Fire Touched

8

Thomas had been suspiciously amiable about my request to include us in his fae lady’s meeting.

“I am,” he’d said when I’d called him, “very happy to have more security for Margaret.”

I cleared my throat. “You might not be so happy when I explain exactly why we’d like to come along.” He’d listened as I expanded on the tale of the trouble I’d caused with my little speech on the bridge.

“So,” he said when I’d finished. “You wish to come in the hopes of taking the Gray Lords by surprise—and are fairly sure that those fae you will corner are people who know the situation and have the power to make bargains.”

“Yes,” I said.

There was a little pause. “You don’t think that the Gray Lords are responsible for the threatening message sent to Hauptman’s ex-wife. Worse, you don’t think that the person, this Widow Queen, you talked to on the phone was the person responsible for the message, either.”

“She may have been one of them,” I said, “but there are others—who may or may not have a different agenda than she does. Or they want our refugee, too, but not for the same purpose. You see our problem.”

“You don’t know who wants what—and where they sit in the halls of power.” Margaret Flanagan had taken the phone. “Too many possibilities and not enough information.”

“Exactly,” I told her. “We don’t want war with the fae—and I don’t think they want war with us, either. But we won’t give them the boy, who has been a victim of the fae for a very long time. We won’t give them”—I paused, because in this instance I probably couldn’t speak for the pack—“I won’t give them Zee or his son. Ideally, the Gray Lords will decide we are too much trouble or not important enough to screw with, and they will take over and police their own. Otherwise, we’ll try to bargain with them to get them to respect our territorial boundaries.”

“Zee?” Margaret asked. “You said his name to Thomas, too, as if he were someone we should know?”

“Siebold Adelbertsmiter,” I said. “He’s had a lot of names over the years. You might know him better as the Dark Smith of Drontheim.”

There was a long pause. “You are a friend of the Dark Smith?”

“Zee is a grumpy old fae,” I said. “But he is my friend.”

She drew in a breath. “He was my father’s much-admired enemy.”

“If it helps,” I said, “when I told him your father was dead, it hit him pretty hard. I’d say the admiration went both ways.”

She laughed.

Thomas said, “Margaret is what is important.”

“We will protect her,” I said.

“All right,” he said. “But you come. You and your mate. I’ve met you, and I’ll have you at my back, but no strangers.”

“Deal,” I said.

Which is how I came to be riding shotgun instead of someone more useful like Warren or Honey—but we were hoping this wouldn’t turn into an actual battle.

Zee came, too.

I hadn’t asked him. Adam hadn’t asked him. Zee hadn’t said anything, he’d just been sitting in the backseat of Adam’s car when we were ready to leave. He wouldn’t say anything, and he wouldn’t get out. None of the other cars parked at the house would start. So, instead of being late, we drove to the hotel with him in the backseat.

Thomas and Margaret came out to meet us. The sky wasn’t quite dark, and Thomas wore gloves and a black hoodie with the hood pulled over his head. The hoodie made him look . . . smaller, and less dangerous—more like a gang member and less like a vampire.

Adam started to explain our stowaway to Thomas, but Zee got out of the car and looked at Margaret.

He frowned at the crutches and the scars on her wrists. “Your father was an honorable enemy,” he told her. “He deserved better followers. Are you as tough as your father?”

She raised her chin, but it was Thomas who said, “Tougher. They were both trapped underground in mining tunnels for decades. He died, and she survived.”

“My father was injured,” she said sharply. “I was not.”

“I did not know about this imprisonment,” Zee said. “Or I would have put a stop to it. I heard only afterward how it happened that you were trapped by those who should have cared for you.” He raised his eyes to her. “I would have broken my old enemy out of a prison he did not deserve—if only to ensure that a worthy opponent still walked the earth. For the error of my ignorance, I will do my best to make sure that his daughter walks away unharmed today.”

She looked at him. “That’s not why you came here,” she said.

