“Hello, dear,” she said. “I’m afraid we’re closed today. Did you need something?”
She was fae. I could smell it on her—earth and forest and magic with a touch of something burning, air and salt water. I’d never smelled the like, and I’ve met two of the Gray Lords who rule the fae.
Most fae smell to me like one of the elements the old alchemists claimed made up the universe—earth, air, fire, and water. Never more than one. Not until this woman.
Her faded hazel eyes smiled into mine.
“Is Phin around?” I said. “Who are you? I haven’t seen you here before.” I wasn’t a regular customer; maybe she worked with Phin all the time. But I was betting she didn’t. If she’d helped often, I’d have smelled her in the store the first time I’d come here. I would have remembered if I’d caught her scent.
Lots of things scare me—like vampires, for instance. Since I’ve become more intimately acquainted with them, they scare me even more than they used to. I know that they can kill me. But I’ve killed one and helped to kill two others.
The fae . . .
In the most terrifying horror films, you never see what is killing people. I know that’s because the unknown is far scarier than anything some makeup or special-effects person can come up with. The fae are like that, their true faces concealed behind other forms—and designed to blend in with the human race and hide what they truly are.
This sweet-faced person who looked like someone’s grandmother might be one of those who ate children who were lost in the woods, or drowned young men who trespassed in her forest. Of course, it was possible that she might be one of the lesser or gentler fae—just as she looked. But I didn’t think so.
I’m smarter than Snow White: I wouldn’t be eating any apples she gave me.
She ignored my questions—fae don’t give out their true names—and said, “Are you a friend of his? You’re shivering. I don’t suppose it would hurt anything if you came in and sat down a bit to warm up. I’m just helping straighten out the books while Phin is gone.”
“Gone?” I wasn’t going into that shop alone with her. Instead, I pounded her with the kind of questions any customer . . . okay, any obsessive customer would ask. “Where is he? Do you know how I can get in touch with him? Why isn’t the store open?”
She smiled. “I don’t know where he is at the moment.” Another evasion. She might know that he was in the basement, for instance, but not exactly where he was standing. “He’ll probably let me know when he gets a chance to call me. Who should I tell him came asking after him?”
I looked into her guileless eyes and knew that Tad had been right to be worried. All I had was Phin’s unresponsive phone, a nasty neighbor, and the store closed—but my instincts were clamoring. Something had happened to Phin, something bad.
I didn’t know him well, but I liked him. And, going by the phone call Tad had received, whatever had happened to him was tied to the book he’d loaned to me. Which made it my fault. Maybe if I hadn’t kept it to read this past month, he’d still be safe in his store.
I smiled back at her, a polite smile. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll stop in another time.”
She snapped her fingers. “Wait just a minute. My grandson told me that he’d loaned a nice young woman a rather valuable book that she should be returning soon.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Right now I’m interested in a first British edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.” Not really a lie. It would be interesting, and I didn’t tell her I was trying to buy one. I don’t know if the fae can figure out if someone is lying as well as the werewolves can, but any group that has a prohibition against lying that is as stringent as the fae’s probably has a method to detect when it happens.
“He didn’t tell me about anything like that,” she said suspiciously, as if he would have normally.
But she had lost the chance to convince me that she was Phin’s assistant when she allowed my comment that she was a stranger to his store to stand.
“I suspect it’ll take him a while,” I told her. “I just stopped by to check in with him. I’ll come back another time.” I stopped the “thanks” that was on the tip of my tongue and substituted “Bye, now” and a casual wave.
I felt her eyes on my back until I was hidden behind rows of cars, and I was glad I’d parked the car a long way from the mall. Sam moved his head off my seat without raising any part of his body enough that he might be seen through the windows. He was hiding.
I looked at him and glanced at the bookstore as I cruised past it on the way out of the parking lot. The woman was back behind the counter going over something that looked like an account book.
Coincidences happen a lot less often in real life than they do in the movies.
