Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  “Mercy?”

  “I don’t know what the crossed bones mean.” Other than bad news. “Zee tells me it is magical but probably not fae magic.” Zee was out, anyone who cared to would know that he was fae, which was the reason that the garage was mine now, instead of his. There was a lot of prejudice against the fae. “He has a few contacts who’ll take a look at it for me. I know a few other people I can ask, too.” Adam had a witch on the pack’s payroll for cleanup. She was good, but it would cost me a lot to hire her if Uncle Mike and Stefan didn’t know what it was. This was shaping up into a real macaroni-and-cheese month. “However, none of them will come within a hundred miles of a police investigation. Do you have anyone on the KPD who is an expert in magic?”

  Tony held my gaze for a minute before giving up with a sigh. “Hell no, Mercy. You should have seen the brass’s faces when they watched that video—” He stopped and gave me a guilty look. It was a video of me killing Tim ... and all the stuff before that. He shrugged nervously and looked away. “There are a few who know something about fae or werewolves, but ... if they know anything more, they keep it quiet for fear of losing their jobs.”

  He sighed and came back into the shop. “Go ahead,” he told Zee. “Let’s watch Tim’s cousin paint the shop.”

  Once the two shadowy people moved fully onto the parking lot, Courtney was unmistakable. Instead of watching the whole process, Zee fast-forwarded it until the pair walked off with bags of empty spray-paint cans almost two hours later. He stopped the images when Courtney was close to the camera and impossible to mistake, her pretty, rounded face hard and angry. Zee flipped back and forth a little until we got a clear view of her companion’s face, too.

  The security system hadn’t been in place long, but Zee loved gadgets. He must have spent some time playing with this one.

  “It’s Courtney all right ... I don’t remember her last name,” I told Tony. “I don’t recognize the man at all. If it were Bright Future, there’d have been more people.”

  “It’s personal,” Tony agreed grimly. “You are going to want to give me those disks and file charges so we can give her some time to cool off. She’s not going to stop harassing you anytime soon unless someone heads her off at the pass. It’s safer for everyone if it’s the police and not the werewolves or the fae.”

  Zee ejected the disk and handed it to Tony.

  Tony frowned at it a moment. “I’m not worried about the kids, Mercy. But there’s something about those bones and that guy that is sending my old radar into fits. If that’s not a death threat, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. You stick close to that werewolf boyfriend of yours for a while.”

  I gave him a martyred sigh. “Why do you think Zee is still here? I suspect I’m not going to get a moment to myself for the next year, at least.”

  “Yeah,” he said, a smile lighting his eyes. “It’s tough when people care about you.”

  Zee made a sound that might have been a laugh. He covered it by saying sourly, “Not that she makes it easy on them to watch over her. You just wait. All she’s going to do for the next few weeks is complain, complain, complain.”

  3

  WORD HAD GOTTEN OUT THAT I WAS BACK IN THE SHOP and my regular customers started stopping in to express their sympathy and support. The graffiti only made things worse. By nine I was hiding in the garage, with the big overhead doors shut, even though that meant that the garage was hot and stuffy, and my electric bill was going to suffer.

  I left Zee to handle the customers, poor customers. Zee is not a people person. Years ago, when I first came to work here, his nine-year-old son was in charge of the front desk and everyone was properly grateful.

  I spent most of the morning trying to figure out the troubles of a twenty-year-old Jetta. Nothing more fun than sorting through intermittent electrical problems, as long as you have a year or two to waste. The owner got off her job at three in the morning and twice had gone to start her car and found the battery drained though the lights were off.

  There was nothing wrong with the battery. Or the alternator. I was upside-down in the driver’s seat, with my head up the Jetta’s dash, when a sudden thought came to me. I rolled over and looked at the shiny new CD player in the ancient car, which had held only a cassette player when it had last visited here.

  When Zee came in, I was using Power Words to describe service techs who didn’t know how to tie their own shoes but felt free and easy meddling in one of my cars. I’d been taking care of this Jetta for as long as I’d been working on cars, and felt a special affection for it.

