Silver Borne mt-5

by Patricia Briggs

  I ran through the whole thing from beginning to end—leaving out only the part where I hid the book.

  When I’d finished, there was a small pause while Tad absorbed what I’d said. Then he asked, “Just what is in that book anyway?”

  “It’s a book written about the fae by someone who was fae,” I told him. “I don’t think there’s anything magical about it—or if there is, I can’t tell, and I usually can. There’s a lot of information in it and a lot of fairy tales retold from the other side.” I had to laugh. “Gave me a whole new perspective on ‘Rumplestiltskin’ and a real aversion to ever reading ‘Hansel and Gretel’ again.”

  “Nothing shocking?”

  “Not that I read. Not a whole lot that isn’t already out in the realm of folklore—though this is more organized. Particularly in regard to the variety of the fae and the fae artifacts. I suppose there could be something shocking in the part I haven’t gotten through yet—or there’s something concealed by magic or a secret code . . . Invisible ink, maybe?” My imagination failed me.

  “Let me tell Dad all of this,” Tad said. “I can’t think that there would be that much interest in that old book. Sure, it’s valuable—and there would be a desire, I think, to keep it out of the hands of the humans. But it wouldn’t be disastrous if there’s nothing in it but fairy tales not that much different from books already available . . . Wait a minute.” He paused. “Maybe that old woman in the shop was Phin’s grandmother.”

  “His grandmother? She was older, but not that old. Phin is . . .” It had been difficult to pin his age, I remembered. But he had been an adult—at least in his thirties, possibly as old as a well-preserved fifty. “Anyway, this woman was maybe early sixties, no older than that.”

  Tad cleared his throat. “If she’s fae, Mercy, it doesn’t matter how old she looks.”

  “Phin doesn’t have much fae in his background,” I said. I was certain of that. “This woman was big-time old-school Gray Lord kind of fae.”

  Tad laughed. “The woman he calls his grandmother is probably more like his great, great, great . . . Add a lot more ‘great’s to the end of it. He told me that one time, when he was a kid, she drove off a bunch of fae who were unhappy that he was so human . . . or maybe that he, a human, had a touch of fae blood at all. After that, she’d drop in now and then until she started to keep up with him just by cell phone.”

  “So she’s a good guy? You think I should talk to her? Tell her about the book and ask her where Phin is?”

  “I don’t know if this piece has any good guys or villains, Mercy,” he said. “And I certainly don’t know if the fae you saw was Phin’s grandmother or a Gray Lord. And if it was . . . there’s no surety that she’s safe to deal with. Fae are not human, Mercy. Some of them could eat their own children without anger or regret. Power motivates them more than love—if they can love. Some of them are so alone . . . You have no idea. I’ll call Dad, then get back to you.”

  He hung up.

  “Well,” I asked Sam, “excitement enough for one day? Do you want to go home?”

  He looked up at me, and I saw that he was tired, too. More tired than a day mostly running around in a car could account for. Sad, I thought suddenly.

  “Don’t worry,” I told him, bending down until my forehead was on the back of his neck. “Don’t worry, we’ll find some answers for you, too.”

  He sighed and wiggled until his muzzle was on my lap. I drove home that way.

  * * *

  I MADE MEAT LOAF—SAMUEL’S RECIPE, WHICH INCLUDED plenty of jalapeños and several other peppers. Day-old and out of the refrigerator, it could burn the skin off the roof of your mouth if you weren’t careful.

  My phone rang, and I looked at the number. I set the timer on the oven, and it was still ringing.

  “Bran,” I answered.

  “You’re playing with fire,” he said. He sounded tired.

  “How did you know I’m making Samuel’s meat loaf?”

  “Mercedes.”

  “You’re supposed to give us some time,” I told him. My stomach roiled. I needed more time to prove Sam’s ability to keep the peace.

  “I love my son,” Bran said, “but I love you, too.”

  I heard everything that he didn’t say. He’d chosen his son over me before—that was how he saw it. That was how I might have seen it at the time, too.

