Iron Kissed

Chapter 10

"You are covered with blood and glass," Jesse snapped at me as she helped me drag my tired bones over the windowsill. "All that blood isn't going to do anything to help the wolves calm down."
"I have to go down and check," I insisted doggedly, not for the first time. "Some of them are hurt and it's my fault."
"They enjoyed every minute of that fight and you know it. It'll take them a bit to calm enough to be safe anyway. Dad'll come up when he's fit to talk. You get in the shower before you ruin the carpet."
I looked down and saw that I was still trailing blood. My feet started to throb as soon as I noticed.
With a little more prodding on Jesse's part, I shuffled off to the shower (in Adam's bedroom, since the hall shower was still exposed to the world). Jesse stuffed a pair of old sweats and a T-shirt that told everyone that I loved New York into my arms and shut the bathroom door behind me.
With the excitement done, I was so tired I could hardly move. Adam's bathroom was decorated in tasteful browns that somehow managed to escape being bland. His ex-wife, whatever her other faults - and they were many - had excellent taste.
While I waited for the shower to warm up, I glanced in the full-length mirror that covered the wall between the shower and the his-and-her sinks - and despite the guilt of bringing the fae down upon Adam's unsuspecting pack - I had to grin.
I looked like something out of a bad horror flick. Naked, I was covered from fingertip to elbow and toe to knee with marsh muck: it always amazes me how much swamp there is in the Tri-Cities, which is pretty much a desert. The rest of me sparkled, as though I'd covered myself with some glitter lotion instead of having a window broken over my sweat-covered body. Here and there were larger chunks of glass that dripped off me every time I moved - my hair was littered with them.
And everywhere, I was covered with tiny cuts that oozed blood. I picked up my foot and removed a largish splinter that was responsible for the small pool of blood that was growing around me. All the cuts were really going to hurt tomorrow. Not for the first time, I wished I healed like the werewolves did.
Steam began to rise from the shower and I trudged in and shut the glass door behind me. The water stung and I hissed as it hit tender bits - then swore when I stepped on another shard of glass, probably one of the ones that had fallen out of my hair as soon as the water hit me.
Too tired to fish the glass out, I leaned against the wall and let the water pour over my head and relief rolled over me with it, robbing my knees of their last bit of starch. Only the fear that I'd sit on glass and cut something more dear than my feet kept me from sinking to the tiled shower floor.
I took inventory.
I was still alive, and with the possible exception of Ben, so were the werewolves. I closed my eyes and tried not to think of the red wolf lying in the grass. Ben would probably be all right. Werewolves can take a lot of damage and there had been the others to keep the fae off him while he was helpless. He'd be all right, I reassured myself - but it didn't matter. Somehow I was going to have to work up the energy to get out of the shower and check.
The bathroom door opened, and I felt the wash of Adam's power.
"There's a Porsche sitting in the middle of Finley Road, right in front of Two Rivers Park," I said, though I hadn't remembered it until just that moment. "Someone's going to hit it and get killed if it doesn't get moved."
The door opened again and there was a quiet murmur of voices.
Even over the drowning spray of the water, I heard someone say, "I'll take care of it." Honey's husband again, I thought, because the werewolves can't talk in their wolf shape and he was the only one who had stayed human. Some of the wolves could have changed back by now - but without a good reason to do so, they'd probably just stay wolves for the night. Except for Adam.
Changing so quickly to fight the fae I'd brought him, the actual fight, then changing back in under an hour weren't going to leave him in a cheerful mood. I hoped he'd eaten something before he came up here - changing cost a lot of energy and I'd rather he not be hungry. I was bleeding too much for that to be good.
Telling Adam to take care of Fideal's car was supposed to have given me enough time to get out of the shower and wrap up in a towel, but I couldn't work up the energy to do anything but stand in the shower stall.
The big glass door swung open, but I didn't look up. Adam didn't say anything, but turned me with his hands on my shoulders so I was facing the showerhead. I bowed my head farther and took a step forward so the spray hit the top of my head rather than my face.
He must have picked up a comb, because he started to comb my hair free of glass. He was being very careful not to touch me anywhere else.
"Watch it," I said. "There's glass all over the floor."
The comb hesitated and then resumed its task. "I have my shoes on," he said. The rumble of his growl told me that the wolf wasn't far away no matter how human or gentle the hands that worked through my hair were.
