Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson #13)(23)

I glanced at Jesse’s car as we walked by it, and I took stock of it reflexively. It still needed a new paint job, but we’d sprayed the exposed metal with an undercoat that would stop the rust even if it gave the old car a somewhat leprous appearance. There were no new dings, no key marks, no spray paint.

As the daughter of the local Alpha, Jesse had watched her world get smaller and smaller as our enemies had grown more numerous and more powerful. She was human and a target for anyone who wanted to attack our pack.

Jesse had altered her plans to go to school in Seattle on her own, knowing that we could no longer spare the manpower to give her the protection she’d need living in a different city. There was a pack in Seattle, but since we had been separated from the Marrok’s care, they could not help us. Jesse had also turned down her best friend’s offer to co-rent an apartment next to the local Washington State University campus because she was afraid that our pack trouble would affect Izzy, too.

It wasn’t just supernatural attacks she had to deal with. Adam was a celebrity, local and otherwise. And everyone in the TriCities knew him and his family (Jesse and me) by sight.

The first week of classes, a group of students organized by the anti-supernatural organization Bright Future had begun following her around with protest signs everywhere she went. While they were doing that, someone vandalized her car with a can of spray paint. Parking lot cameras caught an unhelpful image of a hooded figure in jeans and tennis shoes.

Jesse told us about the car because she hadn’t been able to get the paint off before she had to come home. But Izzy, who had been witness to some of the rest of the harassment, called Tad and told him about all of it.

Tad showed up while I was still trying to get the spray paint off. I know a few ways to get paint off, but it’s tricky to do that without removing the car paint, too. Tad was better at it than I was, but when we’d finished, a new paint job was inevitable. I’d called and made arrangements, but my painter does show cars and was a couple of months out.

The next morning, Tad was waiting next to Jesse’s car when she came out to drive to school. The ensuing argument got pretty heated. I was in the living room, but my hearing is very good. I didn’t start out deliberately eavesdropping, but I didn’t try to tune it out, either. Adam came in about halfway through the argument, just about when things got interesting.

That’s how we learned that the car had been the tip of the iceberg. The only reason Adam stayed in the house was that when Jesse drove to school, Tad was in the passenger seat.

I don’t know, don’t want to know, what Tad did, but Izzy told me that the people with signs only made a brief appearance that morning, and did not reappear again after Tad spoke to them. When the three of them walked to Jesse’s car at the end of the day, it was in the same condition it had been in when they parked it.

That night, the pack made a formal offer of employment to Tad. It took some string-pulling to get Tad enrolled late, but we managed. Adam said that the school’s reluctance to bend the rules of entry had only been pro forma. Tad’s grades were high enough that he qualified—and the school hadn’t known what to do with the protesters. They were more than happy to let us propose a solution that suited everyone; it just took a couple of days to manage that within the established rules.

Tad had cheerfully accepted Jesse’s somewhat scattered approach to her first semester at college. I was pretty sure she’d added the women’s studies Comparative Sexuality class to see how far she could push him. Tad rolled with whatever she threw at him. After dealing with Zee his whole life, Jesse was easy.

I didn’t know what would happen once she picked a major, but maybe matters would quiet down so it would be enough for Tad to be on the same campus rather than needing to be on the same class schedule. For now, at least, Tad and Jesse were fine.

“It’s a Tuesday,” I said to Adam. “Isn’t it a little late for them to still be up?”

“Wednesday morning now,” said Adam. “Did Jesse say anything to you about having plans?”

“No.”

We’d warned her about the Sherwood problem before heading to Uncle Mike’s. If she’d had plans, it was entirely understandable that she’d forgotten to tell us about them. Adam opened the front door, and laughter and the scent of fresh-buttered popcorn rolled out of the kitchen. They didn’t seem to notice our entrance.

Adam winked at me and then announced, “Parental curfew,” in a drill sergeant’s voice that could have awakened the dead.

There was the sound of a chair scraping the floor, then Jesse bolted out of the kitchen and threw herself at her dad. She had, for the time being, eschewed her usual bright-colored hair dye. Her newly natural honey-brown hair, which was making its first appearance since she was about thirteen, made her look uncomfortably like a real grown-up. She didn’t look less adult in her frantic relief.

Adam hugged her hard. “All is well,” he told her, which was true as far as it went. But Jesse was used to that; her dad had been the pack Alpha since the day she was born.

“The thing that we thought might end up with Adam dead looks like it will work out okay,” I told her dryly as her feet hit the ground again. “We have another situation to replace it that might end up with Adam dead. Or me dead. Or maybe the whole pack. But at least we solved one deadly situation before we picked up another one.”