Frost Burned mt-7

by Patricia Briggs

  “Carefully worded for a fae who doesn’t have to tell the truth,” said Asil.

  Tad turned to the old wolf coolly. “I am always careful with the truth. It is a powerful thing and deserves respect.”

  “Of course,” answered Asil. “When you are old, you will find yourself assuming that everyone else is careless with important things, too. My comment was not meant as censure; you merely surprised me.”

  “What do you see?” Adam asked Mercy, who was looking at things he couldn’t perceive.

  “Magic,” she told him. “Fae magic, old magic, and it’s crawling from the basement up to Tad’s hand like a cat seeking a treat.” She looked at Tad, and for a moment Mercy looked more fae than he did. “It likes you, but it isn’t very happy about us.”

  Tad smiled at her. “It’ll behave itself.”

  The white milk glass knob on the door turned without help, and Adam liked that no better than he liked the description Mercy had given. Magic was outside his ability to sense unless it was very strong, and he did not like things that he could not perceive.

  When Tad pulled his hand off the door, it opened and revealed dark wooden stairs that were even narrower and steeper than the ones they’d just come up. They twisted as they rose so they took up only the same amount of room as the narrow linen closet had, and Adam could only see four steps before they were out of view.

  Tad stepped in, and Adam heard the fabric of his shirt catch on a rough spot on the wood at the top of the doorway. Asil followed, and Adam urged Mercy up as soon as the old wolf’s feet disappeared from his sight.

  The passage was tight, even for Mercy, and she banged a knee on a step, winced, and stopped climbing.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, his hand on her ankle.

  “No,” she said without heat. “Not really. That was the knee I hurt in the car wreck, and there’s a ghost.”

  “A ghost?” He knew Mercy saw ghosts, but she usually didn’t tell him when she saw them. She’d once explained to him that most ghosts were only sad memories. The ones that were closer to alive were often better off if they didn’t know she could perceive them. He had a feeling that there was a story there, but he hadn’t pressed.

  “Mmm,” Mercy said. “Right in front of me. I think she’s the same one that looks out of Zee’s dining room window sometimes.”

  Adam couldn’t see anything except for Mercy’s back because of the stupid spiral staircase, but he’d probably not be able to see a ghost even if they were in an open room. “Can you get her to move?” he asked.

  “She’s a repeater, I think,” Mercy replied hesitantly.

  A repeater, he’d learned from her, was a ghost that she could see but who did not react to the real world at all, just did a certain action over and over again, usually in the same place and sometimes at the same time every day. More an impression than a remnant of a real person.

  “What is she doing?”

  “Crying.” Mercy’s voice sharpened a little, making her sound more like herself. “That’s what she does in the window, too. I wonder if she was that much of a wet blanket in real life?”

  Peripherally, Adam had been aware of Tad and Asil talking somewhere above them. But he’d been paying attention to Mercy, and so he didn’t react quickly enough when Tad called out, “Mercy, what’s the holdup? Get up here.”

  She scrambled up the stairs, heedless of the ghost. It was too late to do anything, so Adam hurried behind her. He saw nothing unusual and didn’t feel so much as a shiver. He emerged right on her heels to find Mercy tight-lipped and shaky.

  “Mercy, are you okay?” he asked, and she looked at him and solemnly shook her head.

  “I was wrong. It wasn’t a repeater.” She rubbed her hands and glanced behind him. “But she can’t get in here.”

  “Who is she?” asked Asil.

  “What does it mean that she wasn’t a repeater?” Adam didn’t like the way Mercy looked—too pale, and there was sweat on her forehead.

  “It means that she tried to hitch a ride.” Mercy hugged herself and bounced on the balls of her feet.

  “Who is she?” Asil asked again.

  “Give us a minute,” snarled Adam, though he stopped himself from looking at Asil and escalating matters further.

  The other wolf’s chest rumbled warningly.

  “Sorry,” Adam said with an effort that cost him. “Mercy. Is there anything I can do?”

  She shook her head. “No. I’m okay. I’ve just never had that happen before. She just clung to me, and I couldn’t tell her to go away.” She shivered. “But Zee has this place barricaded with magic, and she couldn’t follow me here.”