"Is everyone all right?" I asked, though I knew he needed quiet now.
"Ben's hurt, but nothing that won't heal by morning - and nothing he doesn't deserve after jumping through the window. Glass is heavy and sharper than a guillotine's blade. He's lucky he didn't cut his own throat - and luckier still that all you have are cuts."
I could feel the anger vibrate through him. Werewolves, in their wolf form, are not always angry - just as a grizzly bear is not always angry: it only seems like it. If what Honey had told me was correct, Adam's temper was even more uncertain than usual. The fight wouldn't have helped it.
All that meant I couldn't cover my own uncertain state by pricking his temper - it wouldn't be fair to him. Damn it.
I was too tired to be playing the kind of games that kept werewolves calm - and keep him from knowing just how scared I had been at the same time.
"I'm not hurt," I said. "Just tired. That fae could run."
He growled at the mention of his recent opponent, and it wasn't a human sound.
I swore, though I usually tried not to do that in front of Adam, as he had the sensibilities of a man raised in the nineteen fifties when nice women didn't swear. "I'm too tired for this. I'm going to shut up now."
He resumed combing my hair and I waited patiently until he was satisfied that he'd gotten all the glass out. He shut off the water and got out of the shower stall to grab a towel out of a cabinet beside the door. I looked at him then, while his head was turned away so there was no chance of catching his gaze. Though he'd taken his shirt off, he was dressed in a very wet pair of jeans and tennis shoes.
As soon as he shifted his weight to turn, I dropped my eyes. He came back to the shower stall and dried me with a fluffy, sweet-smelling towel. It had spent too much time with a dryer sheet, so it wasn't very absorbent, despite the thick nap. I bit my lip so I wouldn't tell him so.
This close to him, I could smell how near his temper was to the surface, so I kept my gaze on our feet and made myself stand submissively while he worked off his temper by taking care of me.
I can fake submissive with the best of them. It's a survival technique around werewolves.
He paused when he came to my belly. He let the towel drop away and dropped to one knee until his face was on level with my navel. He closed his brilliant eyes and pressed his forehead against the vulnerable softness under my rib cage.
The flesh of the belly is soft and sweet, unprotected. But my nose told me that he was definitely not thinking of food. For a breathless moment we both waited.
"Samuel told me about your tattoo," he said, his breath warm against my skin.
Hadn't he seen it before? Being very careful not to tease him meant that I kept my clothes on around him - so maybe not.
"It's a coyote paw print," I told him. "I had it done when I was in college."
He raised his face until he was looking up at me. "It looks like a wolf print to me."
"Is that what Samuel said?" I asked. I wasn't unaffected by the close contact - I couldn't help but let the fingers of one hand slide through his hair. "What did he say? That I'd marked myself his property?" Oh, he wouldn't lie, not to another werewolf; it doesn't work. But a hint here and there was just as effective.
Adam pressed his head against me until all I could see was the top of his head. His cheek and chin were prickly, which should have tickled or hurt, but that wasn't the sensation that I was feeling. His hands slid up my legs to my rump, where they tightened, pulling me harder against his face.
His lips were soft, but not as soft as his tongue.
This was about to go one step further than I was ready for - and for a long moment I considered it. I closed my eyes. Maybe if it had been someone other than Adam, I'd have let him. But one of the things that the Marrok had taught me is that with werewolves you are always dealing with two sets of instincts. The first belonged to the beast, but the second belonged to the man. Adam wasn't a modern man, content to hop from bed to bed. In his era you didn't have sex unless you were married or getting married and I knew that he believed that.
Having been the result of a casual night of sex and grown up belonging to no one - I believed that, too. Oh, I'd fooled around a bit, but I didn't much anymore.
Would it be so bad to be Adam's mate? All that I had to do to let this relationship go one step more was nothing.
"My college roommate had grown up helping her parents run their tattoo shop and she put herself through college by doing tattoos. I tutored her in a few subjects and she offered to give me the tattoo in return," I told him, trying to distract one of us.
"Still scared of me?" he asked.
I didn't know how to answer him because that wasn't it, really. I was scared of the person I became around him.
He sighed and leaned back until none of his skin touched mine before coming back to his feet. He tossed the damp towel on the floor and stepped back out of the stall.
I started to get out, too.
"Stay there."
He grabbed another towel and wrapped me in it. Then he picked me up and set me on the counter between the sinks.
