He’d been under the influence of Elizaveta’s spell. I was pretty sure that it had been my pearl that let me break through the effect of her curse—my hopeful pearl against her words.
“Why couldn’t you have told me this at home?” he asked. “Our bedroom is private enough.”
I gave him a wry smile. “Because I thought you were looking really tired and our house was full of people. I also wanted to see if I could get you to tell me what was wrong.”
He grinned at me abruptly and said, “Well, you got that part done in true Mercy fashion.”
“Anything worth doing is worth overdoing,” I intoned solemnly. I took in a deep breath and sighed loudly. “I suppose that I should quit enjoying the view and go get you some clothes from the SUV.”
I rose up on my toes and kissed him. “Don’t you give up on us, my love.”
“Okay,” he said. He kissed me back. “Nudge?”
Yes. Oh yes. There was so much emotion that my insides felt scoured with the tides. Sex . . . making love wouldn’t fix any of it. Wouldn’t break what Elizaveta had done to my husband. Wouldn’t change the reality that Adam hated himself so much that he thought he deserved to die. I did not lie to myself. I had spoken to his wolf. Elizaveta’s words would not have taken fruit if Adam hadn’t had the garden plowed and fertilized for it.
Sex wouldn’t fix that. But . . . sharing is a very powerful thing. And making love with Adam was generous and warm—powerful magic of its own kind. And ten minutes of not thinking sounded like heaven just now and I was pretty sure Adam felt the same way. It was not passion he was seeking with his “nudge”—it was surcease.
But . . . no way in hell was I going to let him see me naked while Elizaveta’s magic was still working on him. I knew my mate. Guilt—the failure of living up to his own expectations—was driving that curse. Adam had an overabundant sense of responsibility. My poor face had been the tipping point today, I was pretty sure. I wasn’t going to let him see that my entire right side was black where it hadn’t been scraped raw.
“Not tonight,” I told him. “We have wolves to kill and Underhill to talk to. Busy, busy.” And after misquoting The Princess Bride, I admitted the truth—a little of the truth. “As much as I’d like some nudging of my own, I think I need to give my body a break for a day or so.” I paused, and since it was true and I deserved a chance to whine a little, I said, “And my nose is throbbing.”
He hugged me gently and I didn’t so much as stiffen at the pain in my ribs—which I hadn’t actually noticed until I saw them in the mirror. I’d been too focused on a lot of things more painful than bruised ribs. Once all the drama had subsided, my body was more sore than it had felt before the whole Adam’s-got-a-gun scene had played out.
* * *
• • •
Everyone was tucked into bed by the time we got home. Jesse called a good night to us as we passed her room, so they hadn’t been in bed for long.
I found the pajamas that I wore when I was sick—Adam wouldn’t think it strange for me to grab them when I had a broken nose. They were a gift from my mom—nothing I would ever have bought myself. It was ridiculous how much I loved them.
They were mint green and covered with pink ponies with improbable purple manes and tails. My mom had a thing for horses. But the important thing about them tonight was that they covered me from neck to feet.
I showered and dressed and by the time I was through I hurt so badly I wasn’t sure I could sleep. Every muscle in my body was stiff and sore. I crawled into bed and finally just lay facedown with a pillow under my chest and my face turned aside so that my nose didn’t hit the mattress. Nothing else was comfortable, either.
Adam showered and I must have dozed despite the discomfort because the next thing I knew the bed was moving under his weight.
“Mercy,” he told me. “Take off your shirt.”
I lay very still. Maybe he would think I was asleep.
“Your shirt rode up while you were poking your finger at me,” he said. “Threatening me with the dire consequences of dying around a ticked-off daughter of Coyote who can call the dead. You don’t have to hide your injuries from me—that’s our deal, remember?”
“You knew?” I asked.
“I just wanted to see how far you would take it. Strip off your shirt, tough girl, and I’ll see what I can do about making you feel better.”
He didn’t know I’d been hiding my bruises so that he didn’t have one more thing to feel responsible for. One more thing for Elizaveta’s curse to dig into him with. He wasn’t wearing a monster, so apparently I hadn’t needed to try to hide anything from him.
“I can’t move,” I whined, now that I didn’t have to pretend. “It hurts.”
He helped me roll over and gave me a bag of frozen peas, which he must have brought upstairs while I was dozing, for my nose.
“No, don’t press it,” he said. “Just let it rest there.”
And my nose settled down while he lit a vanilla candle I couldn’t smell and turned out the lights.
“I’m not being romantic,” he advised me. “The lights are going to hurt your eyes. The candle is warming the oil I’m going to use to help your poor abused muscles relax.”
I thought that sounded like a pretty romantic thing to do. Romantic didn’t always have to do with sex.
He unbuttoned the shirt of my pajamas and managed to get it off me without hurting me more. I had a bag of peas over my eyes so I couldn’t see what he looked like after getting a fully detailed report on my body.
What he said, after a moment, was “Okay, pants off, too.”
And he lifted and moved my limp body around. At one point he stopped and said, “These are your favorite pajamas.”
“Yes,” I said.
He grunted. “Easier if I could rip them off, but I’ll manage.”
