Iron Kissed

Chapter 5

It watched me from the hall doorway, as if it had simply found the open back door and flown in. But ravens are not night birds despite their color and reputation. If there had been nothing else, that alone would have told me that there was something off about this bird.
But that wasn't the only thing. Or even the first.
As soon as I caught the glitter of the moon's light in the shine of its feathers, I smelled it - as if it hadn't been there until then.
Ravens smell of the carrion they eat overlaying a musty sharp scent they share with crows and magpies. This one smelled of rain, forest, and good black garden soil in the spring. Then there was its size.
The Tri-Cities has some awfully big ravens, but nothing like this bird. It was taller than the coyote I was; easily as big as a golden eagle.
And every hair on my body stood up to attention as a wave of magic swept through the room.
It took a sudden hop forward, which moved its head into the faint light that trickled through the windows. There was a spot of white on its head, like a drop of snow. But what caught most of my attention were its eyes: bloodred, like a white rabbit's, they glittered eerily as it stared right at me...and through me, as if it were blind.
For the first time in my life I was afraid to drop my eyes. Werewolves put great value on eye contact - and I'd blithely used that all my life. I have no trouble dropping my eyes, acknowledging anyone's superiority and then doing whatever I please. Among the werewolves, once dominance was acknowledged, the dominant werewolf could, by custom, do no more than cuff me out of his way...while I then ignored him or plotted how to get back at him as I chose.
But this wasn't a werewolf, and I was consumed with the conviction that if I moved at all, it would destroy me - though it was not making any sign of aggression.
I value my instincts, so I stayed motionless.
It opened its mouth and gave a rattling cry, like old bones shaken roughly in a wooden box. Then it dismissed me from its notice. It strode to the corner and knocked the walking stick to the floor. The raven took the old thing into its mouth and without so much as a glance over its shoulder took flight through the wall.
Fifteen minutes later, I was well on the way back home - in human shape and driving my car.
Being not exactly human myself and raised by werewolves, I'd thought I'd seen just about everything: witches, vampires, ghosts, and a half dozen other things that aren't supposed to exist. But that bird had been real, as solid as me - I'd seen its ribs rise and fall as it breathed and I'd touched that walking stick myself.
I'd never seen one solid object go through another solid object - not without some pretty impressive CGI graphics or David Copperfield.
Magic, despite Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, just doesn't work like that. If the bird had faded, become immaterial or something before it hit the wall, I might have accepted that as magic.
Maybe, just maybe, I'd been like the rest of the world, accepting the fae at their face value. Acting like they were something familiar, that they were constrained by rules I could understand and feel comfortable with.
If anyone should have known better, it would be me. After all, I well understood that what the public knew about the werewolves was just the polished tip of a nasty iceberg. I knew that the fae were, if anything, worse about secrecy than the wolves. Though Zee had been my friend for a decade, I knew very little about the fae side of his life. I knew he was a Steelers fan, that his human wife had died of cancer shortly before I met him, and that he liked tartar sauce on his fries - but I didn't know what he looked like beneath his glamour.
There were lights on at my house when I pulled the Rabbit into the driveway and parked it next to Samuel's Mercedes and a strange Ford Explorer. I'd been hoping Samuel would be home and awake, so I could use him as a sounding board - but the SUV put paid to that idea.
I frowned at it. It was two in the morning, an odd time for visitors. Most visitors.
I took in a deep breath through my nose, but couldn't catch a whiff of vampire - or anything else. Even the night air smelled duller than usual. Probably just a leftover from the shift from coyote to human. My human nose was better than most people's but quite a bit less sensitive than the coyote's, so changing to human was a little like taking out a hearing aid. Still...
Vampires could hide their scent from me if they chose to.
I shivered in the warm night air. I think I would have stayed out there all night, except that I heard the murmur of guitar. I couldn't see Samuel playing for Marsilia, the mistress of the vampire seethe, so I climbed up the steps and went in.
Uncle Mike sat on the overstuffed chair Samuel had replaced my old flea-market find with. Samuel was half-stretched out on the couch like a mountain lion. He played idle bits of music on his guitar. He might look relaxed, but I knew him too well. The cat who was purring on the back of the couch, just behind Samuel's head, was the only relaxed person in the room.
