Storm Cursed

6

Adam called about five minutes before closing time to say that he had another meeting and Jesse was staying over with a friend. He sounded tired. I told him it was no trouble; I’d just stop and grab something on the way home.

Zee had gone for the day, but Tad was helping me tidy the office.

“You know,” he said, swinging his mop with practiced ease. “You and my dad have been whining all day about how sterile the garage is. But now you’re insisting on cleaning all the nooks and crannies that might have gotten even a smudge of dirt.”

“I don’t know why I surround myself with insubordinate smart alecks,” I said, getting a smudge off the big window with a little elbow grease. “Maybe I should fire a few.”

He gave me a companionable grin. “If you’re going to start firing smart alecks, you’d have to start with the biggest one of all. I dare you to fire my dad, I just dare you.”

I looked around. “You know that he’s going to give us both the edge of his tongue if we don’t have this immaculate when he gets in tomorrow.”

“Yep. Hypocrites, the both of you,” he said affectionately.

We were getting ready to lock up when a battered bug sporting a rattle-can, glitter-gold paint job drove into the lot. The VW known as Stella chugged roughly, coughed, and died as soon as she stopped moving.

“Sorry,” Nick, Stella’s owner and devoted fan, said. “I know it’s closing time, but Stella isn’t doing well—I can’t figure it out. And I need her to run for another three weeks before I can afford to fix her again.”

It took Tad and me and the young man about three hours to fix Stella to our satisfaction. Nick wasn’t an absolute newbie; buying Stella two years ago had turned him from someone who had never put a wrench on a bolt to someone who could change his own oil and spark plugs. But Stella was a diva who would be a challenge for the most experienced mechanic to keep running.

Darkness had fallen by the time Nick drove off, but Stella was purring like a kitten.

“Softy,” said Tad as we cleaned up.

“You donated your time, too,” I reminded him. I’d told Nick that we’d throw in labor because he’d been sending people to the reopened shop. He could pay for the parts when he caught his breath. If money was too tight, he could come put in a few hours—he knew enough to run tools.

I expected Tad to continue teasing, but he turned grim instead. “Last time I left you alone here,” he said shortly and half-embarrassed, “you almost died. Not going to do that again anytime soon. Nick wouldn’t have even slowed your kind of bad guys down.”

And that explained why he’d been coming to the shop before I got here and insisted on locking up afterward. We all had our scars.

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate it.” Contrary to popular belief, I did know my limits. Having Tad guard my back was comforting.

He nodded without meeting my eyes. And he waited until I was safely in my car before he got into his own.

I decided to celebrate surviving the day by driving the extra few miles to a local fast-food place that served an Asian-Mexican fusion that could take the roof of your mouth off with heat and still taste amazing. I grabbed enough food to feed half the pack, just in case, and headed home. Traffic made me turn right instead of left and I found myself taking the long way back.

The long way took me past the turn to Stefan’s house. I had decided that Adam could talk to Stefan. I slowed the car, giving it a bit more gas when it stuttered. I needed to do some fine adjustments still.

Without letting myself think too much, I turned the car and drove to Stefan’s house. I pulled into the driveway and parked next to the dust-covered VW bus that had been painted to match the Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine.

I got out of the Jetta but couldn’t make myself go to the house. Instead I wandered around the bus. Life-sized and stuffed, Scooby watched me sadly from the front passenger seat. His coat was getting sun faded.

Stefan opened his front door and walked out, stopping well clear of me, but close enough to engage. He didn’t say anything.

“Shame to let it sit there,” I said finally, not looking at him. “I’ve spent a lot of hours keeping her running. If you leave her there, she’s going to need rebuilding again.”

“I need to drain the gas tank and refill it before I drive it again,” he said. “I confess, the prospect is a little daunting.”

“Call Dale and have him tow it to the garage,” I suggested. Dale was one of the towing guys we both knew. One of the perks of driving old cars is getting to know towing guys. “You might air up the tires first, though; the right front tire is a little low.”

“And having you fix her is messy, too,” Stefan said. “If I pay you, Marsilia might take it into her head that you should be punished for charging me money. If I don’t pay you, I’m telling her that I consider myself a part of her seethe again—which I do not. I’m an ally, certainly. But never again will I owe her fealty.”

Marsilia ruled the vampires in the Tri-Cities. We had a long-standing agreement that I would provide whatever maintenance her cars needed and she would keep her vampires from attacking me. She had destroyed Stefan, who had been her loyal wingman, for her own needs. If that had been the extent of it, I thought Stefan would have forgiven her for that. But to do it, she’d gone after the people Stefan kept in his household to feed upon, his sheep. Most vampires would not have cared, but Stefan believed in taking care and responsibility for his people.

I pursed my lips, took a deep breath, and turned to face him. “How about an exchange of favors?” I proposed. “I came here for information—and I am happy to fix the Mystery Machine to get it.”

“What do you need?” he asked.

The yard light did a decent job of illuminating Stefan. He looked good. Back to his usual self, even. He was tall and lean, but not skinny now. And he looked entirely human again, something in the way he balanced on his feet and the energy with which he moved. For a while he’d moved more like a vampire—some of the very young or the very old have this odd jerkiness to their movements, like somewhere there might be a puppeteer making them move.

