Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(134)

Zack didn’t talk as we drove. He turned his baseball cap around and covered his eyes. Someone else might have thought he was sleeping, but I could smell his alertness. He was just conserving his strength. I couldn’t tell what he thought about going ghost hunting with me beyond that.

The whole drive between my garage in east Kennewick to Prosser is usually about forty-five minutes on the interstate. The Old Inland Empire Highway was twistier and slower, so we’d been driving about an hour when Lisa turned toward the river.

The road was one of those sneaky dirt roads hidden in the narrow gap between fences. The highway had turned away from the river, and we drove maybe a quarter of a mile when the dirt road dropped and twisted, revealing a hidden Garden of Eden tucked into a flattish fifteen- or twenty-acre parcel between the river and a bench of basalt.

On the side of the road was a tall signpost with a large mailbox beside it. The top and biggest sign said THE HOLLOW. Below it on smaller, hand-painted signs were NO HUNTING, NO TRESPASSING, GO AWAY, and YES, THIS MEANS YOU.

We passed a barn, a smaller stable, then wound around to stop in front of a house that was maybe twice the size of the one I lived in with Adam. Since Adam’s house had been built with the idea that it would serve as a meetinghouse and safe house for Adam’s werewolf pack, our house was huge.

We parked in front of the house and followed Lisa to the door. She gave me a nervous glance.

“I didn’t tell him I was bringing you,” she said.

“A little late to mention it now,” I told her. “Are we going to stand on the porch until he notices us, or are you going to ring the bell?”

She hit the bell, and I could hear it echo—Rick must have had it piped in several places throughout the house. We waited long enough that Lisa was getting nervous before Rick Albright opened the door.

He was not as impressive as I had expected. The werewolves have given me a skewed view on the world. Important werewolves drip authority and (usually) dignity. Dignity, at least, wasn’t apparently important to Richard Albright.

It would have helped if his glasses had not been held together with green duct tape. It would have helped if his shirt hadn’t had a hole in the shoulder—helped more if there weren’t little toy boats sailing across it. But I don’t think I would have liked him as quickly if it hadn’t been for the toy boats. The only person I’d ever had that instant like for was Anna Cornick, the only Omega werewolf I’ve ever met.

However, Rick stepped out on the porch, shut the door behind him, folded his arms, and narrowed his eyes. Despite being the shortest person on the porch, he had enough authority to make Zack drop his gaze and step back.

“Lisa?” Rick’s voice was soft. And hostile. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

I expected, somehow, for her to drop back to babbling, as she had with me. Instead, she said, with a bit of defiance, “That thing has been following you around for more than a decade. So I made some calls, and they sent me to Mercy Hauptman here.”

He looked at her—and the connection between them was bright and clear to my coyote nose. She might not have told him that she wanted him. And from what she’d told me, he’d never told her he wanted her, either, but I could have cut the sexual tension in that exchange of looks with a knife.

Zack tucked his head and covered his smile with a hand.

Rick’s eyes focused on me, and all that heat turned to ice. “I have no intention of paying you anything.”

“You have a VW around here that needs work?” I asked casually, glancing around. The only cars I could see were ours.

He frowned, and the intensity of his gaze picked up. “No.”

“That’s the only thing I charge for,” I told him. “I’m a mechanic by trade. This ghost thing is not my chosen profession. And before you invite me in, you ought to know that the last time someone talked me into checking out a ghost, it turned out to be something a lot more dangerous. The woman who invited me to her house ended up dead.”

He pushed his glasses up his nose. “How did she die? Did the ghost kill her? Did you?”

“No. And no. But I couldn’t save her, either,” I told him.

He asked Lisa, “Who sent you to her?”

“Kiri’s husband.”

He took a breath, nodded abruptly, and opened the door to his house. “I suppose you’d better come inside, then.”

A curious thing happened as we entered the house. I shot a quick glance at Zack, who frowned at me and tilted his head. He’d smelled it, too.

Emotions have a scent—more of a feel, I guess, a combination of the sound of breath, heartbeat, and body secretions. Nervous sweat, aroused sweat, and exercise sweat are composed of different substances. They have an intensity, too. Outside on the porch, Rick had been aroused by Lisa and angry at our intrusion—and a variety of other things. He’d been intense. As soon as we came inside the house, everything muted. It might have been some effect of being safely in his own home—the force of emotions quite often is ameliorated by a safe haven. But this was a much stronger drop than I’d ever seen before—and Lisa’s emotions did exactly the same thing. As soon as she stepped across the threshold.

The effect was momentary, like what sound does just before your ears repressurize after an airplane flight or driving down out of the mountains. We followed Rick, and by the time he’d led us across the entrance hall into a room that felt mostly unused, his emotions—and Lisa’s—were normal. If Zack hadn’t noticed it, too, I’d have thought I had imagined it.