"There's hot water for cocoa," said Samuel, without looking away from Uncle Mike. "Why don't you get yourself some, then come tell us about Zee, who put you on the scent of their murderer so they could go kill him. Then tell me what you've been doing tonight that would leave you smelling of blood and magic?"
Yep, Samuel was ticked at Uncle Mike.
I riffled through the cupboards until I found the box of emergency cocoa. Not the milk chocolate with marshmallow kind, but the hard stuff, dark chocolate with a bit of jalapeno pepper for flavor. I wasn't really upset enough now to need it, but it kept me busy while I thought about how I might keep matters peaceable. Real cocoa needs milk, so I put some in a sauce pan and began heating it up.
I'd left Samuel and the other werewolves this morning knowing only that Zee was in jail and needed a lawyer. Obviously, someone had filled Samuel in a bit since then. Almost certainly not Uncle Mike.
Probably not Warren, who would know everything from the lawyer's meeting - I'd told Kyle to go ahead and tell him what I'd told the lawyer. Warren could keep secrets.
Ah. Warren wouldn't keep secrets from his pack Alpha, Adam. Adam would see no reason not to tell Samuel the whole story if he asked.
See that's the thing about secrets. All you have to do is tell one person - and suddenly everyone knows. Still, if I disappeared, I'd like to know that the werewolves would come looking for me. Hopefully the fae (in the person of Uncle Mike) understood that, and I wasn't likely to just disappear: if the Gray Lords would arrange a suicide for Zee, one of their own who was of some value, they certainly wouldn't hesitate to arrange something to happen to me as well. The pack would make that a little more difficult.
A cup of liquid doesn't take long to heat. I poured it into a mug; took the first sip, bittersweet and biting; then rejoined the men. My deliberations in the kitchen led me to the couch, where I sat with a whole cushion between me and Samuel so I wouldn't be assumed (by Samuel) to be taking a side in the antagonism that was stirring in my living room like the inky surface of Loch Ness just before the monster erupts. I didn't want any eruptions in my living room, thank you. Eruptions meant repair bills and blood. Growing up with werewolves had left me hyperaware of power struggles and things unspoken.
With another werewolf, a show of support might put the likelihood of violence down a few notches, because he would feel more confident. Samuel didn't need more confidence. He needed to know that I felt that Uncle Mike had done the right thing by calling me in, no matter what Samuel's opinion on the matter was.
"I found a good lawyer for Zee," I told Uncle Mike.
"She is a member of the John Lauren Society." Uncle Mike seemed much more himself than he'd sounded on the phone. That meant that his "cheerful innkeeper" guise was in full swing. I couldn't tell if he was unhappy with my choice of lawyers or not.
"Kyle - " I stopped myself and backed up. "I have a friend who is among the best divorce attorneys in the state. When I called him, he suggested this Jean Ryan from Spokane. He told me she was a barracuda in the courtroom, and says that her membership in a fae hate group will actually help. People will think that she must be absolutely convinced of Zee's innocence to take this case."
"Is that true? She believes him innocent?"
I shrugged. "I don't know, but both Kyle and she say it won't matter. I did my best to convince her." I took a sip of cocoa and told them everything Ms. Ryan had told me, including her warning that I keep my nose out of police business.
Samuel's lips quirked at that. "So how long did you wait before going to O'Donnell's after she told you not to?"
I gave him an indignant look. "I wouldn't have done it before dark. Too many people would have been calling Animal Control if they saw a coyote that far into town, collar or not. I can't do much investigating from the animal shelter, and they've already picked me up once this summer."
I looked at Uncle Mike and wondered how to get him to tell me all the things I needed to know. "Did you know that O'Donnell was involved with Citizens for a Bright Future?"
He sat up straighter. "I'd have thought he would be smarter than that. If the BFA had known, he'd have lost his job."
He didn't say that he'd been unaware of it, I noticed.
"He didn't seem too worried about anyone finding out," I told him. "There were Bright Future posters all over the walls of one of his rooms."
"The BFA doesn't exactly make a habit of searching their employees' houses. Their funding just got cut again and the moneys diverted to that mess in the Middle East." He didn't sound too upset about the BFA's troubles.