Stefan also looked like a cat contemplating a strange dog.

I laughed. “Nothing to put that look on your face. I just stopped in to ask a question. If we can turn that into an exchange that gets you out of a dilemma, that’s all the better.”

He relaxed fractionally. “What did you need to know? Or do we need privacy for it?”

“I just need to know whatever you can tell me about Frost. I don’t think that we need privacy.”

“Frost?” said Stefan. “He is dead, Mercy.” Then, very un-Stefan-like, he stumbled a little. “All the way dead, I mean.”

“I know that—I accomplished his demise,” I said, putting him out of his apparent misery. I’d have thought a vampire as old as he was would have gotten around the awkwardness of how to announce the extinction of a vampire. Maybe that awkwardness was more about what was between us, though. “Or at least I was there when Adam finished him off—but Adam wouldn’t have been there without me. However you’d prefer.”

Frost had been finished, I was pretty sure, before Adam got there to complete the business. But there was no arguing that Adam had ended Frost with absolute finality.

“But here’s the thing,” I said. “I stumbled into someone who smells a lot like Frost recently. Since it is the only identifier anyone has picked up in the whole mess, I decided it might help to get more information.”

“Today’s mystery?” asked Stefan.

And because he was a friend, and because Marsilia needed to know about the attack on Elizaveta’s family and I wasn’t about to call her, I told Stefan about my morning, stopping just after the werewolf zombie in the basement—and I tidied up the zombie wolf’s attack and end without much detail, leaving out Sherwood’s spectacular performance entirely. His secrets didn’t belong to me.

Unlike with Zee, I left out the upcoming meeting between the fae and the government. I would have been surprised if the vampires didn’t know about the meeting—the vampires had ties pretty high up in politics. But if they didn’t know, they weren’t going to learn about it from me.

I also didn’t tell him about the evidence that Elizaveta and her brood were working black magic—just as I had not told Zee. That was pack business. We paid her a retainer for her services. We had been supporting her while she tortured unwilling subjects for the power she used to aid us.

“Elizaveta’s family is gone?” he murmured.

I couldn’t tell what he felt about that.

“Yes.”

“And you and Adam were attacked by a zombie werewolf at your home and”—he did air quotes—“‘the werewolves took care of him.’”

“Not a lie,” I told him. I don’t lie very often, so I’d been very brief instead. “I can’t tell you things that aren’t mine to tell.”

He watched me for a moment, and then his face relaxed and he nodded. “Okay.” Looking away, he continued, “You could have called on me for help with the goblin.”

I knew what he meant. Just as I bore bonds to my mate and to our pack, I also had a bond to Stefan. Through it, he could control me, not just my actions, but my thoughts. He could take away my ability to make decisions for myself. All I could do was trust that he would not do that, that he would continue as he had since I’d asked for his help against another vampire.

That was why I’d been avoiding him.

He didn’t deserve my first response, so I kept my mouth shut until I could give him the real truth.

Finally I said, “I didn’t think about it. It was pack business, so I took a pair of werewolves. He was a goblin, so I called Larry.”

“Fair enough,” he acknowledged. “But it could have killed you when it came out of the barn. You are no match for a goblin. You could have called me.” And he could have come. Like his former Mistress, Marsilia, Stefan could teleport. I’d never heard of any other vampires who could do that.

He paced away from me and stood, arms crossed, with his back to me. “Once you married Adam, you pulled yourself out of your weight class. Someday I will be looking at your dead body, because you were too stubborn to call me.”

There was real anger in his voice. I thought about telling him that it wasn’t his job to protect me—but I actually didn’t know the vampire protocol about situations like ours. I thought about telling him I could protect myself—but he was right.

“If I had thought about it,” I told him, “I might have called you. But that would have been a mistake. Marsilia leaves you alone now.”

He laughed and it sounded harsh, like broken dreams.

“She allows you to stay here, Stefan. In relative safety. Instead of forcing you to move into another vampire’s territory. She allows you to be independent when you might not have that luxury elsewhere.”

He nodded. “She is generous,” he told me, meaning the opposite.

“If she thinks that your first loyalty is to our pack—or me . . . especially me—she will not abide it.” I held up a finger to make him pause. “And if the pack thinks that I have a tame vampire that I call upon whenever things might get hairy, it will be equally bad for me.”

I put a hand on his arm and he stiffened. “But I am very happy to come over to your house and ask you to help me solve mysteries.”

He drew in a deep breath he didn’t need. Then he turned around and let his arms drop to his side. My hand fell away when he moved.

“All right,” he said. “All right, Mercy. We are friends as well as allies? But I am not pack—nor should I be.”

And I realized that Stefan was lonely. Werewolves are like that. They need a pack to belong to, to be safe with. Some of them don’t like it much, but that doesn’t change the nature of the beast. I knew vampires lived in seethes, but it had never occurred to me that one of the reasons they did so was that they, like the wolves, needed to belong.

There was not much I could do about that. Stefan did not want to be a member of the pack—and the pack would not, could not, make him a member.

