility between the deputies, too.

“First the sheriff’s office, then the civilians,” I murmured to Mary Jo.

I hung back and let her take the lead with the law enforcement. One of the deputies had misstepped with the civilians, I thought, watching the aggressive stances. He’d gotten some blowback and they were split three to two. I was betting, from his clenched shoulders, that the man with the runner’s build was the culprit. But it might be his stocky buddy. He’d been reprimanded and it had stuck because he was hanging back and letting the others talk.

Body language shouts louder than words in most cases.

I half listened to what they had to say, because most of it was just a repeat of the information I’d gotten on the initial phone call. Once I had the deputies analyzed, I studied the people waiting on the porch without looking directly at them.

Family and family friend, I thought—the giant was noticeably not Hispanic.

The farm belonged to Arnoldo Salas; the goats had belonged to his ten-year-old son. Arnoldo wasn’t hard to pick out.

An extremely fit man in his midforties, he stood in the center of the porch, one hand on the shoulder of a teary-eyed boy while his other arm was wrapped around a woman who looked to be his wife, who wasn’t in much better condition than the child. He watched me with hostility.

Maybe he didn’t like werewolves.

Mary Jo’s voice broke into my concentration. “Why in the world would someone make zombie goats?”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “Let’s see what we can find out.”