River Marked (Mercy Thompson #6)(30)

Over his shoulder he carried one of those leather bags that should look like a purse but doesn't. On his feet were the most lurid pair of cowboy boots I've ever seen--and that is saying something because I come from cowboy country, and cowboys wear some really gaudy stuff. The boots were bright lipstick red, each with a United States flag beaded in red, white, and blue across the top.

He smelled of fresh air and tobacco. But his tobacco hadn't come out of a cigarette. A pipe maybe--something without all the additives that make cigarettes smell so bad. It reminded me of my father's ghost.

"He told me about you, Mr. Hauptman," said Calvin's grandfather. "Been a long time since I saw a werewolf. Not a lot of them in this part of the country. And this must be your wife, Mercedes--" Then he looked at me and drew in a breath.

"You," he said. "I wasn't expecting you. Calvin said you were Blackfeet married to an Anglo werewolf. I should have asked myself how many Blackfeet women would associate with a werewolf, shouldn't I? I had wondered what happened to you." He narrowed his eyes. "You don't look like Old Coyote. Oh, I can see him some in your eyes and in your coloring, but you look more Anglo than I'd expected."

He had known my father.

Suddenly, antihistamine or no antihistamine, I wasn't at all sleepy. But there was a disconnect between my tongue and the questions that were galloping through my head. I looked at Adam. His eyes were half-lidded, and his expression was neutral. His body language said, "Isn't he interesting? Let's see what he does."

The old man looked down at my leg and hissed. "That looks bad. River Devil is back for sure." He sat beside me and opened the purse that wasn't a purse and pulled out a bundle wrapped in a silk scarf. He opened it up and began singing.

If you've never heard Native American music, it is hard to convey the feel of it. Sometimes there are words, but Gordon Seeker didn't use any. The music flowed up from his chest and resonated in his sinuses--as had the music made by the dancing ghost of my father. Still singing, Gordon Seeker took out a homemade honeycomb wax candle and lit it. It looked as though he lit it with magic, but I can usually sense when someone uses magic. I didn't see a match though I could smell sulfur.

I sniffed suspiciously and he grinned at me and I noticed he was missing one of his front teeth. Still singing, he held up his empty hand and closed his fingers. Then he opened the hand, and he held a burnt matchstick.

Then he pulled a segment of leaf out and held it to the candle. It was dry and lit fast. He let it go, and I tensed to grab it before it burned the trailer-- but the flames consumed the leaf before it hit the carpet, leaving only a smattering of ash and a surprising amount of smoke.

I recognized the plant by its smell when I hadn't recognized the leaf. Tobacco. I guess he didn't smoke a pipe.

Gordon leaned forward and blew the smoke from the tobacco and the candle toward my leg. The blowing didn't seem to affect his song. He tilted his head, and I could only see one of his eyes.

And in his eye I saw a predatory bird that looked somewhat like an eagle. It was so darkly feathered that at first I thought it was a golden eagle, which, despite the name, often looks almost black; but it moved differently.

He closed his eyes, blew again, and when his eye opened, it was bright and predatory--but it was also just an eye in which no bird flew. I decided the antihistamine I'd just taken must have been affecting me more than usual.

He opened a jar and took some yellowish salve out and spread it on the mark the not-a-hemp- rope-not-a-weed had left on my leg. The relief was almost immediate.

He stopped singing, wiped his greasy fingers on his jeans. Then he put the candle out.

Adam looked at me. "It feels a lot better."

"Magic?" Adam asked our visitor.

The old man grinned. "Maybe." He still had the little earthenware jar and tipped it toward me. "Or maybe it's the Bag Balm. I use it on all my cuts and burns." I'd thought that salve had smelled familiar. He'd added something to it, but the base was definitely Bag Balm. My foster mother had used Bag Balm as a cure-all, too. I kept a tin of it at work. "I understand your feet took quite a beating, too. Why don't you get them out where we can see them?"

"How do you know me?" I asked, peeling off my shoes and socks.

Adam had decided to judge this frail old man a possible threat. I could tell because he'd taken a step back out of reach. He was standing guard, ready to do whatever the circumstances required, trusting me to handle the rest. Likewise, I'd trust his judgment about the threat.

Our opponent might be an old man, but both Adam and I had lived around very old things that were dangerous. We wouldn't underestimate this man who smelled of tobacco, woodsmoke ... and magic. It wasn't fae magic, so I hadn't noticed it right away. This was sweeter and subtler, though I didn't think it was any less potent.

Charles smelled a little like this sometimes.

The old man smiled at me and held the unguent pot. "And how would I not know Mercedes Thompson who is married to Adam Hauptman, Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack?"

He did the not-lying thing very well. There are a lot of Other creatures who know when you are lying. Some of the fae, werewolves, some of the vampires--and me. The art of not lying without telling the truth is a valuable skill if you're going to have to deal with people who are Other.

He hadn't known who I was when he came into the trailer. But he'd taken one look at me, and his surprised recognition had been genuine.