Stefan was apparently finished with that conversation, because when he spoke again it was on a different topic. “I don’t know a lot more about Frost than you do. He showed up as a Power maybe twenty or thirty years ago—I don’t keep track of time on that level, so I’m not sure. He seemed to be acting as a minion of Bonarata for most of that, so I watched Bonarata, and not him.” Bonarata was the Lord of Night, ruler of the European vampires, who had, I was assured, long tentacles of power that dug deeply on this continent, too.

Stefan frowned deeply. “I don’t know who made him or why. I don’t know who his affiliates are. But I should be able to find out.”

“What nationality is he?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I had assumed that he was European, given that he initially came as an agent of Bonarata. I can find that out, too.” Stefan rubbed his hands briskly together. “Give me some time to run some things down. I do think it is interesting that a vampire who has power over the dead and a witch who creates zombie goats share a close familial scent. If he was born a witch and someone turned him—that someone needs to be stopped.”

“Creates miniature zombie goats,” I corrected him.

He nodded at me. “‘Zombie goat’ sounds satanic.”

There are reasons that Stefan and I became friends.

My phone rang when I was about halfway home from Stefan’s house.

I glanced down at my cell phone, which was faceup on the passenger seat. Whoever was calling wasn’t a number my phone knew, but it was a Benton City number. Benton City is not a hotbed of robocallers trying to sell auto warranties or time-shares. I let the phone ring three times before I gave in to curiosity and pulled over to the side of the road.

“Ms. Hauptman? This is Arnoldo Salas. You were at my house this morning with the zombie goats.”

“Mr. Salas,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

“There is a car that has been driving back and forth in front of my house. It matches the car my boy saw yesterday. I do not know if it means anything. Maybe whoever is driving the car is lost—we get that here a lot.”

“And maybe we should get you some help right now,” I said. “Okay. Don’t go outside your house. Don’t answer your door if anyone knocks. I will call you from this phone when I get there.”

I called Adam and got his voice mail. I called Warren and got his voice mail.

I called Stefan.

“What do you think that you and I can do against a witch?” asked Stefan, sounding not overly concerned.

I glanced over at him. He was driving his two-year-old baby blue BMW because my Jetta now only had one usable seat.

“Do you think I should call for some more backup?” I asked. I’d left a message for Adam. I could have called more werewolves, but I wasn’t sure how much help they would be. I, at least, had my undependable resistance to magic. Stefan was Stefan.

I didn’t want to call Sherwood. Not because he wouldn’t be useful, but because he’d been pushed enough today.

“I could call Wulfe,” he said.

I straightened in my seat. “No.”

“He can deal with witches,” he continued. “They are very nearly his favorite playthings.”

“No,” I said again. More firmly.

Stefan grinned at me. “Yes, the ‘very nearly’ thing is a problem. He might just throw in with the enemy because you are ‘more fun as an opponent than any witch.’ I’m afraid that last bit is a quote. A recent quote. I didn’t know, yesterday, why he’d suddenly started blathering on about witches. He must have known about Elizaveta’s visitors.”

A chill ran down my spine. I did not want to be within a mile of Wulfe if I could help it. The crazy-like-a-tornado-in-the-land-of-Oz vampire wasn’t anyone I wanted thinking about me at all. Let alone looking forward to having me as an opponent.

“Hmm,” I said.

“So now you are warned,” Stefan said, his voice remote. The reason for that became apparent in his next sentence. “I need your promise that you will summon me should Wulfe become a problem. Wulfe is not werewolf business.”

I stiffened. But I didn’t think that he was influencing me. I thought that it sounded like a good idea. That right there is the reason vampires are so scary.

“I understand your reasoning,” I said slowly.

“But?” Stefan supplied.

“But,” I agreed. “How about if I make you a promise when I am not sitting in the car next to you?”

A distinct chill settled in the air. “You do know that if I were going to influence you like that, I could do it if I were here and you in Seattle.”

“Thanks for that,” I told him sourly. “How about I promise to consider what you’ve said should the occasion arise?”

“Fine,” he said.

I knew I’d hurt his feelings. But there was a tie between us through which he could make me think and do whatever he wanted—and unlike hypnotism, I was pretty sure that “whatever he wanted” was limitless. I saw a man participate happily in his own death. The vampire involved wasn’t Stefan—it was Wulfe. That knowledge made me understand why trapped animals have been known to gnaw their own legs off. It was a peculiar kind of claustrophobia and there was nothing I could do about it.

Nothing Stefan could do about it, either.

“I am being unfair,” I said grudgingly. “I know it. But . . .” I made a frustrated sound.

“But,” agreed Stefan heavily.

And we drove the rest of the way to Benton City in silence.

Stefan’s was the only car on the road in front of the Salas house. As we turned down the long drive, the porch light came on and Arnoldo Salas came out.

“She quit driving by as soon as I called you,” he said grimly. He had a gun in a holster on his hip and he was wearing his military posture. His breathing was slow and even—deliberately so, I thought. I didn’t know him, but I thought he was pretty spooked.

I shrugged. “I’m not a witch,” I told him. “I don’t know how they think—and only some of what they can do.”

“I don’t want her near my family,” he said.