  She’d been in danger, and Adam had been right there and helpless. He had been leaving her alone because she didn’t like “cuddling in public” much, and in this state, she had no choice. But when her teeth started chattering, he hugged her to him. She was icy cold and leaned into him. She was all muscle and bone—and she’d be offended if she knew he thought of her as fragile. Without the formidable will that drove her, she was … small.

  Her teeth quit chattering almost right away. She looked over Adam’s shoulder, and said, “She’s a ghost, Asil. I’ve seen her a few times hanging out around this house.”

  “Our house is haunted?” Tad sounded taken aback.

  “She doesn’t bother you,” Mercy said defensively. She stepped away, and Adam let her go. “I’d have told you about it if she were bothering you.”

  Crisis apparently averted, Adam looked around. The room was narrow and long, wide enough, if barely, for three people to stand shoulder to shoulder. The floor was carpeted with layers of Persian rugs that were worth a not-so-small fortune.

  Unmatched bookcases lined the wall on one of the long ways of the room, ranging from hand-carved museum pieces to boards separated by cinder blocks. The top two shelves of each held a selection of unpainted metal toys. The rest of the shelves were filled with various sharp-bladed weapons. The books, and there were a lot of them, were piled on the floor on the other side of the room. The wall directly across from the doorway they’d entered was entirely covered by an enormous mirror.

  “Could you shut the door, Mercy?” Tad asked, walking up to the mirror. “I don’t activate the mirror without the door closed.”

  Adam got to the door before Mercy could and closed the ghost out. He didn’t like it that she was still obediently following orders, although this time, he thought, Tad hadn’t meant it like that. Tad would know that giving Adam or Asil orders, under these circumstances, might be a bad idea, and so he’d told Mercy.

  Mercy touched the door after Adam shut it. “There’s some kind of magic,” she said.

  “Protections,” Tad agreed, without turning from the mirror. “Useful to keep out ghosts and spies.”

  He knocked three times on the mirror, and said,

  Spiegel spieg’le finde,Vaters Bild und Stimme,

  in der Tiefe Deiner Sinne, seiner Worte seiner Form,

  meiner Worte meiner Form, führe, leite, führ’ zusammen,

  deiner Wahrheit Bindeglied,

  verbinde unsere Wirklichkeiten,

  Wesen und Natur im Lied!

  “Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” Asil murmured when Tad quit speaking.

  “Shh,” said Tad. “This isn’t that mirror. That mirror broke, and good riddance to it. Let’s not give this one ideas, please.”

  Adam couldn’t tell if he was serious or not.

  After a few minutes, during which the mirror did nothing more interesting than reflect everyone present back at it, Asil started to look at the toys on the shelves, though he kept his hands to himself. It gave him an excuse to keep his back to Adam, which Adam appreciated.

  Mercy bent down to get a better look at the books—most of them were German and old. But Adam noticed that there were a couple of newer mysteries, too—and what looked like a complete Doc Savage series, numbered one through ninety-six, in paperback. Mercy reached out to touch one old book, a
nd Adam’s instincts made him block her hand. “It’s not smart to touch a grumpy old fae’s things,” he said.

  “It wants me to touch it,” she explained earnestly.

  “All the more reason not to do it,” Adam told her, keeping a hold on her hand.

  A compliant prisoner, he thought, has to do whatever she is told by who—or whatever—tells her to do something. He wondered if that ghost would have given her trouble if she had been able to exert her will. He glanced at the mirror, but there was still nothing more interesting than their reflections in it. “Tad, what’s the holdup?”

  “Shh,” the young man said. “Not so loud. Someone on the other side of the mirror might overhear. He’ll come as soon as he can.”

  “There’s a lot of metal in here for a fae’s den,” murmured Asil. “And enough magic to make my nose itch.”

  “Zee is a metalsmith,” Mercy explained, leaning against Adam. Like Asil, she spoke quietly. “Iron-kissed. Siebolt Adelbertsmiter.”

