Storm Cursed (Mercy Thompson #11)(39)

“Checking our response time?” asked Sherwood.

I yawned. “Or exhausting our resources.”

“Or we are jumping to unwarranted conclusions,” cautioned Adam. “Getting from ‘she’ to ‘a witch’ to ‘the witches who attacked Elizaveta’s family’ is a leap of Olympian scale. And adding that this meeting has nothing to do with witches at all . . . and yet.”

“Right?” I said.

“Coincidences sometimes happen,” Sherwood said heavily. “But when they happen around witches, they aren’t usually coincidences.”



* * *



? ? ?

When I got to work, finally, the imaginary parking lot full of cars with scheduled appointments that I hadn’t been there to repair wasn’t there. The customer parking lot was empty, as were the three repair bays.

Maybe Tad had called everyone and told them not to come in—but that didn’t sound like Tad. Answers came when I opened the office door and saw Zee at the computer inputting invoices.

Siebold Adelbertsmiter looked like a wiry old man, balding and nimble for his age. Looks, in his case, were very deceiving. Zee was an ancient fae smith, a gremlin, if you read his official government ID. Since gremlins were an invention of the twentieth century and Zee had been ancient when Columbus was commissioned to find a new route to Asia, I had my doubts. But I seldom contradicted Zee on matters that didn’t involve me.

He glanced up at me but didn’t stop the rapid keystrokes. “Your inventory is too low,” he said. “You will be out of parts this time next week.”

“I have a large order coming in day after tomorrow,” I said.

He grunted. “You are charging too much for labor. It is more than the dealership.”

“They charge what their faraway masters tell them a job should take. We charge actual time. Since I was trained by the best mechanic in the world, I am a lot faster. My right hand is arguably better and faster than I am, since his father is that same mechanic. Our clients usually get out cheaper—and they know that our repairs are solid.”

Zee grunted again.

Since he’d given me that same speech in the past—not quite verbatim, but close enough—I assumed that grunt was a grunt of approval.

“It is good,” he said after a moment, “when children prove they actually listen to their elders.”

“It is good,” I said carefully, because the old fae was as prickly as an Alpha werewolf about people noticing weaknesses, “to see someone who can really type. It takes me twice the time to do those entries as it does you.”

He huffed, but we both knew that not very long ago, his hands had been in no shape for quick typing. He’d been held and tortured by the fae who had been trying to find out just how powerful Zee’s half-human son was. That was why I hadn’t called him in to help Tad this morning. My comment amounted to “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better” in such a way that he wouldn’t take offense.

“This shop,” he said, changing the subject away from his hands. “Everything works correctly. It has no character.”

“Give it a few months,” I said. “Things will start breaking down just when we need them. It will be back to usual before you know it.”

He looked at me over the rims of the wire-framed glasses that he wore when doing close work. I was pretty sure they were an affectation. “Are you patronizing me?”

I hitched a hip on the padded stool that was on the customer side of the counter. “Nope.” I looked around at the clean walls and neatly organized matching shelving units. Even the bays smelled clean and new. “This shop makes me feel itchy, too.”

He hit the enter key and set his work aside. He took off his glasses and set them on the counter.

“You do not smell like a goblin,” he said.

Zee could smell goblins? I mean, I could smell goblins, and the werewolves could smell goblins, but I didn’t know that Zee could smell goblins.

“That was this morning,” I told him. “Very early this morning. I’ve showered since then. The more recent thing was a zombie werewolf set loose in the basement of my house.”

I gave him a general rundown of everything that had happened. Except for the secret part—that Elizaveta and her family had all been practicing black magic. I didn’t leave out the fae-government meeting. Zee was in a precarious place with the Gray Lords. They had wronged him and he’d avenged himself on the responsible parties. I wasn’t sure how safe he was, and I wouldn’t leave out any information about the Gray Lords for fear that it could affect his safety.

“Witches,” Zee said when I was done, ignoring the information about the meeting, which told me that he’d probably already known. “I have not had much to do with witches. In the old days, if one became troublesome, I killed them. Mostly they died off on their own before I felt the need to bestir myself.”

Witches were mortal, I was pretty sure. I had the feeling that they probably avoided the fae. It was a question that I might have thrown to Elizaveta—but not anymore.

“Do you think that we should warn the fae that there is a new group of witches in town?” I asked.

Zee grunted. “If they do not know, then they deserve to be blindsided. But I expect they know; they are planning their meeting with the government and so are more concerned with the doings of the mortals here than usual.”