“I don’t blame you,” I agreed. “Let me introduce my associate. Arnoldo Salas, this is my friend Stefan Uccello. We’ll wait here for a bit—don’t invite us inside your house—to see if she returns. If she does, we’ll find out if she wants to talk.”

I could hear the sound of a car’s engine in the distance. It might just have been one of his neighbors.

“Do you know why she is stalking my family?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t know the why of any of this. Witches are hungry for power—and killing the goats would give her power. But it would take more power than the goats’ deaths to allow her to do something as spectacular as turning them all into zombies. And that accomplished nothing except to make your family sad and scared. Do you know any reason anyone would have had for that?”

“Scaring people is fun,” said the witch, stepping out of the shadows about ten feet from the porch.

I had not sensed her in any way—and, I could tell by Stefan’s complete stillness, neither had the vampire. Usually supernatural creatures who can hide from sight forget about other things—scent or sound.

I, of course, jumped—as she evidently intended.

Arnoldo Salas pulled his gun.

She smiled at him. I noted that she was tall for a woman and built on a graceful frame. Her hair was dark and her eyes were some light color but I couldn’t tell for certain if they were green, gray, or blue in the dimness of the night. I see very well in the darkness, but colors tend to fade to shades of gray.

Her face had been relatively plain until she smiled and the expression gave definition to her features. She reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t place who. It wasn’t Frost, though she did indeed share a close family resemblance to his scent under the foulness of her magic. Smelling her again, I was absolutely certain of the connection between her and Frost.

I hadn’t been able to scent her until she’d come out of the shadows, though. I didn’t like that at all.

“Aren’t you a darling?” she told Salas in a husky voice with an accent that originated in the Deep South. “But you won’t have any luck with that old thing, so you might as well put it away.” There was magic in her voice that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

He held his stance, cradling the gun in a classic grip. A light sweat broke out on his face—but the gun held steady.

She turned her smile to me. “And that is the reason I picked this family, Mercedes Thompson Hauptman. I find it so interesting when people don’t do as I tell them. It doesn’t happen too often.”

I wondered if the three tortured members of Elizaveta’s family had been told to go make breakfast. Time to think about that later. Right this moment, I needed to distract her from Salas. I didn’t like the attention she was paying to him, even with her face turned toward me.

Last moon hunt, which we held out on the Hanford Reservation, the pack had been on the trail of an elk when a rabbit broke cover just in front of us. Just for an instant, the pack weighed switching their prey before continuing after the elk.

Salas was the witch’s version of that rabbit and I wanted her focus on me instead.

“Picked them for what?” I asked.

“To get your attention,” she said. “We need to talk.” She glanced at Arnoldo and said softly, “Why are you still pointing that gun at me? Stefan Uccello is a vampire. Shoot him.”

This time Arnoldo didn’t react at all.

The witch frowned at him. “That’s not nice,” she said. “I asked you politely.”

“Mr. Salas,” said Stefan softly. “I think that if you put the gun away, you won’t be so interesting to her. That might be a good thing.”

“Ms. Hauptman,” said Salas. “If I shoot her, will she die?”

“Probably,” I said. “But then you’ll have a dead woman on your front lawn. I’ll stand witness for you that she was a witch, but she is not trying to harm you just now. I think that she is responsible for the killing of your son’s goats, but that won’t get you out of a murder charge. Worse, I am fairly certain that she is part of a group of witches. If you kill her, they will come for you. I promise that our pack will try to keep them away, but our resources are limited.”

“Werewolves protecting humans,” drawled the witch. “I never thought I’d see the day. It’s kind of cute.”

Salas nodded at me and put his gun away. He glanced at Stefan and then away. He’d heard her call Stefan a vampire, but he was willing to give us the benefit of the doubt. Which was pretty amazing in a man I’d only met this morning.

“You wanted our attention,” I said. “You have it. What do you want?”

“We have pushed out the local coven,” she said. “My lady, our Ishtar, has told me that you have found the results.”

“Yes,” I said. Who was Ishtar? It sounded, from the way she said it, more like a title than a name, but I couldn’t be certain.

“Good. Then you will have no trouble with us assuming their place. We find that this town, which previously we knew nothing about, has become very interesting—a place where the werewolves make certain everyone feels safe. You will stay out of our way—and we will allow you to remain here.”

“No,” I said. I’d heard the “feels” safe. “Feels safe” is a lot different from “is safe.”

She smiled. “Ms. Hauptman, you are young.” Which was a weird thing for her to say. I’d have put her in her midtwenties, maybe, given the kindness of night shadows, even midthirties. “I doubt you know your history. Until the arrival of the Marrok, werewolves were the vermin of the supernatural world. Dangerous individually, of course, if one were such a fool as to put yourself in a bad position, but ultimately not much of a threat. Nuisances. Your pack does not belong to the witchborn Marrok, he who has abandoned his birthright. Alone, you and your pack are no match for us.”

She was guessing about Bran being witchborn, I was pretty sure. Bran made a point of not confirming that rumor.

The witch looked at Stefan. “I understand that you do not represent the Mistress of the Seethe, but that she listens to you. Please inform her that we will send a delegate to speak with her sometime in the next few days.”

