Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson #13)(16)

“If he is a Cornick, it might,” Adam answered.

Sherwood half lidded his eyes. That was a Charles-like expression if I’d ever seen one. “If I am?”

“Well, there are going to be a lot of disappointed people in the betting pool,” I said, to buy Adam a little time to think. “But Ben will be happy.”

I didn’t understand why I felt relieved that Sherwood was a Cornick rather than any of the scary monsters in the betting book—assuming that being related to Bran meant that Sherwood wasn’t Merlin, King Lycaon, or the Beast of Gévaudan (someone had written “He’s dead, idiots” beside the Beast of Gévaudan in block letters). The problem of Sherwood’s dominance did not just go away because we knew he was related to the Marrok. I knew that it didn’t. But reality apparently didn’t affect how I felt about it.

Adam looked at me. “Ben said that Sherwood is a Cornick?”

“Ben said ‘Bran’s flunky,’?” I said.

“I am no one’s flunky,” Sherwood growled, sounding so much like Bran that I couldn’t imagine how I hadn’t seen it before now.

I paused. How had I missed that resemblance until now?

We’d fought side by side, Sherwood and I. We had bonded sitting way too high up in the air on a freaking huge crane designed to build nuclear power plants in Japan, overlooking the Columbia River in a way I hoped never to see again. And I hadn’t noticed he had a tattoo on his neck? Hadn’t noticed that his eyes were the same hazel as Bran’s? Put like that, the answer was obvious.

Magic.

If I were going to send an amnesiac wolf out into the world, and that wolf was old and powerful enough to have amassed the kinds of enemies that such a one would accumulate, it would be better if everyone didn’t immediately know who he was.

Pack magic is hunter’s magic, very good at stealthy things like camouflage and muting sounds. I wouldn’t have thought that pack magic could have hidden Sherwood’s actual appearance from other werewolves, but Bran was Bran. I was happy to believe that he could figure out a way to use pack magic to hide Sherwood in plain sight. Something that made people not really see him. Something that made him look less real.

Bran had given Sherwood a disguise to protect him from his enemies when he could not protect himself. Magic that had melted away today in Uncle Mike’s, in the halls of a Green Man. I remembered that odd look I’d gotten from Uncle Mike as he gave us privacy, and wondered if it had been on purpose or by accident.

Moreover, thinking about how no one had hinted anything about Sherwood, I was pretty sure that his disguise was not something Bran had done just for Sherwood’s move to our pack. I could see a few old wolves holding their tongue about Sherwood’s real name. But no one who looked at him and also knew Bran could fail to understand what they were looking at. Bran must have disguised Sherwood almost as soon as Sherwood regained his human shape. I couldn’t think of any other way for Bran to keep all the wolves quiet.

“Not a flunky,” agreed Zack, interrupting my racing thoughts. He still had a rapt look on his face, like an acolyte meeting a saint—or maybe a teenager meeting a rock star. “His right hand. His problem solver.” His voice sank to a whisper as his lips curled into a smile. “I have heard stories.”

“You think you know who I am,” Sherwood said.

Zack started to nod but paused and shook his head slowly. “No. Maybe. Maybe not. But I know who you have been. And I heard a story from a wolf who was there, in Northumberland. The strangest thing in the whole business, she said, was that you didn’t have any trouble following the lead of an Alpha a lot less dominant than Adam for a couple of years.”

I glanced at Adam, who shook his head. He didn’t know what Zack was talking about, either. But unlike Adam and me, Zack had reason for his belief that Sherwood’s identity meant we had a path forward without blood being spilled. If Sherwood had managed to be part of a pack without killing the less dominant Alpha, then he could do it again.

Sherwood said with a growl in his voice, “Northumberland was six hundred years ago. At your age, you should know better than to believe stories.”

Zack, who still cringed when the other wolves growled too close to him, gave Sherwood a serene smile. “Stories have power. My friend is—” Here his voice hesitated, and the smile faded. “She was not one to exaggerate.”

“A Cornick,” said Adam. “I think we can manage things differently if you are a Cornick.”

Sherwood glanced at the three of us and shook his head in what looked to me something very like dismay.

“Bran Cornick abandoned you,” he said. “And even if he had not, I am not he. And you have such—” He searched for a word.

“Faith,” I supplied.

“Hope,” Zack offered.

“I’m not going to say ‘charity,’?” said Adam with amusement. “But yes.”

Sherwood shook his head and raised his arms up in a hopeless gesture. “Being a Cornick is not magical. Trust me, it does not solve any problems.”

“No,” I agreed. “But it solves this kind of problem. There never was a Cornick who couldn’t turn a bad situation to his advantage.” And that was true. They were all, even Samuel, ruthless and focused. “And killing Adam is not to your advantage.”