I rubbed my tired face. "The search wasn't as much help as I'd hoped. I didn't find a scent, except for O'Donnell himself, of anyone who was in the reservation murder scenes. I don't think that there was anyone with him when he killed the fae." Except maybe Cologne Man, I thought. I had no way of telling what he really smelled like, though I had not the slightest idea why he'd have worn cologne to kill O'Donnell and not for killing the fae. Surely he wouldn't expect a werewolf or someone like me to be tracking down O'Donnell's killer.
"So your visit was uneventful." That was Samuel, his voice just a little more intense than the soft, harplike notes he was calling from the guitar. If he kept playing like that, I was going to be asleep before I finished. "Why then do you smell like blood and magic?"
"I didn't say it was uneventful. The blood is because the living room of O'Donnell's house was covered in it."
Uncle Mike gave a faint grimace, which I didn't believe at all. My experience with immortals might be with werewolves, but the fae aren't a kind and gentle people either. He might have been thrown off his game when Zee was taken into custody, but blood and gore never really bother the old ones.
"The magic..." I shrugged. "It could have been a number of things. I saw the murder take place."
"Magic?" Uncle Mike frowned. "I didn't know you were a farseer. I thought that magic didn't work around you."
"That would be terrific," I said. "But no, magic works around me for the most part. I just have some kind of partial immunity to it. Usually the way it works is that the less harmful the magic is, the better the chance it won't work. The really bad stuff usually does just fine."
"She sees ghosts," said Samuel, impatient with my whining.
"I see dead people," I deadpanned back. Oddly, it was Uncle Mike who laughed. I hadn't thought he'd be a moviegoer.
"So did these ghosts tell you anything?"
I shook my head. "No. I just got the playback of the murder with O'Donnell as the only player. I think the killer was after something, though. Did O'Donnell steal from the fae?"
Uncle Mike's face went blank and I knew two things. The answer to my question was yes, and Uncle Mike had no intention of telling me what O'Donnell had taken.
"Just for kicks," I said instead of waiting in vain for his answer, "how many fae are there who can take on the shape of a raven?"
"Here?" Uncle Mike shrugged. "Five or six."
"There was a raven in O'Donnell's house and it reeked of fae magic."
Uncle Mike gave an abrupt, harsh laugh. "If you're asking if I sent someone to O'Donnell's house, the answer is no. If you're wondering if one of them killed O'Donnell, the answer is still no. None of those with a raven shape have the physical strength to tear off someone's head."
"Could Zee?" I asked. Sometimes if you ask unexpected questions, you get answers.
His eyebrows rose and his brogue grew thicker. "Sure and why would you ask that? Haven't I told you he had naught to do with it?"
I shook my head. "I know Zee didn't kill him. The police have an expert who told them that he could. I have reasons to doubt her ability - and it might help Zee if I know exactly how far off she is."
Uncle Mike took a deep breath and tilted his head to the side. "The Dark Smith of Drontheim might have been able to do what I saw, but that was a long time ago. Most of us have lost a bit of what was once ours over the years of cold iron and Christianity. Zee less than most, though. Maybe he could have. Maybe not."
The Dark Smith of Drontheim. He'd said something like that before. Trying to figure out who Zee had once been was one of my favorite hobbies, but the current situation made the small jewel of information taste like ashes. If Zee lost his life over this, who he had once been was irrelevant.
"Just how many of the fae in the reservation..." I thought about that and reworded it a little. "...or in the Tri-City area could have done that?"
"A few," Uncle Mike said without taking time to reflect. "I've been racking my head all day. One of the ogres could have, though I'll be a Catholic monk if I know why they would want to. And once they get to that point, they'd not have stopped until they'd had a bite or two. None of the ogres were particularly friendly with any of the victims on the reservation - or anyone else, except maybe Zee. There are a few others who might have been capable of it once, but most of them haven't fared as well as Zee in the modern world."
I remembered the power of the sea man.
"What about the man I met in the selkie's..." I glanced at Samuel and bit my tongue. That ocean I knew was a secret, and it could have no impact on Zee's fate. I wouldn't speak of it in front of Samuel, but that left my sentence hanging in the air.
