Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson #7)(69)

"That is one I thought would never change," said Asil thoughtfully.

"He loved my mother," Tad told him. "Love is more powerful than anything, even an old grumpy fae who knows how to hate."

Asil gave Tad a thoughtful look. "Indeed?" And then he looked back at the mirror. "Love is both useful and powerful - but seldom convenient."

"I don't know about that," Adam said. "I've found it pretty convenient."

"That's not what you told me," I corrected him, and he laughed.

The ghost tried to give me trouble again on the way back down the stairway from Zee's mirror room. But I wasn't stoned by fae magic this time.

"Go away," I told her.

"Mercy?" Adam was just behind me, and he put his hand on my back.

"Not you," I told him. "It's the ghost." He growled, and it made me smile.

Proving that she could do something other than cry, the ghost screamed at me, her face all but pressed to mine. No one else reacted. It was really ear-piercing, so someone would have reacted if they could hear it. It was just another one of those things that only I could perceive - lucky me.

For a long time I'd thought that was the only thing I could do with ghosts - observe them. Then I'd met a vampire who could steal the power of those he consumed. He'd taken the power of a walker like me, and he'd been able to do more.

I focused my attention on the ghost, borrowed a little Alpha from Adam, though I didn't really need it, and said again, "Go away."

She disappeared abruptly, and there was a crash somewhere below. I heard Tad, who'd preceded us, run down the stairs to the main level. Asil, like a lot of the older werewolves, didn't make any noise when he ran.

When Adam and I got down there, Tad was sweeping up glass in the kitchen while Asil watched. It looked as though the ghost had managed to dump all the dishes that had been in the drainer by the sink onto the floor.

Tad looked at me as he dumped the shards in the garbage. "I thought you said all that she did was cry?"

"I think," I told him apologetically, "that when I walked through the ghost without my usual mulishness, although she didn't quite manage to take me over, she did succeed in pulling herself a little closer to this world. She's probably going to be a little more of a presence here until the effect wears off."

"We have a ghost."

"I told you that already," I said.

"Cool." He set the dustpan on the counter and grinned at me. "Haunted houses are nifty."

"Tell me that when she keeps you up all night with her sobbing," I told him. "But if she gets too obstreperous, just let me know. I might be able to make her leave you alone." I hadn't done a lot of experimentation on that front. Ghosts had so little self-determination - bound as they were by the rules of their existence - taking any control away from them seemed like a crime. As long as they didn't try to possess me or bother my friends, they were safe from me.

"'Obstreperous,' huh," said Tad. "I see you've been using that Big Word of the Day calendar I got you last Christmas."

"That is irrefragable," I told him solemnly.

Silverless, de-magicked, and vowing never to play word one-upmanship - or even Scrabble for that matter - with either Adam or Asil (What exactly was a quicquidlibet, anyway?), I drove to Kyle's, where we would meet with the Cantrip agent and everyone else.

Adam only raised his eyebrows when I told him I would drive - which meant he was really exhausted. He closed his eyes as soon as I got the car on the road, and no one said much on the trip. Probably, with two dominant wolves who weren't in the same pack, it was just as well.

Marsilia's car was parked in Kyle's driveway. I had to park the Corolla a block away because there were a lot of cars on the street - including a short bus that was covered with quotes from the Bible - mostly from Romans, but there were a few Revelation quotes and a lot of Proverbs. Most of them I recognized, but the chapter and verse were helpfully spelled out on each just in case. When I paused to read, Adam gave a quiet laugh.

"Elizaveta," he told me. "I told her we had the whole pack to transport, and she showed up with a couple of vans and that. She said that one of her nephews borrowed it from his church. He told them that he needed to move some things. They left it here for us to use until we get everyone all sorted out."

"It's a good thing that Kyle's old neighbor is dead," I told him. Adam hadn't called me; he'd called the witch who hadn't even bothered to answer my phone call. "Every time I parked my poor old Rabbit in front of Kyle's house, Kyle got a letter of complaint taped to his door. I can't imagine what he'd have done in response to this bus."

"Hey," Adam said, quietly into my ear. "I called you first, but your phone was dead. Then I called Elizaveta."

It shouldn't have made me feel better. Elizaveta was more useful; he should have called her first. She could destroy evidence and had minions who could borrow vans. But he'd called me first instead. Impatient with myself for having been so jealous about something so stupid, I looked around for a distraction, and my eyes found the bus again.

"'Thou shall not suffer a witch to live,'" I told him, pointing at the front quarter panel. "I wonder if Elizaveta saw that. It doesn't say werewolves, but I expect it is implied."