  Zee blinked at me a couple of times to hide his amusement. “We could give your bill to the place that put her stereo in.”

  “Would they pay for it?” I asked.

  Zee smiled. “They would if I took it in.” Zee took a personal interest in our customers’ cars, too.

  We locked up for lunch and went to our favorite taco wagon for authentic Mexican tacos. That meant no cheese or iceberg lettuce, but cilantro, lime, and radishes instead—a more-than-fair trade in my view.

  The wagon was parked in a lot next to a Mexican bakery just across the cable bridge over the Columbia River, putting it in Pasco, but just barely. Some wagons are step vans, but this one was a small trailer laden with whiteboards that listed the menu with prices.

  The sweet-faced woman who worked there spoke barely enough English to take orders—which probably didn’t matter because there were very few English-only speakers among her patrons. She said something and patted my hand when I paid—and when I checked the bag to make sure the little plastic cups of salsa were there, I saw she’d added a couple of extra of my favorite tacos in our bag. Which proved that everyone, even people who couldn’t read the newspaper, knew about me.

  Zee drove us to the park on the Kennewick side of the river, where there were waterfront picnic tables for us to eat at. I sighed as we walked along the river’s edge between the parking lot and the tables. “I wish it hadn’t made the papers. How long before everyone forgets, and I don’t get any more pitying looks?”

  Zee grinned wolfishly at me. “I’ve told you before; you need to learn Spanish. She congratulated you on killing him. And she knows a few other men who could benefit from your efforts.” He picked a table and sat down.

  I sat down across from him and set the bag between us. “She did not.” I don’t speak Spanish, but everyone who lives in the Tri-Cities for long picks up a few words—besides she hadn’t said very much, even in Spanish.

  “Maybe not the last part of it,” agreed Zee, pulling out a chicken taco and squeezing one of the lime segments over it. “Though I saw it in her face. But she did say, ‘Bien hecho.’”

  I knew the first word, but he made me ask for the last, waiting until curiosity forced the words out of my mouth. “Which means? Good—”

  “Good job.” His white teeth sank into the tortilla.

  Stupid. It was stupid to let other people’s opinions matter, but having someone else who didn’t view me as a victim cheered me up immensely. After pouring green hot sauce over my goat taco, I ate with a renewed appetite.

  “I think,” I told Zee, “that I’ll go to the dojo tonight after I get done with work.” I’d already missed Saturday’s early-morning session.

  “It should be interesting to watch,” Zee said, which was as close as he could come to lying. He had no desire to watch a bunch of people working themselves up into a noxious puddle of sweat and fatigue (his words). He must have been elected to be my bodyguard for a little longer than just the workday.

  SOMEONE HAD TALKED TO THEM ALL. I COULD SEE IT IN the casual way they greeted me as I walked into the dojo. Muscles in Sensei Johanson’s jaw twitched when he first saw me, but he led us through the opening exercises and stretches with his usual sadistic thoroughness.

  By the time we started sparring, the muscles in my lower back, which had been tense for the last week, were loose and moving well. After the first two bouts, I was relaxed and settled into my us
ual love-hate relationship with my third opponent, the devastatingly powerful brown belt who was the bully of the dojo. He was careful, oh so careful that Sensei never saw him do it, but he liked to hurt people ... women. In addition to the full-contact part of Sensei’s chosen form, Lee Holland was the other reason I was the only woman in the advanced class. Lee wasn’t married, for which I was glad. No woman deserved to have to live with him.

  I actually liked to spar with him because I never felt guilty about leaving bruises behind. I also enjoyed the frustrated look in his eyes as his skilled moves (his brown belt justly outranked my own purple) constantly failed to connect as well as they should.

  Today there was something else in his eyes when he looked at the stitches on my chin, a hot edge of desire that seriously creeped me out. He was turned on that I had been raped. Either that or that I’d killed someone. I preferred the latter but, knowing Lee, it was probably the former.

  “You are weak,” he told me, whispering so no one else could hear.

  I’d been right about what had excited his interest.