“It is,” he said. “But it isn’t the only reason, nor the most important, until I saw your face. The Dragon Under the Hill lives in your face. You have his eyes. Your father was one of the few enemies I had who was capable of giving as good as he got. He fought with cunning, skill, and honor; those three qualities are seldom found together. I disagreed with him, and he annoyed me—but he was a worthy opponent. I have other reasons to speak to the Gray Lords, but your safety will be my primary concern.”

They faced off with each other, the delicate woman with her scars and her crutches, and the wiry old man with his bald patch and his potbelly.

“Say no,” said Thomas. “Sunshine, he is dangerous.”

“So am I,” she said, but gently. “So are we all, isn’t that the truth? But he is more dangerous to our enemies.” She frowned at Zee. “You aren’t what I expected from the stories.”

He glanced around the parking lot, then back at her. “This is a different time.” He shrugged—the movement a little shallower than his usual shrug, but she wouldn’t know that.

“I see,” said Margaret. “I agree to your unexpected proposal, Smith.”

“You aren’t riding in the car with him,” Thomas said.

She smiled at Thomas. “All right. We’ll take both cars.” She looked at me. “I’d like some time to talk with you.” She glanced at her vampire guardian, then at Adam. “I think we have a lot in common, and I’d like to compare notes. I had hoped we’d all have a chance to talk on the way to Walla Walla.”

“Maybe we can get together before you leave?” I asked.

She nodded gravely. “I hope so.”

“Walla Walla” was a term the Nez Percé used for a place where a stream flowed into a larger stream—or so I was told, though probably the pronunciation had changed quite a bit from the original. The most common translation was “many waters,” probably because it was both shorter and more lyrical than “where a stream flows into a bigger stream.”

Walla Walla was a town of a little over thirty thousand people, though it felt smaller than that somehow. I think it was the old-fashioned feel of the downtown district, an atmosphere invoking the days of horse and buggy or Model T cars. It was the kind of town that got voted “most friendly,” “most picturesque,” or “best place to live” on a regular basis.

Despite its many fine qualities, before the Ronald Wilson Reagan Fae Reservation was plunked down west of the town, Walla Walla was most famous for the nearby site of the Whitman Mission. There, the Protestant missionary Dr. Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa, and twelve other white people living at the mission were killed by Cayuse Indians in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Whitman was a doctor and a missionary, and he gained a reputation in the local tribes (Walla Walla, Nez Percé, and Cayuse mostly) as a spiritual leader and a man of powerful medicine. When measles swept through the Cayuse tribe, they turned to him for help he could not provide. The disaster that ensued was not, strictly speaking, the fault of either the Cayuse or the Whitmans, who were all doing what they believed to be right.

The symbolic irony of this meeting between werewolf, vampire, and fae at a hotel named after Marcus Whitman did not go over my head. I hoped our results were better than those Whitman and the Cayuse achieved.

The road to Walla Walla was one of those winding highways that meandered through small towns along the way instead of speeding right past them with nothing more than an exit to mark their place. As I rode shotgun next to Adam, following Thomas Hao’s white Subaru down the narrow highway to Walla Walla, we passed the road that used to lead to the fae reservation. “How do you want to play this?” I asked Adam, abruptly tired of the quiet in the car. I felt itchy with readiness, and the quiet, centered calm in both men irritated me.

“Nothing to plan,” he said.

When I snorted, he grinned at me. It wasn’t a lighthearted grin, but there was amusement in it. “There is no reason to overthink things, Mercy. We don’t know who we’re going to see or what they are going to say. We can’t plan except in the most general of fashions. We’ll let Margaret get her say in first—that’s courtesy. We’ll work our business in as we can. Probably that will be very short and sweet for our part. We’ll let them tell us what they are looking for if it gets that far. That part is up to them as well. It may be that we all just snap threats at each other and go home. I won’t know how to play it until we at least know who we’re playing with.”

He was right. I knew he was right. But I needed something to do, something to think about, so I could quit scaring myself with what-ifs, even if that meant talking about what-ifs. Adam was very good at making them less scary than my imagination did.

“There are only a few things we know for certain,” he said, as if he could hear my restlessness. “Zee isn’t going to let anything happen to Margaret. Thomas can take care of himself.” Then his voice dropped into a low, dangerous tone that was nothing like the easy, relaxed attitude he’d been portraying. “And nothing is getting past me to you.”

