Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson #13)(110)

The car told both of us to Stay Alert!!!

“Can you trade it in for something a little older?” I asked.

“Kyle gave me this car,” he said carefully.

“I know that.”

“Kyle grew up in a shitty home that taught him a lot of stupid things. Most of them he’s shed like a snake sheds its skin. But the one thing that he’s held on to is that he tells me he loves me with gifts.”

I could see that.

“He don’t want gifts in return,” Warren said. “It ain’t transactional.”

“Okay,” I said.

“But if he can’t give me somethin’, it hurts him. Took me a long time to figure that out. He’s been trying to get me a car for two years and finally talked me into letting him do it. I told him to pick out anything—but it had to be something that wouldn’t stand out, because that was the pretext he was using to buy me a car.”

“And you think he won’t understand about the dinging,” I said.

“It don’t do it if he’s in the car.”

“What?” I said.

“It don’t do it if he’s in the car.”

“I heard you the first time,” I told him. He grunted.

“I won’t hurt that man,” he said in a soft voice. “He only just survived his family. He don’t let no one in as far as I am in. I won’t hurt him by trading this car in.”

“I see,” I said. The only sounds in the car the rest of the way back to the garage were the sounds the car made at me.

Zee came out and scowled at me as we got out of the car. It wasn’t his I’m-angry scowl, just his usual you-made-me-deal-with-customers scowl. I tapped the hood of the car a couple of times and said, “Zee, this car has a problem.”

I explained what was going on, in detail. Zee pursed his lips, opened the car door, and looked inside. Then he held out his hand.

“Keys,” he said.

I saw a flash when Warren almost reacted to the sharp note in Zee’s voice, then he controlled it and tossed Zee the key fob. Zee was gone about ten minutes, and when he got out of the car, there was something softer than usual in his face.

“Kyle bought you that car,” he said.

Warren nodded.

“He picked it out and drove it home—you didn’t go with him.”

“It was a gift from Kyle,” Warren said. “I wanted it to be the gift he wanted to give me.”

Zee smiled, a real smile, one of the ones he only shared with people he likes. “He wanted you to be safe,” Zee said. “So he bought you a car that would keep you safe. And he thought about it all the way to your house—like a wish. And sometimes, if you happen to be around a lot of magic—like maybe your mate is a werewolf—a little magic happens.”

I thought about the girdle—that hadn’t felt especially magic to me until Wulfe had been nearby.

He gave Warren back the key fob. “It should behave itself now. If it starts up again, bring it to me.” He paused. “I think you got a keeper,” he said, and went back into the office.

I was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about the car.



* * *



—

Adam and I went to the special showing of The Harvester at the pumpkin patch on Saturday night. I had tried to stay home. I liked horror films, especially bad horror films—but I had no desire to revisit the Soul Taker. However, Adam had a plan, and it was a good plan. I dressed up a little more than I usually would for a movie showing held in a barn.

Waiting for the show to start, Adam put his lips against my ear to murmur, “Marsilia called with thanks. She also told me that Zee has been spreading the story about how we took down Bonarata and gave the Soul Taker to him instead of Underhill because he would destroy it and free the people, our people, that it had killed. She said that our credit with the supernatural residents of the TriCities is getting a pretty good boost from that.”

“Zee is spreading that?” I asked. Zee didn’t gossip.

“Uncle Mike,” Adam said. “But he wouldn’t be doing it if Zee hadn’t asked him to.”

“Damage control,” I said. “And we’re in better with the vampires than we have ever been.”

Wulfe, Marsilia, and Stefan had taken most of the torture Bonarata had meted out on his visit. But it had been a lot of damage. The rest of their people were mostly newly made or weak, and Bonarata had scared them badly.

They’d been in pretty bad shape by the time the pack found them. Our pack had gotten them fed and transported back to the seethe before daylight. Physically, Marsilia had assured Adam, they’d be okay in a few weeks.

“Marsilia intends to move the seethe,” Adam murmured.

I blinked. “To the house in Benton City?”

“No,” Adam said. “She’s going to build a new house. She asked me for the name of our contractor.” He paused. “I don’t know what to think about it—but she’s bought Elizaveta’s property in Finley.”

I didn’t know what to think about that, either. “I wouldn’t live there.”

“She says it has power.”

“Yikes,” I said.

His shoulders shook with silent laughter. We were in a movie-theater barn. Good manners said we had to be quiet.