Smoke Bitten

8

Adam was gone when my alarm woke me up. Downstairs, Darryl had been replaced by George, who was taking his coffee down to keep watch over Ben.

“How is he?” I asked.

“Not good,” said George, pausing halfway to the basement. “He’s himself this morning, but he says that thing still has a hold on him.” He hesitated. “He doesn’t want you down there. He says that thing in his head wants to kill you in the worst way.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. The urge to go down and watch over him was a pain in my heart. He was my friend and in trouble that he’d gotten into following my wishes. But if the thing was leaving him alone, more or less, as long as I was out of reach, I wasn’t going to make matters worse for him. The image of him crying on the bank of the river last night was a strong one.

I didn’t have any comment on Ben’s situation that I wished to share out loud. So I said, “Beauclaire called me last night.” I needed a sounding board, but Adam had obviously not wanted to talk to me about the call; who better to talk to than George, who solved crimes for a living.

“So I heard,” George said. “Adam talked to Darryl, Darryl told me.” He frowned at me, then said, “Darryl said Beauclaire didn’t have much to say.” He glanced downstairs and then started walking toward Adam’s office. “But both Adam and Darryl indicated that all important conversations should happen in the upstairs bedrooms with the doors shut or in Adam’s office.”

So Ben wouldn’t overhear us.

George took the fancy chair; I closed the office door and took my usual seat on Adam’s desk.

“Did Adam and Darryl have their conversation in here or out there?” I asked.

“In here,” George said, his eyes shrewd.

I felt sick. Beauclaire had been subtle, but Adam understood subtle better than I did. Reading between the lines was admittedly dangerous with the fae. But Beauclaire did not want to keep his people locked up in the reservation. Without Underhill being a safe refuge for the fae—which she decidedly was not—the reservation was a limited-time solution. If all the fae remained trapped inside those walls, they would start feeding upon each other—in both a figurative and literal sense. Beauclaire had already proven that his primary goal was the survival of his people, and his people were all of the fae.

Beauclaire had been subtle, for sure. But he’d given me a lot of information. That Adam hadn’t seen it scared me.

“Beauclaire thinks that there is a reason Underhill let the smoke beast escape in our yard instead of the reservation, where it could have had access to fae who could kill hundreds if not thousands of people in very short order.” And that last was why Beauclaire had pulled all of his people to safety. It was also why Marsilia had sealed her people in, too.

“So she didn’t want to create chaos or kill lots of fae,” said George.

“Right,” I agreed. “When Aiden discovered the door, Underhill told him, ‘I need a door to Mercy’s backyard. I miss you. The fae aren’t playing nice.’” I frowned, trying to remember exactly what Aiden had told me. There had been something about not wanting to owe the fae anything.

But George said, “She meant those statements to be put together.” He’d seen what I had. “That she wanted a door to your backyard so she could see Aiden—because she didn’t trust the fae with him, or they were using his visits as bargaining chips or some such thing.”

I nodded. “But why would she need to let him go in my backyard? She likes Adam better than me. She could have said Adam’s backyard. And Aiden lives here—so she could have said your backyard.”

“The smoke beast bit you,” George said. “And it couldn’t control you.”

“Okay,” I said. “I think that is significant. And later she told Aiden something about me being good at killing monsters.” I grabbed a small spiral notebook out of Adam’s top drawer, ruthlessly ripped out all the pages with writing on them, and shoved them back in the drawer. Then I wrote:

Underhill released smoke beast here because of me. Smoke beast’s bite doesn’t let him control me.

“It still almost killed you,” he reminded me.

“Why didn’t it just turn me into concrete like it did that semi?” I asked him. “Or, for that matter, why didn’t it just turn you and me both into concrete?”

“Because we’re living?” George postulated.

I shook my head. “Zee says that for fae magic—transformation is transformation.”

“Power,” suggested George—that was what Zee had concluded as well. “She said that she killed things for power. And she hadn’t been able to kill those kids crossing the road. Maybe she used all her power transforming the semi—and that’s why the whole semi wasn’t concrete when we got there. I’ve been wondering why, when she was mad at the driver, she only transformed part of the semi. What if she was trying to transform the whole thing, driver and all, but didn’t have the juice to do it? She took Dennis—and Dennis killed Anna, but didn’t kill anyone else. You didn’t kill anyone or die yourself. She took this poor hitchhiker and still didn’t manage to kill anyone—that we know of. That’s a lot of power outlay.”

“That sounds right,” I said, writing:

Did not have enough power to transform George and me and only ½ semi.

“So if we can keep the people the beast takes from killing anyone, we can keep it powered down,” George said. “We have Ben contained.”

He sounded so hopeful.

“Did Adam tell Darryl, and Darryl tell you, that one of the fae was bitten, went into Uncle Mike’s, and killed a whole bunch of people—fae and human and goblin? That Larry and the frost giant stopped it?”