"What man?" Samuel's question was mild, though Uncle Mike's words, coming right over the top of Samuel, were not.
I could smell Uncle Mike's fear, harsh and sudden, like his words. It wasn't an emotion I associated with him.
After a quick, wary look around the room, he continued in an urgent whisper, "I don't know how you managed it, but it will do you no good to speak of the encounter. The one you met could have done it, but he has not bestirred himself this past hundred years." He took a breath and forced himself to relax. "Trust me, it wasn't the Gray Lords who killed O'Donnell, Mercedes. His murder was too clumsy to be their work. Tell me more of this fae raven you encountered."
I stared at him a moment. Was the sea fae one of the Gray Lords?
"The raven?" he prompted gently.
So I told him, backing up a bit to tell him about the staff, then about the raven leaping through the wall with it.
"How did I miss the staff?" Uncle Mike asked himself, looking thoroughly shaken.
"It was tucked in a corner," I told him. "It came from one of the victims' houses, didn't it? The one who smoked a pipe and whose back window looked out over a forest."
Uncle Mike seemed to come back to himself and he stared at me. "You know too many of our secrets, Mercedes."
Samuel set his guitar aside and put himself between us before I had time to register the menace in Uncle Mike's voice.
"Careful," he said, his voice thick with Wales and warning. "Careful, Green Man. She's put her neck out to help you - shame upon you and your house if she comes to harm by't."
"Two," Uncle Mike said. "Two of the Gray Lords have seen your face in our business, Mercy. One might have forgotten, but two never will." He waved an impatient hand at Samuel. "Oh, stand down, wolf. I'll not harm your kit. I only spoke the truth. There are things not nearly so benign who will not be happy about her knowing what she knows - and two of them already have."
"Two?" I asked in a voice that was smaller than I'd meant it to be.
"That was no raven you met," he said grimly. "It was the great Carrion Crow herself." He gave me a long look. "I wonder why she didn't kill you."
"Maybe she thought I was a coyote," I said in a small voice.
Uncle Mike shook his head. "She might be blind, but she perceives more clearly than I, still."
There was a brief silence. I don't know what the others were thinking about, but I was contemplating just how many close calls I'd been having lately. If the vampires didn't hurry, the fae or some other monster would kill me before she got a chance. What had happened to all the years of carefully keeping to myself and staying out of trouble?
"You are sure that one of the Gray Lords didn't kill O'Donnell?" I asked.
"Yes," he said firmly, then paused. "I hope not. If so, then Zee's arrest was intended and he is doomed - and probably me as well." He ran a hand along his chin and something about the gesture made me wonder if he'd once worn a beard. "No. It was not they. They aren't above a messy kill - but they wouldn't have left the staff for the police to find. The Carrion Crow came to keep the staff out of human hands - though I'm surprised she didn't retrieve it sooner." He gave me a speculative look. "Zee and I weren't in that living room long, but we'd never have overlooked the staff. I wonder..."
"What is the staff?" I asked. "I could tell it was magic, but nothing else."
"Naught of interest to you, I trust," said Uncle Mike, coming to his feet. "Naught for you to fuss with when there's the Carrion Crow about. There's money in the briefcase..." For the first time I noticed a brown leather case tucked against the arm of his chair. "If it is not enough to cover Zee's expenses, let me know."
He tipped an imaginary hat toward Samuel, then took my hand, bowed, and kissed it. "Mercy, I'd be doing you no favors if I didn't tell you to stop. We appreciate the help you have given us so far, but your usefulness ends here. There are things going on that I'm not at liberty to tell you. If you continue, you are not going to discover anything - and if those Nameless Ones find out how much you know, it will go ill with you. And there are two too many of them about." He nodded sharply at me, then at Samuel. "I'll bid you both good mornin'."
And he was out the door.
"Keep your weather eye on him, Mercy," Samuel said, still standing with his back to me as we watched Uncle Mike's headlights turn on as he backed out of the driveway. "He's not Zee. His loyalties are to himself and his alone."
I rubbed my shoulders and stood up myself. Never have a discussion with a werewolf when he's standing and you're sitting; it puts you at a disadvantage and makes them think they can give you orders.
