Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(102)

When he finished the chorus, he sang the first verse in English, translating on the fly. When he couldn’t find a word fast enough, he used the Spanish word and kept going. It worked, adding humor. On the second verse, Bran joined him. Sometimes, Bran found a different English word than Asil did—sometimes it was a better one.

Just before they started the second chorus, Asil leaned down, and said, “Now, chica. Try now.” He didn’t put any particular force in his voice, nothing any of their watchers could object to. If there was power in his words, it was only the power of hope.

Kara sighed—and began to change.

Asil was unashamed when a tear slid down his face.

When she could speak, Kara said, “It was a magical rose. Like you said.”

Bran’s eyebrows shot up. And several of the wolves in the audience came to their feet at her words.

Asil lifted a haughty brow. “There is magic in a rose in winter,” he told them. “If only because it is a rose in winter.” He smiled at Kara. “But that change you accomplished yourself.”

•   •   •

A few weeks later, Asil answered a knock on his greenhouse door.

“Bran,” he said. “How nice to see you.”

Bran folded his arms and looked at Asil without making any attempt to come inside. “You’ve been gone for a few days.”

Asil smiled. He stepped outside and closed the door, to keep the cold from getting inside. “I’m flattered that you noticed.”

“Hatchard Cole’s second called me this morning. Seems Hatchard disappeared. No sign of struggle, no sign of anything. He just vanished.”

Asil’s wolf slid out and looked at their Alpha. “Odd,” Asil said, knowing the wolf was in his voice. Knowing that Bran would hear the satisfaction he did not bother to hide.

“I remember,” Bran said softly. “There was an Alpha in Spain who was a very bad man, two hundred years ago. He hurt a lot of people. And then one day, his second went to that Alpha’s home and his Alpha was just gone. No sign of struggle. No scent of strangers. Nothing. No one ever heard of him again.”

Asil shrugged.

“Someday, you aren’t going to come back from a kill,” Bran said intently.

“Some risks are worth taking,” Asil told him. “Did you hear that Kara’s dad is bringing her mom to visit?”

Bran’s face gentled. “Yes. I heard. Kara told me, too.”

IN RED, WITH PEARLS

When I received the invitation to do a private detective story for the George R. R. Martin/Gardner Dozois anthology Down These Strange Streets, Warren had just started to work for his boyfriend, Kyle, as a private detective. Of course, the story had to be Warren’s.

Because I write the Mercy books from Mercy’s point of view, her impressions of people are all that I can show. To Mercy, Warren seems to be the least intimidating of the werewolves. This is largely because they are friends but partially because she sees him as a kind, caring, and gentle man—which he is. But he is also a very dominant and g*y werewolf who has survived more than a century when most g*y werewolves do not (my werewolves are still, for the most part, caught in the mores of a hundred years ago). Warren is bone-deep tough and practical—and here, for the first time, he gets to tell the story.

The events of “In Red, with Pearls” happen between Silver Borne and River Marked.

I’m real good at waiting. I reckon it’s all the time I spent herding cows when I was a boy. Kyle says it’s the werewolf in me, that predators have to be patient. But Kyle knows squat about herding cows. I’d say he knows squat about predators, too, but he’s a lawyer.

I stretched out my legs and put the heels of my boots on the desk of Angelina the Receptionist and Dictator of All Things Proper at Brooks, Gordon, and Howe, Attorneys at Law. Angelina would have thrown a fit if she’d seen my feet propped up where anyone could just walk in and see me.

“Image, hijo,” she’d said to me when I started working for the firm. I kinda liked it when she called me hijo. Though I was a lot older than any son of hers could possibly be—she didn’t know that.

She’d given me a disapproving look. “It is all about image. Your appearance must be just so to get the clients to spend their money, Warren. They like expensive offices, lawyers in suits, and private detectives in fedoras and ties—it tells them that we are successful, that we have the skills to help them.”

I’d told her I’d wear a fedora when the cows came home wearing muumuus and feather boas. I consented, however, to wearing ties to work and to playing nicely during office hours, and she was mostly happy with that.

Office hours had been officially over for a good while, the tie was in my back pocket, and Angelina was gone for the day. I’d have been gone for the day, too, but one of Kyle’s clients had come bursting in all upset and he’d taken her into his office and was talking her down.

Kyle was usually the last one out of the office. This time it was a sobbing client who suddenly decided that the jerk who’d slept with her best friend was actually the love of her life and she didn’t really want to divorce him, just teach him a lesson. Tomorrow it would be a mound of paperwork that would only take him a few minutes to straighten up and a few minutes would stretch into a few hours. He tended toward workaholism.