George frowned. “No,” he said. “Just that the fae, like the vampires, are holed up until the smoke beast is dealt with. By us.”

“Do you remember the big car wreck that pushed Kyle’s discharging of a firearm to protect Warren off the front page?” I asked.

George looked sick. “Stefan,” he said.

I nodded. “That’s what Beauclaire indicated. I think that the smoke beast has plenty of power right now.”

“What else did Beauclaire tell you?” George asked.

“He said that they called it the smoke dragon and smoke weaver—that both of those terms spoke to its nature—that it had a name, but Beauclaire could not speak it. Nor could any fae. And that that was because of the rules under which the smoke weaver operated.”

George started to say something, but I held up a hand. “Sorry, there is something Zee told me. He said . . . he said that what the smoke beast—” I hesitated because Beauclaire had told me what they called the creature for a reason. “What the smoke weaver is doing with the whole body snatching and killing to power up is more like the way an artifact would have been made. He said that the transformations like what the weaver did with the semi are a power that belong to a group of lesser fae.”

“Huh,” said George. “That would explain the power problem it has. I have never noticed that the fae have trouble powering their own magic. Maybe it has an artifact it’s using? All you have to do is figure out what it is and take it away.”

That sounded like an interesting plan. I wished I had the book Ariana, a powerful fae I knew, had written about her people. It had a whole section on artifacts—but I didn’t remember any of them operating quite like that. If Zee had known of one (or built one), he would have told me. The book was gone, but I would call Ariana and see if she knew of something like this. Last I had heard from her, she was somewhere in Africa with her mate, Samuel, and communication was tricky.

George had moved on. “Are we sure this is fae? You said her magic—its magic—didn’t smell fae.”

I shrugged. “I haven’t run into it before. There are a lot of fae; maybe this one is like the platypus—or the goblins, for that matter. It doesn’t quite fit in.”

“What else did Beauclaire say?” asked George, half closing his eyes, which was what he did when he was thinking hard.

“That we’re unlikely to be able to kill it”—and Beauclaire hadn’t mentioned an artifact—“and that trick it has of transforming itself to smoke makes it hard to capture. He then said that Underhill had imprisoned it because of a bargain it made. And that there is a story about that bargain I should find. Then Baba Yaga shut him up and told me that the key to the smoke weaver’s undoing is to be found in his basic nature.” Huh. “His basic nature,” I said again.

“So we have a start,” said George. “That’s more than we knew when Ben got bitten. I have a few contacts that might know something about artifacts. Even if they’re locked up in Fairyland, cell phones still work. I’ll do some sleuthing.”

“I’d appreciate that.” I hopped off the desk and opened the door.

“I need to go put some signs up at my garage,” I told George. “I’m trusting you to keep Ben from killing anyone—or himself—while I’m gone.”

“He doesn’t seem suicidal,” George said. “He ate a hearty breakfast—muffin with bacon, eggs, and cheese—all off a paper plate without even so much as a fork or spoon. He’s not exactly cheery—but Ben isn’t usually a cheery sort of guy.”

Hmm. Ben was usually pretty cheery around me. Foul-mouthed and sarcastic, maybe, but cheerful enough. For sure he hadn’t started out that way. Maybe he was grumpier around other people—or they avoided him so much that they didn’t know he’d changed.

“So you played cook this morning?” I asked. George didn’t strike me as the homemaker type. Toast and eggs maybe, but not a better-than version of a fast-food staple.

“Adam cooked it up for all of us.” George frowned at me. “He was cooking when I got here at five—and Darryl said you didn’t get to sleep until the wee hours. You look like you could use another eight hours to sleep. You both need to get more rest or you aren’t going to be any good for anything.”

“News at eleven,” I said dryly, and he grinned.

“Telling you things you already know is the job of all of your friends,” he said, and headed down to the basement.

When had George become my friend?

I had a smile on my face when I opened the fridge, but it dropped away when I saw the deconstructed breakfast sandwich on the large plate with assembly instructions written out in Adam’s handwriting.

The sandwich was for me. And another time I would have taken it as a thoughtful love-note kind of thing. But we weren’t in that place right now, so that limited the reasons for this gesture. Apologies or guilt—which were both kind of the same thing.

I thought, just then, of waking up in the middle of the night knowing there was a predator watching me with hostile eyes. Of reaching out and finding Adam in wolf form.

I don’t trust myself, he’d said. I’ve been a werewolf for longer than you’ve been alive and it’s been decades since I’ve had trouble with it. But now I wake up and I’m in my wolf’s shape—without remembering how I got there.

Could that hostile presence have been Adam?

Shaken, I microwaved the things that needed to be microwaved and toasted the English muffin. Adam had said he didn’t know what had caused his problem controlling his shapeshifting—but his wolf had blamed the witches.