I absorbed that—the tone, not the words or intent behind it; those I already knew. Part of the magic of his voice was the Southern softness that blurred his consonants even when his accent wasn’t strong. Part of it was the reliable confidence behind every word—I just knew there was no guile, give, or hesitation in this man the first time I heard him speak. At the time, it had been frustrating and annoying.

But mostly, when he dropped his voice that way, it caressed something inside me—like he’d stroked the back of my neck without touching me. It made me want to melt into a puddle at his feet and settled my restlessness right down.

He knew it, too. He smiled a little and turned his attention back to driving. I glanced at Zee. “How about you? Are you planning or running by the seat of your pants, too?”

Zee smiled happily. Somehow it was worse than his usual tightly sour smile—even though the happy was real. Maybe it was because the happy was real. “I will keep my old enemy’s daughter safe. Sometime soon, I will deal with the fae who have offended me in such a way that others avoid annoying me for another century or two. That’s a good plan for the next few weeks, I think. Findest du nicht auch?”

He didn’t really expect an answer. “Don’t you find it so?” is usually a rhetorical question, especially with Zee, who seldom cares for other people’s opinions at the best of times.

We drove for a while longer, and I got restless again. Maybe if I started fidgeting, Adam would let me drive. Maybe someone could start a conversation so I would quit worrying about how wrong this night could go.

“Why so quiet?” I asked Adam.

“I’m planning my moves,” he said. “I think I’ll walk to the left of Thomas and Margaret. Studies show that right-handed people look right before they look left. That will give me a psychological advantage. Then I’ll walk at half speed—”

“I could smack you,” I said. “Just saying.”

“I’m driving,” he answered meekly. “And you shouldn’t hurt the one you love.”

“Flirt on your own time, Lieblings,” advised Zee. “I am too old for it—you could give me a heart attack.”

“You’d have to have a heart for that threat to work,” I said, and happily settled in for a game of insults with Zee.

We parked next to Thomas’s car. It was nearly full dark—close enough to it that the vampire had discarded his hoodie and stood, looking elegant, in his usual bright-colored silk shirt. This one was an iridescent pearly blue, with an embroidered dark blue or black dragon crawling over his shoulder and down his arm.

He opened the door for Margaret and stood watching her struggle to get out. He didn’t move a muscle, but I could feel the willpower it took not to help. Adam was right, Thomas was a goner. People who say that vampires don’t care about anyone except themselves are mostly right—but sometimes they are very and lethally wrong.

Margaret’s pain was too private to watch, so I looked up at the hotel.

In downtown Seattle, the Marcus Whitman Hotel wouldn’t stand out, but in Walla Walla, it was about a hundred feet taller than anything else around it. From the bones of the original structure, it had been built in the late nineteen twenties. Several colors of brick and the very modern entrance evidenced more than one renovation over the years.

“All right,” Margaret said, her voice a little husky from pain. “There are supposed to be three Gray Lords meeting with me, and I’m allowed to bring my people with me. I had intended it to be just Thomas, but they allowed me six. With your permission, I’m going to give you, Adam and Mercy, a little glamour, nothing fancy—just something that will help them dismiss you as thugs numbers one and two. If you do something to draw attention, the glamour won’t hold.” She looked at Zee. “You, I expect, can do your own and be thug number three.” She turned back to Adam and me. “It won’t hold if they really look at you, but it should give us the element of surprise. And any advantage is to your favor—they’ll respect you for it.”

“Fine,” said Adam. I nodded.

Her magic settled over me like a cool mist. Sometimes magic doesn’t stick to me, but this time it seemed to.

“Thomas?” I asked.

“He doesn’t need it,” she said. “He can do it without magic. When he doesn’t want people to notice him, they just don’t.”

I rubbed my pleasantly tingling skin, and said, “You’re just going in to tell them ‘no,’ right? Which you could do with just Thomas. The glamour is to help us?”

She smiled. “It’s fun. I don’t like them. Don’t like the games they are playing. I’m happy to help. Now hush, someone could be listening.”

