Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson #7)(65)

"Mercedes," he said. "What have you done to your lips?"

Mercy touched her lips but didn't say anything. Adam found that a hopeful sign.

White-gold hair slicked down over Zee's shoulders like a waterfall of pale wheat. He wore, incongruously, a pair of black jeans and a gray flannel shirt with a motor-oil stain on one cuff. On his feet were his old battered, steel-toed boots.

Asil's lips curled back, and he snarled softly.

"Peace, wolfling," said Zee in his usual impatient and crabby fashion. "It's been a long time since I hunted your kind. And, as I recall, you got away cleanly anyway. You have no axe to grind."

The old fae frowned at Tad, who had set the deck of cards on the poker caddy and gotten to his feet.

"What's wrong, Tad, that you've called me here?"

"What isn't is a better question," said Tad. "I'm really glad to see you. I don't know exactly where to start."

"If it helps," Zee said, "I'm caught up to where someone has apparently taken most of the wolf pack captive. Last I heard, Mercy set you to guard Jesse and Gabriel while she went off to see how Kyle fared. I see that you managed to recover at least one of the wolves, Mercy."

"Adam recovered himself," Mercy told him. "The lips are from the silver."

Zee frowned at her and took a couple of steps nearer. Adam stood up and pulled Mercy to her feet beside him, unwilling to let this stranger with Zee's eyes and voice approach him when he was in a vulnerable position.

"Silver?"

Mercy explained how Coyote told her to change the rules and so she'd drunk the silver out of Adam's body. Adam intended on having a word or two with Coyote the next time he saw him - not that it would do any good. Mercy backtracked and began again with Stefan's helping her free Kyle and ran all the way through to escorting Asil to Sylvia's house.

"So I sent Jesse and Gabriel to take the kids to Kyle's house," Mercy said.

"In Marsilia's car, which now has a dent and a dead body in the back," said Zee.

"It sounds worse than it is," she assured him.

"No," Adam disagreed. "It is exactly as bad as it sounds."

"You know these assassins?" Zee asked Tad.

"It was Sliver and Spice." Tad leaned against the bookcase nearest him and caught the hunting knife before it fell on the ground. He frowned at it and set it back in the corner it had started in. "You stay there," he told it.

Zee smiled, and his face suddenly looked a lot more like the Zee Adam knew. "I wish you better luck than I have with that." He nodded toward the knife. "It doesn't like to stay in one place when interesting things are going on. How do you know it was Sliver and Spice? They are both skilled at hiding who and what they are."

"Here," said Tad, taking out the small bit of metal that the fae man's sword had turned into. "This is yours. Sliver was using it on Asil - who fought him off with a baseball bat from Walmart. And Sliver had to drop the glamour to keep up with him." There was a bit of hero worship coming off Tad.

"The Moor doesn't need a pesky magic blade to triumph over evil," Mercy murmured, and Adam gave her a sharp look.

Zee took the object from Tad, and in his hands, it formed once more into a blade. This time, though, it was black as pitch but only two feet long.

"Of course he did," Zee said, sounding a little put out that Asil had triumphed over one of his blades. But his face smoothed out, and he said, "He outsmarted me for three weeks in high winter in the Alps. It stands to reason that a spriggand would have no chance at all, even with such a blade as this."

"Sliver got away," Tad said. "But not before Adam showed up out of the blue and stole that sword from him."

"You didn't bring me here to tell me this," Zee said. He didn't look at Mercy, but Adam could feel his attention.

"Right," Tad said. "Mercy, touch your toes, then turn around three times."

Adam understood why Tad had to do it, but he couldn't help the unhappy sound he made. "You need to quit giving her orders," he warned Tad. He wasn't angry, not at Tad, anyway. But her easy compliance made his wolf want to jump out of his skin. The last time she'd been caught in this kind of magic, she'd been raped, and he remembered it, both wolf and man.

"Peace and Quiet, also known as the Fairy Queen's Gift," said Zee, in a contemplative voice that made Adam think that he wasn't the only one who was bothered by Mercy's obedience. "I had heard that it had surfaced again. Did Sliver and Spice get away with it?"

Adam caught Mercy's shoulders and stopped her before she finished the second turn. "You don't have to listen to him anymore, Mercy. Stop."

"No," Asil said. "The cuffs are in the trunk with the dead woman - who it is probably safe to assume is Spice." He grimaced. "Did she pick the name from the singing group?"

Tad smiled. "Not unless they were around a couple of centuries ago."

"Sliver is alone?" Zee sounded for a moment like a hunting wolf. "Interesting." Then he looked at Mercy again, and some of the inhumanity slid away from him.

"Stealing someone's willpower was always a rare and difficult fae gift," Zee said. "It's a spell easier to work on someone who is asleep or happy."