Adam was smart, but beyond that he was perceptive. He didn’t usually have blinders on when he was looking at people, even if he was looking into a mirror.

I bit into the sandwich.

He was, in fact, overly harsh when looking into a mirror. He still thought he was a monster. I swallowed and considered that. Could it be that the witches had done something to him and he thought it was his own inner demons breaking free? That the wolf was right and Adam was wrong?

And what the freak could I do about that? Find another witch? I thought of Elizaveta, who had been our pack’s witch for decades before Adam had had to kill her. I didn’t know that there was a witch I would trust Adam to. Maybe I should talk to Bran? That was an idea with some merit.

I finished the sandwich and punished myself with a glass of orange juice for health. Followed that up by punishing myself with a cup of coffee to stay awake for the day. Coffee I found nearly as vile as orange juice, but hopefully both of them would do their jobs.

I was dumping the last half of my coffee in the sink when the front door opened and my nose told me that Auriele had walked in.

“We are both being chastised,” she told me as she walked into the kitchen. “I am to accompany you on whatever you are doing today.”

Her tone was neutral, as was her body language. I had no idea what she was feeling about doing guard duty for me. Maybe it was time to put the cards on the table.

I dusted my hands off and gave her a somber look. “I like you. I think that you are too easily led by your need to protect Christy, who needs protecting about as much as a . . . a jaguar needs protecting.” I didn’t call Christy either a shark or viper—go me!

Auriele gave me a look that told me that she’d heard “viper” instead of the sexier “jaguar” just fine.

“I like you,” she told me without sounding like she was going to choke on it. “You are a Goody Two-shoes sometimes, but you’d fall on a grenade for Adam or Jesse or a member of the pack. You fell on a grenade for Christy, even. But you would also fall on a grenade for a total stranger—and that makes you a liability to the pack.”

I thought about what she said.

“That’s fair,” I told her. “But I don’t open other people’s mail.”

“That’s fair, too,” she said. “Where are we going and when? Adam said he thought you’d be moving by eight.”

It was seven and if she’d been five minutes later I’d have been gone. Normally I’d have been headed to church (although not at seven a.m.), but the garage was more urgent today.

I grabbed my purse and said, “The garage. The fae have recalled everyone into the reservation. Without Zee and Tad there, under the circumstances, working in the garage by myself is a liability to the pack.” I deliberately chose her words.

She nodded approvingly. “Good decision.” Implying that most of my decisions were not.

But I was a grown-up and didn’t bring up her decision to open Jesse’s mail again.

I used the shop computer and printed out signs after Auriele observed that my handwritten signs looked like something her students would do if they were trying to flunk her class. I am not a computer whiz and wasn’t sure the ones I’d put together were any better than the handwritten ones, but I put them up anyway while Auriele played on her phone. And I hid the signs I’d previously scrawled with a marker for everyday use: Lunch break, back in five and Unexpected drama, will return eventually. On that sign I had initially spelled “eventually” with one “l.” In my defense I’d been in a panic when I’d written it. Tad later corrected it for me using a different color marker than I’d used. It probably said something about me that it didn’t bother me to display it for my clients, but I didn’t want Auriele to see it.

I called and canceled the appointments for that week that I could, and streamlined the rest. I’d come in on Monday and fix a few desperately needed vehicles. I sent some of my clients with newer cars to the dealership—and a few who couldn’t afford the dealership to another garage. Fifty-fifty chance that those clients would stay with that garage afterward, because he was good and nearly as inexpensive as I was.

“I thought you were closing the garage until further notice,” Auriele said as I locked up.

“That’s right.”

“But you are still coming back Monday,” she said.

“There are some cars I can’t trust to anyone else,” I said. “And a few customers who need special handling. I’ll get one of the wolves to come in with me. People need their cars to work.”

We got back in my Jetta.

“We could have taken my car,” she said, not for the first time.

“I don’t want to get oil stains on any car that Darryl half owns,” I told her seriously. “He might have a heart attack and we can’t afford to lose any more wolves until Adam succeeds in bringing the invaders into our fold.”

She laughed. “Ah. So it is not the gas mileage, or the need to be in the driver’s seat.” Which were the answers that I’d given her the first two times she’d complained about the Jetta. “It is out of a deep and abiding concern for my husband’s health.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I like Darryl.”

“We aren’t going back?” she asked as I turned the wrong way to head home.

“Nope,” I said. “It’s been a rough few days. I’m going for doughnuts. Spudnuts.” Spudnuts were called spudnuts because the dough was made from potato flour. Ben loved spudnuts.

“Okay,” she said. “I could do a doughnut.”

Spudnuts was in the Uptown in Richland—a fair commute from my garage in east Kennewick, but it was totally worth the trip. Except when it was closed—which apparently it was.