"I'm going to change out of this wet stuff and find something for your feet. There's glass scattered all over downstairs and everywhere you walked. You stay on this counter until I get back."
He didn't wait for my agreement, which was probably for the best as I would have choked on it. That last sentence would have made me bristle even if his tone of voice hadn't been military-sharp. Why was it that I was always trying to handle the werewolves instead of the other way around?
Maybe because Adam's other form had big claws and great big teeth.
I could reach Jesse's clothes without leaving the counter and so I ditched the towel and scrambled into the sweatpants and then the T-shirt. My T-shirts were the old-fashioned thick cotton kind, but Jesse wore fashionably thin ones that clung to every curve. Since my skin was still damp and the shirt was tight, I looked like a refugee from a wet T-shirt contest.
I snagged the towel and used it to cover my assets just as Adam strode back in. He was wearing clean, dry jeans and a different pair of tennis shoes. He hadn't bothered putting on a shirt: after two changes in under an hour, his skin must feel raw, like a bad sunburn. The shower wouldn't have helped that.
I focused on his feet and clutched the towel a little closer to my chest.
To my surprise, he took a good look at me and laughed abruptly. "You look so meek. I don't think I've ever seen you meek before."
"Looks are deceiving," I said. "What I am is exhausted, scared, and stupid. I'm sorry I brought it here and endangered Jesse."
I watched his shoes as they approached the counter. He leaned close, enveloping me in his power and in his scent. His face rubbed against my hair, and the faint trace of stubble caught on the wet strands.
"You have a few cuts on your scalp," he said.
"I'm sorry I brought him here," I told Adam again. "I thought I could lose him in the chase, but he was too fast. He has another form, some kind of horse, I think, though I was too busy running to look."
His head stilled and he took a deep breath, assessing my mood.
"Exhausted, scared, and stupid, you said." He paused as if he were evaluating what I'd said. "Exhausted, yes." If he could smell exhaustion, his nose was a lot better than mine, which I didn't believe. "And I can catch a faint trace of fear, though the shower took care of most of that. But stupid I don't believe. What else could you have done but bring it here where we could handle it?"
"I could have led it somewhere else."
He tipped my chin back and forced me to look into his bright gold eyes. "You'd have died."
His voice was soft, but the wolf's eyes were hot with the fire of battle.
"Jesse could have died...you almost did." For a moment I felt the gut-wrenching twist of seeing him disappear under the water.
He let me hide my face against his shoulder so he couldn't read my expression - but I felt the power that had been buzzing against my skin drop a notch. My reaction to his near-drowning pleased him.
"Shh," he said and one of his big, calloused hands slid under my hair and around the back of my neck to hold me against him. "I coughed up a gallon or two of river and am as good as new. Much better than I'd have been if you'd gotten yourself killed because you didn't trust me to take care of one lone fae."
Leaving my head tucked against him was as dangerous as anything I'd done tonight, and I knew it. I just couldn't seem to care. He smelled so good and his skin was so warm.
"All right," he said at last. "Let me take a look at your feet."
He did more than that. He washed them in hot water in the sink and scrubbed them with a brush he pulled out of a drawer that would have been uncomfortable even if my feet hadn't been all cut up.
To my yips, he purred a little, but it didn't slow down his scrub brush. Nor did I have a chance of pulling a foot out of his hand because he kept a firm grip on my ankle as he worked. He doused my feet in hydrogen peroxide and then dried them off with a dark towel.
"You're going to end up with bleached spots on the towel," I told him, pulling my feet away.
"Shut up, Mercy," he said, catching an ankle and dragging me over until he could hold the foot with one hand and use the towel to wipe my foot off with the other.
"Dad?" Jesse peered carefully around the door. When she got a good look at us, she trotted through the door and held out a cordless phone. "You have a phone call from Uncle Mike."
"Thanks," he said and took the phone and tucked it against his ear. "Could you finish up here, Jesse? She just needs drying off, bandaging, and something on her feet before we let her out of here."
I waited until he took the phone out of the room and down the stairs before I grabbed the towel from Jesse, who was giggling.
"If you could just see your face," she told me. "You look like a cat in a bathtub."
I dried my feet and then opened the box of bandages Adam had set on the counter next to me. "I can dry my own damn feet," I snarled. "Sit here, stay here."