"I trust him about as far as I can throw him," I agreed. Uncle Mike wouldn't go out of his way to harm me, but..."You know, one of the things I learned growing up about you wolves was that sometimes the most interesting part of the conversation with someone who can't lie is the questions they don't answer."
Samuel nodded. "I noticed it, too. That staff, whatever it is, was stolen from one of the murder victims - and he didn't want to talk about it."
I yawned twice and heard my jaw pop the second time. "I'm going to bed tonight. I have to go to church in the morning." I hesitated. "What do you know about the Black Smith of Drontheim?"
He gave me a small smile. "Not as much as you do, I expect, if you've worked with him for ten years."
"Samuel Cornick," I snapped.
He laughed.
"Do you know a story about this Black Smith of Drontheim?" I was tired and the heap of my worries was a weight I was staggering under: Zee, the Gray Lords, Adam, and Samuel - and the wait for Marsilia to find out that Andre had not been killed by his helpless victims. However, I'd been searching for stories about Zee for years. Too many of the fae treated him with awed respect for him not to be in stories somewhere. I just couldn't find them.
"The Dark Smith, Mercy, the Dark Smith."
I tapped my toe and Samuel gave in. "Ever since I saw his knife, I've wondered if he was the Dark Smith. That one was supposed to have forged at least one blade that would cut through anything."
"Drontheim..." I muttered. "Trondheim? The old capital of Norway? Zee's German."
Samuel shrugged. "Or he's pretending to be German - or the old story could have it wrong. In the stories I heard, the Dark Smith was a genius and a malicious bastard, a son of the King of Norway. The sword he made had a nasty habit of turning on the man who wielded it."
I thought about it for a moment. "I guess I could believe a villain before I'd believe a story about him being a goody-goody hero."
"People change over the years," said Samuel.
I looked up sharply and met his eyes. He wasn't talking about Zee anymore.
There were only a few feet between us, but the gulf of history was much larger: I'd loved him so much, once. I'd been sixteen and he'd been centuries older. I'd seen in him a gentle protector, a knight who would rescue me and build his world around me. Someone for whom I would not be an obligation, a burden, or a bother. He'd seen in me a mother who could bear his living children.
Werewolves, with one exception, are made, not born. It takes more than a nip or two - or as I read in a comic book once, a scratch of a claw. A human who wants to change must be savaged so badly that he either dies or becomes a werewolf and is saved by the rapid healing that is necessary to surviving as a hot-tempered monster among other such beasts.
Women don't survive the Change as well as the men for some reason. And the women who do cannot bear children. Oh, they're fertile enough, but the monthly change at the full moon is too violent and they abort any pregnancies when they shift from human to werewolf.
Werewolves can mate with humans, and often do. But they have a terribly high miscarriage rate and higher than usual infant mortality. Adam had a daughter born after his Change, but his ex-wife had had three miscarriages while I knew her. The only children who survive are completely human.
But Samuel had a brother who was born a werewolf. The only one that anyone I know had ever heard of. His mother was from a family that was gifted with magic native to this land and not Europe as most of our magic-using humans have. She was able to hold off the change every month until Charles's birth. Weakened by her efforts, she died at his birth - but her experiences had started Samuel thinking.
When I, neither human nor werewolf, was brought to his father for his pack to raise, Samuel had seen his chance. I don't have to change - and even when I do, the change is not violent. Though real wolves in the wild kill any coyotes they find in their territory, they can mate and have viable offspring.
Samuel waited until I was sixteen before he made me fall in love with him.
"We all change," I told him. "I'm going to bed."
Just as I've always known there are monsters in the world, monsters and things even more evil, I've always known that it is God who keeps evil at bay. So I make a point of going to church every Sunday and praying on a regular basis. Since killing Andre and his demon-bearing spawn, church was the only place I felt truly safe.
"You look tired." Pastor Julio Arnez's hands were big-knuckled and battered. Like me, he'd worked with his hands for a living - he'd been a lumberman until he retired and become our pastor.
"A little," I agreed.
"I heard about your friend," he said. "Would he appreciate a visit?"
Zee would like my pastor - everyone liked Pastor Julio. He might even manage to make being in jail more bearable, but getting close to Zee was too dangerous.
