Night Broken
Page 14
The muffins were good, he said. So was the apple pie. I guess I can do without chocolate if the alternative is cinnamon rolls. There was sympathy in his voice if not his words.
Blasphemer, I told him. There are no cinnamon rolls better than chocolate.
He sniffed again. These might be.
I left him to it and retreated to go work on cars. In my garage, I ruled without questionand had since Zee had retreated to the fae reservation. Her makeup case wasnt going to end up in my garage.
But as soon as I put Christy out of my mind, I started fretting over my inability to find Coyote. Id been pretty optimistic after Honey had grilled Gary Laughingdog. But I hadnt had any brainstorms about how to be interesting enough to attract Coyotes attention.
Last night Id resorted to yelling Coyotes name to the open air (well away from home to make sure no werewolves would hear me making an idiot out of myself). Id tried talking to Coyote as if he were in the same room to see if he would come out of hidingand wondered if I was going to have to mastermind a bank heist in order to attract his attention.
I was contemplating criminal activities when Hank called. I peeled off the stupid latex gloves, so I didnt get grease on my phone. Christy had done that much for me: since I started wearing the glovesmy phone was staying cleaner.
Hey, Hank, I said.
You talk with Gary?
Something in his voice had me straightening my spine. Yes.
Hope you got the information you needed.
Whats wrong?
Last night or this morning, Laughingdog escaped. One of his relatives called me to see if I thought you might have had something to do with it.
No, I said. I wondered who Gary Laughingdogs relatives were and if they might be able to tell me how to get in touch with Coyote. I dont think so. Did you know that he has some kind of foresight?
Yes, said Hank. And much joy hes ever gotten from it. Gets him into trouble and never out, he says. You think he saw something and broke out?
I dont know him well enough to say that, I said. He had a couple of visions while we were there. Mostly a bunch of nonsense But hed known Honeys name. Something to the effect of CoyotesI remembered that odd pronunciationsomebodys children breaking the night with their cries. I dont know anyone else besides the two of us who qualify. Maybe he saw something that made his escape necessary.
And maybe Coyotes kin dont do well in lockup, Hank said. No more than does anyone, but Coyote was always good at getting out of places he didnt want to be. Anyway, you can expect to see police sometime. Theyll talk to everyone on his visitors list, and there are about four of us up in the Yakama Nation and you. Hes not big-time, but breaking out might make him more important to them. They dont like being thwarted. They, I knew, referred to the authorities of whatever flavor. Hank didnt like people who could tell him what to doand he avoided them by being a very law-abiding citizen.
Thank you for the heads-up, I said.
Probably hes just gone walkabout. Show up with another name in ten or twenty years. He does that.
Walkabout? I said doubtfully. Isnt that an Aussie Aboriginal term?
An Indian is an Indian, Mercy, no matter what continent they come from, he said with a grin in his voice. Before I could disagree, he disconnected.
So I wasnt surprised when the police showed up in the afternoon.
Mercy.
Tony? I looked up from the Passat I was working on. There was something wrong with the injectors, but it was intermittent, and I was afraid that meant it was electronicand probably something to do with the computer. And that would explain why the cars computer hadnt been able to tell me what was going on.
Mercy, I need you to clean up and come talk to me.
I blinked at the tightness in his voice and focused on his face. Trouble, that expression said, and in response, I backed out of the job, pulling bolts and pieces out of my pockets and putting them on the car where they wouldnt be lost. I peeled off the latex gloves and tossed them.
Tad? I said.
The sound of the crawlers hard wheels on pavement signaled his emergence from under the Vanagon he was repairing.
Im headed off with Tony for a bit. Dont burn down the garage or run off the customers while Im gone.
Tad glanced from Tonys face to mine, and said mildly, Is it okay if I call in a few strippers to put on a show and charge it to the garage? Ive been thinking it might pull in some more customers.
Sure, I said as I stepped out of my overalls: in the interest of time, I didnt bother to retreat to the bathroom. I was wearing a full set of clothes underneath anyway. Just make sure Christy makes it over in time for the show so she can tell the pack what kind of place I run here. Oh, and tell her I took off with a hot-looking man.
He grimaced. Yeah, sorry about that.
Shed called yesterday, and, knowing how I felt about her, Tad had told her that Id gone out for a run. Tad doesnt usually lie, though since he is only half-fae, he can, and he is a fair hand at misdirection. I had been in the garage bay, and hed answered my cell in the office, where Id left it.
Next thing I know, I was getting a call from Adam, who was mad because he thought that I had been running without protection. Grocery stores and other public places were unlikely spots for kidnapping the Alphas wife. Running I had to do with company for safetys sake. I regretted it, but I understood the necessity.