“No,” I said. “You are not staying here.”

She turned her pleasant face to me.

“We will not allow black witches in our territory,” I said.

“Darling,” she said. “You already did.” She turned to walk away. “Oh, and about that meeting your mate is planning. When we act, don’t interfere.”

Shadows cloaked her. The three of us waited on Arnoldo Salas’s porch until she was gone.

“Do you know why the witch could not make you do as she asked?” Stefan asked Salas.

Salas let air out through his nose like a spooked horse. “My mother had the pope bless me when I was a child. She asked him to bless me that witchcraft would not touch me or my children. It is a story my father liked to tell. My mother was afraid of witches.”

“Me, too,” I said, still looking around.

“She is gone,” Stefan said.

“You’re sure?” I asked.

He nodded. “I am certain.”

“Mr. Salas,” I said earnestly. “Do you have the ability to leave town for a week or two? You’ve caught the attention of the witches and I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

He nodded. “I have some vacation coming. My wife’s mother lives in California, and she has been asking us to come visit.”

“I would go.”

His mouth tightened. “It does not make me happy to leave the field because of a witch.”

“You have a family to protect,” I said.

“I can leave for two weeks. I have neighbors who can mind our place, but we still have to come home.”

“That will give her time to forget about you,” said Stefan. “Why don’t you call Mercy when you are ready to head back?”

“And if no one answers,” I told him grimly, “maybe you should consider staying away. I have a feeling that she’s not going to forget about you very easily.”

All of the lights were blazing at the Salas household when we left. I didn’t blame him in the least.

I called Adam’s cell phone and left the message that I was headed home. I called Warren’s phone and left the same message. Feeling Stefan’s attention on the matter, I said, “My recent kidnapping has left everyone a little on edge. So I check in.”

He nodded.

Eventually he asked, “What do you intend to do about the witches?”

“Not my call,” I told him. “I’ll let Adam know and he’ll take it from there.”

Not that I wouldn’t give him suggestions. I hesitated, but I needed to talk this out. And Stefan had a tactical mind—he could pick out things that I missed sometimes.

“Why didn’t the witch just pick up the phone and call us? Our pack isn’t exactly hiding out. She killed the goats, turned them into zombies, to get our attention? That is a serious waste of power right before what might be a real fight. Killing Elizaveta’s people would get our attention all on its own. She doesn’t make sense. But, Stefan, she wasn’t lying.”

“Just because something is stupid doesn’t mean it is not true,” said Stefan.

I tapped my fingers on the dashboard. “No, but it’s still stupid.” I thought a little more. “I can understand tonight—just now at Salas’s house. There was no power wasted. She was testing us, to see if we would protect someone who we met just this morning.”

“Probing for weakness, yes,” said Stefan. “I agree. I have another thought you are not going to like. She meant to take the boy—you could see it in her. She took the goats as revenge because that boy stood up to her. She tested the father, but it didn’t anger her. She expected it. Witches have different affinities, but most of them are good with things like bloodline powers.”

“The boy resisted her—and she divined that it was something that might run in his family?” I asked. “Because she could normally control someone? If she asked someone to come to her, they would have to do it?” I swallowed. “I thought they needed artifacts—like the collar Bonarata had on that poor werewolf in Italy.”

“For werewolves,” he said. “But people with no magic?” He shrugged. At least he didn’t sound happy about it. “If it helps,” he added, “it is a rare thing. Back in the days when covens dotted the landscape of Europe, they were highly prized. They called them Love Talkers.”

“Love Talkers are fae,” I told him. “And they are male.”

“In fairy tales,” he said. “But most of those stories are about witches, not the fae. And I think it is one of the few witch traits that is equally strong in men and women.”

I supposed if Baba Yaga was fae, it was only fair that some of the stories about the fae were really about witches.

He continued, “We are safe enough, but I am not sure a blessing, even one given by the pope, could make a human resistant to witchcraft.” He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “But witchborn families can be resistant to magic.”

I didn’t think, upon reflection, that the Salases were even a little bit safe while that witch knew where they were. If they were witchborn and didn’t know it, that would explain why the witch singled them out. It also meant that, like any other white witches, they were prey.

I picked up my phone and called Mary Jo.

She listened while I explained everything.

“You want me to protect them?” she asked.

“I want you to find another two wolves and go keep watch. Call us—me, I suppose, because Adam is in another freaking long meeting—if you notice anything awry. Do not engage unless it can’t be helped. But this man’s whole family has a target painted on their backs.”

“You have any objection to me grabbing Sherwood and Joel?” she asked.

I hesitated. “Only if you don’t force Sherwood,” I said finally. “Accept no for an answer.”

“Done,” she said and disconnected.

The billboard on Chemical Drive was new. Don’t let the monsters win in our city was sprawled menacingly over a picture of a cute little girl with a terrified expression on her face, down which slid a single tear. A shadow of a wolflike creature fell over her white dress. In case I was in any doubt of who funded the billboard, eight-foot-tall letters on the right-hand corner proclaimed the website address for the John Lauren Society.

