Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson #13)(68)

I nodded, flexing my hands reflexively.

“There is something about spiders and the Soul Taker,” Zee said. He tapped his forehead. “It is in here somewhere, but I am very old and I think it is an old story. I will think on it some more. There are people who might remember.”

“It sounds like we have one problem and not two,” said Adam. “I don’t think that makes our situation better.”

“No,” I agreed.

“I am not going to be able to come in here tomorrow, Liebchen,” Zee said in a total non sequitur. “Either you’ll have to work the shop or close it for a day—which is bad for business.”

It became obvious that he wasn’t going to elaborate until I responded.

I rubbed my face and glanced at Adam.

“We’re going to break into the seethe tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve arranged to bring some of our pack with us. ‘With us’ can be ‘with me’ if you need to open the shop. If we run into something where we need you, we can always call.”

I should go with him. But I was exhausted mentally and physically. The idea of coming to work and doing something I knew how to do was very appealing. At the very least, I was unlikely to have spider-fae lay eggs in my feet if I was taking apart carburetors.

“Mary Jo was going to come with us to the seethe,” Adam said. “If you stay here, I’d ask that you keep her with you here for the day.”

He met my eyes and waited. This was not an “I want to keep you safe, little woman” request. This was the Alpha of our pack not wanting to let one of his pack members who may or may not have put herself in the sights of a supernatural serial killer work alone in a place where she would predictably be found.

“She can do paperwork.” Adam offered up Mary Jo to my least favorite job without evidence of a qualm.

After a few terrible incidents, Mary Jo and I were coming to an odd sort of acceptance of each other. It wasn’t quite friendship, though the possibility was there—more a matter of mutual respect.

“You mean I get to torture her?” I asked.

Adam threw back his head and laughed.

“Of course I’m coming with you,” I told him. “I’ll close the shop for the day.” I glanced at Zee. “If we don’t take a random day off every once in a while, our customers will think they are in charge.”

“Passt,” said Zee, the satisfaction in his tone conveying the meaning of the German word, which meant I probably wouldn’t bother looking it up in the Langenscheidt’s German-English, English-German Dictionary I kept tucked in a drawer in the office.

“Zee,” I said. “We need to talk about the Soul Taker. What it is. What it’s doing. And how to render it harmless.”

He stared down at his boots. Then he laced his fingers together and stretched them, as if preparing for an arduous task.

“Most artifacts are made with intent,” he said. “On purpose rather than by accident. And if so made, most are crafted by the fae.”

He reached out a hand and pulled the walking stick, my walking stick, from the air. I had been looking at his hands and couldn’t quite pinpoint the moment in which the walking stick had appeared. It felt as if, somehow, the artifact had always been there, in Zee’s hands. He turned it as if examining it, letting the artificial lights overhead illuminate the old wood and silver.

He eventually continued, “Humans can also create magical items, but being mortal, most are not concerned with making something that outlives them. The more conscientious mortals are very concerned, in fact, that nothing they make outlasts them so that they do no unintentional harm.” His face composed itself into something subtly more gentle, as if thinking about someone specific. “A witch’s magic dies when they die, usually. And if not, it fades over time. Humans are rarely able to make true artifacts. There are, outside of the fae and human magic users, few other beings whose magical crafting lends itself into making artifacts.”

Everyone in the garage bay knew all of this. My feet hurt. I was very tired. And, I realized, hungry. I should have let Adam get food earlier. Zee was seldom long-winded, I reminded myself. If he was taking time with this, it was because he thought it was important.

“Among the fae, there have never been many who could make even such a minor artifact as this once was.”

He tapped the walking stick lightly, then spun it. I would never have suspected that the old fae had the skills of a drum major, but he twirled it so fast it blurred.

Still spinning it, he said, “Ariana”—Samuel’s mate—“was one of the best of the makers before she deliberately crippled herself.”

He tossed the walking stick up and caught it.

“Lugh.”

As he spoke that name, a spark of light twinkled in the worked silver that bound the gray wood of the artifact Lugh had crafted who knew how long ago. Possibly Zee had an idea, but I doubted it. The few very old beings I knew tended not to dwell on the past or count the years.

“An artifact is made—and then finished, sealed in its wholeness so it neither gains nor loses magic. Nor can its purpose be changed. Lugh was careless in his later years, though mostly that just meant that his artifacts lost power, became less, and then broke.”

He tossed the walking stick at me without warning. I caught it. Or possibly it came to my hand.