Storm Cursed (Mercy Thompson #11)(40)

I guess the meeting wasn’t as secret as all that, at least not among the fae.

Zee grunted again, then picked out a single inconsequential detail from my whole recitation of witches and zombies and said, “That rifle that was damaged—it was the one your father bequeathed you?”

I blinked at him a moment, then said, “Yes. The Marlin.”

He nodded. “Bring to me your father’s rifle, and I will fix it.”

Adam had looked at it and determined that the zombie had bent more than just the barrel. He didn’t think it could be fixed.

Neither of us had thought about bringing it to Zee. If Peter’s sword had been broken, Zee would have been the first person I’d have taken it to. But I just didn’t think of Zee and rifles at the same time.

“I will,” I said in a voice that was a little rougher than I meant it to be.

He frowned at me. “What are you leaking about, child? Go work on that carburetor. You have the mixture too rich, I can smell it from here.”

I huffed and went back to the car I’d been working on yesterday. I hadn’t been crying, no matter what Zee had said. Though it had been a close call. Bryan had really loved that rifle.

Tad returned with lunch. It was Chinese, so splitting it between the three of us instead of two was pretty easy. I shared the same information with Tad that I had with Zee. He was still mulling it over when an old customer stopped in with a stalling Passat and no appointment.

“I heard you were back in business,” Betty said, handing me the keys. “Thank goodness. I’ve had it to the dealership twice and they can’t figure out what it is.”

The dealership had a couple of decent mechanics in their mix. If someone brought a problem back to them, the car went to one of their good people. If they hadn’t been able to fix her Passat, then I was glad Zee had decided to spend the day here.

“We’ll take a look at it and call you when we know more,” I told her. “Do you want Tad to give you a ride home?”

Betty was in her eighties, though she didn’t look a day over sixty-five. Even if the waiting area was cleaner than it used to be, I wasn’t going to make her sit around until we knew what was up.

“Bless you, Mercy,” she said. “That would be wonderful.”

As Tad drove off with her, our two o’clock appointment drove in. I took that one and left the Passat with its mystery problem to Zee.

The rest of the day was pretty normal. We fixed a few cars, including the Passat. I never did figure out what was wrong with it—Zee told me he had to let the bad mojo out. I thought he was kidding, but that was what I put on the bill.

Betty had been Zee’s customer before I started working at the shop. She just laughed as she paid for the work when Tad and I dropped the car off.

“That Zee,” she said. “He likes his little jokes. One time he said that he told my car to behave itself. He didn’t charge me for that one—but the car ran fine for another six months. If Zee says he fixed the car, it will be fixed.”

We sent one old BMW to the eternal resting place (a scrap yard) and mourned with her owner. When there weren’t customers around, we chatted about odd topics. Zee, Tad, and I had spent a lot of days like this. It felt like coming home in a way the previous weeks had not, as if with Zee’s presence, the shop had regained its heart.

Working on a car cleared my head. When there was a gnarly mechanical problem to fix, I would concentrate on that—and all the other things going on in my life got sorted out by my subconscious. But most of the work I did in the shop was more like building with Legos. Once I had the plan of attack laid out, and understood the steps to take—then there was this Zen time where my head cleared and I could examine things without the hefty weight of emotion.

The first thing I decided was that now that there were witches added into the mix, Adam could not have left the humans in the government to guard themselves. There was only so much that mundane security could do against supernatural forces. Because of the badly written contract, he had an excuse to give to the fae—so that contract had actually turned out to be useful. And it was nice that he was charging them more money.

“Why are you humming, Mercy?” asked Tad, shutting the hood of a car with his elbow because his hands were covered with grease. Neither Tad nor Zee had adopted my new habit of using nitrile gloves to keep their hands cleaner.

“Humming is fine,” proclaimed Zee more directly from under the new bug (as opposed to the old ones) he was working on. He didn’t like the new version as well—he had a whole spiel in German that he would occasionally lapse into about the beauty of a simple car.

“But do not, please,” he continued, “hum ‘Yellow Submarine’ anymore today. I may be working on a Beetle, but it is not necessary to also sing songs of the Beatles.”

I switched to “Billie Jean” and Tad sighed. Zee snorted but didn’t object.

The second thing I thought about were the witches who had killed Elizaveta’s family. There weren’t a lot of clues about who they were. The only clue I could think of was that one of the witches shared a close bloodline with Frost.

I didn’t know much about Frost’s background, but I knew where to go looking.

I should talk to Stefan.

And all of my Zen disappeared in one thought. Stefan was my friend. He had risked his life for mine on a number of occasions, the most recent being my involuntary trip to Europe.