“Well, that’s sad,” I said. Why did I not know it was closed on Sundays? I was sure I’d come here on Sunday once or twice.

“Safeway has good doughnuts,” Auriele offered soberly.

I sighed. Grocery store doughnuts and spudnuts shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath. With the garage closed for the foreseeable future, it looked like I was going to have some extra time on my hands. Maybe I should try making doughnuts. My homemade bread was good. I already knew how to make fry bread—and there wasn’t a whole lot of—

My brain lit up with information.

I didn’t know if the other wolves saw their connections to the pack the way I did. To me, it was like a web of Christmas garland, sparkly and metallic with unexpected lights here and there, the mating bond between Adam and me a thick, glowing rope. That one changed every time I observed. Today it was a sullen red with orange light moving within, almost like a lava lamp. The orange light, I was sure, was information the bond wanted me to have but Adam was keeping from me. Under normal circumstances that bond informed me of things like Adam’s mood, where he was, what music he was listening to, or what he was thinking about.

The pack bonds, on the other hand, very seldom told me much. Mostly I could tell when someone died. I knew that Adam got a lot more information than that. But the only time the pack bonds really gave me much was when we were on a hunt. Then it was overwhelming, as if the whole pack was one beast.

I would have thought I’d freak out when I was consumed by the pack bonds—but it was the best feeling in the world. There was no sadness, no worry, nothing except for a wild joy that seared my nerve endings. No hesitation, no questioning, just knowing that the pack is one.

Granted, if the bonds had done that all the time, turning us into a hive mind like the Borg from Star Trek, I’d be moving to Istanbul or Outer Mongolia or some other faraway place to get away. But once or twice a month in a planned and organized hunt? That was pretty cool.

Today was different.

I froze where I was, standing in the parking lot with my hand on the top of the open door of my disreputable Jetta, my head and fingertips buzzing with the urgency of the call. The power of it made the air I breathed feel electric. And as on the nights of the hunt, I knew things I had no business knowing. I knew that Kelly was down and scared and—

“Makaya,” said Auriele, putting her butt in the passenger seat of the Jetta.

I’d gotten that, too. Makaya was Kelly’s six-year-old daughter—and she was in trouble. We were less than two miles from Kelly’s house. I was peeling rubber before Auriele slammed her door shut.

On the whole, ’80s Jettas looked like pedestrian cars, something built along the lines of the Chevette or Echo. Useful, but unpretty and unremarkable. My Jetta, midway through restorations, was remarkable for all the wrong reasons. But unlike my beloved Vanagon, which was lucky to attain highway speed, the Jetta was built to move, not only quick but also maneuverable.

I was doing sixty when I took the corner from Jadwin onto Kelly’s street, and the wheels stayed on the ground when I did it. Ahead, right by Kelly’s house, I could see a large man with a small child in his hands—he was holding her above his head. Just beyond them was a large construction dumpster.

“She’s alive,” said Auriele, her voice raspy with wolf. “She’s moving her legs.”

“If I hit him with the car,” I asked her, “can you make the grab from the hood of the car to protect her?”

I braked pretty hard as I spoke, slowing the car until we were going about twenty-five miles an hour. Much faster and Auriele wouldn’t have a chance. Much slower and I risked not doing enough damage to the werewolf to get him to drop Makaya. This was an old car, well-designed, but what I was planning was going to hurt me, too, because it didn’t have airbags. That thought was a rueful one, and didn’t change my plans. Makaya was a child. And also a smart aleck. And I adored her.

Auriele didn’t bother to answer me. She just broke out the side window with one definite hit of her elbow and climbed out over the shattered glass. The Jetta’s windows rolled up and down manually—she’d still have been lowering the glass ten seconds after we passed Kelly’s house if she’d tried it that way.

Being a werewolf gave her the strength to break the window efficiently and crawl outside without risk of falling on the ground. But it was her own natural grace that let her stand on the hood of the Jetta while I drove over a pothole-pocked road, aiming my two-thousand-pound weapon at the bad guy holding the little girl.

He dropped Makaya, holding her by one leg. Apparently his intent was to scare her family, because his focus was toward Kelly’s house. I couldn’t see Kelly or his mate, Hannah, but I couldn’t imagine that they weren’t out there, just hidden from my sight by their picket fence and the neighbor’s hedge.

I started to slow. I didn’t want to risk hitting Makaya with the car. We were barely half a block away—I was going to have to abort.

And then he swung her up over his head again, dancing around in a circle. He didn’t even look at us—though he had to have heard the engine. He was having too much fun.

On the hood of my car, Auriele remained crouched, knees slightly bent. There wasn’t another wolf in the pack that I would even have thought of asking to try this in human form. I wasn’t asking Auriele just to survive the accident. I was asking her to keep six-year-old Makaya safe. But I’d seen her fight a volcano god; I was reasonably certain that if anyone outside a movie could do this, it would be Auriele.

