Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson #7)(101)

Stefan shrugged. "Who knows. I've seen him be a lot more lethal than he was tonight. There were no firebombs, for instance. But he doesn't always remember how to perform magic - that's what he tells us anyway. And Hao is well-known for his ability to fight."

Hao shrugged. "Frost is dead. If Wulfe were mine, I would kill him, but Marsilia's seethe is no concern of mine."

When we left the remains of the winery, Hao and Stefan were killing the vampires who had collapsed against the wall of the basement. Marsilia's Mercedes was gone, though the seethe's other car was in the lot. There was no sign that Adam had brought a car, so we all piled into Warren's truck - the werewolves in the back. We went home.

We gave the Rabbit a Viking funeral.

She sat a battered warrior - or a decrepit pile of junk - perched on a pile of wood three feet high and a foot bigger around than the car. I'd drained her fluids and stripped her of any parts that were usable before the pack had lifted her to her final resting place.

Those parts were now tucked in and around the junker Rabbit that still graced the space between my old home and my new one. Sure, I could have found somewhere else to put the parts, but Adam had yelled at me about fighting the vampire one too many times.

I know I'd scared him - I'd scared me, too. I also remembered how mad I'd been at Adam when he'd hurt himself kissing me because he thought it would break the fae's magic that held me. He'd been right to kiss me, though it burned him, and I'd been right to help Marsilia with the vampire. I'd yelled at him anyway.

Which was why the old junker only got to wear a pair of tires on its trunk instead of getting something rude painted in fluorescent pink or (and I was saving this one for something serious) a solar-powered blinking red light that I'd found at Walmart on the ill-fated Black Friday shopping expedition.

The fire burned hot and long past the time when the last of the marshmallows and hot dogs were roasted. Even with the heaping mounds of firewood, the car wouldn't have burned to ash without Tad's help.

It had been two weeks since Frost died.

Adam's appearance on TV had cemented (if it needed cementing) his reputation as a hero and a pillar of all that was good and civil. It was a fortunate thing that no one had gotten a picture of him tearing into Frost's body. Tony assured me that the police were satisfied with the abbreviated story Adam and Agent Armstrong had given them.

Kyle forgave me the shirt I'd destroyed, and he'd helped us look for his car without a word of complaint. He was, I think, happy we hadn't found it that night and covered his buttery leather upholstery with soot and blood.

Warren told me, as we drove through nameless dirt roads through seemingly endless vineyards and orchards, that Adam had just suddenly gotten out of the chair he'd been sitting in at Kyle's office and sprinted out the door, leaving the rest of them to soothe the reporter who'd lingered to get a few more details.

Adam had taken off in Kyle's Jaguar and left the rest of them to call a taxi to get home.

Adam had explained, a little sheepishly, that all he knew was that I was at the winery with the vampires - but he hadn't been really certain how to get there. He could feel me, but the roads kept turning the wrong way. Finally, he'd abandoned the car and taken off on four feet.

It took us three days to find the Jaguar - and then only because someone called the police and reported an abandoned car in their vineyard.

I gave the sword back to Tad as soon as I saw him again, a couple of days after our adventure.

"What did you do to it?" he asked me. "It feels ..."

"Frightened?" I suggested.

He grimaced. "Subdued."

"Wulfe - you know the crazy vampire? Wulfe used it to kill another vampire."

He grimaced. "That would do it. You should ask Dad about Wulfe sometime. It'll give you nightmares."

Tad was living at his father's house still, but he quit being a hermit. He's helping me at the shop again. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed working with someone I liked. I might still have to close down the shop eventually, but not for a while.

Peter's funeral, held as soon as we could manage, had taken place in sunshine, though it was still cold. The pack mourned, as was fitting. It was a quiet affair without the usual speeches because Honey didn't want them. I agreed with her; speeches weren't necessary. We all knew what we had lost.

Asil went home directly afterward. As did Agent Armstrong, who had stayed for the funeral, though he'd never met Peter.

"It is a good thing to remember the victims," he told me at the grave site. "It gives me perspective."

Adam made Honey stay with us for a couple more days before moving back to her house. Mary Jo planned on giving up her apartment in the next few weeks and moving in with her. Mary Jo, firefighter, and Honey, princess, seem to me a disaster in the making - but neither of them like me for a lot of reasons that boil down to my being a coyote and not a werewolf. Maybe that will give them enough in common to let their roommate situation work out.

The last of the flames under the Rabbit died down just as the snow began to fall in earnest.

"Come inside," Adam suggested. "Everyone's gone except Jesse, and she's asleep."

His gruff tone and the touch of his lips on my ear told me that he had something more in mind than sleep.

"I am," I told him, as we walked back to the house, "feeling very lucky tonight."