So I shook my head. "He's fae," I said apologetically. "They don't think very highly of Christianity. Thank you for offering."
"If there's anything I can do, you tell me," he said sternly. He kissed my forehead and sent me off with his blessing.
Zee on my mind, as soon as I got home I called Tony on his cell phone because I had no idea how to get in to see Zee.
He answered, sounding cheerful and friendly rather than coolly professional, so he must have been home.
"Hey, Mercedes," he said. "It was not nice of you to sic Ms. Ryan on us. Smart, but not nice."
"Hey, Tony," I said. "I'd apologize but Zee matters to me - and he's innocent, so I got the best I could find. However, if it makes you feel any better, I have to deal with her, too."
He laughed. "All right, what's up?"
"This is stupid," I told him, "but I've never had to go visit anyone in jail before now. So how do I go about seeing Zee? Are there visiting hours or what? Should I wait until Monday? And where is he being held?"
There was a short silence. "I think visiting hours are weekends and evenings only. But before you go, you might talk to your lawyer," he said cautiously. Was there something wrong with me seeing Zee?
"Call your lawyer," he said again when I asked him.
So I did. The card she'd given me had her cell on it as well as her office.
"Mr. Adelbertsmiter is not talking to anyone," Jean Ryan told me in a frosty voice, as if it were my fault. "It will be difficult to mount an effective defense unless he talks to me."
I frowned. Zee could be cantankerous but he wasn't stupid. If he wasn't talking, he had a reason.
"I need to see him," I told her. "Maybe I can persuade him to talk to you."
"I don't think you're going to persuade him of anything." There was a bare hint of smugness in her voice. "When he wouldn't respond to me, I told him what I knew about O'Donnell's death - all that you had told me. That was the only time he spoke. He said that you had no business telling his secrets to strangers." She hesitated. "This next part is a threat, and I normally would not pass it on, as it does my client's case no good. But...I think you ought to be warned. He said you'd better hope he doesn't get out - and that he's calling the loan due immediately. Do you know what he means?"
Numbly I nodded before realizing that she couldn't see me. "I bought my shop from him. I still owe him money on it." I'd been paying him on a monthly basis, just as I did the bank. It wasn't the money, which I didn't have, that left my throat dry and pressure building behind my eyes.
He thought I'd betrayed him.
Zee was fae; he could not lie.
"Well," she said. "He made it clear that he had no desire to talk to you before he went mute again. Do you still wish to retain my services?" She sounded almost hopeful.
"Yes," I said. It wasn't my money that was paying her - even at her rates there was more than enough in Uncle Mike's briefcase to cover Zee's expenses.
"I'll be honest, Ms. Thompson, if he doesn't talk to me, I can't do him any good at all."
"Do what you can," I told her numbly. "I'm working on a few things myself."
Secrets. I shivered a little, though as soon as I'd gotten home from church, I'd turned up the temperature from the sixty degrees Samuel had set it at this morning before he'd left to go to the last day of Tumbleweed. Werewolves like things a little cooler than I do. It was a balmy eighty in the house, not a reason in the world that I should feel cold.
I wondered which part of what I'd told the lawyer he objected to - the murders in the reservation, or telling Ms. Ryan that there had been another fae with him when he'd found the body.
Damn it, I hadn't told Ms. Ryan anything someone wasn't going to have to tell the police. Come to think of it - I had told the police most everything I'd told Ms. Ryan.
However, I should have asked someone before I'd talked to the police or the lawyer. I knew that. It was the first rule of the pack - keep your mouth shut around the mundanes.
I could have asked Uncle Mike how much I could tell the police - and the lawyer - rather than depending upon my own judgement. I hadn't...because I knew that if the police were going to look beyond Zee for a murderer, they'd have to know more than Uncle Mike or any other fae would have told them.
It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission - unless you are dealing with the fae, who aren't much given to forgiveness. They see it as a Christian virtue - and they aren't particularly fond of Christian anything.
I didn't lie to myself that Zee would get over it. I might not know much about his history, but I did know him. He gathered his anger to him and made it as permanent as the tattoo on my belly. He'd never forgive me for betraying his trust.