  “The Dark Smith of Drontheim?” Asil was suddenly a lot more tense, his voice half-strangled.

  “That’s right,” said Tad, looking away from the mirror because Asil was more interesting. At least that was why Adam was looking at him. Fortunately, the other wolf was looking at Tad.

  “Your father is Loan Maclibhuin, the Dark Smith of Drontheim?” Asil turned to Adam, averting his eyes at the last minute. “Are you sure you want to contact Maclibhuin? Do you know what he is?”

  “He’s mellowed with age,” Mercy assured Asil before Adam could say anything. She sounded like herself. “No more killing people because they annoy him. No more making crazy weapons that will inevitably cause more problems than they solve because he had a bad day and wanted to destroy a civilization or two.”

  Tad snorted. “He likes Mercy. He’ll help us.”

  Suddenly exhausted, as much by keeping a tight rein on himself as by the events of the past few days, Adam sat down on the rug and pulled Mercy onto his lap, where she couldn’t get into trouble.

  When Mercy squeaked in surprise—though she didn’t fight him—he said, “No telling how long it will take the old fae to answer. No sense for you to stand the whole time. Your knee is bothering you.” He’d noticed that she was keeping her weight off it.

  “Car wreck, then that step,” she said, relaxing against him. “But it’s my cheekbone that really hurts. Falling from Sylvia’s apartment didn’t help.”

  “Wait a moment,” Tad said, and left them in the attic by themselves as he ran downstairs for something, closing the door behind him.

  “He left us alone in the heart of his father’s power,” said Asil.

  “That’s because I would kill you before I allowed you to do anything,” Adam assured him with an easy voice. “Tad knows that we stand with him, Mercy and I. And if you think this is the center of Zee’s power, you are very much mistaken. This is a cache, he probably has fifty of them around somewhere. Paranoid old fae.” Adam understood paranoia. It was a useful attribute if you were trying to keep the people you loved safe.

  Asil didn’t reply, which was probably a good thing. They needed more space between them before they could deal with each other safely. Tad came pounding back up the stairs with a deck of cards and a poker-chip carousel.

  Mercy drew in a breath, and Adam looked at her. There was nothing Mercy enjoyed so much as complaining to people about the idiosyncrasies of werewolves; he had always found it charming—and useful. He waited a moment, but she didn’t say anything.

  Adam put his hand on her face and turned it, gently, toward Tad. It would be better if she explained the problem to him. Until Asil and Adam had been properly introduced on Adam’s territory—such things had a very well-established protocol so that no blood was shed—Asil would be easy to offend. He and Adam had both been very careful not to pay too much attention to each other.

  “Mercy, would you tell Tad why poker is a bad idea?” he asked her.

  “Asil and Adam don’t know each other,” she said amiably. “And even if they did … poker isn’t really a good werewolf game.” She appeared to consider that a moment. “Or rather, it is too good a werewolf game. It would end with bodies.”

  Tad glanced at both wolves, one after the other. “Seven-up?” he suggested. “War? Gin rummy? I know you play gin rummy because Warren taught me to play it when I was a kid.”

  “Tell him,” Adam said to Mercy.

  “No games between two dominant wolves unless they know each other very well and have established their dominance. There was a very nasty chess match that happened in the Marrok’s pack when I was six or seven. Bran put an end to it, but not before one of the wolves ended up with a pickax in his leg.” Mercy continued instructing the uninitiated in her Mercy-matter-of-fact fashion. “Adam and Warren could play, for instance, because, though they are both dominant wolves, Adam has firmly established himself as more dominant in both their eyes. One lost game won’t make any difference. Darryl and Warren, though, are second and third in the pack hierarchy. They play CAGCTDPBT during pack gaming days, but they play on the same side. Always.”

  Tad gave Mercy an assessing look. “No poker. No gin rummy, and especially no chess if you don’t want to end up pickaxed. And I didn’t know you played CAGCTDPBT.”

  “Werewolf games,” Mercy said solemnly, “play for keeps, or go home.” She was so cute sometimes it made Adam’s heart hurt. She was also a killer CAGCTDPBT player. The pack made Mercy and him play on opposite sides to keep it fair.

