Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson #5)(39)

"I don't know what I hope to discover in the bookstore," I said. "There is hardly going to be a note telling me where Phin is, right? Still, it's a start. If we don't find anything, maybe we'll go break into his apartment. It's better than sitting around at home, right?"

And the pack was meeting at Adam's house that night. I knew why he'd called the meeting. He wanted to find out who'd been playing games with me. He'd called me to tell me what he was doing - and asked me to stay away because he hadn't had a chance to show me how to defend myself from pack members crawling around in my head.

I should have gone over anyway, confronted my enemies. But it was different when all your enemies could do was kill you.

"I don't want to stay home knowing how much of a coward I am," I told Sam. "I should have gone to Adam's when I saw them all arrive."

He grunted.

"But the thought of them being able to make me do something I would never . . ."

I was pretty sure that it hadn't just been lack of opportunity that kept Adam from teaching me how to protect myself. He'd said that if he'd known what was happening at the time when whoever it was started influencing me, he could have discovered their identity. I think he planned on trying to force a confession tonight - and if he couldn't, he would wait until they tried it again. If that was his motivation, I approved in spirit, but at the same time, I really didn't want to wait around until someone tried to make me do their bidding again.

I parked in the corner of the Uptown parking lot where an all-night restaurant was located. There weren't a lot of cars there but enough that the Rabbit didn't stand out.

I opened Sam's door and he sniffed the air carefully.

"Are you scenting for the fae woman who was here today?" I asked.

He didn't give me any kind of answer, just shook himself and looked at me expectantly - as if he really were the dog we were pretending he was. Was he slower? Did his tail droop more than usual? Or was I letting Charles's words make me paranoid?

I glanced at him and was pretty sure it was both. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean you aren't right. He wasn't quite as responsive, either, as if it took him a moment to translate words into meanings.

I didn't notice anyone who seemed to be watching us as we crossed the parking lot - but we were out where people could see us. All I could do was act as if I weren't breaking into the shop. It took me two full minutes to crack the lock on the door of the bookstore, which was about one and a half minutes longer than I was comfortable standing there with my back to the parking lot and the busy street beyond. I was hopeful that someone from the street couldn't tell that I was playing with my lockpicks instead of fumbling with a stiff lock. There was a bar that was still open about three stores over, but no one had come or gone while I struggled. Sheer good luck, something I couldn't always count on. I was going to have to get some practice in if I kept having to break into buildings.

The door handle turned, and I started to move on to the dead bolt, when I realized that the door had popped open when I'd unlocked the handle. Someone hadn't engaged the dead bolt.

I held the door for Sam, then slipped inside myself. He couldn't shut the door - and if there was something unfriendly in the store, he was better able to deal with it.

I turned the dead bolt and looked around. My eyesight is good in the dark, so we didn't need to attract even more attention by turning on the light. It was darker in the store than it was outside and the windows were already tinted, so it would be hard for anyone looking to see anything but the reflection of the outside lights.

At first I observed a neat and tidy store that smelled of incense and old books. Paper holds the memory of any strong scent, so in a used bookstore, it wasn't uncommon to get little trickles of food, tobacco, and perfume. I took a deep breath to see if I could find anything that stood out.

Blood and fear and rage are a little out of the ordinary.

I stopped where I was and sucked in several deep breaths. Each time the smell grew stronger and stronger.

Fae glamour - a type of illusion - is strongly effective on sight, sound, taste, and touch. I'm told it is sufficient for a human sense of smell, but mine is better than that. By the third breath I smelled the sharp smell of broken wood, and the ammonia-like scent that fae magic sometimes leaves behind.

I closed my eyes, bowed my head, and let my nose be right. My ears cleared with a pop, and when I looked up, the tidy bookcases filled with tidy books had disappeared, leaving destruction in their place.

"Sam." I kept my voice down, though I don't think anyone outside would have heard me if I'd shouted. It was a reflex thing - we were sneaking around, so I needed to be quiet. "Do you smell it? The blood? There's a glamour here. Can you break it, too? Do you see the mess the fae left behind when they searched the place?"

He cocked an ear at me, then looked around. With a movement swifter than thought, he turned and sank his teeth into my arm.

Maybe if I'd thought there was a chance of him attacking me, I could have gotten out of the way or defended myself somehow. Instead, I stared at him dumbly as his fangs slid through skin and into flesh. He released me almost immediately, leaving behind two clean marks that could have been a vampire bite except that they were too far apart and too big. Vampires have smaller fangs.

Blood trickled out of one mark, then the other, dribbling down my forearm. Sam licked it clean, mostly, ignoring my surprised squeak and the way I backed away from him.