Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson #7)(22)
"There is time," he said, his voice as gentle as I'd ever heard it. "I can get home in very short order should I need to. Do not worry about me. We will worry about the others, yes? Hang up now and drive."
I hung up and hoped I'd done the right thing. Exposing the pack's vulnerability to the local vampires wasn't a smart thing to do. Marsilia would happily dance on our graves if the pack and I, especially I, were utterly destroyed. I trusted Stefan. I did. But Stefan was a vampire and I could never forget that.
Kyle's house in West Richland was a generous half-hour drive from Sylvia's apartment in Kennewick. I'd spent a lot of time this night traveling back and forth along the same stretch of highway. To my right, the Columbia was a murky presence as the houses of Kennewick passed by the window to mark my progress.
Had I done the right thing leaving Gabriel and Jesse? It had felt like I was getting them out of harm's way when I'd done it. But what if whoever had taken Adam did think of Sylvia? Gabriel was strong and smart, but he was also an unarmed teenage human. Had I just given our enemies more victims? I thought of the bullet that hit Peter and was pretty sure that the person who had fired it at a helpless man could shoot one of Gabriel's little sisters, too.
Somewhere nearby, Adam was being held. I had no real reason to think that they would be hunting Jesse. Not one. But I was uneasy leaving them without protection.
I called Zee. He hadn't said good-bye when he'd retreated to the fae reservation, just left a note telling me to be patient and not contact him. But he liked Gabriel and Jesse - and adored, though he'd never have admitted it out loud, the little hellions who were Gabriel's sisters.
His cell phone rang and rang as the interstate carried me past Richland. My finger was on the button to end the call when Zee said, grumpily, "Liebling, this is not a good idea."
"Zee," I told him, "I am completely out of good ideas and am doing my best with the bad ones I have left." I explained the whole thing again. When I finished, I said, "The fae owe us, Adam and me, they owe us for the otterkin and for the fairy queen. Is there some way you could keep a watch over Gabriel's mom's house? You probably won't have to do anything at all. I'm probably being paranoid - it's that kind of night. But all they have keeping them safe is my hope that no one would think to look there - and that reasoning gets weaker and weaker the farther away I get."
"I agree that you are owed a debt," Zee said heavily, at last. "There might be some who would argue that the otterkin's deaths were a tragedy. I am not one of those people. No one can argue that you were sent on an errand for us that put you in danger, and where you took much harm. And no one, not even the most anti-human of us" - the way he said it made me think that he had a specific fae in mind - "can argue you are owed for the downfall of the fairy queen, who caught so many of us in her web and might have taken us all, unaware as we were."
He made a clicking noise with his tongue that I recognized as the sound he made when confronted with a particularly difficult fix on a car. "It brings me sorrow, but at this time it would wipe the slate clean of favors owed to you if they knew that I had even answered this phone - which phone I am not supposed to have at all because it is corrupt human technology." He bit out the last part of the sentence as if he found it annoying. "If I left the reservation to help you, I would bring trouble down upon both of us." His laugh was distinctly unamused. "And if I left the reservation at this point, it might be disastrous on a much larger scale because I am trying to bring reason to chaos, which I cannot do from a distance and may not be able to do even with a sword to someone's throat. I cannot even give you advice without creating issues." He sighed but didn't hang up, so I kept the phone to my ear.
After a long pause, he said, carefully, "I could not tell you to call my house and speak to the one there. I could not tell you to think about the kinds of places that could be fortified to hold a pack of werewolves, which would not be easy. A place where people in pseudo-military garb might not be remarked upon or where they could get in and out unnoticed carrying bodies. There are not many places like that around here, Mercy. There are no peasants who are too afraid of the powers that be to speak out when men carrying guns walk where they should not be."
"You think they're being held somewhere out in the Area?" I asked. The Area was the secured section of land surrounding the Hanford nuclear power plant.
"I am sorry, Liebling. I cannot help you at this time. Perhaps if the talks between the Gray Lords and Bran Cornick go well, we can discuss this again. Until that time, we are forbidden to give aid to anyone associated with the werewolf packs." Another slight pause. "This was very clearly expressed to me. Very clearly." His voice held an edge that was sharper than his knife - and his knife was legendarily sharp.
"If you know anyone who is talking to Bran right now," I said, "would you please have them tell him what's going on here? This information might not help the fae's cause with the Marrok, but you might let someone understand that not passing on this information will be a statement the Marrok will take very seriously. And I will make sure that Bran knows the fae were given this information."
"You phrase your suggestion very well," Zee said, sounding pleased. "I will let the ones who are talking to Bran know all that you have told me." He paused. "I will have to be creative to do it in such a way that they do not know that we have been talking on the phone." He hung up without another word.