Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(29)

The old vampire leaned forward and smiled at him.

“Pretty boy,” he said—and collapsed into himself.

Only then, staring at the dust that had been his Master, did Thomas understand the gift he’d been given.

•   •   •

Butte, Montana, present day

Freedom, Thomas thought, following the hobgoblin up the hill to wherever Nick wanted him to go. He’d spoken to her with his lips, and Margaret had heard his heart.

Thomas had left Butte that very night, with his father’s twenty-dollar gold piece in his pocket. He could not wait for Hao Xun to come and get him, because he didn’t want to kill the man who had sired his human self the way he’d killed the thing that had sired his current flesh. If he’d seen his father again, he wasn’t certain he could have helped himself.

He had never seen the two fae again, either, but unlike any of the vampires he’d met since then, he saw the sun every day and it did not burn him. He no longer needed to feed from a vampire in order to survive. Margaret had given him everything he’d desired as well as the feeding he’d asked for.

Nick stopped at a small well-kept house near the base of Big Butte, the hill that had given its name to the town—despite not being a butte at all. He let himself in the front door.

Thomas stopped on the porch. “If you want me inside,” he told the hobgoblin, “you have to invite me in.”

The little fellow stopped where he was and looked up at Thomas. “You mean no harm to me and mine, you will swear it.”

“I’m not fae. Oaths have no power over me, Nick,” he told the fae. “What I am is already damned.”

The hobgoblin hissed and dismissed that with one hand.

“Don’t throw Christian gobbledygook at me,” he said. “Margaret told me you would come, told me you would help. You are here, so that is the first, but I wonder if the second is true. Vampire. I served her father most of my life. I can’t afford to get this wrong.”

The fae didn’t like vampires. Thomas would have left because, with one exception, he didn’t like the fae, either. But it hadn’t been Nick who had brought him here; it had been Margaret. For her, he would do what he could.

“I owe Margaret Flanagan,” said Thomas, who was better educated about fae than he’d been a hundred years ago. He knew what he was admitting—and that the fae would take it very seriously. “What she did for me was far more than what little I managed for her. I swear I mean no harm to her or hers.”

“Come in and be welcome,” said Nick after a pause, and turned to lead the way into his home.

•   •   •

There were four other people in the little man’s living room, waiting for them, along with a blazing fire in the fireplace that gave out more light than heat.

One of the people, a big blond man, looked familiar, as though Thomas might have known him a long time ago. They were none of them human, and given that they were in a hobgoblin’s house, Thomas was certain they were fae.

As soon as he entered the room on Nick’s heels, everyone stood up—almost everyone. The kid on the piano bench just relaxed a little more. Thomas judged him the biggest threat: the really powerful ones often disguised themselves as something soft and helpless.

“Vampire,” said the only woman. She was tall and muscular and spoke with a Finnish accent. “Is this the one?”

The big man’s nose wrinkled as if he smelled something foul.

There was an old man—or one who looked old, since the fae could adopt any appearance that suited them. He peered at Thomas with nonjudgmental interest, which Thomas returned.

“It is him,” said the boy on the piano bench. He was a beautiful young man, draped between the bench and the piano, his elbows on the cover that protected the keys. “Who else could it be? How many Chinese vampires do you think there are in Butte?”

“This is Thomas Hao,” said Nick. “It is he who will find our Margaret.”

He didn’t introduce the others—hardly surprising, as names were odd things for the fae. Even a nickname, if held long enough, had power.

“Why does Margaret need finding?” Thomas asked.

The woman and the big man dropped their eyes and looked uncomfortable. Silence hung in the air for a moment.

“It is a long story,” said Nick. “Will you take a seat?”

Thomas might be a vampire, but he had no way to judge the people in the room and was reluctant to sit down and put himself at a disadvantage.

The boy’s smile widened as he slid off the bench and onto the floor. “Sit down, vampire, do—and the rest of you, too. Nick’ll give him the rundown and then we’ll see if she’s right about the vampire.”

The piano bench was hard and easy to rise from, unlike the overstuffed furniture in the rest of the room. It was acceptable—and it told Thomas something about the boy that he understood that.

Thomas sat on the bench. Once he was down, the fae took their seats. Nick sat on the floor opposite Thomas, though there was an empty chair.

“Let me begin this tale in its proper place—with the Flanagan,” he said. “He was high-court fae. Do you know what that means, Tom?”

“Powerful,” replied Thomas. “Though there is no high court any longer. There are only the Gray Lords, who rule all of the fae.”