Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson #13)(63)

“Makes it feel like you lost a friend instead of a stranger,” Adam said gently, rubbing her arms. He made a point of not looking in the backseat, where he was pretty sure Aubrey’s ghost was sitting.

She nodded. Silence fell between them, and he was content with that.

After too short of a time, Mercy said, “Why are you out here without the rest of them?”

“Zee sent me out to see if you would come in. He wants you to look at the bodies. Something he figured out in there made him pretty upset.” Adam considered his memory of Zee’s face. “Angry, I think.”

Both of her eyebrows shot up. “He wants me to do what? Since when am I an expert on dead bodies?” She pursed her lips to disguise her smile as she continued in an appalled tone. “And you kept them waiting in the morgue while I chatter on about stupid woo-woo stuff? When Zee is angry?”

“They’ll wait,” he said.

She snorted and clambered back into the SUV to turn it off. She locked it, handed his keys to him, and set off for the coroner’s office, limping.

“Do you want to go coyote?” he asked, following her closely. He didn’t ask if he could carry her in; he wasn’t stupid.

She shook her head. “I can’t talk that way. If Zee needs the coyote’s help, I’m sure there’s a bathroom I can change in so I don’t shock anyone.”

She stopped abruptly. Tensed. Adam looked around, but he couldn’t see anything to cause her reaction.

“Okay,” she muttered to herself. Then she turned and looked at someone standing on his right—Aubrey’s ghost, he presumed.

“Look,” she said. “You need to go. Go into the light or whatever.” Pause. “I don’t know what light. There’s supposed to be a light. Or a path.” Pause. “Look, I don’t have a freaking manual. I don’t know what to do—but I think that you should.” Pause. “Because most people die and go somewhere. Their souls don’t linger around even if their ghosts do. I don’t think it’s good for you.” Much longer pause.

Adam put his hand on her shoulder and his lips to her ear. “Pull on the pack,” he said. “On me. Tell him to go.”

“What if that just leaves him wandering around somewhere away from me?” she said, her shoulders hunching under his hand.

“You can’t help everyone,” he told her.

She gave him a look. “The day you take that advice is the day I listen to it from you.”

That was fair.

“Can you call someone to help?” he asked. “Your brother, Gary? One of the other walkers?”

She shook her head. “Tad always says that the real cool thing about being half one thing and half another is that no one can figure you out. He was being sarcastic about the ‘real cool’ part.”

“I gathered.”

“Even Gary’s powers work differently than mine do,” she said. She frowned a moment, and Adam felt her draw on the pack bonds—he pushed a little to speed things up.

“Aubrey Alan Worth,” she said with the punch of Alpha that let Adam force his pack members to obedience.

Adam hadn’t known Aubrey’s middle name. He didn’t think that anyone had said it aloud in Mercy’s hearing, either.

“Your time here is done.” Her voice, for all the power she was putting in it, was gentle. “Be at peace.”

Adam seldom felt magic—other than the magic inherent in being a werewolf and Alpha of his pack. But Mercy was his mate, he was touching her, and she was using his power to amplify her voice. He felt the weight of her magic—and he felt the backlash as something cold and old and empty pushed back.

She staggered, and for a moment Adam was sure that the only thing keeping her on her feet was his hold. She reached up and grabbed one of his hands with her cold one and held on tight.

“No,” she said quickly, her voice soothing. “I see. I see. I understand. You can’t go yet. No. Don’t panic. We’ll fix it. Calm down.” That last she put another push of pack magic into.

“Okay,” she said. “I understand. But I won’t take you into that building because it’s not a good place for you. Could you wait by the SUV?”

She waited, then released Adam’s hand to stride off toward the coroner’s office, muttering, “If I’m going to be haunted for the rest of my life, at least it will be by a sweet boy who takes orders.”

“Do you think that’s likely?” he asked, keeping his voice down. Whatever had happened had scared her, and she needed to distract herself. It scared him, too, because it hadn’t felt like anything a big bad wolf could protect Mercy from.

Mercy started to shrug and then said, “I think that if we can find the killer, we might be able to break whatever is keeping Aubrey here. It’s not what Frost did to Peter, but it’s the same effect.”

Frost had been a vampire who fed off the souls of the dead, keeping his victims tied to their bodies, including one of Adam’s wolves. Frost had been a nasty piece of work.

“Okay,” he said, putting confidence in his voice. They’d handled every other damned thing that had come their way, including Frost. They’d handle this one, too. Hopefully.

“I don’t know what I’m talking about,” she reminded him. “I wish there were a Haynes or Chilton repair manual on how I work.”