Even so, I wouldn’t have tried it—except that even when I’d turned the corner and he’d been six blocks away, I could read madness in the enemy wolf’s body language. I’d grown up in the Marrok’s pack, where every year, people who had been newly Changed failed to control their wolf. Some of them went completely mad. I’d probably seen a dozen of them, but one would have been enough. They were scary enough to imprint on my brain the first time.

If I’d had any doubt, the expression on the face of the man holding Makaya would have cleared it right up. Whether Lincoln Stuart—I recognized him from Adam’s photo presentation—lived or died today, he was never going to have a human heart again.

I could see Hannah and Kelly now. Hannah, a scarlet streak across one shoulder, was frozen just inside the gate. Kelly was on the grass, elbow crawling toward her.

And then the time for observation was over.

Auriele launched herself, stretching out in the instant before the Jetta hit the werewolf. He was tall, so the bumper caught him just below the knee, obliterating the bone. The sound was loud, but dull as if I’d hit something soft. The velocity folded him sideways over the hood as the car crushed him into the dumpster.

The seat belt holding me in my seat gave up the ghost—I’d been worried about that; it was on my list to fix. Even so, the car crumpled, as it had been designed to do, absorbing a good bit of the power of the collision. The seat belt held on long enough that I didn’t go through the windshield.

The impact rang my bell pretty good—and maybe broke my nose on the steering wheel. There was enough blood for that, and my nose hurt sufficiently. Dazed, I backed the car up until it died—about six feet from the dumpster, which had not moved with the impact. I popped the door open and struggled out amid dripping glass. I had to spin around awkwardly once to get rid of the remains of the seat belt.

The car was more damaged than I’d expected—maybe the speedometer had needed some work. I stared at the car for a moment and decided the speedometer was a moot point. I was going to be looking for another car, again.

About that time, I realized I could hear a lot of noise—and that there were a lot more important things going on than the wreck of my car.

I pulled out my gun and stepped around the car to point it at Lincoln, who was howling and snarling and trying to pull the remains of his left leg out of my radiator, where it was caught. That both of his legs were hideously broken did not apparently register because in among the other sounds he was making were threats. They seemed pretty undirected at the moment, but I believed him.

I’d seen this kind of behavior before. Pain meant nothing to someone who was lost in his wolf. But then his shirt slid back—and I saw a wound on the top of his shoulder.

My breathing was labored—because I had to breathe through my mouth because of my nose. I was starting to think, as the shock of the collision (I could hardly term it an accident) receded a bit, that I had broken a rib or two as well. Woozy as I was, I couldn’t afford to take my eyes off Lincoln. The shirt slid a little more and I saw a second scab on his skin where another tooth had penetrated. They weren’t small holes—like the rabbit bite that Ben and I had gotten. These were bigger—more like the photos that Marsilia had sent of Stefan’s wounds. As much as I wanted to go rip the shirt off to be sure, I didn’t dare go any nearer to him. He might be bitten, but he was also a werewolf.

“Makaya?” I called. “Auriele?”

“Safe,” said Auriele, sounding remarkably composed.

The sounds had died down to just children crying—near and far—and Lincoln’s frenzy.

“Injuries?” I asked.

“Makaya looks like she has a broken wrist and maybe an ankle,” Auriele said. “Hannah has a bad cut on her shoulder that will need stitches. A lot of stitches. Kelly—”

“Will survive,” he growled. “Changing now.”

“Any bites?” I asked. “This wolf has been bitten like Ben.”

Auriele said something pungent. After a moment, relief in her voice, she said, “Not Makaya. Not Hannah. Kelly?”

“No,” said Kelly. “He hit me with a baseball bat. Then he hit me with my tool chest.”

“And the sledgehammer,” said Hannah, sounding broken.

“And the sledgehammer. But no bites. Will survive,” said Kelly again. “No bites, Mercy.”

I was pretty sure the last word he said was my name, but Kelly’s voice had dropped and lost clarity because he was changing.

Shifting to wolf and food should fix most of it over the next couple of days—as long as nothing was misaligned. I had to trust Auriele to make sure Kelly would be okay, too. My job was to figure out what to do with this wolf.

I had my gun and my cutlass, which was still in its case in the car, but I couldn’t just kill him, not here in the open with door cameras and cell phone cameras (I could see some curtains moving at Kelly’s neighbor’s house). He hadn’t killed anyone here for anyone to see. Broken by the impact with my car, he appeared not to be an immediate threat. He was, especially with those bite marks, but the human authorities wouldn’t know that if I killed him. And if I waited until he was up on his feet—he might manage to kill me.

“What about the other kids?” Auriele asked—not me, obviously.