“Sam,” I said, “are you staying out of sight of a fae? One that smells like all the elements at once?”
He raised his chin and dropped it.
“Is she one of the good guys?” I asked.
He made a gesture that was neither yes nor no.
“Trouble?”
He snorted affirmative.
“Damn it.”
I pulled over at a gas station, parked the car, and called Warren, Adam’s third in the pack and my friend.
“Hey, Warren,” I said when he answered. “Does Kyle have a safe in that monstrosity he lives in?” I could put the book in Adam’s safe—and if it weren’t fae who were looking for it, I’d feel relatively confident with it hidden and surrounded by werewolves. But Warren’s human boyfriend’s house would be a much less likely spot to leave it and nearly as safe.
“Several.” Warren’s voice was dry. “I’m sure he’d be delighted to loan you one. You storin’ blackmail material now, Mercy?” There were noises in the background of his phone, people and the kind of echoing you get in a really big building.
“Wouldn’t that be something,” I said. “How much do you suppose Adam would pay to keep an X-rated video of him off the Internet?”
Warren laughed.
“Yeah,” I said sadly, “that’s what I think, too. So no riches in my future, and no blackmail either. Can you or Kyle meet Sam and me at Kyle’s house sometime soon?”
“I’m on guard duty right now, but I bet Kyle is home. He doesn’t always answer the house phone. Do you have his cell number?”
Warren worked for his boyfriend—I know, it’s an awkward thing, but Warren hadn’t exactly been making rent at the Stop and Rob he’d worked at before. Kyle’d shaken a few trees, bribed a few officials (probably) and maybe blackmailed more, and gotten Warren a private detective’s license. Warren guarded clients and did quiet investigations for Kyle’s law firm.
“I have it,” I told him. “Are you at Wal-Mart?”
“Nope, grocery store. Wal-Mart was an hour ago.”
“Poor baby,” I said sympathetically.
“Nope,” he said, his voice soft. “I’m doin’ something useful. This lady deserves to feel safe—though lots of folks seem to think I’m responsible for her black eye.”
“You’re tough,” I said unsympathetically. “You can handle a few nasty looks.” Being a gay werewolf for a hundred years gave Warren a skin so thick it might as well be armor. Not much ruffled his feathers except for Kyle.
“I’m kinda hoping her soon-to-be-ex shows up,” he said softly; I thought so she wouldn’t hear him. “I’d like to get the opportunity to introduce myself to him.”
* * *
KYLE BROOKS’S HOUSE IS IN THE WEST RICHLAND HILLS, where the rich folks live. Huge and yet somehow delicately designed, it settles in among its neighbors like a sly cat among poodles. The size is right, but it’s more graceful and comfortable in the desert light than the rest of them. Divorce lawyering, at least in Kyle’s case, pays very well.
I parked the Rabbit on the street, let Sam out, and got the book . . . and the walking stick that was lying beside it.
“Hello,” I told it. It didn’t do anything magical or warm in my hands,
but somehow, it felt smug.
I bumped the Rabbit’s door closed with a hip and trotted all the way up to Kyle’s front door. The significance of the book had just entered a whole new dimension, once the old woman at the bookstore had mentioned it. So I held it with both hands and tucked the walking stick under my arm.
When I got to the front door, I couldn’t ring the bell.
Sam saw my dilemma and caught the doorbell with a gentle nudge of one claw. Kyle must have been right by the door, as he’d promised when we talked, because when he opened the door, he was face-to-fang with Sam.
He didn’t even flinch. Instead, he cocked a hip, made a kissy face, then smiled seductively, turning an ordinary pair of jeans and a purple wifebeater into brothel-wear.
“Hey, darling,” he told Sam. “I bet you’re gorgeous in man shape, hmm?”
“It’s Sam,” I told Kyle dryly. And even though I knew it would just stir up trouble, I had to warn him again because I really liked him. “You need to be careful about whom you flirt with among the wolves—you might get more than you bargain for.”