I was sitting between the sinks so there was room on the far side of the one nearest the door for Jesse to hitch a hip on it and half sit. "So why did you listen to his orders?"
"Because he just saved my bacon and I don't need to rile him more than he already is." There were only three cuts that needed bandages, all of them on my left foot.
"Come on," she said. "Admit it, you enjoyed him fussing over you just a little bit."
I gave her a look. When she didn't back down, I turned my attention to peeling the paper off a bandage so I could stick it on my foot. I wasn't going to admit to anything. Not with Adam just downstairs where he might overhear something I didn't want him to hear.
"How come you're wearing a towel?" she asked.
I showed her and she giggled. "Whoops. I forgot you wouldn't have a bra. I'll get a sweatshirt for you to wear over that."
When she was safely gone, I smiled to myself. She was right. There is something about having someone take care of you, even when you don't need it - maybe especially when you don't need it.
Something else made me happier, though. Even though Adam was on edge, even though he'd been issuing orders left and right, I hadn't felt that desire to do whatever he asked me that was part of his magic as the Alpha. If he could manage that under these circumstances...Perhaps I could be his mate and keep myself at the same time.
Jesse's shoes, which Adam had brought in for me, were too small, but in addition to the sweatshirt, she managed to scrounge up a pair of flip-flops that worked.
Honey's husband walked in the door as I came down the stairs, Honey, as gorgeous in wolf form as she was in human, at his side. He gave me a friendly smile when he saw me.
"I didn't find the Porsche, but your Rabbit was off the side of the road with the keys in the ignition. I couldn't start it, so I locked it up." He handed me the keys.
"Thanks, Peter. Fideal must have gone back for his car. That means he wasn't badly hurt." I'd been going to head over to my house, but with Fideal running around, it didn't sound like such a good idea.
Peter obviously shared my displeasure at the fae's state of health. "I'm sorry," he said. "The steel would have done it, I think, but I couldn't find his body under all the fronds."
"How is it that you're so comfortable with the sword?" I asked. "And why did Adam have a sword here anyway?"
"It's my sword," Jesse said. "I got it at the Renaissance Faire last year and Peter's been teaching me how to use it."
He smiled. "I was a calvary officer before I Changed," he explained. "We used guns, of course, but they weren't accurate. The sword was still our first weapon." He sounded as he always had, his Midwest accent firmly back in place.
He'd been Changed during the Revolutionary War era or a little before, I thought, to use guns but rely on swords. That would make him, other than maybe Samuel and the Marrok himself, the oldest werewolf I'd ever met. Werewolves might not die of old age, but violence was part and parcel of their way of life.
He saw my surprise. "I'm not a dominant, Mercy. We tend to last a little longer." Honey pushed her face under his hand and he rubbed her gently behind her ears.
"Cool," I said.
"Fideal is in safe hands," said Adam from behind me.
I turned to see him replacing the phone in its base on the kitchen counter.
"Uncle Mike assures me that it was a mistake - an overeagerness on the part of Fideal to carry out the Gray Lords' orders."
I raised my eyebrows. "He told me he was hungry for human flesh. I guess that could be overeagerness."
He looked at me and I couldn't read his face or his scent. "I talked to Samuel earlier. He's sorry to have missed the excitement, but he's at home now. If Fideal follows you home, he'll have Samuel to contend with." He waved his hand around. "And there are plenty of us here to come to your aid."
"Are you sending me home?" Was I flirting? Damn it, I was.
He smiled, first with his eyes and then his lips, just a little, just enough to turn his face into something that made my pulse pick up. "You can stay if you'd like," he said, flirting right back. Then, a wicked light gleaming in his eyes, he went one step too far. "But I think there are too many people around for what I'd like you to stay for."
I dodged around Honey's husband and out the door, the flip-flops making little snapping sounds that didn't cover up Adam's final comment. "I like your tattoo, Mercy."
I made sure that my shoulders were stiff as I stalked away. He couldn't see the grin on my face...and it faded soon enough.
From the porch I could see the damage the fight had done to both the house and the SUV. That dent in the side of the shiny black vehicle was going to be expensive to fix. The side of the house had taken some damage, too, and I didn't know how much it would cost to repair. When I'd had to have the siding replaced on my trailer, the vampires had picked up the tab.
