Storm Cursed (Mercy Thompson #11)(68)

Zee paused. “Liebling, this might not be a battle for a little coyote. Black witches are an ugly thing. Maybe leave it for the ugly thing that your pack’s witch has become.”

I shook my head. “No. Adam has promised to protect the government people—and the witches have made it pretty obvious that they intend harm. And they attacked us—here and at my home. We can’t just stand back and hope that Elizaveta takes them out.”

I quit scrubbing for a moment so I could look him in the face. “And what if Elizaveta joins with them like some of her family did?”

“The Gray Lords tell us that no one is to interfere with the witches,” he said.

“They know about them?” I asked.

He nodded. “I told them about the attack here, Mercy, but they already knew that the black witches had attacked Elizaveta.” He scrubbed with a little more emphasis, then said reluctantly, “They are right to tell us not to interfere. These talks are important and it would be too easy to make ourselves look bad if we take on the witches. I may be an outcast—”

“I’m not sure you can be an outcast by choice,” I told him. “They’d take you back in a moment if you wanted to go.”

He shrugged. “Sometimes the English language confuses me.”

“Sure it does,” I said. I took out a Q-tip and started on the vent covers. “Outcast. Cast. Out. That means someone kicked you out. If you leave—then you can be something less pathetic and more adventurous-sounding. Like a rogue.”

He snorted. “I may be a rogue, Mercy, but I don’t want the fae to fade away and die.” He looked thoughtful. “I don’t want all of them to fade away and die, anyway. And the ones I’d prefer dead, I’d rather kill myself.”

“Hah,” I said.

My phone chimed and I checked the text message—it was from Ruth Gillman. She was reminding me of our lunch date, and requesting that I pick the venue since she wasn’t familiar with the Tri-Cities.

“I’m going to talk to Senator Campbell’s assistant over lunch,” I told Zee. “Do you have any idea who the fae are going to send to deal with them? I won’t tell her if you don’t want me to, but I’d like to have a ballpark guess about how easily offended the fae who are treating with the humans are going to be.”

“Es tut mir leid, Mercy.” Zee shook his head. “I do not know. I am a rogue, you see; they do not tell me such things. But you may tell them that the majority of the fae are tired of the fuss. They would like to go and live their lives. They are not clamoring for human blood.”

I gave him a look and he flashed a quick smile.

“Ah, you are right. There are fae who would love to bathe in human blood. But the fae who are making the decisions are not driven by the need to destroy. They just want a place to live in peace.”

“Do you have any sense that this meeting might be dangerous?” I said. “I mean, that the humans will have to watch what they say and how they say it? Some of the fae can be very prickly.” I cleared my throat. “And Adam and most of the pack are going to be putting themselves between the fae and the humans if something goes wrong.”

“I don’t know who they are sending,” Zee said again. “But I do know that they will not send out anyone who is not familiar with working with the human government. With humans in general.” He turned on the steam cleaner—and then shut it off again. “Among the more powerful of us, we have a lot who are trained in human law. Like your government, we have an overabundance of lawyers.”



* * *



? ? ?

I had been going to meet Ms. Gillman at the Ice Harbor Brewing Company, a local pub, but changed my mind at the last minute and texted her directions for a different place.

She beat me there and was waiting for me in a white Camry that shouted “rental car.” When I pulled in next to her, she unlocked her doors and got out.

“I was just about to text you to make sure I’d gotten the right place,” she said. “I hope that this is like good Chinese restaurants. You know—where the more run-down the exterior is, the better the food.”

She was right that it wasn’t pretty. The exterior was boxy and an unlovely blend of textures and shades of white.

The wall nearest the entrance had been newly repaired. I’d been here when a snow elf had taken the whole wall out. He’d been chasing me at the time.

Getting chased by a snow elf might not sound impressive. But when a frost giant says he’s a snow elf, there aren’t many, even among the fae, who would argue with him about it.

The repair work, though not beautiful, had been competently done. Like the rest of the building, it had been painted white. It might have looked better if the rest of the building, also whitish, had been painted sometime this century.

The only elegant thing in sight was a hitching post that looked like someone had lifted it from the movie set of Elrond Half-elven’s home in The Lord of the Rings. It was new because I’d have remembered if I’d seen something so out of place before.

I didn’t know what Uncle Mike’s needed with a hitching post. I breathed in and paid attention to the scents—there just might have been a hint of horse in the air.

“You found the right place,” I told Ruth Gillman, assistant to the most famously fae-hostile senator in Congress. “Welcome to Uncle Mike’s.”