Kyle could sometimes have a real chip on his shoulder—getting disinherited, then living in a conservative community has had that effect on more than one gay man—and Kyle could take flaming (and bitchy) to an art form when he thought it would make someone who disapproved of him uncomfortable. Luckily, he chose to take my warning in the spirit it was offered.
In an entirely different kind of voice, he said, “Love you, too, Mercy.” He dropped the flirtatious act with a speed and completeness that many an Oscar winner would envy. “Hey, Samuel. Sorry, didn’t recognize you with all the fur.” He looked at what I held. “You want to put a towel in my safe?”
“It’s a very special towel,” I told him as I ducked around him and into the house. “Dried Elvis’s hair on the day of the last concert.”
“Oooh,” he said, stepping back so Sam could follow me. He shut the door and, almost as an afterthought, turned the dead bolt. “In that case, you certainly need it someplace secure. You want the big safe with all the electronics or something better hidden?”
“Better hidden would be cool.” I didn’t think that electronics were going to work against the fae.
He led the way through the house, up the stairs, and past his library—one side filled with beautiful leather-clad law books, the other with tattered paperbacks that included Nora Roberts’s complete works. I took two steps and stopped, backed up, and looked in the library again.
If the fae were after the book, and they had some way of tracking it—certainly they would already have it. Instead, it had spent the better part of two days in my Rabbit wrapped in a towel.
Kyle came back and looked at the library, too. “It’s a book, is it? You’re thinking of hiding it in plain sight?” He shook his head. “We can do that, but if someone is looking for a book, the first place they’ll look—after the big safe—is the library. I have a better idea.”
So I followed him to a bedroom. It was painted dark blue with black splatters, and the twin-sized bunk beds had comforters with Thomas the Tank Engine chugging around on his track—not exactly something I expected to ever see in Kyle’s house. I knew that he never had family visit, so it couldn’t be for a nephew. Kyle continued into the bathroom so I did, too. Sam’s claws clicked on the slate floor.
Thomas continued to rule the bathroom, too. A plastic toothbrush holder in the shape of a train sat next to the sink, and a set of towels embroidered with Thomas and his friends hung from towel racks shaped like train tracks.
Kyle opened a cupboard next to the sink to reveal two empty shelves and one filled with towels of various colors.
“Give me that,” he said, so I handed him the book.
He knelt on the floor and unfolded the towel, repositioned the book, and folded the towel in the same way as all the other towels. He handed it back to me, and I put it on the bottom of one of the stacks.
Kyle looked at my work and straightened the stack. The book towel looked just like the ones around it.
One thing pretending to be another.
For some reason I thought about the incident with the bounty hunter this morning. The bounty hunter—and the fae armed with a plastic gun loaded with silver bullets just like Kelly Heart’s gun had been. Because he’d been hunting werewolves.
Maybe . . . maybe that was not what the fae had been hunting. Adam had suggested the silver ammunition might have been used only to match Kelly Heart’s, that the shooter might have been after any of us and not just a werewolf. I’d thought he was just trying to draw the spotlight off himself and keep me from worrying about him. But what if he was right? What if the fae had been after me?
I was probably being paranoid. The world didn’t revolve around me, after all. Just because this past year I’d had vampires, fae, and werewolves try to kill me at various times didn’t mean someone was after me at present. The old woman in the bookstore hadn’t known who I was. Surely, if the fae were trying to kill me, she’d have recognized my face. Maybe the fae were willing to kill for the book I’d just hidden in my friend’s home. Warren wasn’t always here, and Kyle was just human. Maybe I shouldn’t leave it here. Maybe I was paranoid and seeing conspiracies where there were none.
“Hey, Kyle?” I said.
He looked at me.
“You don’t risk anything for that book,” I told him. “If someone comes and threatens you—just give it to them.”
He raised a well-groomed eyebrow. “Why don’t you give it to them? Whoever ‘them’ is.”