And so he did.
Then he rubbed warmed oil all over my sore muscles. Not a massage, just gentle repetitive motions that took the edge off. I fell asleep with his strong hands rubbing my shoulders. I still hurt, but I didn’t care as much as I had.
* * *
• • •
I don’t know what time it was that I woke up to the hairs on the back of my neck crawling.
“Adam?”
A low growl from the far side of the room answered me. It wasn’t Adam’s usual growl, but it was him. I thought about the ugly, ugly monster.
“For Pete’s sake,” I complained after a moment of thought. “Get back to bed. I’m cold.”
Something very, very heavy got into bed beside me. I was worried the bed was going to break. A very big, hot body curled around me and rough skin touched my own. Adam rested his very large chin on the top of my head.
“Better,” I grumped, snuggling into his warmth. “Go to sleep.”
* * *
• • •
He was gone when I woke up in the morning—and I woke up early because moving hurt. It didn’t hurt as much as it might have if Adam hadn’t given me a hot oil treatment. Today was Monday, and though I was shutting down the garage until further notice, on Monday I had promised to fix the cars that absolutely only I could do. If I was going to have to go to work this morning, it was probably a good thing that I’d gotten up early.
Hannah was in the kitchen when I finally came down, feeling like I was a hundred and ten years old. She took one look at me and winced.
“Adam said you’d be in rough shape this morning,” she said. Then she walked over and kissed me on the cheek. “I’d hug you if it wouldn’t hurt both of us. Thank you for saving my little girl.”
“You’ve got me mixed up,” I told her. “Auriele saved Makaya. I just hit the bastard with my car.”
“Yes, well, thanks for that, too,” she said. “I hurt too much to sleep in, so I thought I’d come down and make my granny’s secret r
ecipe for all that ails you.”
She brewed it all up in a double boiler, then poured it into two cups, took out a flask that had Granny’s Secret Ingredient engraved on the side, and added generously to the result.
She sniffed one of the cups, then added a teaspoon of honey. She sniffed it again.
“That’s smells right,” she said. Then she added another teaspoon of honey to both cups and shoved one in front of me. “Drink that.”
I looked at her. I knew what had gone into that pot. Moreover, I had a fair suspicion that there was something potent in Granny’s flask of alcoholic splendor.
“Just plug your nose,” she advised.
“Ha-ha,” I told her. “Funny.”
She drank it down. All of it in one gulp. When she was done, her eyes watered and she couldn’t talk—but she pointed her finger at the cup in front of me.
It was a gift, I knew. A thank-you that she’d gotten up ungodly early to prepare and feed to me.
It was the kind of gift that was unrefusable.
I followed her lead and drank the whole thing before I could think too much about what I’d seen her put in the brew.
When I was in college, after my first and only drunken bout, I realized that I knew too many people’s secrets to be drinking. After that, I’d made a habit of avoiding alcohol of any kind—so I didn’t know if my reaction to Hannah’s gift would have been the same if I’d gulped a glass of any old alcohol.
My skin warmed, my ears tingled, and so did the backs of my knees. My broken nose buzzed with a feeling that I was worried was going to wake up nerve endings that didn’t need to be roused. Instead, it settled into a pleasant sort of hum that drove the soreness away.
I couldn’t breathe or see for as much as a full minute, and my taste buds would have run away from my mouth in full revolt if they could have. But that was a fair price to pay for the lack of pain.
When I could focus properly again, Hannah said, “Warren’s going with you to the garage today. He’ll be here pretty soon. I would let him drive. But by the time you get to the garage, you should be okay for handling tools again.”
I moved my right shoulder, working it around in a circle. “I just might live,” I told her.
11
A little buzzed and a lot less sore, I left Hannah making breakfast waffles in the kitchen and went down to the basement.
A red wolf paced restlessly back and forth in the cage. He didn’t seem to take any note of me, even when I stopped in to say, “Hello, Ben.”
Luke, on watch duty, looked up from the video game he was playing to say, “He shifted to wolf about two in the morning. I don’t know why or if it was his decision. And so I told Adam about two hours ago.”
It was six in the morning. That made yet another night of very little sleep for Adam. It was obvious from Luke’s tone of voice that he was worried, too. The last thing we needed in the middle of multiple crises was Adam impaired by lack of sleep.
I couldn’t do anything about Adam just then, but I did have one avenue of progress on other matters. If Adam had been home, I’d have taken him because he was better at negotiations than I was—as long as he didn’t lose his temper. And he’d have been better at this negotiation because Underhill, like most females, had a soft spot for Adam.
I knocked on Aiden’s door. “Up and at ’em. Hannah’s making waffles.”
“I’ll dress and be out,” he said, sounding alert. To survive terrible conditions, you learn to be alert.
I put my hand on his door.
“Waffles?” said Luke hopefully, and I let my hand fall as I turned to face him.
“I think you are on the top of the list,” I told him.
He smiled and went back to his game.
* * *
• • •
By the time Aiden made it upstairs, I’d carried Luke’s waffles down to him along with a cup of fresh-made coffee, and was arranging a second plate. Aiden had dressed in a sweater and jeans, even though the day outside looked to be warming up nicely. His fire had mostly returned, he’d told me, but there were lingering effects from what Wulfe had done to him.