I needed something to do, something to keep my hands and mind busy, to distract me from the sick feeling that I'd done something terrible. Unfortunately I'd stayed late and finished all the work I had at the shop on Friday, thinking I'd be spending most of Saturday at the music festival. I didn't even have a project car to work on. The current project, an old Karmann Ghia, was out getting the upholstery redone.
After pacing restlessly around the house and making a batch of peanut butter cookies, I went to the small third bedroom that served as my study, turned on the computer, and connected to the Internet before I started on brownies.
I answered e-mail from my sister and my mother and then browsed a bit. The brownie I brought into the room with me sat undisturbed on its plate. Just because I make food when I'm upset doesn't mean I can eat it.
I needed something to do. I ran through the conversation with Uncle Mike and decided that he probably really didn't know who had killed O'Donnell - though he was pretty sure it wasn't the ogres, or he wouldn't have mentioned them at all. I knew it wasn't Zee. Uncle Mike didn't think it was the Gray Lords - and I agreed with him. From the fae point of view, O'Donnell's murder was a screwup - a screwup that the Gray Lords could have easily avoided.
The old staff I'd found in the corner of O'Donnell's living room had something to do with the murder, though. It was important enough that the raven...no, what had Uncle Mike called it - the Carrion Crow - had come and taken it, and Uncle Mike hadn't wanted to talk about it.
I looked at the search engine screen that I used as my default page when I surfed the 'Net. Impulsively, I typed staff and fairy then hit the search button.
I got the results I should have expected had I thought about it. So I substituted folklore for fairy, but it wasn't until I tried walking stick (after magic staff and magic stick) that I found myself on a website with a small library of old fairy and folklore books scanned online.
I found my walking stick, or at least a walking stick.
It was given to a farmer who had the habit of leaving bread and milk on his back porch to feed the fairies. While he held that staff, each of his ewes gave birth to two healthy lambs every year and gave the farmer modest, if growing, prosperity. But (and there is always a "but" in fairy tales) one evening while walking over a bridge, the farmer lost his grip on the staff and it fell into the river and was swept away. When he got home, he found that his fields had flooded and killed most of his sheep - thus all the gain he'd gotten from the staff had left with it. He never found the staff again.
It wasn't likely that a staff that ensured all its owner's ewes had two healthy lambs each year was worth murdering people over - especially as O'Donnell's killer hadn't taken it. Either the walking stick I'd found wasn't the same one, it wasn't as important as I had thought it might be, or O'Donnell's killer hadn't been after it. The only thing I was certain of was that O'Donnell had taken it from the murdered forest man.
The victims, even though they were mostly names, had been gradually becoming more real to me: Connora, the forest man, the selkie...It is a habit of humans to put labels on things, Zee always told me. Usually when I was trying to get him to tell me just who or what he was.
Impulsively, I typed in dark smith and Drontheim and found the story Samuel had told me about. I read it twice and sat back in my chair.
Somehow it fit. I could see Zee being perverse enough to create a sword that, once swung, would cut through whatever was in its path - including the person who was using it.
Still, there wasn't a Siebold or an Adelbert in the story. Zee's last name was Adelbertsmiter - smiter of Adelbert. I'd once heard a fae introduce him to another in a hushed voice as "the Adelbertsmiter."
On a whim I looked up Adelbert and laughed involuntarily. The first hit I had was on Saint Adelbert, a Northumbrian missionary who sought to Christianize Norway in the eighth century. All I could find out about him was that he'd died a martyr's death.
Could he be Zee's Adelbert?
The phone rang, interrupting my speculations.
Before I had a chance to say anything, a very British voice said, "Mercy, you'd better get your butt over here."
There was a noise in the background - a roar. It sounded odd and I pulled my ear away from the phone long enough to confirm that I was hearing it from Adam's house as well as through the phone.
"Is that Adam?" I asked.
Ben didn't answer me, just yelped a swearword and hung up the phone.
It was enough to have me sprinting through my house and out my door, the phone still in my hand. I dropped it on the porch.
I was vaulting over the barbed wire fence that separated my three acres from Adam's larger field before it occurred to me to wonder why Ben had called me - and not asked for, say Samuel, who had the advantage of being a werewolf, one of the few more dominant than Adam.