Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson #5)(72)

I wasn't surprised to see that Zee's companion was the older woman from the bookstore - though I wouldn't have been surprised to see a complete stranger either. She was subtly different from the grandmotherly woman I'd met earlier. The kind of difference that made Little Red Riding Hood say, "What big teeth you have, Grandmother."

"Mercy," Zee said, "you may call this woman Alicia Brewster. Alicia, this is Mercedes Thompson and" - he paused - "Jesse."

He gave me a look. "I hope you know what you're doing," he said.

"Having her here will speed things up," I said. "When we're finished, she's going home."

"All right," he said, and sat down next to Alicia.

"You came to my grandson's store looking for him," the fae woman said to me without acknowledging the introductions. "And to return what you'd borrowed."

I looked at Jesse. "When I saw Alicia at Phin's store, I was trying to bring Phin's book back to him. He'd called Tad - Zee's son - to have him ask me to take care of it. It was odd, that phone call, and the fae who'd moved in next door to Phin was odder. By the time I got to the bookstore, I was ready to believe that there was a problem. When I saw Alicia at the counter, and she couldn't tell me anything about where Phin was or when he was coming back, I decided that I wasn't going to give her the book to return to him. I also decided that someone needed to see if they could figure out where Phin was."

"So you came back at night and looked for him at the store?"

"I thought," I said to Jesse, "that we were coming here to find out where Gabriel is and how to rescue him."

"And I choose to ask questions of you first so that I may decide how much I want to tell you," Alicia said.

That implied heavily that if I chose not to answer her questions, she'd tell us nothing. If she knew anything. I looked at Zee, who shrugged and lifted his hands an inch off his lap - he had no influence with her.

My other option was to wait for the fairy queen's call.

"All right," I told Jesse. "You already know that Sam and I went to check out the bookstore at night to find out if something happened to Phin. We found that his store had been trashed by a water fae and two forest fae of some sort."

"There was a glamour in the store," said Alicia. "A strong glamour that I couldn't penetrate, though I knew it was there. I was so afraid that my grandson's body was lying next to me, and I could not sense it."

"There's a cost for magic," said Zee, folding his age-spotted hands over his little potbelly. "Glamour has less than most now, but there is still a cost for sight and sound, a cost for physical dimensions. There are few fae with good noses, so less effort is spent there and more on the other senses. Magic works . . ." He glanced my way.

" 'Oddly' is what I usually say," I told him.

"Oddly on Mercedes. Some works fine, some not so well. But she has a keen nose, and that allows her to penetrate glamours. I've seen her break through a glamour set by a Gray Lord. This one we are after is no Gray Lord."

"Phin bled on that floor, Jesse," I said. "I don't have much hope that he survived his encounter. But we didn't find his body. We went down to the basement - which was also trashed - and while we were down there, one of the fae who had destroyed the store turned up on the stairs."

"That's the one who was dead in the basement," Alicia said in an odd tone. "The one someone started to eat."

"Sam's not been himself lately," I told Jesse. "The fae knocked me cold, and when I woke up Sam had killed him and . . ."

"Sam," the fae said softly - and her hands clenched on her lap. "You have friends who are werewolves, Zee tells me. This Sam is a werewolf?"

"Sam is a werewolf and my friend," I told her. Maybe my tone was a little sharp, but I was getting tired of people attacking Samuel. "Who saved my life by killing the not-so-jolly green giant. I'm okay with it if he helped himself to a little snack." If it squicked my thou-shalt-not-be-a-cannibal button, that was a button my mother gave me, not the werewolves. He hadn't violated any werewolf taboos - eating your prey is better than leaving the bodies lying around.

Alicia didn't seem to be too upset about my snapping at her, though.

"Samuel Cornick," she said, her eyes catching mine. "Samuel Marrokson, Samuel Branson, Samuel Whitewolf, Samuel Swift-foot, Samuel Deathbringer, Samuel Avenger." I couldn't remember what color her eyes had been in the bookstore, but I knew it hadn't been green. Not hazel, not a human color at all, but a brilliant grass green that darkened to blue and brightened.

"That would be me," said Samuel, standing in the doorway. He was wearing a gray sweatshirt and had managed to find a pair of jeans that were only a little baggy. "Hello, Ari. It's been a few centuries." His voice was soft. "I didn't know you had a talent for true naming."

She looked at him, and I saw the pupils of her eyes widen past her changeable irises until her eyes were as black as a starless night. And then her glamour went all funky.

I've seen fae drop their glamour before. Sometimes it's cool, with colors sliding and mixing; sometimes it's like when I shapeshift - just blink and the man in front of you suddenly has antennae and six-inch-long hair growing from his hands.