“Safe,” said Hannah. “Sean and Patrick are at a friend’s house. I locked the baby in our bedroom; she’s not happy, but she’s safe.” Sean and Patrick were their two boys, ages twelve and ten. The baby was three—so not really a baby anymore.

A truck drove up. I didn’t look up from Lincoln, but I heard it just fine. A late-model Ford diesel, I thought from the sounds of it. It didn’t belong to any of the pack—I knew the sounds of the pack’s vehicles.

The truck stopped across the street and a pair of doors opened. I heard three people get out of the truck and stop on the other side of the road. Three people who were werewolves, and not our werewolves. I wasn’t smelling them—my nose was definitely broken—but I could hear the werewolf in the way they moved. I knew they were our invaders because of the truck.

“People are watching,” I told them. “Think about what you do next.” Then in a softer voice I asked, “Auriele?”

“They don’t look like they’re coming for a fight,” she told me, quietly. “That could change.” The enemy werewolves would be able to hear us, but not the humans in their houses.

I needed to move, to get my back to Auriele and my front toward the new threat. The problem was I was still dizzy, my eyes were having trouble focusing, and I wasn’t sure how far I needed to keep away from the downed wolf-mad Lincoln. I had to be close enough to shoot him if he started to regain mobility.

The new werewolves stayed where they were.

“Kids okay?” called a man’s voice.

“The one he manhandled has broken bones,” I said. “She is six.”

“Seven,” said Makaya, her voice wobbly. “I am seven.”

“I told you,” the stranger said. “I told you that he wasn’t right. But you thought you knew better.”

“Lincoln said he was fine. He had eighty years of controlling his beast,” said a woman.

I frowned. I’d heard that voice before. But I didn’t know Nonnie Palsic, the only woman in the group of invading werewolves, according to the data Adam had compiled. Maybe I’d only heard her voice, on the phone or something.

I wished my nose were working. My memory for scent was much better than my memory for voices.

“We were supposed to go out and create a little havoc today,” said the man—I think he was speaking to me. “The houses with kids were supposed to be strictly out-of-bounds.”

I chanced a quick look at the new werewolves.

The man was hard to focus on—as if I were a human looking at a werewolf pulling on the pack bonds to hide themself in the guise of a big dog. I didn’t have time to do more than glance at him, but it didn’t take a genius to know this was James Palsic. Standing just behind him was Nonnie Palsic. Her hair was dark brown, though in the photo Adam had shown the pack it had been lighter. Her face was thinner, but unmistakable. The third person was also a woman, both short and slight, who was faintly familiar.

I turned my focus back to Lincoln as he finally managed to rip his leg free of the ruined front of my car. He hadn’t shown any sign of noticing me at all, up to this point. But, still without looking at me, he rolled sideways with speed, slashing at my knee with a knife I hadn’t noticed him having.

Having two good legs, I managed to get out of his way, but that put me in the middle of the street. And closer to the Palsics and the oddly familiar woman.

James Palsic said, “Would you mind if I took care of him?”

I couldn’t tell if he was asking me.

“Put him in the back of the truck,” the woman with the familiar voice ordered. “We’ll figure out what to do with him when we get back.”

“Go ahead,” I said.

I put the gun up in the air so I wasn’t aiming at anyone and backed up a dozen feet down the middle of the road, so it didn’t put me any closer to the enemy. Auriele, who had given Makaya to her mother, put herself in front of the little family. I wondered if I should tell them what was wrong with Lincoln.

Palsic stalked past me and said something in a Romance language that wasn’t Spanish or Italian—Portuguese maybe, or Romanian. It sounded sorrowful and resolute. He avoided Lincoln’s attack, and the maneuver put him at the damaged werewolf’s back. With a quick and easy movement he picked up the struggling werewolf.

“Don’t let him bite you,” I told him—and he raised an eyebrow at me.

“Don’t intend to,” he said.

“Kill him,” said Nonnie.

“There are about six cell phones pointed at us through windows,” James told her. He didn’t seem to be having trouble keeping Lincoln’s mouth away from him.

“I said we will decide what to do when we get back.” There was ice in the other woman’s voice—and for some reason that made everything click.

I had met her before, in the Marrok’s office. I’d been cleaning it after Bran had been the victim of a glitter bomb. For some reason he’d blamed me—even though I’d only been responsible for the first three or four of the things. Someone who was not me had been gutsy enough to break into Bran’s office and suspend the glitter bomb over his desk. Bran was not interested in my defense—though he must have known I wasn’t lying—so I got to clean the room. It did not take much glitter to make a real mess.

Bran must have forgotten about it—or else he’d assumed that it would only take a half hour or so to clean up. He clearly hadn’t expected to find me there, two hours later, when he came in with a tiny blond woman with a sweet face. But he’d introduced us and explained about the glitter bomb to her—which, as I recall, she’d had very little reaction to. He’d sent me off so they could conduct their business.