  “I killed the last person who thought that,” I said, and front kicked him hard in the chest. Usually, I tempered my speed to something more humanly possible. But his eyes made me quit playing human. I’m not supernaturally strong, but in the martial arts, speed counts, too.

  I was moving at full tilt when I stepped around him while he was still off balance. Tournament martial arts have two opponents facing each other, but our style encourages us to strike from the back or the side—keeping the enemies’ weapons facing the wrong way. I stepped hard on the back of his knee, forcing him to drop to the floor. Before he could respond, I hopped back three feet to give him a chance to get up, this being only sparring and not a death match.

  Our dojo did some grappling, but not much. Shi Sei Kai Kan is all about putting your opponent down fast and moving on to the next guy. It was developed for warfare, when a soldier might be facing multiple opponents. Grappling left you vulnerable to attack from another opponent. And I had no desire to get up close and personal with Lee.

  He roared with humiliation-charged rage and came for me. Block and block, twist and dodge, I kept him from contacting me.

  Someone called out sharply, “Sensei! Check out Lee’s fight.”

  “Enough, Lee,” Sensei called from the far side of the dojo, where he’d been working with someone. “That’s enough.”

  Lee didn’t appear to hear him. If I hadn’t been so much faster than him, I’d have been hurt already. As it was, I made sure he couldn’t connect any of his hits. For a while, at least, until I got cocky and overconfident.

  I fell for a sham move with his right hand, while he slammed me in the diaphragm and laid me out on the floor with his left. Ignoring my lack of breath as much as I could, I rolled and stumbled to my feet. And as I rolled, I saw that Adam was standing in the doorway in a business suit. He had his arms folded on his chest as he waited for me to deal with Lee.

  So I did. I thought it was Adam’s presence that gave me the idea. I’d spent some time at his dojo—in his garage—practicing a jumping, spinning roundhouse kick. It was developed as a way to knock an opponent off his horse, a sacrificial move that the foot soldier would not expect to survive. Mounted warriors had more value as a weapon than foot soldiers, so the sacrifice would be worth it. In modern days, the kick is mostly for demos, used in combat with another skilled person on the ground it is generally too slow, too flashy, to be useful. Too slow unless you happened to be a part-time coyote and supernaturally fast.

  Lee would never expect me to try it.

  My heel hit Lee’s jaw, and he collapsed on the floor almost before I’d decided to use the move. I collapsed right next to him, still fighting for breath from his hit to my diaphragm.

  Sensei was beside Lee, checking him out almost before I landed. Adam put his hand on my abdomen and pulled my legs straight to facilitate breathing.

  “Pretty,” he said. “Too bad you pulled it; if anyone deserved to lose his head ...” He didn’t mean it as a joke. If he’d said it with a hair more heat, I’d have been worried.

  “Is he all right?” I tried to ask—and he must have understood.

  “Knocked out cold, but he’ll be fine. Not even a sore neck for his trouble.”

  “I think you’re right,” Sensei said. “She pulled it, and angled her foot perfectly for a tournament hit.” He held Lee still as the big man moaned and started to stir.

  Sensei looked at me and frowned. “You were stupid, Mercy. What is the first rule of combat?”

  By this time I could talk. “The best defense is fast tennis shoes,” I said.

  He nodded. “Right. When you noticed he was out of control—which I’m sure was about two full minutes at least before I did, because I was helping Gibbs with his axe kick—you should have called for help, then gotten away from him. There was no point in letting this continue until someone got hurt.”

  From the sidelines, Gibbs, the other brown belt, said, “She’s sorry, Sensei. She just got her directions confused. She kept running the wrong way.”

  There was a general laugh as tension dispersed.

  Sensei guided Lee though a general check to make sure nothing was permanently damaged. “Sit out for the rest of the lesson,” he told Lee. “Then we’ll have a little talk.”

  When Lee got up, he didn’t look at me or anyone else, just took up a low-horse stance with a wall at his back.

  Sensei stood up, and I followed suit. He looked at Adam.