The waffles I’d taken from Hannah’s second batch were an even golden brown. I’d poured a thin layer of homemade (by Christy) raspberry syrup and topped that with fresh whipped cream. I’d already dribbled some blueberries around and was slicing strawberries, which were the final touch on my gift for Underhill.
Aiden looked at the plate, raised his eyebrows, and said, “For me?”
“We’ll take it outside,” I told him, and comprehension lit his face.
He opened his mouth, glanced down the stairs, and simply nodded. “Sounds good.”
I started to pick up the plate and remembered another thing from my recent study of fairy tales. I got a small glass from the cupboards and said, “Hey, Hannah? Can I borrow your flask?”
* * *
• • •
I carried a glass three fingers full of Kentucky bourbon, made twenty years ago by Hannah’s grandmother in a batch she’d intended for family use only, out to the door in the wall in our backyard. Aiden brought the plate of waffles.
“I don’t know if she’ll come if you knock,” he told me.
“She’s a guest in our backyard. She’ll come,” I said with more confidence than I felt. I rapped the rough wood with my knuckles as if I meant business. Three times, because three is important in fairy tales.
Nothing happened.
Multiples of three are important, too, I told myself.
I knocked three more times. Waited. Knocked three more times. If this didn’t work, I’d take the plate and Aiden would knock. But my instincts told me that since I was asking her for information, I needed to be the one requesting her presence.
The door popped open and a cranky-looking Tilly stuck her head out. Her hair was dripping wet and had something that looked like seaweed in it. Even with my nose out of action, I caught a whiff of brine. Through the partially open door I heard surf and wind.
“What is it?” she snapped. “I’m drowning things and you’re inter—” She looked at my face and brightened. “Is there a fight?” Then her smile deepened. “Are you wounded?”
“She mostly killed a werewolf with her car,” Aiden said. “All he needed was the coup de grâce.” He paused and then in a mournful voice he said, “The car was sacrificed for the good of all.”
Tilly’s smile disappeared. “Alas,” she said. Tilly liked cars. She couldn’t get far enough from one of her doors to ride in one—and then there was all the cold iron. But she liked them anyway.
Aiden nodded his head in acknowledgment, then said, in a more hearty tone, “She managed the blow without harming the child the werewolf held over his head. She used one of her own werewolves—tossed her wolf onto the front of the car to catch the child. Mercy is a little hurt—but her enemy is dead.”
“You told that backward,” I said. And skipped most of the parts that would have made that story make sense.
“Important parts first,” said Tilly thoughtfully. “That’s how to tell a story. Skip the boring parts. End with the results, though. Good job, Fire. That was a good story—I especially liked the part where the car died. I do so love tragedy.”
She stepped through the door and closed it behind her, running a dirty finger around the latch. The magic she used sent a zing up my spine. Her white shift was drenched with water until she looked at it. Under her gaze, the cloth dried in a few seconds but looked stiff and crusted with salt. There were smears of green here and there. Something I was pretty sure was blood had soaked the bottom of her hem, which was about knee height.
“I need to ask you a few things,” I told her. “I brought you a gift as an exchange.”
Aiden held the plate out to her. She gave me a considering look before turning her attention to the food. She stuck a fin
ger in the cream and licked it off. She ate a slice of strawberry. Waited. Then ate one of the blueberries as if it might be poisonous.
“Did you make this?” she asked.
And I wished I’d taken the time to make brownies or cookies or something, because the way she asked it, I knew it was important.
“I assembled it,” I told her. “My friend made the waffles fresh this morning and my stepdaughter’s mother made the syrup from the first fruits of summer. I whipped the cream”—thus ensuring that anyone in the house who was trying to sleep was awakened—“sliced the strawberries, and put it all together for you.”
“Friends and enemies,” she said. I couldn’t tell if it was a good thing or a bad thing. “Bitter and sweet. And the fruits of the earth. I accept.”
And she ate with the manners and speed of a starving stray dog as Aiden held the plate for her. She took it from him and licked it clean before handing it back. Her face was covered with whipped cream and syrup, and she wiped her hands on her white shift, leaving streaks of pink behind.
“Interesting,” she said. “I liked it.” She looked pointedly at the glass in my hand.
Aiden shook his head at me, so I didn’t say anything. Finally, she sighed, rolled her eyes, and said, “What do you have in your glass?”
“My friend’s grandmother’s bourbon,” I told her.
She had been reaching for the glass, but she hesitated. “I do not know bourbon.”
“Whiskey,” said Aiden. “Local variety.”
She reached for it again and I gave it to her. She said, suspiciously, “This has some magic within.”
“Huh,” I said. “It was more than just alcohol. I had some this morning and it took the ache out of my muscles. The woman who crafted it gave it to her granddaughter. She made it specifically for her family.”
Tilly sniffed it warily, then tipped the glass so she could touch her tongue to it. She smacked her lips together a couple of times. “Good,” she said. “Very good.” Then she drank the whole of it in one swallow.
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