  “He’s not going to hurt me,” I said, looking into Sam’s white eyes. He stiffened, and I remembered to drop my gaze—though he hadn’t been making me do that after last night. Usually, once the wolf knows you’ve acknowledged he’s the boss, those kinds of things only crop up when the more dominant wolf is upset.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do, actually,” I replied. “I had a gunman break into the garage and point a gun at him, and he didn’t attack because I asked him not to—and because someone, a child, might have gotten hurt in the cross fire.”

  There was a very long pause.

  “I need you to be very clear on what is wrong,” he said.

  But I interrupted him. “No, you don’t. If I tell you that Samuel’s wolf is in charge, you will have to kill him.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Maybe if he weren’t your son, you could afford to be more lenient. Or if you hadn’t used your position as Marrok to force wolves who would rather have stayed hidden out into the open. But that lost you a lot of moral support that you haven’t recovered yet. If you loosen those rules even a little . . . well, you probably won’t lose your position—but there might be a lot of dead bodies on the ground. Maybe more than can be explained away to the humans.” I’d been doing a lot of thinking about this.

  I let that hang in the air for a little while. We needed that week to justify Sam’s reprieve to the other wolves.

  “Stay by the phone,” he said, and hung up.

  Sam looked at me and sighed, then flattened out on the floor on his side like a big fur rug.

  When the phone rang next, it was Charles, Samuel’s brother and Bran’s enforcer. “Mercy?”

  “Right here,” I answered.

  “Tell me about Samuel.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “I won’t know until you tell me, will I?”

  Was he trying to be funny? With Charles, I could never tell. Of all the Marrok’s wolves, his younger son was the most intimidating—at least to me.

  “I meant for Samuel,” I said.

  “I’m under orders,” he said, with a cool smile in his voice, “to keep the contents of our conversation to myself.”

  “All right.” I cleared my throat and took Charles through my discovery that Samuel had tried to commit suicide all the way through Kelly Heart trying to apprehend Adam.

  “He played with the children?” Charles asked.

  “Yes. I told you. Maia got on his back and rode him like a pony. It’s a good thing for him she wasn’t wearing spurs.”

  Still flat on the floor, Sam thumped it with his tail twice—otherwise, he might have been asleep.

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” I asked. “It means he has some time.”

  “Maybe,” Charles answered. “Mercy, for werewolves—all of us have different relations with our wolves.” Charles didn’t usually talk a lot, and when he did, his speech was deliberate, as if he thought through everything twice before saying anything out loud. Bran sounded that way on the phone, but Charles did it all the time, even in person.

  “Think of werewolves as conjoined twins. Some of us are quite separate, barely sharing anything at all with our wolves. Just two entities under the same skin—we all start out that way. When our human side is able to take control, wolf and man work out a . . . ‘Truce’ is the wrong word. ‘Balance’ is better. And just as our human soul loses parts of what it was to be human, our wolf loses part of what it means to be wolf.”

  “So Samuel’s wolf isn’t dangerous?”

  “No,” he said quickly, and Sam picked up his head, rolled up
to his belly, and took a more sphinxlike stance. “Never think that. He’s not whole anymore—he isn’t equipped to be in charge. Like a conjoined twin, he shares his heart and head with Samuel. And if he succeeds in wresting complete control from Samuel, or if Samuel lets him do it, that heart will quit beating.”

  I dropped to my knees and put a hand on Sam’s shoulder because the pain in Charles’s voice found its echo in mine.

  “I doubt he’ll survive for very long that way—do you hear me, wolf?”

  Sam’s upper lip curled, showing teeth.

  “He does,” I said.

  “He’ll grow tired and more hungry than usual. He’ll slowly lose the chains that Samuel forged to control him, but all that will be left is a ravenous beast. A new wolf, a whole wolf in charge, kills easily and often, but usually there is a reason for it, even if that reason is that he doesn’t like the way his victim smelled. What will be left of Samuel will kill and destroy until he drops dead.”

