Fire Touched (Mercy Thompson, #9)(42)

“Good to know,” I said.

She smoothed her skirt. “I am the Flanagan, and that means they asked me to come. I have decided that it would be better to make some things clear in person.” Her gray eyes were chilly.

—

“He’s in love with her,” said Adam. “Poor fool.”

The sun was sneaking out to greet the day as we drove home. I twisted around until I could see his face.

“A blind man could see that,” I said. “Why ‘poor fool’?”

“Because he hasn’t made a move on her,” he said. “I recognize that half-crazed desire to say, ‘Mine, mine, mine,’ tempered by love that would never do that without a permission that will never come.”

“Yours came,” I told him.

He snorted.

“Hey,” I said, holding up the chain on my neck where my wedding ring held court next to one of his dog tags and my lamb charm.

“Nudge?” he said.

I looked at the cars traveling beside us as we trekked down the interstate. “Here? Seriously?”

“Permission that will never come,” he said.

“That’s not funny,” I said.

He took my hand and gently tugged it away from my necklace and kissed it. “Yes, it is.” He winked at me. “But yes, it only seemed like forever before you gave in. It left me with sympathy for other guys in that situation.”

I thought about how the fae woman had put herself in our debt, something not lightly done by any fae, because Adam had backed down and allowed Thomas space.

“She’s not uninterested,” I said, settling back in my seat. “Did you parse what she said about her place in the power structure of the fae? It didn’t sound like the Elphame court of the fairy queen.” I’d met a fairy queen: a fae with the rare ability to make anyone with less power than she had into a follower—a form of magical slavery.

Adam shook his head. “No. It’s a real court system. I’ve only heard a little of the fae courts. They were gone before the fae traveled to this continent. Nothing to impress the Gray Lords—except that it is a measure of the power her father and, evidently, she holds. They wouldn’t be asking her to join them; they’d be issuing orders if they weren’t convinced of her power.”

“Like Ariana,” I said.

“For different reasons,” Adam agreed. “Ariana made herself unwelcome because of what she held. No Gray Lord is going to want to be around something that can siphon his magic away—or any fae who could have created it. Thomas’s fae is powerful. Did you smell what I did?”

“Fire,” I agreed. “Like Aiden—only more so. We’re sure knee-deep in fiery things right now.”

“You think it’s more than coincidence?” asked Adam. It is a mark of how much he loved me that his voice was merely bland, not cutting. Adam believed in God all right, and they were not best buddies.

“Mmmm,” I said. “Karma or coincidence, or something, maybe. Doesn’t really matter.”

We pulled into the driveway, and I examined the silver Accord parked in Adam’s usual spot and managed not to growl. What was Adam’s ex-wife doing here this early? In two more weeks, she was supposedly moving back to Oregon, where she had a new condo and her old job waiting for her. I would celebrate when she actually left and not a moment before then.

I hopped out of the SUV and noticed that a lot of the cars and trucks that had been parked here when Adam and I left were gone. It took me a moment to remember that this morning was a Monday.

Adam would work from home, as he often did, but most of our pack had more mundane employment that involved schedules. Before my shop was trashed, I’d had a place to be and a reason to remember what day of the week it was, too.

Adam paused by Christy’s car. He looked tired.

“Why don’t you get started arranging guards for Hao,” I said. “I’ll go see why Christy came over today.”

We’d discovered that if he wasn’t standing there, Christy and I could come to a meeting of minds. There would be snark and snarling, but in the end we could deal with each other. Mostly, I suspected, because without Adam’s presence to remind her that I’d won the prize she’d tossed away, she remembered to be afraid of what I might do if she made my life too unpleasant. It was a pretty good return for a box of blue dye, if I did say so myself.

“She’s not your problem,” he said.

She couldn’t hurt me, but she could hurt Adam. She’d had years of practice to develop her aim. “It’s no trouble,” I said.

He smiled. “That’s a lie.”

“It is my privilege,” I said carefully, trying not to tweak his pride, “to do those things that are easier for me than for you. You do the same for me. Let me deal with her.”

That was the truth.

Adam hesitated. It was in his nature to protect the people around him. I’d been working on him to let me do the same for him.

“If she’s here for you, there’s nothing I can do,” I told him. “But if she’s just here for Jesse, keeping you out of the picture might keep the nastiness quotient down a fair bit—and that will make things easier for Jesse.”

He leaned forward and kissed me. “You know the magic words,” he said.