  “I threw out my Go-Fish cards a long time ago.” Tad’s voice was dry. “I’m going to play some solitaire and leave the rest of you to twiddle your thumbs.”

  Exhausted, worried, and unhappy, Adam leaned against the wall and let his eyes half close in an old soldier’s trick. He wasn’t really asleep but not really awake, either. Any break in the current patterns of sound, sight, or scent would attract his attention.

  Tad sat down in front of the mirror and laid out a game of spider solitaire. He played three or four games and lost all of them—no cheating for Tad.

  Asil seemed happy to occupy himself studying Zee’s little toys as far away as he could get from Adam. The Moor wasn’t exactly what Adam had expected. Much less crazy, and also much better at the dance that kept everyone alive in a small room with two dominant wolves who were strangers to each other than a wolf of his reputation ought to be. Bran usually knew what he was doing, and that seemed to be true when he sent Asil as well.

  Mercy wasn’t sleeping, but she lay quietly in his lap. She liked to cuddle when they were alone. He decided to enjoy it because it settled the beast inside him a little. The wolf was convinced that as long as he held her, nothing could touch her.

  Neither could he. Not for long.

  Mercy put her hand on Adam’s, and he could feel the silver go to work on his skin. He didn’t react because he craved her touch more than he minded the burn—and she’d taken it for him, hadn’t she? So maybe part of it was guilt, feeling that he deserved to hurt because he’d brought harm to her.

  She leaned forward, reading the titles on the books again. He opened his eyes a bit more to make sure she didn’t try for that book that called to her again.

  Zee had a modern college text on metallurgy right next to a very old book bound in leather with a title that was nearly indecipherable, between the faded gold embossing and the old German script. And just out of easy reach was the little green linen-bound book with the warped cover that had fascinated her earlier. Mercy shifted restlessly then froze, jerking her hands away from him.

  “I’ve burned you,” she whispered, horrified.

  Tad looked up from dealing another round, and Asil glanced their way—and then returned his attention to the fae weapons on the shelves.

  “I’m a werewolf,” Adam said softly. “It won’t kill me.”

  She frowned at him, and he closed his eyes again. “It’s all right, Mercy. It’s already healed.” He wanted to tell her not to worry, but then
maybe she wouldn’t. Not because she chose to follow his advice but because of the damned fae artifact that made her obedient. An obedient Mercy because she had no choice—that was an abomination.

  She curled up, tucking her hands in where they couldn’t accidentally touch him. She closed her eyes, too—he knew because he had only mostly shut his.

  The better to see you with, my dear, said the Big Bad Wolf.

  He also saw something else. Adam had a habit of keeping track of things in his environment—situational awareness. It had saved his butt more than once. He was especially aware of things that could be used as weapons.

  One of the blades on the shelves was moving. He didn’t catch it in actual motion, but when they’d first come into the room, it had been in the back corner of the bottom shelf of the bookcase nearest the mirror. Now it was in the middle of the shelf and had slid nearly off the edge.

  He wondered if it might be chasing Asil, if only very slowly.

  It was a hunting knife with a dark blade that showed just a touch of rust. The hilt was some sort of antler. When he closed his eyes a little more and turned his gaze so that the knife was in the corner of his vision, he could tell that there was some sort of runic lettering down the blade. But as soon as he looked directly at it again, the runes disappeared.

  Because Adam was carefully not-watching the blade, he noticed something was happening to the mirror.

  The corners were darkening until, gradually, it quit reflecting the room and looked more like a huge photo of a heavy, gray, silk curtain than a silver-backed glass mirror. Adam lifted his head to see it more clearly. As soon as the whole of it was dark, frost bloomed. It started in the very center of the mirror, as if it were very cold and someone was blowing on it with a warm, wet breath. A fog of ice spiderwebbed out in a crystalline sheet across the glass.

  As soon as the ice covered the entire surface, a darker line dripped down the middle of the mirror and dark, callused, long-fingered hands slid out of the glass and pulled the gray aside, sending a light snow to the rug that butted up against that end of the room.