“Probably not,” I said. “I would smell anyone close enough to listen.”

Thomas looked at me as though I were interesting. “Better than a werewolf?”

“For fae and magic, yes,” I told him. “To be fair, there is a lot of ambient noise right now. Someone would have to be very close to overhear us.” I didn’t tell them that fae glamour might be awesomely powerful, but it seldom worked on scent. Let them think I was special.

We walked into the hotel, following Margaret. She didn’t travel fast, but no one evinced even the slightest impatience. Adam took the left-rear position. I don’t know if he did it for the reasons he’d told me in the car, or if that was just where he happened to be. Zee took the right rear. Thomas walked in front of Adam, and I took the leftover spot next to Thomas.

Inside, the lobby was overflowing with beige tuxes and unflattering teal gowns. They were most densely clustered near the bride, recognizable as such by her thirties-style off-white lace gown. She was patting the back of a middle-aged woman in a bright green sparkly suit who was sobbing on the bride’s shoulder. The whole lobby was trying not to watch—and so no one noticed us at all.

As if she’d been in the hotel a hundred times, Margaret headed for one of the banks of elevators. We waited in silence for the doors to slide open. When they did, we stepped inside—it was a tight squeeze. The elevators weren’t built for a fairy princess and her guards. Fortunately, it was a fast elevator, and we got off on the second floor. Margaret headed down the hallway, and we spread out behind her like a wedding train.

She passed a couple of doors on her left before opening the door on her right, discreetly marked WALLA WALLA. She waited while we flowed around her to precede her into the room. There was a conference table and someone, maybe the hotel, had put bright bouquets of carnations in shades of red on either end of the long table. Five people were already seated on the side of the table that faced the entry door, two more stood against the far wall in parade rest. All of the fae were wearing their human glamour.

I knew some of them. Beauclaire, the handsome former lawyer who’d declared fae independence, was seated on the far left. Next to him was a dark-haired woman whose sunglasses concealed her blind eyes—Nemane, the Morrigan, who’d once been the Irish goddess of battle. I didn’t know the man next to her. He was pale-skinned, bald, and fine-boned, with bulging eyes and broken blood vessels on the sides of his nose that were so bad it was almost hard to focus on anything else. Next to him was an extraordinarily beautiful woman with childlike features, porcelain skin, and deep red lips. The final seated person was a middle-aged woman who was comfortably plump and clothed in a badly fitting, three-piece business suit in salmon pink. Her hair was gray and brown, and her features were absolutely unremarkable.

The two people who stood before the wall were Uncle Mike and Edythe, who I still thought of as Yo-yo Girl because the first time I’d seen her, she’d been playing with a yo-yo. Edythe looked like a young girl—like Aiden, she appeared to be somewhere between nine and eleven. Unlike Aiden, she chose that guise because she enjoyed looking like a victim. Which she very much wasn’t. I’d seen her do some scary stuff and watched other fae skittle out of her path. She met my eyes and gave me an ironic lift of an eyebrow. Apparently, Margaret’s magic wasn’t working for her. The two Gray Lords who knew me looked past me without the hesitation that they’d have given if they’d really seen me, and so did Uncle Mike. I filed Edythe’s immunity in the mental file I kept marked Why Edythe/Yo-yo Girl Is Scary. It was a big file.

Margaret looked at the five people seated on the opposite side of the table, letting her gaze linger meaningfully on the last two. “You told me there would be three of you,” Margaret said coolly. “Do the fae negotiate in falsehoods now?”

“It’s my fault, Margaret,” said the beautiful woman in a husky voice that I’d last heard coming out of Adam’s phone a few hours earlier. “I was visiting this reservation and heard that you were expected. My associate”—she touched the middle-aged woman’s arm lightly—“and I asked to be included for old times’ sake. I once knew your father very well, and I couldn’t resist the chance to see his daughter.”

Margaret spread her hands, as if to display herself. “As you now do.”

