Night Broken (Mercy Thompson #8)(9)

“Maybe the walking stick is the first, or even the only one. I am not lying to you.” My voice was tight. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling him all of this. But he scared me, this Gray Lord who wore a lawyer’s suit and seemed so cool and calm. I was under no illusions about the civility promised by the oh-so-expensive suit—the fae were masters at donning the trappings of civilization to hide the predator inside. I needed him to understand why I’d given the walking stick away, or there was a very real chance he’d kill me.

“Maybe not,” he conceded after too long a pause. “But there are many kinds of lies.”

“Before the otterkin died, we fought the river devil, a primordial creature that came to destroy the world. Most of the work was done by others. It was a hard fight, and we almost lost. Those who fought to kill it, all of them, except for me, died.” For some creatures, death was less permanent than for others, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t died. “I had lost my last weapon. I was desperate, everyone was dead or dying. The walking stick came to my hand, and I killed the river devil with it.”

Beauclaire didn’t say anything, but his attention was so focused it felt electric on my skin. “You think it was quenched in the blood of this ‘river devil.’” He sneered on the last two words.

“‘River devil’ was the name given to it by other people, so don’t blame me for it,” I told him. “But yes. Because after the river devil died, the walking stick changed. It killed the otterkin and … it was aware.”

Beauclaire just watched me, and his eyes reminded me of Medea’s when she crouched outside a mousehole. Waiting.

“I’d broken it,” I admitted frankly. “And I didn’t know what to do about it.”

“You gave it to Siebold Adelbertsmiter,” Beauclaire said, his voice cool, his body ready to rend, and his eyes hungry.

“It wouldn’t let him take it when it first came to me,” I told him. “It wouldn’t have gone with him, so I didn’t even try.”

“Uncle Mike?” That would have bothered him less.

“No. Not Uncle Mike, either. I told you it wouldn’t go with him. What do you know about Native American guesting laws?”

He looked at me for a moment. “Why don’t you explain them to me?”

So I explained how I’d given Lugh’s walking stick to Coyote.

Lugh’s son looked at me in patent disbelief. “You gave it to Coyote? Because he was your guest, and he admired it.”

“That’s right,” I agreed.

He shook his head and muttered something in a language that sounded like Welsh, but wasn’t, because I speak a few words of Welsh. There are more British Isles languages than just Welsh, Irish, Scots, and English—Manx, Cornish, and a host of extinct variants. I have no idea what language Beauclaire spoke.

When he was finished, he looked at me, and asked, “Can you retrieve it?”

“I can try.” I smiled grimly. “I have a better chance of retrieving it from him than you do.”

He stood up. “I swore that I would not go from here empty-handed, and it is not in me to go back on my oath. So I will take from here your word that you will retrieve the walking stick and return it to me within one week’s time.”

“As much as I’d love to agree,” I told him, “I cannot. Coyote is beyond my ability to control. I will look for him and ask when I find him. That I will swear to.”

“One week’s time.” He met my eyes, and what I saw in his gaze made me cold to the bone as I remembered that he’d spoken of tidal waves and drowned cities. “If not, we will have another talk with a less cordial ending.”

He walked out of the kitchen the same way he’d come in; I took the shorter path, near the stairs, and watched as he left. The front door shut behind him with a gentle click.

A car started up. I couldn’t pick out the engine, though it had a low, throaty purr that sounded like something expensive. Nothing I’d worked on very much. He didn’t rev it up, just drove it like a family sedan out of the driveway and down the road.

The sound of Beauclaire’s engine was blending into the distant sounds of the night when I felt a tickling sensation, like someone had pulled mosquito netting off my skin. There was a half-second pause, then Adam, naked and enraged, was at the bottom of the stairs beside me. He looked at me. It was only a momentary look, but the intensity of it told me he saw that I was unharmed and not particularly alarmed. Then he was out the front door.

By the time I retrieved the gun from under the kitchen towels and checked the safety, Adam was back.

“Fae,” he said, sounding calmer than he looked. “No one I’ve smelled before. Who was it, and what did they want with you?”

“Gray Lord,” I told him because he needed to know that it had taken a Power to enspell him and successfully invade our home. “It was Beauclaire—you know, the guy who initiated the fae’s retreat to the reservations. He came looking for the walking stick. Have you seen Medea? He scared the holy spit out of her.”

Adam frowned. “I thought Zee knew about the walking stick. And nothing scares that cat.”

“Apparently she’s good with coyotes, vampires, witches, werewolves, and all the fae who’ve come around before, but Gray Lords are an entirely different proposition.” I started up the stairs. I had to get up in a couple of hours and go to work. Tomorrow, Christy was going to be here. It looked to be a long day, and I wanted to face it with at least the better part of a full night’s sleep. And first I needed to find the cat and make sure she was okay.