Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson #13)(108)

“Me, neither,” I said.



* * *



—

I went to work the next day because I was a small-business owner and Friday was a business day.

I took my Vanagon, begrudging every mile I put on her. Part of me knew that was stupid—cars needed to be driven. But I wanted to choose when I drove her. It had taken me a long time to find the Jetta I’d totaled in August. Old VWs were scarce. I’d have to get serious about running down a replacement. Maybe I’d see if Adam wanted to take a weekend and head to Seattle.

About nine in the morning, I was underneath the greasiest engine compartment I’d seen for a couple of weeks, trying to find an electrical wire hidden in a half inch of mud-grease. I knew—from my own investigations on the upper part of the engine compartment—that terrible mechanics (or ham-handed amateurs) had worked on the wiring in this lovely cabriolet a number of times in its four decades of life. That meant the wire I was looking for could be anywhere.

Aubrey crawled under the car and scared the bejeebers out of me, and I shoved most of my face into the greasy mass above me before I realized what had happened.

He laughed, then apologized for it because he’d been a sweet young man. “Hey, Mercy,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you thank you—and tell you good-bye.”

“Good-bye?” I asked.

He smiled again—and it looked like the one Wulfe had given me yesterday: sweet with a hint of wickedness. “I get to go,” he said, sounding excited.

“Yeah?” I asked, smiling back at him.

He nodded. When he hit his head on the car, there was no noise and the grease fairy didn’t cover his face. “But they said I could tell you thank you.”

“Time to go, boy,” said a familiar voice, sounding kinder than he usually did when talking to me. That’s fathers for you.

I skittered out from under the car, but quick as I was, Aubrey and his guide-to-wherever-dead-souls-go were gone.

About a half hour later I’d managed to get the grease off my face and most of my hair—and also found the wire about two inches from where it should have been. I was trying to decide how to bill a job that cost four dollars in parts and took me fifteen minutes to fix after I’d spent two and a half hours looking for a short. Two and a half hours was pretty good for chasing down an electrical fault, actually.

Once, Zee and I together had spent three days on a Vanagon, trying to find an intermittent short. We’d come out disagreeing on which wire was the problem, replaced them both—and had it come back in the next day. Tad, who was manning the shop while I went for lunch, had fixed it in ten minutes.

I’d just worked out the taxes on the invoice when I felt an odd tug inside my head. I grabbed the top of the counter, because I was sitting on a very tall stool, and held on while someone pulled a spiritual octopus out of me complete with a million arms loaded with suction cups. When it was finished, I was sitting on the floor, curled up in a ball with a bloody nose.

My phone rang.

I read the caller ID and answered it only because it was Zee.

“The Soul Taker is no more,” he said, sounding satisfied.

Bargains, I thought, are how you deal with the fae. If I gave Zee the Soul Taker, he agreed to destroy it. And heal me, too. It had been a good bargain.

“Got that,” I told him. “It had a few more holds on me than I thought it did.”

“Ja, it happens like that sometimes. Good that you did not pick it up. Eat something, you’ll feel better.” He paused. “I am hungry, too. I’ll bring lunch.”

“Paper or plastic cups if you bring drinks,” I told him. “No skull cups.”

“Underhill wanted the Soul Taker,” Zee said. “Tad told me what she said when she gave you the cup for me. She would have kept her bargain to keep your family safe. And a favor from Underhill is no small thing.”

“Yeah, well,” I said. “You had first dibs.”

He laughed and hung up.

When he came in twenty minutes later, he brought street tacos from our favorite food truck. He handed me a soda in a can with a little emphasis. But what we talked about was fixing cars.

When lunch was over, he stayed to help, and we were both working on a twenty-year-old Mercedes convertible when the phone rang and the bell jingled at the front desk.

“Desk or phone?” I asked.

“Pest oder Cholera—es ist ein und dasselbe,” he grumbled.

“If I go to Germany and everyone thinks I’m a grump, it will be your fault,” I said. “And since when do we compare our customers to diseases?”

“Since I sold you the garage and they became your customers,” he said. “I will get the phone.”

I was still smiling when I walked into the office—to see Warren.

“Hey,” I said. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I have a deadline,” he said. “And it occurred to me that I have a friend I can ask for help.”

Adam had given him two days to deal with whatever was making him so crabby.

“Always happy to poke my nose into your business,” I said.

Loud and muffled German leaked through the closed door to the bays. “Hey, maybe if I can fix what’s making you grumpy, we can try it out on Zee.”

Warren gave me the faint smile that deserved. “I doubt it. Leopard don’t change its spots. Come take a drive with me.” He turned and walked out the door, tension obvious in the set of his shoulders and the snap in his voice.