The Citizens for a Bright Future were more active in the Tri-Cities, so I was more familiar with their tactics. Bright Future’s focus was more protest marches, graffiti, and vandalism. My builder had spent a lot of time and money (for which I was billed) keeping them away from the garage. Now that the garage was rebuilt, Hauptman Security had run people off twice in the last two weeks. I had killed one of Bright Future’s members a while back. It had been self-defense, but they didn’t intend to let it go. Not as long as his cousin ran the local chapter, anyway.

The John Lauren Society was a different enemy altogether. They had money and their attacks were better planned. The billboards that had begun springing up all over town after the incident with the troll and the bridge were the first hint we’d had that they were interested in the Tri-Cities. Two of the signs on the farmer’s field this morning had been smaller versions of JLS billboards.

It was good, I thought as I drove past the billboard, to remember that not everyone was enamored of living in a city under the protection of a werewolf pack.

I wondered what the JLS would think about witches.

Hordes of hungry werewolves were awaiting the food I brought. Okay, it was only Lucia, Aiden, George, and Honey—and only some of them were werewolves. But they were hungry.

I threaded my way past the destruction between the front door and the kitchen, then passed out the cold food and ate myself, one hip on a counter, and caught up with everyone’s day.

“Cookie is gone,” Aiden told me sadly.

I looked up at Lucia, who nodded. “The brother of a friend of mine took her. She has a nice family now, and another shepherd to play with.”

Aiden sighed. “And there are too many people coming in and out of here for her. I know.”

Lucia tilted her head. “We can find another dog who needs our help. Maybe one who would enjoy all the commotion?”

“That’s where you were when the zombie wolf tried to destroy the house?” I asked.

She nodded. “Cookie saved my life.” She didn’t sound worried. Lucia was one of the most confident people I’d ever met. If she were a werewolf, she might give Bran a run for his money.

“And you saved hers,” said Aiden, sounding happier. “Balance.”

Aiden had spent a long time in Underhill. We were working on things like generosity and charity. He was more comfortable with bargains.

It was early when I headed to bed, but it had been a long day and I was tired. I took a long, hot shower that loosened my sore muscles, then took my battered body and tucked it into our big bed.

In my dreams I was wandering down a dark road with Coyote. We were talking about . . . water, I think. Then suddenly Coyote stopped, turned to me, grabbed me by my hands, looked into my eyes, and said, “Her name is Death.”

I woke up gasping in panic, and Adam’s voice from the bathroom said, “It’s all right, sweetheart, it’s just me.”

“It’s just I,” I told him, more pedantic than usual because I was scared.

“Good to know,” he said, unperturbed. “I’d hate to think that someone else was in my bed.”

“How did your meeting go?” I asked, shaking off the ugly feeling that had accompanied my nightmare.

He grunted without pleasure. “It would be so much easier if I could kill a few of them. Then I wouldn’t have to argue for an hour to get them to see common sense. I have one more meeting tomorrow afternoon before the show is ready to start. Can you break free? They want to meet you and tell you that you don’t have any real power, they just need you to be the figurehead and play messenger.”

“When?” I asked.

“Two in the afternoon,” he said.

If Zee didn’t mind working in the shop again, it would be no trouble. “I can do that, I think. Where?”

He turned out the light in the bathroom and pulled back the covers. He looked at me. “I’ll pick you up,” he said absently.

And then ripped the covers all the way off.

I squeaked and ran. He caught me without much effort because he was my Adam, and I didn’t really want to run away from him. I was laughing when he dragged me (not ungently) by one leg to the bed.

He picked me up and set me on the mattress.

“You are so beautiful,” he told me.

He was wrong, but he wasn’t lying. I can hit pretty, but beautiful was a long way off. Christy, his ex-wife, was beautiful. Honey was beautiful. But if Adam thought I was beautiful, I wasn’t going to argue with him.

“Back atcha,” I said—and he snorted.

But he was intent on other things than words. And it didn’t take long before I was, too. I bathed myself in him, the silken skin of his shoulders and the rougher skin of his hands, his distinctive smell, the weight of his body.

After the first time, I was in the mood to play. I tortured the both of us (in the best sense of the word) until sweat gathered on his forehead and his wolf looked out from his eyes. His hands dug into my hips harder than he’d be happy with, but he didn’t force me to stop teasing. Adam would never use his strength against me.

I ratcheted us both up until we hung on that edge, like being on the top of the first hill on a wooden roller coaster. I held us both suspended, hearts pounding but bodies still. The muscles stood out on his flat belly and I put one hand there. He shuddered and our eyes met. I felt butterflies take flight in my veins as he smiled, a wolf’s smile, joyous and hungry.

We fell together. And it was glorious.

Adam fell asleep afterward. But energized by good sex, I thought about motivation. After a few minutes, I poked him.

“I have a theory,” I said when he grunted.

“This is going to be one of those nights when all I want to do is sleep, and you’re wound up like a spinning top, isn’t it?” he said.

I ignored him. “There are two possibilities to explain the witches’ arrival. The first is that they found out that Sherwood is here—we’ve been getting a lot of press and Sherwood was in at least one of the pictures that hit the AP.”

“Sleep, that blessed state . . .” intoned Adam, but he was listening to me.