“You look bad,” said the man who sat in the middle seat. His voice, high and fussy, fit his outwardly meek appearance. “You need to come home with us, and we will see you restored to your proper self. It’s been several years since the incident, hasn’t it? So it is obvious that you need help to recover from your ordeal.”

Margaret directed her attention at him even as she waved a hand over her shoulder at us, and we four spread out on the wall behind her. The door was on the far left-hand side of the wall, so we didn’t have to worry about anyone’s coming in from outside between us.

She walked with painful slowness—more slowly than I’d seen her move before, in fact. When she reached the table, she pulled out a chair left of the middle, directly in front of Nemane. I couldn’t tell if it was deliberate, or if the chair was closer to the door so she didn’t have to walk so far.

She took her time seating herself and arranging her crutches so that everyone in the room could see just how crippled she was. Only when she was comfortably seated in the leather executive chair did she speak.

“Incident,” she said. “What a curious word. ‘Incident.’ So . . . bland and small. I truly appreciate your words, Goreu, but I think not. I am healing at precisely the correct rate for full recovery.”

Goreu. I should remember something about that name. I’d been reading a lot of stories about the fae lately. Goreu sounded like it should be French, but I was thinking it came from The Mabinogion, which was Welsh.

“You are fae,” said the beautiful woman. “You belong to us.”

I couldn’t see Margaret’s expression, since I was directly behind her, but a raised eyebrow was evident in her voice anyway. “Curious choice of words. I do not belong to you.”

“You are fae, child,” said Nemane. She took a deep breath through her nose, tilted her head in a birdlike gesture—and smiled at me. She couldn’t see me. But Nemane didn’t need her eyes for much. She chose not to say anything. My dealings with her had been almost friendly, but she wasn’t an ally. Instead of asking Margaret why she’d brought the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack and his mate to a fae meeting, she said carefully, “Neuth chose her words poorly. You belong with us.”

“You think so, do you?” asked Margaret. “I disagree. Which I have explained in several letters, e-mails, and one . . . no, two phone calls, if you count the one where I hung up on the Council representative. I am here, now, to explain it in person. I will not go. I will not put myself in your power. I have been under the power of the fae before, and I will not do it again.”

“You are fae,” Beauclaire began carefully, but Goreu went on the attack before Beauclaire could make his point.

“You think you can resist us?” asked Goreu, though I don’t think he meant it as a question—his tone was too confident.

“Do you mean to try to force me?” Margaret countered. She looked at Beauclaire. “You—who set the world on this course in search of justice for your daughter—you would seek to imprison me for the crime of being my father’s daughter?”

“There are many,” said Nemane, “who would rather be elsewhere. But we are few, child. Too few to survive a war—no matter what some say. We have to make a show of strength. We need you in order to survive.”

Margaret raised her head and squared her shoulders. “Do you know what I learned when I was trapped in the earth for more than half a century? With neither food to eat, nor water to drink, nor light to see by, when there is no sound except that you make yourself, some things become very clear. Death is not to be feared. Death is easy. It is living that is brutal. The fae may survive or not. I do not care. I am not one of you except through my parents—and they are both dead.”

Goreu reached across the table with the speed of a striking snake and slapped something on Margaret’s wrist that closed with a click—a fine silver bar bracelet with a red cabochon stone. Goreu held a similar bracelet and shut it on his wrist. As he clicked it closed, he drew in a breath as if it had hurt.

Margaret sat frozen.

It wasn’t one of the set of bone cuffs, Peace and Quiet, that had once been used on me. Tad had destroyed those.

“If you cannot be persuaded any other way,” the Widow Queen said, “then you leave us no choice. We owe it to your father to protect you and return you to health.”

Margaret looked down at her wrist. Then she looked at Goreu. “You have made a mistake.”

I couldn’t help but look at Thomas. He was very, very still.

“Perhaps,” said Goreu. “I did argue that there were those who might be of more use to us—we have only one artifact that can hold a fae against their will for very long.”

“You are so arrogant, all of you,” Margaret said. “Goreu, Custennin’s son, you may be powerful, I do not contest that. But it has been a long time since you beheaded your uncle—and that you did after he was already defeated. But these bracelets are not about how powerful your magic is. You have made a mistake.”