He’d summoned me back a few hours later. His room was absolutely sparkle-less, which was more than could be said about me. He had apologized—told me the real culprit had confessed (without telling me who it was) and cleaned the room. Then he told me that if I ever saw Fiona again, to steer clear of her.

It had made an impression—because he’d never warned me about another werewolf like that. Because she was so small—smaller than I had been at fourteen or fifteen. And because her eyes had been a cold, clear green—not the green of hazel eyes. But like someone with light blue eyes had put in green-tinted contacts. I’d never seen anyone with eyes that color.

I later learned that she was one of a group of wolves that Bran used to keep the werewolves in order. Charles was only the most obvious and feared one. But Charles had limits—he knew right from wrong. This woman did exactly what she was told, and enjoyed assassin work the most.

“Fiona,” I said, and she turned to focus on me. From this distance I couldn’t see her eye color beyond that they were light. Her hair was dark, not blond, but her body language was the same.

“Mercy Hauptman,” she said, without smiling. “Bran’s little coyote pet.”

“How unexpected,” I said—though clearly she was not surprised to find me here. “Are you still . . .” I couldn’t think of how to phrase it.

“Running errands,” she said.

“Still running errands for Bran?” I asked, using her phrase.

She shook her head. “No, actually. I found my mate and changed my ways.”

“Not Lincoln Stuart,” I said, more to let her know that she wasn’t the only one who knew their enemies than because I thought there was a chance that it was Lincoln. She’d have been a lot more concerned about Lincoln than she was if he had been her mate. “And the Palsics are mated to each other.”

James, still standing beside my car with the struggling Lincoln in his arms, met my eyes.

“Adam remembered you,” I told him. Let them think we’d had eyes on them, too, instead of good intel from Charles.

Fiona gave me a sharp smile. “Sven Harolford is my mate, Mercedes Thompson . . . Hauptman. We are here to take over your pack. We will allow Hauptman to take three wolves with him—and you. You should be grateful.”

I smiled back at her, centering my weight over my feet. I was in no shape to fight, between broken nose and sore ribs, but I wasn’t going to let her see that.

“Shivering in my boots, here,” I told her. Fiona was probably a game changer. We had a lot of wolves in our pack who had killed people. But we didn’t have any killers—wolves who enjoyed murder. I didn’t want Fiona in our pack. “You won’t take my advice, but you should move on. If you need a refuge from Gartman and his pack, Bran will help you.”

“No,” said Fiona, a faint bitterness in her voice. “He won’t. James? What are you waiting around for? Get Lincoln in the truck.” She turned around and stalked back to the truck herself.

James nodded to me as he passed by with Lincoln. I stared at him, trying to fix his features in my head. I knew what he looked like from Adam’s picture. But I couldn’t get a lock on his face.

James tossed the other wolf ungently into the back of the truck. Onlookers who did not have supernatural hearing wouldn’t have heard the pop as he broke Lincoln’s neck in the middle of that toss.

“Idiot,” snapped Fiona. “Who do you think gives the orders around here?”

He stared at the truck bed for a long moment, tension in his body. Then he turned back to me.

“I told them,” he said in a soft voice. “No children. And Fiona and Sven sent him here anyway.” He looked at Fiona. “He did not find this place on his own. He’s been so wild that he could barely put his own clothes on.” He met my gaze.

I felt a spark. There was a little pop in my head, like when my ears depressurized. A zing of magic darted down my spine—and I could see his face at last.

Fiona said, “We thought he was stable. Today he was better.”

And she’d sent a wolf here to cause havoc. To Kelly’s house where there were children.

I looked back at James. “Green Beetle,” I said to him. “Nicely restored. You needed a new generator.”

He’d come into the shop a couple of weeks ago—and I hadn’t even noticed he was a werewolf. Hadn’t remembered his features or recognized him when Adam had shown his face to the pack. More worrisome, Zee had been working with me that day—and he hadn’t noticed that James was a werewolf, either. Adam’s information was wrong. James Palsic’s ability to go unnoticed was definitely magic. I was pretty sure it wouldn’t work on me anymore.

He smiled at me, a genuine, open smile. Which felt a little odd coming from an enemy werewolf who had just killed one of his compatriots.

“That’s right,” he said. “Nice shop you have there.”

“I’ve closed it temporarily,” I told them. “Because you folks are not the monsters we are worried about just now.”

“Having trouble with the fae?” asked Fiona. “You should let us handle them.”

I smiled at her and debated telling her that the smoke beast had already taken one victim from her people. “Not all the fae—they have locked themselves in the reservation because this one, this one they are afraid of.”

“Sirens are getting closer,” Nonnie said. “If you really don’t want to meet the human authorities until later, Fi, we should get going right now.”

