River Marked (Mercy Thompson #6)(59)
"Sorry," he said. "Too many changes and not enough food."
I patted his hard belly and kissed it. "Poor thing," I told it. "Doesn't Adam treat you right? No worries. I'll go feed you."
My head bounced when Adam laughed.
"Let's go find someplace to eat breakfast and get some groceries." And then he proved that even when he was distracted, he still listened to me. "And some clothes for you."
WHILE I WAS DRESSING, I NOTICED THE NUMBER WRITTEN on the palm of my hand and remembered I was supposed to make a phone call.
"Yes?" Jim's voice was wary.
"Coyote told me to call you," I told him. "He said that you wouldn't believe that he was real unless I did."
The man on the other side of the phone didn't even breathe.
Adam grinned at me as he buttoned up his shirt.
"How is your husband?" Jim asked politely.
"He's fine." Even the red mark was gone. How fast a wound healed varied from wolf to wolf and wound to wound. As Alpha, Adam tended to heal even faster than most. I'd expected that to change since we were so far from the pack, but evidently it hadn't.
"How are Hank's head and Benny's foot?" I asked.
"Hank is okay. Once we got him away from you, he seemed to recover a bit. Though he has a concussion, it's not a bad one." He cleared his throat. "Fred told the doctor Hank took a fall. The doctor seemed to think it might involve a pipe or tire iron, but Hank told him it was a fall, too. Fred is keeping an eye on him. Benny has been tranquilized ever since he tried to get up and leave the second time. He seems perfectly happy."
"So we're meeting you at Stonehenge? Coyote seemed pretty sure something could be done for Hank."
"You are very casual about meeting Coyote," he said. "Maybe we both just had a dream."
"You're the medicine man," I told him. "You should know better than that--and be casual, too." Maybe that wasn't fair. "Eventually, anyway. I'm married to a werewolf, and I've met Baba Yaga. At least Coyote doesn't fly around in a giant mortar."
"Baba Yaga? No. I don't want to know." Jim sighed. "Maybe I should go back to teaching school about crazy people instead of being one. Yes. I'll see you and your husband at Stonehenge at midnight. The memorial is supposed to be closed after dark, but I have a few contacts. Indian sacred ceremonies usually works, but I have a few more tricks up my sleeve if I need them."
ADAM DIDN'T APPROVE OF WAL-MART.
"There is a department store back in The Dalles," he said with a touch of grimness as we walked through the doors into the warehouselike building.
"Do they still call them department stores?" I wondered aloud, then shrugged it off. "Doesn't matter. Wal-Mart is the Happy Shopping Grounds for the financially challenged. And those who ruin clothing on a daily basis. I don't care about ripping up five-dollar T-shirts. And destroying twenty-dollar jeans hurts less than eighty-dollar jeans."
He growled, and I really looked at him.
The bright lights over our heads flickered and gave his skin a slightly green cast. That was the fault of the cheap bulbs, but the tension in his neck and the hunted expression were different. Too many strangers, too many smells, way too many sounds. A paranoid person--or an Alpha wolf--might feel like he couldn't make sure no one blindsided him in a place like Wal-Mart.
"Hey," I said, coming to a stop. "How about I shop here, and you head over to the grocery store and grab some food. I'll shop in peace, and you can pick me up in forty-five minutes?"
He shook his head. "I'm not leaving you here alone."
"The only thing that wants to kill me is in the river," I told him, trying to keep my voice down, but the woman pushing a cart past us gave me an odd look. "I've been shopping at Wal-Marts for most of my life, and I've never been assaulted in one." I narrowed my gaze at him though I kept it focused on his chin. "As long as it's not demons, fae, or sea monsters, I can also take care of myself pretty well. I'm not helpless." And suddenly it mattered very much that he not treat me like some ninny who needed to be protected at all times, someone who would stand around waiting to be rescued.
He saw it in my face, I think, because he took a deep breath and looked around. "Okay. Okay."
I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his cheek. "Thank you."
He kissed me back. Not on the cheek. By the time I'd recovered enough to process information, he was striding out the door, and everyone in view was staring at me.
I flushed. "We just got married," I announced, then felt even stupider, so I hurried to escape in the aisles.
The Wal-Mart in Hood River wasn't as big as any of the three in the Tri-Cities. But it had jeans and shirts, and that was all I was worried about.
I grabbed four dark-colored T-shirts and three pairs of jeans in the proper size and headed for the dressing rooms. I didn't need to try on the T- shirts, but I never buy jeans without putting them on first. It doesn't matter what size they say they are--some of them are shaped differently than others.
The lady working the dressing rooms gave me a bored look, handed me a plastic "6" and a "1," and sent me in. Apparently, they were out of "7"s.
The only other occupant of the rooms was a harried mother and her teenage daughter arguing about how tight the girl's jeans were. They stood in the larger area in the center of two rows of small rooms in front of the big mirror.