I started adding up the cost of the fight. I didn't know exactly what Fideal had done to my car, but it was going to take hours to fix, even if I could scrounge all the parts off the dead Rabbit presently annoying Adam in my back field. And somewhere I was going to have to come up with money to pay off Zee (and I really didn't want to borrow it from Samuel) - unless Zee had been playing some elaborate game to keep me from investigating the murder.
I rubbed my face, suddenly tired. I'd kept mostly to myself since I left the Marrok's pack when I was sixteen. The only problems I'd stuck my nose into had been my own. I stayed out of werewolf business and Zee kept me out of his. Somehow in the past year all that careful management had gone to hell.
I wasn't sure that there was a way back to my old peaceful existence, or if I even wanted it. But my new lifestyle was starting to get expensive.
A piece of gravel slid between the flip-flop and my sore foot and I yelped. It was getting painful, too.
Samuel was waiting for me on the porch with a mug of hot chocolate and an expert glance that checked for wounds.
"I'm fine," I told him, scooting past the open screen door and snagging the cocoa on the way. It was instant, but the marshmallows were just what I needed. "Ben's the one who got hurt, and I think I saw Darryl limping."
"Adam didn't ask me to come over, so neither of them must have been hurt very badly," he said, shutting the door. When I sat on a chair in the living room, he sat on the couch across from me. "Why don't you tell me about tonight. Like how you happened to get chased by the Fideal."
"The Fideal?"
"It used to live in a bog and eat straying children," he told me. "You're a little older than its usual fare. So what did you do to tick it off?"
"Nothing. Not a darn thing."
He made one of those sounds he used to let me know he wasn't buying my story.
I took a long drink. Maybe another viewpoint would notice something I had missed. So I told him most of it - leaving out only what had gone on between Adam and me after I'd gotten into the shower.
As I talked, I noticed that Samuel looked tired. He loved working in the emergency room, but it took a toll. Not just the odd hours, though they could be bad enough. Mostly it was the stress of keeping control when surrounded by blood and fear and death.
By the time I finished my story, he looked better. "So you went to a Bright Future meeting, hoping to find someone else who might have killed this guard, and ran into a bunch of college kids - and a fae who decided that eating you would be fun."
I nodded. "That's about it."
"Could the fae have been the killer?"
I closed my eyes and pictured Fideal's fight with the werewolves. Could he have ripped a man's head off his shoulders? "Maybe. But he didn't seem concerned about the investigation."
"You said that he was angry you were at the meeting. Could he have been worried that you were closing in on him?"
"That might have been it," I said. "I'll call Uncle Mike and see if there's any reason Fideal might have wanted the other fae dead. He certainly knew O'Donnell - and the more I find out about him, the odder it seems that someone hadn't killed him years ago."
Samuel smiled a little. "But you're not convinced the Fideal did it."
I shook my head. "He's put himself on the top of my list, but..."
"But what?"
"He was so hungry. Not for sustenance, though that was part of it, but for the hunt." Samuel the werewolf would understand what I meant. "I think that if Fideal had killed the guard, O'Donnell's death would have been different. He'd have been found drowned, or eaten, or never found at all." Putting it into words made it more than a suspicion. "I'll call Uncle Mike and see what he thinks, but I don't believe it was Fideal."
I remembered that I had something else to talk to Uncle Mike about, too. "And that walking stick showed up in my car tonight, again."
I started to get up to get the phone, but my legs had had enough and I fell back. "Darn it."
"What's wrong?" The tired relaxation left Samuel between one heartbeat and the next - I gave him an exasperated glance.
"I told you, I'm fine. Nothing some stretches, Icy Hot, and a good night of sleep won't cure." I thought of all the little cuts and decided to do without the Icy Hot. "Can you throw me the phone?"
He plucked it off its base on the table next to the couch and tossed it to me.
"Thanks." I'd been calling him so often the past few days that I had Uncle Mike's number memorized. It took me a few minutes of wading through minions before Uncle Mike himself got on the phone.
"Could Fideal have killed O'Donnell?" I asked without ceremony.
"Could have, but didn't," answered Uncle Mike. "O'Donnell's body was still twitching when Zee and I found him. Whoever killed him did it while we were still standing on the doorstep. The Fideal's glamour isn't good enough to hide himself from me if he were that close. And he'd have bitten O'Donnell's head off and eaten it, not just torn it off."
I swallowed. "So what was Fideal doing at the Bright Future meeting and why wasn't his scent at O'Donnell's?"
