Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson #13)(100)

“Quality pays off,” I murmured.

“You should eat something,” he said.

If I moved, it was going to hurt. Right now nothing hurt at all.

“Go away or come to bed,” I told him.

“I thought it’s supposed to be men who have to sleep after sex,” he complained, but there was a thread of laughter in his voice. I made Adam happy, too.

“I fought a possessed vampire. I get to sleep.”

“Fair enough,” he said, patting my butt. He pulled the sheet and then the blankets over me.

I probably should have worried about the ointment on my back getting on the sheets. But I couldn’t work up the energy.

Adam pulled down the shades to darken the room, then took a shower. I was asleep before he came out of the bathroom. Someone tried to wake me up for dinner but left me alone after I yelled at them. If I dreamed, I didn’t notice.



* * *



—

I woke up to a dark room and Adam sleeping beside me. I’d stolen all of the covers and he lay naked, facedown on the bed. I couldn’t help but smile—and it had nothing to do with his hard-muscled body. He could have unrolled me from the covers, but that would have woken me up.

“Frost—”

The memory of Wulfe’s voice made me frown. Why had he wanted to talk about Frost? Frost was dust, Adam and I had killed him between us, but when Frost was walking the earth, he’d had a talent for souls. He’d fed off them.

Adam stirred. I rolled out of the blankets and covered him.

“I’m up,” I whispered. “Go back to sleep. I’m going down to grab some food.”

He grunted and reached out. I touched his hand and leaned over to kiss him. Then I grabbed a set of sweats I kept in the top drawer of my dresser and put them on before leaving the bedroom.

The house was quiet. I could hear even breathing from Jesse’s room. Medea joined me at the top of the stairs, twining around my ankles all the way down to the kitchen. There was a Tupperware container of food obviously portioned for my dinner—spaghetti and salad. The pumpkin pie was on the same shelf with two pieces missing. I gave Medea a meatball in her food dish, then sat down and ate like I hadn’t had food in a week. When I’d finished the dinner I’d been left and a big piece of pie, I went back to the fridge and gathered sandwich makings.

And on my second bite of sandwich, I realized what Wulfe had meant. It was a lot of meaning to get from one word, but I was pretty sure I was right.

My absent gaze fell on the window, and I realized that Tilly, in her favorite guise of a ten-year-old girl complete with long, tangled hair and a dirty shift, was sitting on the picnic table I’d been sitting on when the Harvester had come calling.

Blood chilled, I wondered how long she’d been there.

I was going to start using the curtains in this room at night, I decided. After a second, I changed my mind. Curtains would mean that I couldn’t see what was on the other side of the window.

She beckoned me outside.

I looked at the cat. “I don’t think this is going to be good,” I said, but I went out, sandwich in hand. If the Harvester came back, he would be occupied with Tilly and not me.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” I asked as I closed the kitchen door behind me.

She had a lumpy mass of rough fabric sewn with thick thread that might have been gut sitting on the table beside her. Something roundish about the size of a small cantaloupe was inside the makeshift bag.

“You are going to get the Soul Taker,” she said with more confidence than I felt. “And I have a gift for you to give the old Smith, with my compliments. I’d give him the other, but I can’t remember where it was left.” She held a finger up to her cheek and dimpled at me. Someone had been watching too many Shirley Temple movies.

I finished my sandwich, taking my time, then wiped my hands on my pants. When I started toward her, she pushed the bag in my direction.

“You bring the Soul Taker to me,” she said, her voice no longer sounding like a child’s voice, “and I will see that it troubles you no more. You bring me the Soul Taker, and I will see that no harm comes to you and yours for a mortal generation. You bring me the Soul Taker, and I will owe you a favor commensurate with the gift of the sickle.”

She opened the bag, pulling the fabric back so that it worked as a presentation cloth for the object it had held. Then she lit a lantern—or created one, because I hadn’t noticed a lantern before this. Maybe she thought that I hadn’t figured out what it was and I needed the light.

I looked her in the eyes—then flinched away when I remembered I shouldn’t do it. But it had been only Tilly’s dirty face I saw. She smiled slyly at me when I met her eyes a second time. “Is it that I don’t have a soul, do you think?”

“I think that it would take more than the magic of an old artifact to let me see into you,” I said.

She laughed delightedly. “I do like you,” she said.

I stared at the thing on the table. “If I take it to him, you will extend the agreement—the one that allows you to have a door in our backyard and pledges that you harm no one who lives in our home—to my house over there.” I waved at the single-wide. “So I can rent it to someone without worrying about the tenant.”

If one of the fae asked me to do something, it was expected that I ask something in return. I didn’t let on that it was important to me—just a balance for the delivery service.