Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson #13)(24)

“Business as usual,” said Tad, who’d exited the kitchen with a little less speed than Jesse.

He was only tall when compared to his dad, but he had a sort of lanky grace that made him look taller. His ears stuck out, and his nose was flattened as if he’d spent time in a boxing ring. He was still attractive, but it was an effect of expression rather than bone structure. Of course, his appearance was a matter of choice rather than genetics. He was half-fae and half-human, but powerful enough that he could adopt a glamour like the full-blooded fae in order to hide his other-than-human appearance.

Izzy, full name Isabella Norman, tagged along behind Tad. She was slender and doll-sized, with curly brown hair—and was a lot tougher than she looked. She and Jesse had been casual friends for a long time. When Jesse started taking heat from other high school students as her father’s position as the werewolf pack Alpha became better known, Izzy had jumped into the breach. For that alone I would have liked her, but she was also a genuinely good person.

She wrapped a hand under Tad’s arm and leaned around him so she could see us better. “Hey, Mr. H, Ms. H, glad you’re both still alive. Mom wants to know if you want more of the orange essential oil—it’s on special this month.”

“I’ll take two,” I said. I’d been experimenting with using it in my baking. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it was awful.

“Don’t you have school?” Adam asked, addressing all three of them.

“Not until eleven tomorrow,” Jesse said. “And we are working on an assignment, anyway.”

“The Harvester,” said Izzy in a tone suitably sepulchral. Then she grinned and said, “You know, the new horror movie? The one written by that Danson guy who graduated from Pasco High? Apparently he went to school with our English Lit teacher, from kindergarten through college. We were given the assignment of watching it and reporting on it.”

“The screenwriter claims that it’s based on a local urban myth,” said Tad with a grin. His hand covered Izzy’s where she touched his arm.

Aha, I thought. They’re dating. No wonder she’d called Tad when Jesse had been in trouble.

“The problem, ladies and gentlemen,” announced Jesse in a voice meant to mimic their instructor’s, “is that there is no urban myth of that sort around here. Have fun picking it apart.”

“I don’t think he likes his old schoolmate much,” murmured Tad with laughing eyes. “Jealousy is a terrible thing.”

“I get the impression that it’s not jealousy,” said Jesse. “It feels more personal than that. Like maybe Danson stole Dr. Holbearth’s girlfriend.” She paused. “Or they dated and had a bad breakup.”

“The Harvester had a pre-opening midnight showing tonight,” said Izzy. “We thought we’d get a running start on our assignment. And also miss out on the crowds.” She shook her head. “One out of two isn’t bad. That theater was packed.”

Tad’s eyes caught mine meaningfully, then traveled to Jesse. He and Izzy had taken Jesse out to distract her from her worries over her father, I interpreted. I gave him a little nod of thanks.

“It was so bad,” Jesse said. “I mean even worse than the usual B-horror-movie bad. The villain, for no discernible motive I could figure out, dressed up like a scarecrow, took a scythe down from an old barn in the back of the farm he’d just bought, and started killing people in ways designed to be as bloody and disgusting as possible.”

“It was a sickle,” said Tad in the patient tone of someone who has said that before.

“And it was supposed to be possessed,” Izzy said. “The old woman, the first victim, she said as much. ‘That old scythe is hainted.’?”

“?‘Hainted’?” I said. “The movie is supposed to take place here, right? Isn’t a ‘haint’ a Southern term for a ghost? Like Georgia Southern. Southeastern Washington is still in the Pacific Northwest.”

“Oh, that’s what she said,” Jesse exclaimed. “I couldn’t tell what she was talking about. Well, if they knew the stupid thing was haunted, why did they leave it hanging around in a barn? Why didn’t they just burn down the barn with the scythe in it?”

“They did eventually,” Tad pointed out. “If the barn burned in the beginning of the movie, they wouldn’t have had a possessed guy armed with the sickle slicing people in half all over the place.”

“He beheaded a couple of them,” said Izzy. “Is it still slicing them in half when it’s more like removing ten percent or so?”

“All I know is that I’ll never get that hundred and eight minutes of my life back,” Jesse said. “Are you really sure it was a sickle? Everyone in the movie called it a scythe.”

“?‘Sickle’ doesn’t sound as cool as ‘scythe,’?” Izzy said, frowning at Tad.

“When the son of an iron-kissed fae who is the most famous smith in all of mythology tells you what a tool is called, you should believe him over someone reading a part,” Adam advised. He wasn’t smiling, but his dimple was making an appearance.

“A scythe is what Death wields,” I told them. “Long-handled. Like a pike or that weird thing Adam’s alter ego Captain Larson uses in ISTDPB4.” ISTDPB4 (Instant Spoils: The Dread Pirate’s Booty Four) was an interactive computer game that the whole pack played together on a regular basis. “A sickle has a handle that fits your hand—like a sword someone bent in a circle.”