Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson #3)(18)

"Tony, make sure you are looking farther than the length of your nose for a killer. It wasn't Zee."

He sighed. "All right. All right. I'm not assigned to this case, but I'll talk to some of the guys who are."

We said our good-byes and I looked around for Kyle.

I found him standing in a small crowd a little ways away, far enough from the stage that their conversation didn't interfere with the next performer's music. Samuel and his instrument cases were in the center of the group.

I put my cell phone in my back pocket (a habit that has destroyed two phones so far) and tried to blank my face. It wouldn't help with the werewolves, who would be able to smell my distress, but at least I wouldn't have complete strangers stop and ask me what was wrong.

There was an earnest-looking young man wearing a tie-dyed shirt talking at Samuel, who was watching him with amusement apparent only to people who knew him very well.

"I haven't ever heard that version of the last song you played," the young man was saying. "That's not the usual melody used with it. I wanted to find out where you heard it. You did an excellent job - except for the pronunciation of the third word in the first verse. This"  -  he said something that sounded vaguely Welsh - "is how you said it, but it should really be"  -  another unpronounceable word that sounded just like the first one he'd uttered. I may have grown up in a werewolf pack led by a Welshman, but English was the common language and neither the Marrok nor Samuel his son used Welsh often enough to give me an ear for it. "I just thought that since everything else was so well done, you should know."

Samuel gave him a little bow and said about fifteen or twenty Welsh-sounding words.

The tie-dyed man frowned. "If that's where you looked for pronunciation, it is no wonder you had a problem. Tolkien based his Elvish on Welsh and Finnish."

"You understood what he said?" Adam asked.

"Oh, please. It was the inscription on the One Ring, you know, One Ring to Rule Them All...everyone knows that much."

I stopped where I was, bemused despite the urgency of my need. A folk song nerd, who would have thought?

Samuel grinned. "Very good. I don't speak any more Elvish than that, but I couldn't resist playing with you a little. An old Welshman taught me the song. I'm Samuel Cornick, by the way. You are?"

"Tim Milanovich."

"Very good to meet you, Tim. Are you performing later?"

"I'm doing a workshop with a friend." He smiled shyly. "You might like to attend it: Celtic folk music. Two o'clock Sunday in the Community Center. You play very well, but if you want to make it in the music business, you need to organize your songs better, get a theme - like Celtic folk songs. Come to my class, and I'll give you a few ideas."

Samuel gave him a grave smile, though I knew the chances of Samuel "organizing" his music was about an icicle's chance in Hell. But he lied, politely enough. "I'll try to catch it. Thank you."

Tim Milanovich shook Samuel's hand and then wandered off, leaving only the werewolves and Kyle behind.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Samuel's eyes focused on me. "What's wrong, Mercy?"

Chapter 4

Kyle found a lawyer for me. He assured me that she was expensive, a pain in the neck, and the best criminal defense attorney this side of Seattle. She wasn't happy to be defending a fae, but, Kyle told me, that wouldn't affect her performance, only her price. She lived in Spokane, but she agreed that time was of the essence. By three that afternoon she was in Kennewick.

Once assured that Zee wasn't talking to the police, she'd demanded to meet with me in Kyle's office first, before she went to the police station. To hear the story from me, she told Kyle, before she spoke to Zee or the police.

Since it was a Saturday, Kyle's efficient staff and the other two lawyers who worked with him were gone, and we had his luxurious office suite to ourselves.

Jean Ryan was a fifty-something woman who had kept her figure with hard work that left taut muscles beneath the light linen suit she wore. Her pale, pale blond hair could only have come from a salon, but the surprisingly soft blue eyes owed nothing to contact lenses.

I don't know what she thought when she looked at me, though I saw her eyes take in my broken nails and the ingrained dirt on my knuckles.

The check I wrote to her made me swallow hard and hope that Uncle Mike would be as good as his word and cover the amount - and this was for only the initial consultation. Maybe my mother had been right, and I should have been a lawyer. She always maintained that at least as a lawyer my contrary nature would be an asset.

Ms. Ryan tucked my check into her purse, then folded her hands on the top of the table in the smaller of Kyle's two conference rooms. "Tell me what happened," she said.

I had just started when Kyle cleared his throat. I stopped to look at him.

"Zee can't afford for Jean to know just the safest part," he told me. "You have to tell her everything. No one knows how to sniff out a lie like a criminal defense lawyer."

"Everything?" I asked him, wide-eyed.

He patted my shoulder. "Jean can keep secrets. If she doesn't know everything, then she's defending your friend with one hand tied behind her back."

I folded my arms across my chest and gave her a long, level look. There was nothing about her that inspired me to trust her with my secrets. A less motherly looking woman I'd seldom seen - except for those eyes.