“Sherwood is witchborn, I think, though his magic feels a little more wild than theirs. Still, they used him as a power source for who knows how long.” No one had actually told me that, but what else would they have been doing with him? “Maybe they want him back. That would explain most of the rest.”

“I listened to your messages,” Adam said. “Thank you for doing that, by the way. I find it reassuring that after you escape near death, I can always expect a phone message from you. That way I only panic if I don’t hear from you.”

I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. Probably because he wasn’t sure, either.

“You’re welcome,” I said with dignity. “The witch last night very kindly informed us that the witches are staging a takeover. And we—Marsilia included—are expected to sit quietly and take it. But she also mentioned that she expects us to remove ourselves from helping with the meeting between the fae and the humans.”

“Yes,” said Adam.

“So maybe today”—I glanced at the clock, which read two A.M.—“yesterday, I mean, had more to do with that.”

“Okay,” Adam said. “Can I go to sleep now?”

I thought about it a minute. “Nudge,” I said.

He growled and lunged.

Meetings are boring.

Meetings in which my whole job was to show up and let everyone get a good look at me, then sit down and shut up while they talked, were more than boring. Okay, first they told me it would be my job to find a venue for the big meeting. But they didn’t actually ask me anything or give me a chance to talk.

We met in a hotel boardroom that looked a lot like a lot of other hotel boardrooms I’d been in. Maybe I’d have been more impressed by the people—all men—who represented so much governmental power if the last boardroom I’d been in hadn’t held five Gray Lords of the fae.

The only person who made an impression on me was Tory Abbot, the assistant of the Senate majority whip, Jake Campbell, a Republican from Minnesota. Tory was a sharp-faced man about ten years older than I was and had a decisive manner that demanded people listen when he spoke. Which he did—quite a lot. And he said not very much, which has always seemed to me to be a quality much prized in a politician.

Most of the reason he was interesting had nothing to do with the man himself. I’d been informed (by him) that he would be my liaison with the government. And the man he worked for, Senator Campbell, was the senator that the rogue Cantrip agents had tried to force Adam to assassinate.

About forty minutes into the meeting, which was mostly an endless debate about where to hold the meeting, I started playing solitaire on my phone. The other pack members—Adam, Paul, Kelly, and Luke (the latter three all clad in Hauptman Security shirts)—were more disciplined. They simply waited, seated around the conference table, while no one talked to them.

Finally, Tory Abbot looked at me. “Do you have any suggestions about where to hold this meeting?”

I looked over my shoulder as if there might be someone there whom he was talking to.

“Smart aleck,” murmured Kelly in a voice too soft for the humans to hear. Kelly’s day job was working at a plant nursery, but like a lot of the wolves, he moonlighted for Adam when needed. His bright blue eyes were looking away from me, so no one would see that he was talking to me. He was a sneaky hunter.

“Ms. Hauptman,” Abbot said, a little impatiently, though he was careful to stay on the far side of the room from me.

“None of the places you talked about will do,” I said. “The fae won’t come to the city and sit in iron and cement walls to discuss peace with the enemy.”

“We’re sure as fuck not going to go out to the reservation and talk with them,” said Abbot.

“That’s my wife you’re swearing at,” growled Adam, and the whole room came to a silent stillness. “Don’t do that again.” There was a lot more threat in his voice than there had been when he’d said the same thing to Sherwood yesterday.

“I wouldn’t suggest going to the reservation,” I said, as smoothly as if Adam hadn’t spoken. “I doubt they’d let you in anyway. Or out, if they did let you in. What you need is a place big enough to hold everyone and their entourages as well as the fae delegation, one that also has a small room nearby where the principals can talk. Somewhere in our territory, but not actually in town, where the fae feel at a disadvantage.”

I had been listening and thinking. I can do all that and play solitaire at the same time—it’s a gift.

“Okay,” said Abbot warily. “Where do you suggest?”

“How about one of the Red Mountain wineries? They are still in our territory.” With a sweeping hand I included Adam and the other wolves. “They are built to hold company meetings and retreats—and they are situated among growing things.”

I stopped speaking before I could tell them about the connections between the fae and alcoholic beverages—beer and mead more than wine, to be sure. But the wine would be something that would make the fae feel more at home.

“Security-wise that might be a good choice,” said a man. I was pretty sure he was Secret Service or something like that because they hadn’t told me what he did—and he’d been sitting on the sidelines like the rest of us while the others talked. “The wineries are pretty isolated, so we can keep nonparticipants away. I can go scout some out tonight and bring back suggestions.”

And the talks resumed.

I looked at the time on my phone for the third time in five minutes and Adam said, breaking easily into a heated argument about the appropriateness of holding a governmental meeting at a winery, “Gentlemen. We should excuse my wife, who needs to get back to her work.” He took the SUV key off his key ring (it was a diesel; diesels still had keys rather than fobs) and tossed it. “Paul, take my rig. I’ll catch a ride back with Luke and Kelly.”

Paul grabbed the key out of the air and saluted Adam. He opened the door for me to precede him.