  “How do you know?” Charles was only a couple of centuries old. He hadn’t ever lived in a place outside of the Marrok’s control, and the Marrok killed the wolves who lost control. But he sounded absolutely certain.

  “Let’s say that, like you, I once had a friend I wished to help, and I kept him out of sight of my father in a place he could do no harm. It would have been kinder to kill him from the first.”

  My fingers sank into Sam’s fur.

  “How long do we have?”

  “My friend was old, but not as old as Samuel. He lost his humanity over a few days, became sick and lethargic toward the end of that. I thought he was just fading—but he went into a frenzy.” He stopped speaking for a moment. “Then just dropped dead. Less than a week. I have no idea how long Samuel will last.”

  “If he’d lost it when the wolf took over?” I asked. “Like the new wolves do? He’d have been better off?” I’d been so happy that he’d been different.

  “Then he’d have lived until our father caught up with him—but you would have died along with the people in the hospital where you found him. This is better, Mercedes. But do not trust him, too much.”

  “Do you have any suggestions how I can help him?”

  “The first is to convince the wolf to allow Samuel back in the driver’s seat, if only for a short period of time.”

  “He wants to survive,” I told them both. “That’s why he took over from Samuel in the first place. If that means letting Samuel back in, he’ll do it.” I sounded much more convinced of that than I felt, but Sam sighed and gave me a tired, faint whine.

  “And then you have to convince Samuel that he wants to survive.”

  “And if I can’t? If the wolf lets Samuel out, and he still wants to kill himself?”

  “Then the wolf will have to fight for control again—or my brother dies.” Charles let out a breath of air. “All things die, Mercedes. Some just take longer than others.”

  Chapter 7

  I TOOK SAM WITH ME TO THE BOOKSTORE THAT NIGHT, which was inconvenient.

  I suppose we both could have stayed home, but I wanted in to look at Phin’s bookstore. The woman had been searching for something; maybe I could figure out what it had been. Maybe I’d find Phin there, happy and healthy. Maybe I wouldn’t sit home all night, worrying about things I couldn’t change.

  I couldn’t leave Sam by himself, not after my little talk with Charles. But he wasn’t the best partner to bring with me to break into the store.

  People would overlook a woman wandering around the Uptown mall in Richland even after most of the stores were closed. It wasn’t that late, a little after nine at night. The crime rate is relatively low in Richland—and most of what crime there is tends to be committed by gang members or teenagers. Sam . . .

  I imagined the hypothetical conversation as I drove down the interstate.

  Officer: “Tell me, did you see anything unusual last night?”

  Random witness: “There was this big white dog. Huge. And really white, stood out in the darkness like a beacon.”

  Yep. Sam made matters more difficult. So I would just act like I knew what I was doing and hope no one ever called the police to investigate.

  “I don’t know what I hope to discover in the bookstore,” I said. “There is hardly going to be a note telling me where Phin is, right? Still, it’s a start. If we don’t find anything, maybe we’ll go break into his apartment. It’s better than sitting around at home, right?”

  And the pack was meeting at Adam’s house that night. I knew why he’d called the meeting. He wanted to find out who’d been playing games with me. He’d called me to tell me what he was doing—and asked me to stay away because he hadn’t had a chance to show me how to defend myself from pack members crawling around in my head.

  I should have gone over anyway, confronted my enemies. But it was different when all your enemies could do was kill you.

  “I don’t want to stay home knowing how much of a coward I am,” I told Sam. “I should have gone to Adam’s when I saw them all arrive.”

  He grunted.

  “But the thought of them being able to make me do something I would never . . .”

  I was pretty sure that it hadn’t just been lack of opportunity that kept Adam from teaching me how to protect myself. He’d said that if he’d known what was happening at the time when whoever it was started influencing me, he could have discovered their identity. I think he planned on trying to force a confession tonight—and if he couldn’t, he would wait until they tried it again. If that was his motivation, I approved in spirit, but at the same time, I really didn’t want to wait around until someone tried to make me do their bidding again.