The name Custennin rang a bell. Margaret focused on the bald little fae. She said, “Crawl across the table to me.”

Custennin had been a shepherd who had twenty-four children. I remembered that because it was twice twelve, and twelve is a number that occurs quite a lot in fairy tales.

Goreu opened his mouth—then lost his smirk. He braced himself on the edge of the table.

“Crawl,” Margaret said.

All but one of Custennin’s children had been killed by a giant, Custennin’s brother. The single son who remained was named Goreu.

Slowly, very slowly, sweating and shaking, the fae boosted himself up onto the table and crawled. The bracelet made a scratchy sound as he dragged it across the gleaming cherry finish of the table. He bit his lip, and blood dripped from it onto the wood.

There must have been some sort of protocol at work because none of the other fae in the room gave him any aid. They stayed in their seats and watched Goreu struggle. The Widow Queen looked mildly amused. The middle-aged woman took out a file and became engrossed in buffing her nails with vicious, jerky movements.

Nemane and Beauclaire looked as though they were competing for who could look the most relaxed. Unseen by the other fae because of her position at the wall behind them, Edythe smiled at Margaret, lifted a finger to her tongue to wet it, then drew an imaginary point in the air.

If Margaret reacted, I couldn’t tell. I’m not sure she even saw Edythe’s gesture—Margaret was engrossed in the strange battle she was engaged in with Goreu.

According to The Mabinogion, the Goreu who was Custennin’s son had traveled with King Arthur and his knights, eventually returning to his home and killing the giant, his uncle. He was a hero—unless I’d gotten the story wrong, because the Goreu in this room didn’t look at all like a hero.

When the unheroic fae arrived at Margaret’s side of the table, she reached out and grasped his wrist. As soon as she touched it, a thin red line began drawing itself across the plain silver of Goreu’s bracelet. It began slowly, then, as Goreu breathed in quick pants, moved more and more quickly, drawing glyphs that became part of more complex patterns until the bracelet was nearly solid red.

Margaret sat back in her chair, took the bracelet off her wrist and caught the other as it fell off Goreu. She tossed both of them to Zee.

It broke the effect of the light glamour we’d all been wearing. Goreu scrambled backward off the table, half falling in his effort to get away—not from Margaret, but from Zee. The middle-aged woman dropped her file, and the Widow Queen froze.

Uncle Mike smiled—and so did Beauclaire. Nemane kept her relaxed pose, but then she’d known who was in the room the whole time.

I glanced over at Zee, who had his happy face on again. It was just . . . wrong to see a happy face on Zee.

“Hello, Goreu,” Zee said. “Interesting to see you once more. I’m sure we’ll meet under different circumstances. I’m looking forward to it.” He looked at the Widow Queen. “But not as much as I’m looking forward to some other meetings. You look more pale than you did the last time I saw you, Neuth,” he said. He looked at the middle-aged woman, who was frozen in her seat, and his smile grew brighter. He said nothing at all to her.

The Widow Queen, I knew, hadn’t been one of the fae who’d tortured Zee. I thought that Goreu was in the clear, too—though they were not allies. Goreu was afraid of Zee, but there hadn’t been any particular maliciousness in Zee’s voice when he addressed him. The middle-aged-looking woman was a dead fae walking.

“We came to provide protection to Margaret and her guard, who were traveling through our territory,” said my husband, breaking into Zee’s moment with a conversational tone. “We thought we’d use this opportunity to express our sadness at the death of the troll yesterday. Please do not send fae who put the citizens of our home at risk. We do not enjoy killing for the sake of killing.”

Adam’s sense of timing is superb. The Gray Lords, even the ones who had nothing to fear from Zee, were so caught up in that drama they had trouble shifting gears to Adam. Their distraction let Adam hold the floor.

“We’d also like to inform you that we are unimpressed with threats. Some of your people”—he looked over the fae at the table, except for the Widow Queen—“composed a letter and put it on the door of my ex-wife’s home. Please see to it that it doesn’t happen again.” He took in a breath, and when he continued, it was in a very soft voice. “We do not want a war with you. But we will not stand by and see our friends captured and tortured. We will not allow you to harm those under our protection. You should know that the fire-touched boy is ours. We will go to war if you force us to it. And if we go to war, it will not stay localized, it will not stay between your people and ours, because our human citizens will fight beside us.”

