Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson #13)(62)

An artifact that Zee had told them could control its wielder. Stefan was old and powerful. Adam had a hard time believing an artifact could control him.

“Because I trailed the killer,” Mercy said. “He appeared, just appeared, in the store. Then disappeared in the back lot. He didn’t get in a car—there’s a feel to the trace when a door closes.”

Adam knew what she meant. Since he hadn’t been able to sense the killer, he didn’t know how what happened to scent when someone got into a car translated to whatever Mercy had sensed. But he trusted her judgment that whatever and whoever the murderer was, he had disappeared in the same way that he had come. And that sounded like something Stefan could do—Stefan and Marsilia, Stefan’s maker.

“Could it have been Marsilia?”

“There wasn’t a scent,” Mercy said. “Stefan could tell me not to recognize his scent.”

“He couldn’t have told me,” Adam reminded her. “I couldn’t scent the killer, either. Marsilia can teleport, too.”

“After he’d killed—” She hesitated. “After he or she killed the boy—” She paused again.

“Aubrey Worth.”

She sighed and bounced her head against the side of his jaw gently. “I didn’t want to know that. I didn’t want his name.”

“After he or she killed the boy . . . ?” Adam asked, since she didn’t seem inclined to finish her thought. When she still didn’t say anything, he said, “Maybe the sickle makes it so we can’t scent its wielder.”

She made a frustrated noise.

“Once you add magic in, it’s hard to know how to limit it,” Adam observed sympathetically.

“It was magic—or rather there was a lot of magic all over.” She let out an irritated huff of breath, sounding, for the first time, almost normal.

She got like that when she was trying to explain magic with words when all she had were feelings. Especially since, as a female mechanic, she was leery about explaining things that might be called into question without empirical evidence—even to Adam. The more “woo-woo” (her words) something was, the more defensive she got.

“I’d like to talk a bit to Zee about what I think I felt there. What he thinks it all means. When that boy—” Her voice broke off. “Okay, okay.”

She sucked in a breath, gave an irritated growl, and wiggled to put some space between them. When she was done, she was sitting sideways in her seat as if ready to get out of the SUV. He stepped back against the open door so she could get out if she wanted to—and to give her space, which is what he thought she really needed.

He wasn’t hurt. He’d been expecting her physical withdrawal as soon as her shivering lessened. Mercy wasn’t much given to public displays of affection—still less if they were driven by a need for comfort. She didn’t lightly reveal weakness—he understood that entirely.

She waved her hands as if in surrender. “Okay. Okay,” she said again. “It helps if I talk through this. I’m sorry if it’s too woo-woo.”

“No problem,” he said.

She gave him a suspicious look, but evidently he was successful in hiding his amusement at her discomfort, because she started talking. “When Aubrey died, there was some sort of explosion of magic, too. I could feel the remnants of it. It felt as if the blood on the floor was still connected to the killer in some way. I could trace that feeling both ways.”

“To Aubrey and to the killer,” Adam said, not liking the way that sounded.

She nodded, and her body gave a convulsive shiver. Her eyebrows rose a bit, and she took another deep breath. She met his eyes.

“I think I could track that magic because it’s attached to me, too. A sort of awful three-way tie.” She glanced in the backseat, and her face tightened.

“Company?” Adam asked. He’d gotten used to that aspect of her power. “I can’t tell.”

He could sometimes sense the ghosts—even see them, as he’d seen the boy in Stefan’s house. But if he could, it was a bad thing. Whenever he walked into Mercy’s old house, he felt like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

She nodded, a flicker of relief crossing her face. He couldn’t tell if she was relieved that the ghost was weak enough he couldn’t perceive it, or if she was relieved that she didn’t have to talk about it and risk making it stronger. He could make an educated guess about who the ghost was.

“That magical connection gave me insights into the boy”—she grimaced and twitched her shoulder as if someone had prodded her—“into Aubrey that I don’t normally get. Sort of a spiritual equivalent of the scent of a person. You know how a good sniff can tell you what shampoo they use, if their car has leather upholstery, how many cats claim them?”

Adam nodded.

“Well, I can tell you that our victim was not too bright but sweet as they come. He was half in love with one of his roommates and half in love with a cute girl in one of his study groups that so far he had been too shy to speak to. He loved bubble tea and sushi. Someday he wanted to visit Japan. He was good at math but had no business being enrolled in computer science.”

That evidently got some sort of reaction from the ghost because Mercy scowled over her shoulder before catching herself. She rubbed her hands over her face and slid out of the car. She stiffened just a little but otherwise covered up the fact that her feet were still sore. She moved into Adam and let her forehead fall forward until it rested on his chest.