Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson #7)(23)

I had missed the turn off at Queensgate and had to drive all the way to Benton City, adding more time onto the trip. Rather than travel back down the interstate, I took the back highway, where there should be fewer police, hoping I could make up some time.

As soon as I was on the right road, I called Zee's house. The phone rang and rang. After a few minutes I hung up and tried it again. Zee wouldn't have given me that number for nothing. Maybe he'd rented the house out to someone he thought could help me. Maybe there was another fae who, like Ariana, was powerful enough to defy the Gray Lords. Or maybe the fae had left designated spies outside to keep track of things they couldn't monitor from their barricaded reservations, someone who owed Zee a favor. I was still coming up with fantasy scenarios when someone picked up the phone.

"What?" he snapped impatiently.

"Who is this?" I asked, because, gruff and sharp as that answer had been, he sounded like Tad. Zee's half-human son would not have come back here without letting me know.

"Mercy?" Some of the grumpiness left his voice and I was certain.

"Tad? What are you doing home? How long have you been there, and why didn't you tell me you were home?"

Tad had been his father's right-hand man in the VW shop when he was nine, and I first met him. He'd kept on as my right hand and chief tool wrangler when his father had retired and let me buy the shop. Tad had left to go to an Ivy League school back East giving out scholarships to fae as a way to show how liberal and enlightened they were.

We'd e-mailed once a week since he left, and I called him once a month to keep up. Tad was the little brother I'd never had, and in some ways we were closer than I was to my half sisters. We had more in common: neither of us quite fitting in to either the world of the humans or the world of the supernatural. He because he was only half-fae and I because I was the only shapeshifting coyote in a world full of werewolves and vampires.

When the fae had pulled their disappearing act, I'd called him, both on his cell and on his dorm-room phone, to no avail. I'd decided he'd gone to the reservations with all the rest of the fae.

Apparently not.

"Tad?" I asked, because he hadn't answered any of my questions.

He hung up on me. Evidently, he didn't want to talk about it. Fair enough. I was a little short for time, too.

I dialed again.

"Go away, Mercy," he said.

"Your dad told me I should call his house for help," I said, speaking quickly. "Bad guys are after Jesse and Gabriel. I have them staying with Gabriel's mom in the hopes that no one will think to look for them there. But if they do, if the bad guys come, there isn't anyone there who can protect them."

I could almost feel Tad's reluctance to listen to me instead of hanging up again. Something must have changed in him while he was at college. I'd seen no sign of it in our correspondence or during his infrequent visits home. Maybe it had something to do with the reason that he was out here instead of in the reservation with the rest of the fae.

"You think I could protect them, huh?" he said, finally.

It was a fair question. Tad was half-fae, but I had no idea what that meant. From a few things that Zee had let slip over the years, I knew Tad wasn't one of the half fae who were as powerless as most humans. But that was all I knew.

"Your father does." I gave him the only answer I had.

He didn't say anything.

"I have to see if Kyle is okay," I told him. "Adam and the whole pack have been taken tonight, and one of the pack was killed. I'm trying to - " Do what? Rescue them? Stop the bad guys? "Check on Kyle because I think that they might have done something to him when they snatched Warren. I need Jesse and Gabriel to be safe, and I'm a little short of allies. It won't be for long. I'll come get them after I see that Kyle is okay." I recited Sylvia's address and hung up without waiting for him to say anything else.

I knew Tad. No matter how grumpy he was, he wouldn't be able to sit around while someone was in danger. He'd flirted lightly with Jesse when he'd been home last - then spent two hours under the hood of Gabriel's car helping him fix an electrical problem.

And the sooner I made sure that Kyle was safe, the sooner I could let Tad off the hook. I put my foot down and hoped the cops were out watching Walmart, the mall, and the interstate routes. The big Mercedes engine gave a satisfied purr and ate up the miles through the desert back to West Richland. The speedometer said 110, but it felt more like 60. I patted the dash, and said, "Good girl."

The eastern sky was still dark when I neared Kyle's house at a more lawful speed. Kyle and Warren lived in an upscale neighborhood where every house had ample garage space and driveways to catch the overflow. Usually, there were no cars on the street unless someone was having a party.

I passed a modest, dark, American-built car parked half a block from Kyle's house and, as I drove sedately by, I saw that there was an unfamiliar black SUV in the driveway. There were no lights on at the house. Not even the one by the door that Kyle left on all night. The SUV and the car had California plates.

I drove right past and turned the corner, parking Marsilia's dark, not-American-built car in front of a house twice the size of Kyle's, where it looked much more at home than the cars I'd just passed. I got out and opened the back.

"It doesn't look good for Kyle," I whispered to Ben. "Did you see those cars?"