Night Broken (Mercy Thompson #8)(91)

He closed his eyes and nodded. “I’ve had the same thought. But didn’t you come find me because some fae dude wanted the walking stick you gave Coyote? He’d have to have manipulated him, too.”

I dropped to the floor because it was just barely possible. Here I’d been complaining about Christy’s manipulations. But she was minor-league next to Coyote.

“It wouldn’t take much, right?” I mused. “Beauclaire isn’t fond of humans. And here is one of his father’s artifacts in the hands of a human despite all the fae who’d tried to take it from her. I’m sure Coyote knows a few of the fae who might whisper in Beauclaire’s ear.” I looked at Gary. “Tell me I’m just being paranoid.”

“The thing you have to ask yourself is this,” Gary said. “Is it Guayota Coyote wants to rid the world of, or us? I can tell you that he won’t care if we die. Death doesn’t mean the same thing to him as it does to us. Possibly it’s a test of strength. Survival is one of those Catch-22s. If you live through one of Coyote’s games, it delights him because then he can push you into one that is more dangerous. On second thought”—he opened his eyes and looked at Kyle—“please, call the cops.”

“Why were you in jail?” asked Kyle.

“Seriously? Do you know how many guilty people are in jail? None.” Gary’s voice rose to imitate a woman’s voice. “Honest. I didn’t kill him. He fell on my knife. Ten times.”

“I saw Chicago,” said Kyle. “You won’t lie to me because Mercy can tell if you lie. And I’m a lawyer, and, current circumstances aside, I’m pretty good at hearing lies, too.”

Gary stared intently at him for a moment, then shrugged, letting the tension in his body slide away. “I guess it doesn’t matter to me. I could tell you that I got drunk, stole a car—though I’m pretty sure that was Coyote, but I was drunk, so who knows. Then I stole four cases of two-hundred-dollar Scotch—I’m pretty sure that might have been Coyote, too, but all I remember is watching him opening one of the bottles. Finally, I parked the car in front of the police station and passed out in the backseat with all but one of the bottles of Scotch until the police found me the next morning. That I am sure was Coyote. If I told you all of that, it would be true.”

He looked at Kyle, his eyes narrowed in a way that told me his head was still hurting. “However, the real reason I went to prison was because a few months before I woke up in front of the police station, I slept with the wife of the man who was later my state-appointed lawyer. I didn’t know that he knew I slept with his wife until after I was serving my sentence, when another of his clients was happy to tell me.” Gary closed his eyes. “That the car we stole was a police car didn’t help.”

Gary laughed, winced, then said, “The funny part is that I had not had a drink of alcohol since I went on a five-day bender in 1917 and woke up to find I’d volunteered for the army.” He smiled and moved his arm back over his eyes. “It’s not safe, you see, to get drunk when Coyote might be watching.”

“He’s telling the truth,” I said, after it became obvious that Gary was through talking.

“And you escaped because you knew that we were about to get hit with some kind of volcano god when we were expecting Mr. Flores the stalker,” Kyle said.

Gary grunted. “I didn’t know about Mr. Flores. All I knew was that Mercy was trying to get an artifact back from Coyote. But then somehow this volcano manitou was going to kill someone, and it was connected to Mercy.” He looked at me and then away. “And Mercy was my sister.”

Kyle rubbed his face, drew in a breath, and looked at the curtain covering the window. Then he said, with a sigh, “Plausible deniability, eh?”

“If you didn’t know Gary had escaped from prison, you couldn’t be held responsible,” I said. “Warren was pretty mad at us for putting you into a situation that could hurt you like that. Adam told him that he’d take care of you and see that you wouldn’t get hurt.”

“And if you go with the pack to deal with Guayota,” Kyle said to Gary, “Warren survives.”

Gary shook his head very slowly, like it hurt. “Not how it works. All I know is that if I don’t go, they all die. Maybe if I go, we all of us die much more horribly than they would have otherwise.” He moved his arm so he could see Kyle’s face and grimaced. “Yes. I recognize that expression. Anyone who deals with Coyote wears that expression eventually. And no, I don’t know why my going makes a difference.”

Kyle stretched his neck to relieve tension and gave a miserable half laugh. “I suppose if Warren’s possible death makes me feel like this, I should give him the benefit of the doubt, right?”

“People make mistakes,” I said. “Even people we love.”

“Hell of it is, I’m not sure where the mistake was,” said Kyle.

“Not killing Coyote the first time I saw him,” said Gary. “Not that he’d have stayed dead, but I think the experience might have made the rest of my life more bearable.”

“Kyle,” I said. “I love you like a brother. Go out and make up with Warren before he heads out to try to get himself killed.”

Christy made dinner with Lucia’s and Darryl’s help: baked herb-and-flour-encrusted stuffed chicken. I ate it and had seconds. It was very good—and right now I was too scared to be jealous.