"The Fideal went to a couple of meetings so he could keep an eye on them. He told us that they were more talk than action and mostly quit attending meetings. When O'Donnell was killed, he was asked to take another look. And he found himself a nosy coyote with a death sentence on her head - a nice evening snack." Uncle Mike sounded irritated, and not with Fideal.
"And when did the coyote end up with a price on her head and why didn't you warn me?" I asked, feeling indignant.
"I told you to leave it alone," he said, his voice suddenly cold with power. "You know too much and you talk too much. You need to do as you are told."
Maybe if he'd been in the room, I'd have felt intimidated. But he wasn't, so I said, "And Zee would be convicted of murder."
There was a long pause, which I broke. "And then he'd be summarily executed as called for by the fae laws."
Samuel, whose sharp ears had no trouble hearing both sides of the phone conversation, growled. "Don't try throwing this on Mercy, Uncle Mike. You knew she wouldn't leave it alone - especially if you told her to. Contrary is her middle name and you played her into looking further than you could. What did the Gray Lords do? Did they order you and the rest of the fae to stop looking for the real killer? Excepting only Zee's capture, they really have no quarrel with the person who killed O'Donnell, do they? He was the one killing the fae and got killed in return. Justice is served."
"Zee was cooperating with the Gray Lords," said Uncle Mike. The apology that had replaced the anger told me not only was Samuel right - Uncle Mike had wanted me to continue investigating - but also Uncle Mike's ears were as sharp as the werewolf's. "I didn't think they would send anyone else to enforce the punishment and the fae here I have some control over. If I'd known they were sending Nemane, I'd have warned you. But she's issued a stay of execution."
"She's an assassin," growled Samuel.
"You wolves have your own assassin, don't they, Samuel Marrokson?" snapped Uncle Mike. "How many wolves has your brother killed to keep your people safe? Do you begrudge us the same necessity?"
"When they come after Mercy, I do. And Charles only kills the guilty, not the inconvenient."
I cleared my throat. "Let's not get diverted from the point. Could Nemane have killed O'Donnell?"
"She's better than that," Uncle Mike said. "If she'd killed O'Donnell, no one would have known it wasn't an accident."
Once more I was left without a suspect.
Any of the werewolves could have done it, I thought, remembering the speed that ripped O'Donnell's head from his body. But they had no reason to, and I hadn't smelled them at O'Donnell's house. The vampires? I didn't know enough about them - though I knew more than I wanted to. I knew they could hide their scents from me if they thought about it. No, O'Donnell's killer had been one of the fae.
Well, if Uncle Mike wanted me to investigate, maybe he'd answer some questions.
"O'Donnell was taking things from the people he killed, wasn't he?" I asked. "The walking stick - which is in my Rabbit, parked off Finley Road over by Two Rivers, Uncle Mike - was one of those. But there were others, weren't there? The first fae killed, Connora, she was a librarian - she'd have had some of the artifacts, wouldn't she? Small things because she was not powerful enough to keep anything anyone else wanted. The walking stick came from the house of the fae with a forest for a backyard. I could smell him on it. What else was stolen?"
I'd been reading Tad's friend's book. There were a lot of things that I wouldn't want in just anyone's hands. There were some things I wouldn't want in anyone's hands.
There was a long pause, then Uncle Mike said, "I'll be over in a few minutes. Stay there."
I tossed Samuel the phone and he hung it up. Then I got to my feet, and retrieved the book I'd borrowed out of the gun safe in my room.
There were actually several walking sticks - one that would lead you home no matter where you roamed, one that allowed you to see people for what they were, and the third, the one that had been following me, was the stick that multiplied the farmer's sheep. None of them sounded bad until you read the stories. No matter how good they seemed, fae artifacts had a way of making their human owners miserable.
I'd found Zee's knife, too. The book called it a sword, but the hand-drawn illustration certainly depicted the weapon I'd twice borrowed from Zee.
Samuel, who'd left the couch to kneel beside my chair as I paged through the section I'd read, hissed between his teeth and touched the illustration: He'd seen Zee's knife, too.
Uncle Mike came in without knocking on the door.
I knew it was him by the deliberate sound of his footsteps and by his scent - spice and old beer - but I didn't look up from the book when I asked, "Was there something that allows the murderer to hide from magic? Is that why you had to call me in to identify the murderer?"
