Night Broken (Mercy Thompson #8)(10)

“Mercy,” Adam said patiently as he followed me. “Why didn’t Beauclaire know that you’d given the stick to Coyote?”

“As best I can put together,” I told him, “Zee didn’t pass it around widely, and Beauclaire and he are not speaking because Zee killed Beauclaire’s father Lugh in order to quench Excalibur.”

Adam’s footfalls had been steady behind me, but at that last they paused. He started up again, and said, “Dealing with the fae is always full of surprises.”

His hand came to rest on my back, then slid lower as he took advantage of being two steps below me and nipped at my hip. “So,” he said gruffly, “what did Lugh’s son say when you told him that you gave his walking stick to Coyote?”

“That I have a week to get it back.”

Adam’s hand curved around my hip and pulled me to a stop at the top of the stairs.

“Or?” His voice was a growl that slid over my skin and warmed me from the outside in.

“We have another talk,” I told him, doing my best to make it sound a lot less threatening than Beauclaire had. I didn’t want my husband out hunting Gray Lords because someone had threatened his family. “It won’t come to that. I’ll find out how to contact Coyote. I’ll call Hank in the morning.” Hank was another walker like me, though his second form was a hawk. He lived an hour and a half from the Tri-Cities and was my information source for most of what I knew about being a walker. “If he doesn’t know, he should be able to hook me up with Gordon Seeker. Gordon will know.” Gordon Seeker was Thunderbird, the way Coyote was Coyote. He liked to travel around in the guise of an old Indian with a thing for the gaudiest version of cowboy wear I’d ever seen.

Adam put his forehead against my shoulder. “No trouble you can’t handle, then.”

“I’m more worried about Christy,” I told him, and it was almost true.

He laughed without joy and pulled me tighter against him. “Me, too.” He whispered, “Don’t believe everything she says, okay? Don’t leave without talking to me.”

I turned around, and said fiercely, “Never. Not even if I talk to you first. You aren’t getting away now, buster.”

He dove for my mouth, and when he was finished ensuring that neither of us was going to get much sleep for a while, he said, “Remember that. We’re both likely to be clinging to that thought by the time this is over.”

I coaxed the bolt out with sweet words and steady, light hands.

I had already done all that I could this morning to find Coyote short of shouting his name into the open air—which I would have if I thought it would do any good. All I could do now was wait for the phone. Not that the fae was the only thing I worried about, or even the thing I was most worried about. Adam was, just about now, picking Christy up from the airport.

Mechanicking took my full concentration, letting my worries about the fae and Adam’s ex-wife fade in the face of a problem I could actually do something about.

The Beetle had been worked on by amateurs for decades, and the bolt that was turning so reluctantly was a victim of years of abuse. Her edges were more suggestions than actual corners, making getting her out of the ’59 Beetle a little tricky. So far I hadn’t had to resort to the Easy Out, and I was starting to get optimistic about my chances of success.

Someone cleared their throat tentatively and scared the bejeebers out of me—though I managed not to jump. He was standing behind me—a strange man, who was also a strange werewolf, my nose told me belatedly. Thankfully, he’d stayed back, waiting just outside the open garage-bay door.

Tad was twenty feet away in the office—and the stranger was probably only a customer who’d come around to the open garage bays instead of to the office. It happened all the time. I was perfectly safe. Reason didn’t have much effect on my spiking heartbeat and the shaft of terror that was my body’s reaction to being startled by a strange man in my garage.

I’d been assaulted a while ago. Just when I thought I was over it, some stupid little thing would bring it back.

I nodded stiffly at him, then visibly focused on the job ahead, no matter where my panicky attention really was. I kept talking to the bolt, finding the soothing tones surprisingly useful even if they were my own. I fought to regain control by the time the bolt came out. Every twist, I told myself, meant I had to calm a little more. To my relief, the silly exercise worked—six twists of the wrench, and I was no longer on the verge of shaking, tears, and (more rare, but what it lacked in frequency it made up for in humiliation) throwing up on a perfect stranger.

I set the wrench down and turned with a smile to face him. He had stayed right where he had been—at a polite and safe distance. He didn’t look directly at me, either—he was a werewolf, he’d know that I had panicked, but he’d allowed me to save face. Points to him for courtesy.

He was neither tall nor short for a man and carried himself pulled tightly toward his core. Arms in, shoulders in, head tipped down. His hair was curly and pulled back in a short ponytail. He looked as though he could use a good meal and a pat on the head.

“I’m looking for a place to be,” he said. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder that looked as old as the Beetle I was repairing. Maybe it was.

Several years ago, another werewolf had approached me at the garage, looking for a place to be. He was dead.