Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(44)
“In my business,” Peter said slowly, “you come into the job seeing the world in black-and-white. Most of us who survive, the good cops, learn to work in shades of gray.” He smiled slowly at her. “So, Ms. Gray. What have you decided about the lighting fixtures in the kitchen?”
The brass lights are nice, but I think the bronze will look better, Jack whispered, his lips brushing the edge of her ear.
“I think I like the bronze,” she told Peter.
SEEING EYE
I was invited to submit a story for P. N. Elrod’s Strange Brew. I had intended to write a story about the witches at some point in time, and this invitation seemed tailor-made for it. In Mercy’s world, good witches are few and far between—and mostly on the run from the dark witches. I thought about how a white witch could gain enough power to stand up to the evil ones, and Moira was born. A moment later, Tom knocked at my (figurative) door, full-fledged and ready to go. I am going to write more about Tom and Moira eventually. But for those who want more now, they also have a guest appearance in Hunting Ground.
Tom and Moira had been together for some time when they appeared in Hunting Ground, so the events in “Seeing Eye” take place about a year before those in Moon Called.
The doorbell rang.
That was the problem with her business. Too many people thought they could approach her at any time. Even oh-dark thirty, even though her hours were posted clearly on her door and on her Web site.
Of course, answering the door would be something to do other than sit in her study shivering in the dark. Not that her world was ever anything but dark. It was one of the reasons she hated bad dreams—she had no way of turning on the light. Bad dreams that held warnings of things to come were the worst.
The doorbell rang again.
She slept—or tried to sleep—the same hours as most people. Kept steady business hours, too. Something she had no trouble making clear to those morons who woke her up in the middle of the night. They came to see Glinda the Good Witch, but after midnight, they found the Wicked Witch of the West and left quaking in fear of flying monkeys.
Whoever waited at the door would have no reason to suspect how grateful she was for the interruption of her thoughts.
The doorbell began a steady throbbing beat, ring-long, ring-short, ring-short, ring-long, and she grew a lot less grateful. To heck with flying monkeys, she was going to turn whoever it was into a frog. She shoved her concealing glasses on her face and stomped out the hall to her front door. No matter that most of the good transmutation spells had been lost with the Coranda family in the seventeenth century—rude people needed to be turned into frogs. Or pigs.
She jerked open the door and slapped the offending hand on her doorbell. She even got out a “Stop that!” before the force of his spirit hit her like a physical blow. Her nose told her, belatedly, that he was sweaty as if he’d been jogging. Her other senses told her that he was something other.
Not that she’d expected him to be human. Unlike other witches, she didn’t advertise, and thus seldom had mundane customers unless their needs disturbed her sleep and she set out one of her “find me” spells to speak to them—she knew when they were coming.
“Ms. Keller,” he growled. “I need to speak to you.” At least he’d quit ringing the bell.
She let her left eyebrow slide up her forehead until it would be visible above her glasses. “Polite people come between the hours of eight in the morning and seven at night,” she informed him. Werewolf, she decided. If he really lost his temper, she might have trouble, but she thought he was desperate, not angry—though with a wolf, the two states could be interchanged with remarkable speed. “Rude people get sent on their way.”
“Tomorrow morning might be too late,” he said—and then added the bit that kept her from slamming the door in his face: “Alan Choo gave me your address, said you were the only one he knew with enough moxie to defy them.”
She should shut the door in his face—not even a werewolf could get through her portal if she didn’t want him to. But . . . them. Her dream tonight and for the past weeks had been about them, about him again. Portents, her instincts had told her, not just nightmares. The time had come at last. No. She wasn’t grateful to him at all.
“Did Alan tell you to say it in those words?”
“Yes, ma’am.” His temper was still there, but restrained and under control. It hadn’t been aimed at her anyway, she thought, only fury born of frustration and fear. She knew how that felt.
She centered herself and asked the questions he’d expect. “Who am I supposed to be defying?”
And he gave her the answer she expected in return. “Something called Samhain’s Coven.”
Moira took a tighter hold on the door. “I see.”
It wasn’t really a coven. No matter what the popular literature said, it had been a long time since a real coven had been possible. Covens had thirteen members, no member related to any other to the sixth generation. Each family amassed its own specialty spells, and a coven of thirteen benefited from all those differing magics. But after most of the witchblood families had been wiped out by fighting among themselves, covens became a thing of the past. What few families remained (and there weren’t thirteen, not if you didn’t count the Russians or the Chinese, who kept to their own ways) had a bone-deep antipathy for the other survivors.