  Who bowed, fist to hand and eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses he hadn’t been wearing when I’d first glimpsed him in the doorway. Most of the werewolves I know carry dark glasses or wear hats that can shadow their eyes.

  “Adam Hauptman,” he said. “A friend of Mercy’s. Just here to observe unless you object.”

  Sensei was an accountant in real life. His day job was working for an insurance firm, but here he was king. His eyes were cool and confident as he looked at Adam.

  “The werewolf,” he said. Adam was one of five or six of his pack who had chosen to come out to the public.

  “Hai,” agreed Adam.

  “So why didn’t you help Mercy?”

  “It is your dojo, Sensei Johanson.” Sensei raised an eyebrow, and Adam’s sudden smile blazed out. “Besides, I’ve seen her fight. She’s tough, and she’s smart. If she had thought she was in trouble, she’d have asked for help.”

  I glanced around as I rolled over and stood up, as good as new except for the pretty bruises I was going to have on my belly. Zee was gone. He wouldn’t have lingered, with Adam to take over guard duty. His nose had wrinkled at the smell of sweaty bodies when we’d come in—he’d been lucky it was relatively cool this fall. In full summer, the dojo smelled from a block away, at least it did to my nose. To me the scent was strong but not unpleasant, but I knew from the comments of my fellow karate students that most humans disliked it almost as much as Zee did.

  Drama over, Adam went back to the sidelines, loosening his tie and pulling his suit jacket off as a concession to the heat. Sensei had us do three hundred side kicks (Lee was called from his position of disgrace to participate) first to the left, then to the right. We all counted them off in Japanese—though I suspected if a native speaker had dropped in, they might’ve had difficulty understanding what we were saying.

  The first hundred were easy, muscles warm and limber from earlier calisthenics; the second ... not so much. Somewhere about 220, I lost myself in the burning ache until it was almost a shock when we stopped and switched sides. Wandering through the ranks of students (there were twelve of us tonight) Sensei adjusted people’s form as he saw necessary.

  You could tell those of us who were more serious because our two hundredth kicks looked just like our first. Students less diligent lost height and form as exhaustion took its toll. There were still some students in good form on the three hundredth kick—but not me.

  AFTER CLASS, PEOPLE WERE TOO BUSY TRYI
NG NOT TO stare at the werewolf—all the while getting in a good look—to pay any attention to me. I changed in the bathroom and took my time, out of courtesy, so that they would all have time to change in the anteroom in front of the dojo before I came out.

  Sensei was waiting for me when I emerged.

  “Good job, Mercy,” he told me with an emphasis that told me he wasn’t talking about Lee. It was odd that the words he had for me were the same ones, in a different language, that the woman in the taco wagon had used, meant the same way.

  “If it hadn’t been for this”—I tilted my head to indicate the dojo—“I would have died that night instead of my attacker.” I gave him a formal bow, two fists down. “Thank you for your teaching, Sensei.”

  He returned my bow, and we both ignored the suspicious watering of eyes.

  Adam was waiting near the front door carefully examining his fingernails. He had chosen to be amused by all the people staring at him, which was a good thing. He had a temper. Sweat darkened his Egyptian-cotton shirt, so it clung to the round lines of his shoulders and arms, announcing to anyone that he was a hard body.

  I took a deep breath to cool my jets and introduced him around. Only Lee met his eyes for longer than a moment, and at first I thought Adam was going to lose it. He gave Lee a scary smile. I was afraid of what he—either he—was going to say, so I grabbed Adam’s arm and tugged him out the door.

  If he’d wanted to, Adam could have shaken me off, but he went along with it. I hadn’t brought my car because the dojo was just a short hike across cheatgrass and down the railroad tracks from my shop. Adam’s SUV wasn’t there either.

  “Did you drive a different car?” I asked in the parking lot.

  “No, I had Carlos drop me off after work so I could walk back with you to your shop.” Carlos was one of his wolves, one of three or four who worked for him at his security business, but not one I knew well. “I remember you told me you liked to cool down on the walk back.”