Storm Cursed (Mercy Thompson #11)(5)

Larry waited, his body intent, but no one answered him. He said something else—this time in a language with tongue clicks and a couple of odd sounds I’m not sure a human mouth could make. He wasn’t particularly loud, but whatever he said was effective.

“No!” shouted a squeaky male voice from inside the barn. “Sanctuary. I claim sanctuary from this wondrous and glorious city said to be safe for fae and foe alike. Grant this me, dear my lord. An it is granted, I will happily emerge into thy keeping, great one.”

I didn’t know how old goblins got. I didn’t know if they were one of the immortal or nearly immortal fae. I’d given back the only trustworthy book that recorded what the different kinds of fae were like before I’d known exactly how much I was going to need that knowledge.

I’d gotten the impression that the goblins were one of the shorter-lived races of the fae, but there was something about the way the voice in the darkness put together sentences and ideas that indicated that my memory or my interpretation might have been wrong. It was possible that “shorter-lived” meant something different to the fae woman who had written the book than it did to me. Or maybe our fugitive spent too much time at summer Shakespeare festivals.

Larry turned his body to me without taking his gaze away from the interior of the barn. “Do you know what he is running from?”

“Last week a goblin killed a police officer in California. The video of the incident was all over the news,” I began, but paused when Larry glanced my way for a hair’s breadth. Long enough for me to see the odd expression on his face.

“And people say humans don’t have magic,” he muttered, once again facing our fugitive. He made a circling gesture with one hand. “Never mind. Go on.”

“He has a pretty distinctive scar,” I told him, gesturing at the scar on my own right cheek. “His is a lot bigger. A goblin with that scar killed the police officer in LA who was trying to arrest him. The police have a manhunt”—I cleared my throat and corrected myself—“a goblinhunt aimed at him.”

Larry muttered something to himself in that other language. Then he called out, “Apparently you have an affinity for getting caught on camera. Careless of you to allow a mindless human device to record you doing murder. And you let it catch you murdering a knight of the human law, no less.”

He emphasized some of the words oddly, leading me to suspect that there were several deadly insults buried in Larry’s comments. I knew that getting caught was very poorly thought of in the goblin culture—but I hadn’t known that getting caught by technology was viewed as even worse. I found it reassuring that, apparently, even to the goblins, killing a police officer was a bad thing.

“No, no—I killed none,” our prey squeaked. “No child of humankind died at my causing, great one. No. No murderer I. I killed nary a one. Not knight nor even child. Not a wee boy with blinky shoes. Not me. I would never so defy the Gray Lords, great one. No more would I ever defy thy commands.”

That gave me pause.

As a matter of course, werewolves don’t lie because most werewolves can tell if someone is lying. I was raised by werewolves, and although I am not one, apparently a coyote can tell if someone is lying, too. I only lie when I think I can get away with it.

But the fae don’t lie because they cannot lie. They can twist the truth until it is a Gordian knot, but they cannot lie.

Still, that goblin’s words seemed oddly specific for someone who hadn’t killed a policeman or, apparently, a child with blinky shoes. But he wasn’t guilty because he said so. Maybe, I thought, he’d been a witness. But his words sounded like a lie to me. Not even a good lie.

Both the werewolves relaxed, a subtle softening of their stances. He wasn’t guilty because he said so. And unlike human criminals, that was actually a true thing, no matter how much it sounded like a lie.

Mary Jo turned to me. “Do we need to offer this goblin sanctuary? If the humans are going after him just because he is a goblin . . . isn’t that what our claiming dominion over the TriCities is all about?”

“No, love,” Ben said in a mock-sorrowful tone designed—as Mary Jo’s had not been—to carry to the goblin hidden in the barn. “Not our thing at all. We keep people safe—but sanctuary is a whole different level of stupid.”

I was still trying to figure out how the goblin was being so specific if he had not killed the police officer and, apparently, a child. Goblins have glamour. Maybe another goblin—or one of the fae—had been trying to frame this one?

Larry’s mouth twisted in a grimace. “At least tell me that you didn’t get caught on camera killing the child,” he said in a resigned voice.

I frowned at Larry. First, because he sounded as if getting caught on camera had been worse than killing the child. But mostly I frowned at him because he sounded as if he knew that the goblin was guilty. But the goblin couldn’t lie.

“No, not I,” said the voice inside the barn earnestly. “I killed not the wee boy with his two sweet blue eyes. Eyes like a robin’s egg so round and innocent and tasty they were. Nor killed I the fierce-voiced police officer who came to stop me.”

Mary Jo and Ben looked as perplexed as I felt.

“I am innocent,” wailed the goblin in the barn. “Innocent and they will harm me if you do not protect me from the humans.”