They listened to her and got in the truck without another word. They drove off just as flashing lights rounded the corner I’d taken at sixty. The police cruiser took it considerably slower than I had. The truck passed them, took a right turn, and disappeared from view.

And I wondered why Fiona had asked me about the fae. There were vampires here—and other things that defied classification. Had she known about the bite?

They set my nose at the hospital. As soon as the medical professionals left me to my own devices, I decamped and went looking for Makaya. I found Auriele and Kelly waiting in one of the other emergency bays and wandered in.

“Nice shirt,” said Auriele.

Mine had made me look like an extra from a horror movie because broken noses bleed. So I’d been issued a hospital top. The hospital issue was a pale beige color that made my Native-toned skin look greenish. Solemnly I turned around so she could get a good look at the open back.

“I don’t think I’ll be setting any fashion trends soon,” I told her. “Makaya in X-ray?”

“Yes,” Auriele nodded. “Hannah went with her. She’ll let them stitch her up in another room as soon as Makaya is taken care of. Makaya is pretty traumatized and wanted her mother.”

“How bad is Hannah’s cut?” I asked.

“Long,” she said. “But not deep. It will need stitches at the top, but the bottom is okay. He cut her with that knife he pulled on you.”

I knelt to talk to Kelly. “How are you doing?”

His muzzle wrinkled up and he let out a low, angry growl.

“He walked in here on his own,” Auriele said. “But it wasn’t easy for him. I checked him over pretty thoroughly. I don’t think any of his bones were misaligned.”

She meant none of them would have to be rebroken.

Kelly was still growling.

“I know,” I said. “Me, too. Those people are not becoming members of our pack. But you have to stop growling now, before you scare someone.”

“They don’t intend to join us, remember,” said Auriele dryly. “They will let Adam take three of his people and you. Who are you going to pick?” She knew Adam and me well enough to know that wandering off and leaving the pack to someone else was not going to happen.

I snorted with more dismissal than I actually felt. “They have no chance now. If they wanted to take the pack from us, they shouldn’t have gone for Kelly’s home. No one will follow a wolf who allows children to be attacked.”

I stood up abruptly. “Adam is here.” I didn’t smell him. My bond was currently telling me nothing. But I heard his voice. At least my ears were working.

I stepped out of the alcove and looked around, finding him talking to a nurse. I’d called him as soon as the truck carrying Fiona and the Palsics had left and told him what had happened.

Adam had been about an hour’s drive away, out in the Hanford Area, nearly six hundred square miles of government access-restricted land surrounding the numerous nuclear reactors and reprocessing facilities being slowly deactivated and cleaned up. He’d known Kelly was hurt—had tried calling him. Then he’d called Darryl and Warren. Apparently, no one except Auriele and me had been alerted by the pack bonds—we had been the closest to the trouble. I was, once I’d had a chance to think about it, a little uncomfortable with what that said about the pack bonds—implying an intelligence at work that did not belong to anyone in the pack.

Darryl and Warren had arrived at Kelly’s not long after I got off the phone with Adam. They bundled up the other three kids—Sean and Patrick having been recalled—and took them to our house, where they should be safe. Safer, anyway.

Adam had said he would meet us at the hospital—and here he was, as promised.

I gave a soft whistle, and Adam looked up. He said something more to the nurse and then strode over.

He stopped in front of me and took my head in his hands. He looked gutted. Whatever weirdness was going on—it could not be what was between us. Because that face said that he cared what happened to me. He was being a stubborn bastard, trying to keep his troubles to himself. Maybe I’d wait until the rest of this—the stray wolves and the smoke weaver—were dealt with. But I wasn’t going to let him continue carrying whatever was bothering him alone.

“No worries,” I told the stubborn bastard. “I broke my nose on the steering wheel. Probably I’ll have two black eyes to go with it. But the good news is that my ribs aren’t broken or cracked, just bruised.”

“I’ll spend the next week telling the press I didn’t hit you,” he said, but he looked like he could breathe again.

“Good for you,” I said encouragingly.

He smiled wryly and kissed my forehead. “Do you think that your next car could have airbags?”

Retrofitting airbags was a fool’s game—and dangerous. It was a matter of pride for me as a mechanic that I drove an old car.

“I just need to quit hitting people with my cars and we’ll be good,” I told him.

“If only,” he murmured, “you don’t run into any more who need to be hit.” Proving he knew me. “I suppose I should be grateful that you aren’t under arrest.”

“Might have been,” I told him. “Except that Kelly’s neighbor came running out of his house. He’d caught most everything on his cell phone. Just wait until you see the part with Auriele making the grab for Makaya as I rammed Lincoln with the Jetta. It looks like a scene from Cirque du Soleil. The police decided I was justified and warned me not to do it again. I pointed out that I couldn’t do it again because the car is totaled—and was, at that moment, getting towed to my garage, where I can mine it for parts.”

Adam smiled, but his eyes were worried.