  I parked in the corner of the Uptown parking lot where an all-night restaurant was located. There weren’t a lot of cars there but enough that the Rabbit didn’t stand out.

  I opened Sam’s door and he sniffed the air carefully.

  “Are you scenting for the fae woman who was here today?” I asked.

  He didn’t give me any kind of answer, just shook himself and looked at me expectantly—as if he really were the dog we were pretending he was. Was he slower? Did his tail droop more than usual? Or was I letting Charles’s words make me paranoid?

  I glanced at him and was pretty sure it was both. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you aren’t right. He wasn’t quite as responsive, either, as if it took him a moment to translate words into meanings.

  I didn’t notice anyone who seemed to be watching us as we crossed the parking lot—but we were out where people could see us. All I could do was act as if I weren’t breaking into the shop. It took me two full minutes to crack the lock on the door of the bookstore, which was about one and a half minutes longer than I was comfortable standing there with my back to the parking lot and the busy street beyond. I was hopeful that someone from the street couldn’t tell that I was playing with my lockpicks instead of fumbling with a stiff lock. There was a bar that was still open about three stores over, but no one had come or gone while I struggled. Sheer good luck, something I couldn’t always count on. I was going to have to get some practice in if I kept having to break into buildings.

  The door handle turned, and I started to move on to the dead bolt, when I realized that the door had popped open when I’d unlocked the handle. Someone hadn’t engaged the dead bolt.

  I held the door for Sam, then slipped inside myself. He couldn’t shut the door—and if there was something unfriendly in the store, he was better able to deal with it.

  I turned the dead bolt and looked around. My eyesight is good in the dark, so we didn’t need to attract even more attention by turning on the light. It was darker in the store than it was outside and the windows were already tinted, so it would be hard for anyone looking to see anything but the reflection of the outside lights.

  At first I observed a neat and tidy store that smelled of incense and old books. Paper holds the memory of any strong scent, so in a used bookstore, it wasn’t uncommon to
get little trickles of food, tobacco, and perfume. I took a deep breath to see if I could find anything that stood out.

  Blood and fear and rage are a little out of the ordinary.

  I stopped where I was and sucked in several deep breaths. Each time the smell grew stronger and stronger.

  Fae glamour—a type of illusion—is strongly effective on sight, sound, taste, and touch. I’m told it is sufficient for a human sense of smell, but mine is better than that. By the third breath I smelled the sharp smell of broken wood, and the ammonia-like scent that fae magic sometimes leaves behind.

  I closed my eyes, bowed my head, and let my nose be right. My ears cleared with a pop, and when I looked up, the tidy bookcases filled with tidy books had disappeared, leaving destruction in their place.

  “Sam.” I kept my voice down, though I don’t think anyone outside would have heard me if I’d shouted. It was a reflex thing—we were sneaking around, so I needed to be quiet. “Do you smell it? The blood? There’s a glamour here. Can you break it, too? Do you see the mess the fae left behind when they searched the place?”

  He cocked an ear at me, then looked around. With a movement swifter than thought, he turned and sank his teeth into my arm.

  Maybe if I’d thought there was a chance of him attacking me, I could have gotten out of the way or defended myself somehow. Instead, I stared at him dumbly as his fangs slid through skin and into flesh. He released me almost immediately, leaving behind two clean marks that could have been a vampire bite except that they were too far apart and too big. Vampires have smaller fangs.

  Blood trickled out of one mark, then the other, dribbling down my forearm. Sam licked it clean, mostly, ignoring my surprised squeak and the way I backed away from him.

  He looked around the shop again. I clamped my arm to my mouth—I didn’t want to be bleeding anywhere in enemy territory. Witches can use blood and hair and other body parts to do nasty things. I didn’t think the fae worked quite the same way, but I didn’t want to chance it.

  I checked under the counter for tissues and found something better—a first-aid kit. It wasn’t as good as the one I had, but it was good enough to have gauze and an Ace bandage.