There were a couple of things in the book that would protect someone from the fae's anger or make them invisible.
Uncle Mike shut the door, but stayed just in front of it. "We retrieved seven artifacts from O'Donnell's house. That's why Zee didn't have time to hide from the police - and why I left him to take the blame alone. The things we found were items of small power, nothing important except that they existed - and fae power in human hands is not usually a good thing."
"You missed the walking stick," I said, looking up. Uncle Mike looked more wrinkled and tired than his T-shirt and jeans.
He nodded. "And there was nothing we found that could have prevented us from finding O'Donnell - so we have to believe that the murderer left with at least one more item."
Samuel, like me, had refrained from looking at Uncle Mike when he'd entered - a small power play that subtly put us in charge. That Samuel had done it told me that he, too, didn't entirely believe Uncle Mike was on our side. Samuel came to his feet before he turned his attention from the book to the fae. He used his extra inches of height to stare down at Uncle Mike.
"You don't know what O'Donnell took?" he asked.
"Our librarian was trying to compile a list of everything our people had. Since she was the first one to die..." He shrugged. "He stole the list and there are no copies that I know of. Maybe Connora gave one to the Gray Lords."
"Was O'Donnell looking for the artifacts when he started to date her?" I asked.
He frowned at me. "How did you know they were dating?" He shook his head. "No. Don't tell me. It's best I don't know if you've fae who are talking to you."
He was trying to keep Tad out of it, I thought.
Uncle Mike flopped on the couch, closing his eyes, giving in to the exhaustion that he was obviously feeling - and giving Samuel the upper hand without a fight.
"I don't think he planned the thefts to start with. We've talked to her friends. Connora chose him. He thought he was doing her a favor - she thought he deserved what she planned to do with him." He looked at me. "Our Connora could be kind, but she despised humans, especially anyone connected to the BFA. She played with him awhile before tiring of her game. The day before she died, she told one of her friends she was dropping him."
"So why did you need Mercy?" Samuel asked. "He was the obvious suspect."
Uncle Mike sighed. "We had just set our sights on him when the second victim turned up dead. It took a while before anyone would talk to us about her affair. For a fae to take up with a human is encouraged. Half-breeds are better than no children at all. But O'Donnell - all the guards really are the enemy. And a fae doesn't consort with the enemy...especially when they are someone like O'Donnell."
"She was slumming," I said.
He considered it. "If one of your friends was consorting with a dog, would it be considered slumming?"
"So he thinks he's doing her a favor and she tells him what she really thinks of him - and he kills her."
"That's what we think. When the second victim was found - we thought it was unlikely that a human could have killed her so we didn't look at O'Donnell again. It wasn't until the third murder that we realized that the motive was theft. Connora had a few items, but no one thought to check if any were missing. She also must have had something else, something that allowed him to hide from our magic. Something much more powerful than anything someone like her should have had."
He looked at me and gave me a tired smile. "We are a secretive people, and even the risk of disobeying the Gray Lords' orders is not worth giving up all of our secrets. If something you possess is too powerful, They will confiscate it. If They had known that she had something of power, she'd have been forced to give it to someone who could take care of it."
"So O'Donnell gets it instead." I closed the book and set it beside me.
"And the list she had compiled for the Gray Lords, of the items they wanted recorded." He spread his hands. "We aren't sure that she had a copy in her house. One of her friends saw it, but Connora might have turned it over to the Gray Lords without keeping a copy."
That didn't sound like the woman whose house I'd searched. A woman like that would have kept a copy of everything. She loved the storage of knowledge.
"So O'Donnell takes that list," I said. "After playing with whatever toys he stole from Connora, he decided he wanted more. He looks at the list and goes after the things he wants." My sample size was limited, but - "It seemed to me that he was killing the least powerful, Connora, to the most, the forest fae who was last killed. Is that right?"
"Yes. She might have told him or maybe she had the list organized that way. He didn't get it quite right, by the way, but close enough. I suppose whatever items he stole allowed him to kill people he would otherwise never have been able to touch."
"Do you have any idea at all what things O'Donnell's killer might have?" Samuel growled.
Uncle Mike sighed. "No. But he doesn't either. The list said things like 'one walking stick' or 'a silver bracelet, but it didn't explain what they were. Mercy, the walking stick wasn't in your car. The Fideal says that he didn't touch it. I suspect it will show up again - it has been persistent in following you."