Zee tossed the bracelets up in the air and caught them, one in each hand, and closed his fists. Air left my lungs, driven by the magic he called. His hands glowed with a white light that was so bright I had to turn my face away. I fought to breathe, fought to stay on my feet—and it was gone.

Zee dropped two blackened chunks of metal on the table. “Those,” he said, “were an abomination.”

“How is it,” murmured Beauclaire, “that you are not on our Council? That you are not a Gray Lord?”

“No one asked me,” said Zee.

“Join us,” said Nemane.

Zee smiled at the Gray Lord who sat on the far side of the Widow Queen, the one in the salmon-colored suit. She swallowed noisily.

“Not today,” Zee said, his voice a purr of menace. “I have a few scores to settle, and I take too much pleasure in the planning to hurry. I’m swamped.”

“‘I’ve got my country’s five hundredth anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it,’” I murmured very quietly. I wasn’t sure that Zee was quoting the movie, but he sounded so much like Prince Humperdinck, I couldn’t help myself. Either Adam was the only one who heard me, or no one else appreciated The Princess Bride.

“So,” said Margaret, pushing herself back from the table. “You have my answer.” This time she let Thomas help her to her feet and hand her the crutches. “Not that it hasn’t been interesting. But you’ll understand that if you want to discuss anything with me, you’ll have to do it long-distance.”

She made good time out of the room, and we followed her. As soon as I shut the conference-room door, Thomas picked Margaret up in his arms. I took the crutches—as the least able fighter, I could most easily be spared to carry things. And the crutches would make pretty good weapons if I needed them.

The bride and her entourage were gone when we got back to the lobby. One of the hotel people saw us get out of the elevator and, upon seeing Margaret in Thomas’s arms, hurried over.

“Is there anything I can do?” he asked.

“No,” Margaret said with a charming smile. “Thomas was either worried that I’ve tired myself out, or just wanted to get out to the car sometime in the next hour or so.” Her tone told him not to take her seriously, and he smiled appreciatively before he got a good look at Thomas’s unamused face.

“Don’t mind him,” Margaret said. “He worries too much.”

“We have a wheelchair,” the young man offered.

“Thank you,” said Thomas, bowing a little despite his burden, though he kept walking in the direction of the exit. “This is not the first time I’ve carried her out to the car. She pushes herself too hard, even though I’ve explained that when she does that, she only slows down the healing process.”

The hotel employee looked worried.

“I should recover fully,” Margaret told him. “Given time. It’s just a lot of boring therapy between now and then. Tonight I really am fine, just a little tired.”

He escorted us out to the front entrance, offered to drive the car up, and when his help was refused, held the door open for us to leave.

We’d gotten halfway across the dark parking lot when Adam murmured, “Someone is watching us. I can feel it on the back of my neck.”

I bent down to tie my shoe and took the opportunity to scan the parking lot behind us. “The nice guy who escorted us out is still watching us. Is that it?”

“She affects a lot of people that way,” said Thomas, as Margaret waved at our observer over his shoulder.

“It’s the tragedy,” said Margaret cheerfully. “Some people can’t stop themselves from wanting to help. It’s a compulsion.” The man waved hesitantly back and left the doorway for the depths of the hotel, presumably to do his job.

“That’s not it,” said Adam in a low voice. “Let’s get to the cars.”

“I don’t scent anyone,” I said after finishing with my shoe. “But I’m with you. There’s someone.”

“They’re around,” agreed Thomas.

Margaret leaned her head against him. “This would be a perfect time for an ambush,” she said, sounding delighted. “Maybe there’s a troll or ogre around.”

“How about a witch?” asked a woman’s voice.

As soon as she spoke, I saw her, a young, muscular woman wearing a summer dress with brown army boots, walking beside Margaret and Thomas as if she’d been beside us all along.