Night Broken (Mercy Thompson #8)(33)

“And jealous,” he added. “I’m sorry.”

I shook my head. “I love you,” I told him. “I love the man you are. But her makeup is not staying here. I won’t have her in our bedroom. In our bathroom. But I will take care of it.” I smiled at him. “I don’t care if she calls me jealous or petty. Not your worry. So still no real information on Flores?”

“No,” he said, soaping up his hands and starting to wash himself off briskly. “The Reno pack sent a couple of wolves to talk to the hotel where Christy met Flores. Turns out he comes there every year about the same time, checks in under different names for which he has ID—but that is apparently not unusual despite government regulations. There’s an actor who regularly checks in there under the name of the secret identity of the last superhero he played. But the staff remembers him because of the dogs—and confirmed that whatever name he’s registered as, he still goes by Juan Flores.”

I had followed Adam’s example and scrubbed myself down as he talked. I even managed to soap my hair and condition it before the magnetic draw of Adam’s skin forced me to touch him.

“He can speak native-quality Spanish, but his accent is weird,” Adam told me, but his voice was a little unsteady, and he braced himself against the corner of the shower. “Not from Spain, Puerto Rico, Cuba, or Mexico. The Argentinian maid said he sounded Colombian. The Colombian maid said maybe Venezuelan, and he used very old-fashioned—”

“Old-fashioned what?” I asked, letting my mouth follow my hands.

“Mmmm,” Adam answered.

Someone knocked on the bathroom door. “Hurry up, Mercy,” Auriele said briskly. “Christy’s made her famous Szechuan chicken, but it needs to be eaten right now.”

I backed away, and Adam snarled soundlessly.

“Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.”

On the way down for dinner, I collected Christy’s things and set them down in front of her door.

“You aren’t going to talk to her?” Adam asked.

“I don’t need to,” I told him. “She’ll get the message.” If I had to give it again, she’d be buying new makeup and a new case. But I was pretty sure this would be enough.

I always start work early—a habit formed in summers when the afternoon sun can heat the garage ten degrees hotter than the triple-digit figures outside. But Thursday morning, I had left home while the sky was still dark just to get away from the breakfast Christy had been in the process of making. Nothing horrible had happened at dinner, but I didn’t want to repeat it, either. Tad didn’t show up at work until almost an hour after I did.

“No brownies?” he asked.

“Christy has taken over my kitchen,” I told him as I wrote the last check for the garage’s bills. “No stress relief for me. No chocolate for you.”

“No chocolate?” he said, leaning on the counter. “That’s terrible.” He waited hopefully, and when I didn’t say anything more, he asked, “So what did she make for us today?”

I waved him at the brown paper bag sitting next to my keyboard.

He sniffed, then opened it. “Cinnamon rolls?”

“You can eat these in here,” I said, and licked the last envelope closed. “Eat them both. They have Christy cooties.”

“The muffins were good,” he said. “So was the apple pie. I guess I can do without chocolate if the alternative is cinnamon rolls.” There was sympathy in his voice if not his words.

“Blasphemer,” I told him. “There are no cinnamon rolls better than chocolate.”

He sniffed again. “These might be.”

I left him to it and retreated to go work on cars. In my garage, I ruled without question—and had since Zee had retreated to the fae reservation. Her makeup case wasn’t going to end up in my garage.

But as soon as I put Christy out of my mind, I started fretting over my inability to find Coyote. I’d been pretty optimistic after Honey had grilled Gary Laughingdog. But I hadn’t had any brainstorms about how to be interesting enough to attract Coyote’s attention.

Last night I’d resorted to yelling Coyote’s name to the open air (well away from home to make sure no werewolves would hear me making an idiot out of myself). I’d tried talking to Coyote as if he were in the same room to see if he would come out of hiding—and wondered if I was going to have to mastermind a bank heist in order to attract his attention.

I was contemplating criminal activities when Hank called. I peeled off the stupid latex gloves, so I didn’t get grease on my phone. Christy had done that much for me: since I started wearing the gloves—my phone was staying cleaner.

“Hey, Hank,” I said.

“You talk with Gary?”

Something in his voice had me straightening my spine. “Yes.”

“Hope you got the information you needed.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Last night or this morning, Laughingdog escaped. One of his relatives called me to see if I thought you might have had something to do with it.”

“No,” I said. I wondered who Gary Laughingdog’s relatives were and if they might be able to tell me how to get in touch with Coyote. “I don’t think so. Did you know that he has some kind of foresight?”