I would have preferred either Kelly or Luke. Paul was one of the wolves who would rather I were not his Alpha’s mate. When Adam had told the pack he would no longer tolerate anyone dissing me, Paul had been very quiet around me. Paul had gotten a divorce a couple of months ago—and that hadn’t sweetened his temperament even a little bit. I wasn’t afraid of Paul, but he wasn’t someone I wanted to hang out with, either. That was probably why Adam had sent him with me, to force us to deal with each other.

“At least you didn’t suggest Uncle Mike’s,” Paul said acerbically when we were far enough down the hall that Adam wouldn’t hear him.

Before I could respond, we turned a corner and found ourselves in the middle of a wild rumpus of the first order. A tourist bus had evidently arrived while we’d been twiddling our toes in the boardroom. The check-in desk and the surrounding room were full of dozens of well-to-do retirees, a pizza delivery guy with a big box, and four people from a local flower shop pushing in carts of bright-colored mini-bouquets in small clear vases.

I dropped back to let Paul take point. He was a big man and people moved to let him through. I trailed in his wake through the crowd and out the revolving door into the fresh air.

“Don’t worry,” said Paul as we cleared the hotel, “I won’t attack you or anything.”

I rolled my eyes. “As if you could.”

He started to say something, shook his head, and muttered, “Let me try this again.”

“Try what?” I asked.

Instead of answering me, he stopped dead and turned in a slow circle. “Do you smell that?”

Having sharp senses is one thing. Paying attention to them so they do some good is another. I inhaled. The hotel was in the middle of town; there were a lot of scents in the air. One of those scents just didn’t belong.

“Gunpowder?” I asked. “Why are we smelling gunpowder?”

I looked around but there weren’t any people outside the hotel who were near enough that the scent could be coming off them even if they’d spent the morning out shooting—even if they had rolled in gunpowder.

Paul focused on the cars, which made more sense because they were closer.

What we had were two minivans, a battered car with a pizza sign on the top, and, closest to us, a tour bus.

The silver bus purred at rest, her big luggage doors open to expose the belly of the beast. I took two steps toward her, but as soon as I did, the smell of her diesel engine overpowered the smell of gunpowder.

The diesel, being a volatile organic, would travel farther than the gunpowder. If I was smelling gunpowder outside the range of the diesel, it could only be because the gunpowder smell was coming from somewhere other than the bus.

Meanwhile, Paul had examined the first of the minivans. He shook his head at me and took a step toward the little battered car with a local pizza sign on the roof. Frowning, he tilted his head.

I ran up to him and got hit in the face with a wash of garlic, tomatoes, cheese, pepperoni—the usual. He looked at me and shrugged; his stomach rumbled. He grinned, a boyish expression he’d never turned on me before, then shook his head.

We both tried the second minivan, but it smelled of flowers and baby’s breath. The baby’s breath made Paul sneeze.

He gave half a growl, stalked back to the pizza car, and pulled open the driver’s-side door. He stuck his head in.

“Pizza is strong, but it shouldn’t smell like gunpowder,” he said to me. But by then I could smell it, too, wafting out of the open door. I saw him in my mind’s eye, the pizza delivery boy carrying one of those big vinyl pizza bags designed to carry multiple boxes of pizzas.

Paul and I both ran, leaving the door of the pizza car open.

When two people run into a crowded room, a lot of drama happens—shouts and shuffling and people with mouths agape. One of the things that doesn’t happen is a miraculous clearing of pathways. Paul did that all by himself.

I hoped that the old woman he shoved to the ground would be okay, but I didn’t hesitate when I jumped over her. Time enough to apologize and feel guilty after we hunted down the threat.

We ran for the boardroom. Once out of the crowd, I was faster than Paul, so I was in front when we turned the last corner.

“Adam,” I yelled. “Gun.”

The pizza man, one hand raised to knock at the closed door, turned a startled gaze at me. I supposed he hadn’t heard us until I yelled.

“Bomb,” corrected Paul, who had spent ten years in the SWAT unit of a large city back east. He’d never told me which one—we just didn’t talk that much.

The pizza man screamed, “Open the goddamned door, you freaks!” And, with a panicked look at my rapid approach, he did something with the pizza box.

The world stopped in a roar of sound and light.

One moment I was upright and running, the next I was facedown on the rough hotel carpet, struggling to breathe. The air was full of dust and my lungs didn’t want to work because of the heavy weight on top of me. Pain and loss shivered down the pack bonds with the even heavier weight of our dead.

Our dead.

“Paul,” I tried to say.

Though the lifeless weight of him on my back didn’t move, I felt the touch of his fingers on my cheek. They were warm, which I knew was weird.

They should have been cold. The touch of the dead is usually cold.

“Heyya, lady,” Paul said, his voice gentler than I’d ever heard it. “You’ll tell him, right?”

“Paul,” I said. “No.”

He laughed. “Yes, you will. You’re fair like that.” There was a little pause and he said a bit wistfully, “Tell Mary Jo that I loved her, okay?” Then he made a sharp sound. “No. No. That wouldn’t be right. Just make sure they all know what I did. So they will think well of me. I’d like that.”

And then Paul was gone, even though his body lay on top of me, the smell of him, of his blood, all around me.