"It is the walking stick that would make all my ewes have twins, isn't it?" I asked, though I was almost certain. The stories about the others had worried me enough to be grateful the stick was useless to me.
He laughed. It started from his belly and worked its way to his eyes, until they twinkled merrily. "You have some ewes you plan on breeding?"
"No, but I'd like to be able to travel more than five miles from home without finding myself on my own doorstep - or worse, be able to see all the faults in the people around me without any of the goodness." Not that any of that had been happening, but for all I knew, the stick had to be activated somehow in order to work.
"Not to worry," he said, still grinning. "If you decide to be a sheep farmer, all of your sheep would have healthy twins until the stick decided to roam again."
I let out a sigh of relief and turned back to what I needed to know. "When O'Donnell was killed, were you and Zee the only ones who knew he was the killer?"
"We hadn't told anyone else."
"Were you the only ones who knew the murderer was stealing artifacts?" I caught a whiff of something magical and tried to keep my face from showing my sudden alertness.
"No. It wasn't talked about, but as soon as we discovered that Connora's list had been taken, we started asking around. Anyone would have made the obvious connection."
Beside me, Samuel nodded in happy agreement. Not that he should have objected to anything Uncle Mike said but...
"Quit that," I told Uncle Mike. I noticed that the tiredness I'd seen in him when he came was gone and he once more appeared to be a kindly man who made his living making people happy.
"What?"
I narrowed my gaze at him. "I don't like you right now, and no fae magic is going to change that." Samuel jerked his head toward me. Maybe he hadn't caught that Uncle Mike was using some kind of charisma magic - or maybe he smelled that I was lying. I did like Uncle Mike, but Uncle Mike didn't need to know that. He'd be easier to pry information out of as long as I could keep him feeling guilty.
"My apologies, lass," he said, sounding as appalled as he looked. "I'm tired and it's a reflex thing."
That might be true, it might be reflex, but he didn't say he wasn't doing it deliberately either.
"I'm tired, too," I said.
"All right," he said. "Let me tell you what we are going to do right now. It is agreed among us that the Fideal offered first offense. It is agreed among us that your death would cost the fae more than it would gain us - you can thank Samuel and Nemane for that."
He leaned forward. "So here is what we can offer you. As it seems important to you that Zee be proven innocent, we can work on that - so you don't cause even greater problems for us. We are allowed to aid the police - except that we cannot tell them about the stolen things. They are powerful, some of them, and it is better if the mortals don't have any idea that they might exist."
Cool relief flowed down my spine. If the Gray Lords were willing to accept the time and notoriety of an investigation, then Zee's chances had risen exponentially. But Uncle Mike hadn't finished speaking.
"...So you may leave the investigation to us and to the police."
"Good," said Samuel.
Now it was true I had no idea where to look for O'Donnell's killer. Perhaps it had been Fideal, or another of the fae, maybe someone who cared for one of the victims, who had somehow discovered O'Donnell was the killer. If it were one of the fae, which at this point was probable, I didn't have a chance of finding out anything. So maybe if Samuel hadn't said "Good," my response to Uncle Mike would have been different - but probably not.
"I'll make sure and keep you informed when I find out anything interesting," I told them gently.
"It is too dangerous," Uncle Mike said, "even for heroes, Mercy. I don't know what relics the killer has, but the things we recovered were lesser items, and I know that Herrick - the forest lord - was a guardian of some greater items."
"Zee is my friend. I'm not going to leave his life in the hands of people who were willing for him to die for this because it was more convenient for them."
Uncle Mike's eyes glittered with some strong emotion, but I couldn't tell what it was. "Zee seldom forgives trespasses, Mercy. I have heard he was so angry that you betrayed his trust that he will not speak to you."
I paid close attention to that "I have heard." "I have heard" wasn't the same thing as "Zee is angry with you."
"I've heard the same," I told him. "But I am Zee's friend anyway. If you'll excuse me, I need to get to bed now. Work starts bright and early."
I heaved myself out of the chair, tucked the book under my arm, and waved at both of the disapproving males as I limped out of the living room on my sore feet. I closed the bedroom door on them and did my best not to listen to them discussing me behind my back. They weren't very polite. And Samuel, at least, should know me better than to think I could be persuaded to sit back and leave Zee to fae hands.