I sorted through a number of answers, but finally said, “That’s just it. I don’t really know who ‘them’ is or why they want that book. Or really if they want the book.” Probably I was overreacting to the whole thing, and Phin would call me in a couple of days and ask for his book back. Probably the bounty-hunter incident was just what everyone thought it was—a publicity-hungry producer. And the armed fae was . . . My imagination failed me. But there could be an explanation that had nothing to do with me or the book.
I couldn’t really see someone just killing me outright like that for the book. Wouldn’t they at least approach me first? Ask me for it? Tell me that if I didn’t give it to them, they’d kill Phin?
Unless they’d already killed Phin.
“You okay, Mercy?” Kyle asked.
“Fine. I’m fine.”
* * *
WE WERE ON OUR WAY DOWN THE STAIRS BEFORE I finally gave in to curiosity. “Okay. Who’s the Thomas the Tank Engine fan—you or Warren?”
Kyle threw back his head and laughed. “Maybe we should have hidden it in the bathroom of the Princess room. Then you could have asked which one of us likes to sleep with a pink canopy over his head.” The grin died down. “I have guests, Mercy. Mostly divorces are messy and hurtful for everyone involved. All that hurt can explode on the wrong people. Sometimes people need a place to be safe for a while—and if there’s a pool and a hot tub in the backyard, so much the better.”
Kyle hid people in his home, children who needed to be safe.
Sam growled.
I reached down and rested my hand on his head, but Kyle didn’t seem to recognize that Sam’s reaction was a little extreme even from a wolf who loved children. No one was being hurt here and now.
“Yes”—Kyle started down the stairs—“I agree, Samuel. Those are the men I really love sticking it to in court.” He paused. “And women, too, sometimes. Abuse and violence goes both ways. Did I ever tell you about the client I had who took a contract out on her husband?”
“You mean a killing-for-hire type contract?”
He nodded. “It was a first for me, too. Who’d have thought it would happen in our little town? Killer took him out with a single shot. They’d been married for thirty-two years, and he took up with their grandson’s girlfriend. Apparently she decided divorce and the lovely settlement I’d gotten her weren’t enough. She turned herself in that afternoon. Seemed pretty happy to do so.” He
paused at the kitchen. “Would you like something to eat?”
“I think I’d better go,” I told him. “I’d rather no one realized I stopped by here.”
“Weren’t you carrying that walking stick of yours? Did you leave it in the bathroom?”
It was gone. I’d been carrying it, and I hadn’t noticed when it left. “Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “It’ll show up again when it wants to.”
He gave me a delighted smile. “That’s right. That’s what Warren said. The thing just follows you around like a puppy?”
I shrugged.
“Pretty cool.”
At the door, he hugged me and kissed my cheek. Sam gravely raised one paw like a well-trained dog, and Kyle shook the lion-sized foot without flinching.
“You take care of Mercy,” he told Sam. “I don’t know what she’s gotten herself into this time—but danger seems to be her new middle name.”
“Hey,” I objected.
Kyle looked down his nose at me. “Broken arm, concussion, sprained ankle, stitches, kidnapped . . .” He let his voice trail off. “And that’s not the end of the list, is it? You keep Samuel or someone next to you until this blows over. I don’t want to be attending your funeral, darling.”
“Fine,” I said, hoping that he wasn’t right. “I’ll be careful.”
“You just let Warren or me know if we can give you any more help.”
* * *
I DROVE TO THE BIG MALL IN KENNEWICK BECAUSE I felt a strong desire not to park somewhere isolated—and I wanted to call Tad. I had to park in Outer Mongolia because on a Saturday, that was the only place with parking spaces. But I was as far from alone as it was possible to be. Then I called Tad.
“Hey, Mercy,” he answered. “Dad told me that you were nearly involved in a shoot-out at the OK Corral in East Kennewick this morning.”
“That’s right,” I told him. “But let me tell you about the whole day and see what you think.”
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