Fire Touched (Mercy Thompson, #9)(38)

He waited, a small smile on his face. “I understand,” he said after waiting a courteous moment to make sure I was finished. “And just to keep such matters on the up-and-up, if I catch you flirting seriously with someone, I will rip out his throat.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “For the record, the ‘strip down and let me take a look’ line is not very sexy.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Mercy”—he deepened his voice—“strip down and let me take a look.”

I shook my head. “That’s not fair. The voice doesn’t count.” But as I talked, I stripped down. Because underneath the sexy voice was worry, as if just because he’d hidden how bad his wounds were from me, I would have done the same to him.

My knees were skinned, one shin was bruised, and when Adam touched my chin, it hurt.

“From tripping while I was carrying you,” I told him.

He nodded and turned his attention to a scrape on my hip. He was tanned, but my skin was still a shade or two darker than his, so mostly my bruises don’t stand out as much as his. “This didn’t come from a fall.”

“It’s just a scrape,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow. Okay, it was a scrape and bruises that were still blossoming in glorious profusion.

“I honestly have no idea,” I said.

He put his forehead against mine. “I’m sorry.”

“About what?” I asked.

“Fussing,” he said.

I wrapped my arms around him, trying not to see the troll lift a car over his head. “I fussed first,” I said shakily. “I fussed first.”

When he kissed me, it was a gesture of comfort. But with the both of us naked, it didn’t stay that way for long. We made love on the soft carpet, and afterward, he fell asleep on top of me. Exhausted, I thought, from the fight and from the healing that followed. I held him and wondered what I’d done to us. Wondered what changes the boy would bring.

Coyote had told me once that changes were neither good nor bad—but brought with them some of both.

I closed my eyes and prayed for more good than bad, for Adam’s safety, for Jesse and the pack. Then I thanked God for helping to return Tad and Zee out of the hands of our enemies. I fell asleep before I was finished.

—

The phone rang at four in the morning. My face was buried in my pillow—though I didn’t remember moving from the floor to my bed. Adam moved, and the phone quit making that annoying noise—I almost fell back asleep.

“They told me, Wulfe told me, I should call you. That you’re taking care of such matters now,” said a high-pitched but sexless voice.

Wulfe’s name had me sitting upright on the mattress.

“I see,” said Adam.

The voice said, “We are paid to watch the hotels and motels around town and to call the Mistress’s people when one of their kind shows up.”

“I see,” said Adam again.

There was a pause. “Are we going to get paid?”

“I am sure you will,” Adam said. “I will call the Mistress and discuss the matter with her further. Is this a good number to reach you at?”

“Yassir,” the voice said.

Adam ended the call.

“Do you know who that was?” I asked.

“Probably a goblin,” Adam replied. “But I’m going to call and check.”

Wulfe answered the phone himself. “Adam,” he purred. “How lovely to hear from you.”

“Goblins?” Adam asked.

“I see they contacted you,” Wulfe said. “They are a little unreliable, so I wasn’t sure they would.”

“How much are you paying them?”

“Three hundred for every stray vampire they find,” Wulfe told him. “And a thousand a month to keep them looking.”

“I’ll pay the three hundred,” Adam said. “But I won’t pay the thousand.”

“Good luck finding the vampires who show up around here, then, darling,” said Wulfe.

“Oh, I’ll find them all right,” Adam told him. “From what I understand, most of them are after Marsilia. I’ll just keep an eye on the seethe, and when they find her, I’ll find them.”

There was a little silence. “Smart boy,” said Wulfe, “aren’t you just a smart boy. Fine. We’ll pay the thousand. But they’ll report to you, and you will pay for the actual sighting.”

“Yes,” Adam agreed.

The first change, I thought.

Adam disconnected and called the goblin back—explaining the new order to . . . him or her, I couldn’t be sure from the voice alone.

Goblins, according to Ariana’s book, were neither fish nor fowl. They qualified for status as fae—they could disguise what they were with illusion spells. But the fae didn’t want them. For human purposes, the goblins counted themselves fae, without argument from the Gray Lords, but the goblins didn’t want to be fae, either. Part of the problem seemed to be that goblins could reproduce as fast, if not faster, than humans, and the other part was that many of the fae considered goblin flesh a delicacy.

When Adam got off the phone, I said, “So the vampires are punishing you because I got uppity?”

He shook his head. “They’re seeing if we’re serious. Do you want to come with me to the hotel?”