Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson #5)(51)

Ben trudged in, towing one of the dining-room chairs. He slid it between Jesse and Auriele, painfully pulled his gory fingers off the chair back, and dropped to the seat. Jesse slid a cup of hot cocoa in front of him, then reached across with the can of nondairy whipped cream and squirted a bunch of sweet artificial white goo on top. Jesse's curly hair had grown out a little, and she'd dyed it pink.

"Thanks, darling," Ben told her in a suggestive voice, and she scooted her chair away from him. He tipped his head so she couldn't see his face and smiled until he realized I was watching him. I narrowed my eyes, and he cleared his throat. "E-mail's out to the list, detailing what happened and that Adam'll be up and about in a day or two."

That there was a mailing list had been news to me. I wasn't on it, probably so they could all complain about me without hurting my feelings. Given the state of Ben's hands, Auriele had offered to send out the report, but he'd said that computer work was his duty, and as he still had ten fingers, he figured he could complete it.

He leaned forward and sipped his cocoa without touching the hot cup.

"It's instant," I apologized. "My stash of spicy real stuff went up with the house." I wished I hadn't said it as soon as the words were out of my mouth. I had been doing just fine at forgetting that out in the darkness beyond the kitchen windows, my house was a pile of black scraps.

"It's chocolate," Ben said. "At this point, that is sufficient."

Silence fell, and I remembered that I was supposed to be running this. It reminded me in an odd way of the time I'd had to take over my sister's Girl Scout troop when my mother had been sick. Fourteen preteen girls, a tableful of werewolves - there were certain monstrous similarities.

I ran my hands over my face. "So what else needs to be dealt with before we can go to bed?"

Darryl folded his big hands on the table. "The fire marshal hasn't made it out yet - but the firemen seemed pretty convinced it was the wiring. The fire started near the fuse box in the hall. Apparently, the old manufactured homes sometimes go up like that, especially the first few weeks the heating system kicks in in the winter." He glanced at me. "Do we accept that, or have you been riling people up again?"

He might owe his ebony skin and his size to his African father, but he could do Chinese inscrutable better than anyone I'd ever met who was wholly Chinese instead of just half. It was hard to tell whether he meant the last sentence as a joke or a justifiable criticism.

"It was the fae," I said with a sigh, bumping the nearest table leg halfheartedly with my ankle.

"What - all of them?" asked Ben humorously. I slid down in my chair so I could reach past Jesse and kicked his foot, which was more satisfying.

"No, not all of them," I said, after he yipped with mock pain.

"You just bring us one damned thing after another don't you, Mercy," said Mary Jo, looking out the window.

"Bitch," said Ben. It seemed to be his word of the day - which was better than the usual assortment. He hadn't actually sworn much around me that day, if I didn't include the time while Samuel was fixing his hands. And if the only words that counted were the ones that got movies an "R" rating. I wondered if it was coincidental, if he was trying to improve himself - or if I hadn't spent enough time with him.

Mary Jo's lip curled. "Suck-up."

"You have some nerve throwing stones," he told her, "when you just sat there and watched them set fire to Mercy's house."

"What?" said Darryl in a very, very soft voice.

But Mary Jo wasn't listening to Darryl. Instead, she half rose to her feet and leaned on the table, threatening Ben. "So what? You think I should have taken on a bunch of unknown fae for her?"

Auriele stood up and gave the table a hard shove, pinning Mary Jo against the wall behind her with a bang that must have hurt. If someone didn't know her very well, I suppose it might be possible to underestimate Auriele. She was delicately built, as some Hispanic women are, and looked as though she'd never gotten her beautifully manicured hands dirty.

Most of the pack would rather have Darryl mad at them than Auriele.

Darryl's mate's voice was frozen as she asked, "You just watched a bunch of fae burn down the house of a pack member?"

I'd picked my cocoa up off the table when it moved and managed to save Jesse's, too. With my hip, I altered the trajectory of the table just enough to make certain that it didn't hit Jesse. Darryl caught Ben's cup - he'd finished his own. So it was only Mary Jo's and Auriele's cocoa that spilled across the table and down on the floor.

Into the tense silence of that moment, the interruption of my ringing phone seemed decidedly welcome. I thumped the two mugs I held down onto the table and pulled the phone out of my pocket.

I didn't recognize either the number or the area code. Usually, I recognize the number of people who call me in the middle of the night.

"Hello?"

"Mercedes Thompson, you have something that belongs to me. I have something that belongs to you. Shall we play?"

I hit the speaker button and set the phone in the middle of the table. Of course, everyone except for Jesse could have overheard the call anyway - but with all of us listening full volume, maybe someone would hear something different. My cell was relatively new, and I'd paid extra to get one with good sound quality.