Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson #3)(26)

I value my instincts, so I stayed motionless.

It opened its mouth and gave a rattling cry, like old bones shaken roughly in a wooden box. Then it dismissed me from its notice. It strode to the corner and knocked the walking stick to the floor. The raven took the old thing into its mouth and without so much as a glance over its shoulder took flight through the wall.

Fifteen minutes later, I was well on the way back home - in human shape and driving my car.

Being not exactly human myself and raised by werewolves, I'd thought I'd seen just about everything: witches, vampires, ghosts, and a half dozen other things that aren't supposed to exist. But that bird had been real, as solid as me - I'd seen its ribs rise and fall as it breathed and I'd touched that walking stick myself.

I'd never seen one solid object go through another solid object - not without some pretty impressive CGI graphics or David Copperfield.

Magic, despite Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, just doesn't work like that. If the bird had faded, become immaterial or something before it hit the wall, I might have accepted that as magic.

Maybe, just maybe, I'd been like the rest of the world, accepting the fae at their face value. Acting like they were something familiar, that they were constrained by rules I could understand and feel comfortable with.

If anyone should have known better, it would be me. After all, I well understood that what the public knew about the werewolves was just the polished tip of a nasty iceberg. I knew that the fae were, if anything, worse about secrecy than the wolves. Though Zee had been my friend for a decade, I knew very little about the fae side of his life. I knew he was a Steelers fan, that his human wife had died of cancer shortly before I met him, and that he liked tartar sauce on his fries - but I didn't know what he looked like beneath his glamour.

There were lights on at my house when I pulled the Rabbit into the driveway and parked it next to Samuel's Mercedes and a strange Ford Explorer. I'd been hoping Samuel would be home and awake, so I could use him as a sounding board - but the SUV put paid to that idea.

I frowned at it. It was two in the morning, an odd time for visitors. Most visitors.

I took in a deep breath through my nose, but couldn't catch a whiff of vampire - or anything else. Even the night air smelled duller than usual. Probably just a leftover from the shift from coyote to human. My human nose was better than most people's but quite a bit less sensitive than the coyote's, so changing to human was a little like taking out a hearing aid. Still...

Vampires could hide their scent from me if they chose to.

I shivered in the warm night air. I think I would have stayed out there all night, except that I heard the murmur of guitar. I couldn't see Samuel playing for Marsilia, the mistress of the vampire seethe, so I climbed up the steps and went in.

Uncle Mike sat on the overstuffed chair Samuel had replaced my old flea-market find with. Samuel was half-stretched out on the couch like a mountain lion. He played idle bits of music on his guitar. He might look relaxed, but I knew him too well. The cat who was purring on the back of the couch, just behind Samuel's head, was the only relaxed person in the room.

"There's hot water for cocoa," said Samuel, without looking away from Uncle Mike. "Why don't you get yourself some, then come tell us about Zee, who put you on the scent of their murderer so they could go kill him. Then tell me what you've been doing tonight that would leave you smelling of blood and magic?"

Yep, Samuel was ticked at Uncle Mike.

I riffled through the cupboards until I found the box of emergency cocoa. Not the milk chocolate with marshmallow kind, but the hard stuff, dark chocolate with a bit of jalapeno pepper for flavor. I wasn't really upset enough now to need it, but it kept me busy while I thought about how I might keep matters peaceable. Real cocoa needs milk, so I put some in a sauce pan and began heating it up.

I'd left Samuel and the other werewolves this morning knowing only that Zee was in jail and needed a lawyer. Obviously, someone had filled Samuel in a bit since then. Almost certainly not Uncle Mike.

Probably not Warren, who would know everything from the lawyer's meeting - I'd told Kyle to go ahead and tell him what I'd told the lawyer. Warren could keep secrets.

Ah. Warren wouldn't keep secrets from his pack Alpha, Adam. Adam would see no reason not to tell Samuel the whole story if he asked.

See that's the thing about secrets. All you have to do is tell one person - and suddenly everyone knows. Still, if I disappeared, I'd like to know that the werewolves would come looking for me. Hopefully the fae (in the person of Uncle Mike) understood that, and I wasn't likely to just disappear: if the Gray Lords would arrange a suicide for Zee, one of their own who was of some value, they certainly wouldn't hesitate to arrange something to happen to me as well. The pack would make that a little more difficult.

A cup of liquid doesn't take long to heat. I poured it into a mug; took the first sip, bittersweet and biting; then rejoined the men. My deliberations in the kitchen led me to the couch, where I sat with a whole cushion between me and Samuel so I wouldn't be assumed (by Samuel) to be taking a side in the antagonism that was stirring in my living room like the inky surface of Loch Ness just before the monster erupts. I didn't want any eruptions in my living room, thank you. Eruptions meant repair bills and blood. Growing up with werewolves had left me hyperaware of power struggles and things unspoken.

With another werewolf, a show of support might put the likelihood of violence down a few notches, because he would feel more confident. Samuel didn't need more confidence. He needed to know that I felt that Uncle Mike had done the right thing by calling me in, no matter what Samuel's opinion on the matter was.