Id explained that Tad had been mistaken when he talked to Christy. I took the blame for itthus putting myself firmly in the wrong. The pack figurativelymaybe literally, for all I knowpatted Christy on the head for being so worried about my well-being.
Not your fault, I told TadChristy would have found something else to make me look bad anyway. Though this time you might mention that the handsome man is an armed police officer who will keep me safe as a fox in a henhouse.
Tad gave me a mock salute while I followed Tony out.
Trouble? Tony asked.
Adams ex-wife has a stalker, so she is living with us until we can figure out what to do about him, I told him as matter-of-factly as I could manage.
He stopped and looked at me, and finally lost the odd distance Id sensedas if Id been a stranger hed been sent to fetch. Maybe he was worried that I had had a hand in Gary Laughingdogs escape.
Adams ex-wife is living withyou? he asked incredulously.
Her stalker is dangerous, I told him. We are pretty sure he killed a man and burned down the building her condo was in. Until someone can find him and arrest him, Christy is staying with us because even a violent man might hesitate to face off with a pack of werewolves.
I had added the arrest him part because it sounded good. I was pretty sure at this point that any arrest would be postmortem. Maybe it had been a mistake because something in the last sentence put the distance right back between us.
I can see that, he said, and continued walking to his car.
I followed and, when he opened the passenger door for me, I got in. We sat in front of the garage for a minute, and I waited for him to ask me about Gary Laughingdogs escape from prison.
I saw what you became, he said instead. Over at Kyle Brookss house, when the body that was in the trunk of the car broke out, and you and Adam tried to chase it down.
I looked at him. Yep. That cat was out of the bag for sure. Id changed into my coyote shape to go chase after a zombie and had forgotten about all the people watching. Tony hadnt been the only one whod gotten an eyeful. Id grown used to having more people know what I was and hadnt even thought about what I was doing and who I was doing it in front of.
In most ways, it wouldnt matter if I shouted out that I was a coyote shapeshifter, a walker, to the whole world. I wasnt alone anymore. In other ways, though, it was possibly disastrous. If the public realized that the fae and the werewolves were just the top of the anthill of Other that lived hidden among the human population, it could be bad. Bad for humans and bad for everyone else, too.
Yes? I said. It was a question because we werent sitting in the car just so I could confess to being a coyote shapeshifter.
I asked Gabriel about it.
Gabriel had been my right hand in the garage before he went to college, and Tony had been infatuated with Gabriels mother for as long as Id known him.
He told me something about what you are. Tony met my eyes. You arent human.
No, I agreed slowly. Not completely.
He huffed an unhappy breath. If there was someone in the pack murdering humans, would you cover for him?
I sucked in a breath. You have a body?
You didnt answer the question. His reply had answered mine, though.
If we had someone going around killing people for the fun of it, I said, Id tell Adam.
And what would Adam do?
Silence hung between us. Id known Tony a long time. Long enough, I decided, to tell him the real truth instead of sugarcoating it. Adam would deal with it before the police could step in. The faes sudden retreat to the reservations has put the werewolves on trial in the court of public opinion. Theywecant allow a murderer to stand trial or continue to rampage.
Are you a werewolf? he asked. I mean a werewolf who turns into a coyote. A werecoyote.
There coyote. I grinned at him and received a look. No. Im not a werewolf or werecoyotewhich I have never heard of, by the way. I have a different kind of magic entirely. Native magic, not European like the werewolves are. Mostly turning into a coyote is about all I manage. I wasnt going to explain to him about the ghosts or my partial immunity to magic, which was nothing I could count on anyway. It would be best if you didnt tell everyone about what I can do, though. Best for the public, who dont need to be looking at their neighbors and worrying if they are something from a horror show. If they think werewolves and fae are it, then everyone is safer.
Tony nodded as if that thought had occurred to him, and hed already been on board with keeping my secrets secret. You included yourself with the werewolves, though.
I shrugged. Im married to oneand he made me an official member of the pack. Not just in name, but in factaccepted by the pack magic that bound us all together. But Tony didnt need to know that. Even less than shapeshifting coyotes did people need to know that there was such a thing as pack magic. Where are you going with this, Tony?
He looked away, not happy. He patted the steering wheel nervously. I need to know if I can trust you.
For some things, I told him seriously. You can trust me not to leave people helpless against a monster. A human monster or a werewolf monster. I dont help bad guyseven if they are someone I thought I liked or felt some loyalty to. Bad guys need to be stopped.
That, apparently, had been the right thing to say.
Okay, he said with sudden assurance. Okay. Yes. He turned on the car and pulled out with a squeal, switching on his lights but not his siren. We need your help with something.
And thats all he said. But that something took us past the old Welchs factory, past the WELCOME TO FINLEY sign, past the road to my house that used to only be Adams house and once was Adam and Christys house. The semirural cluster of houses grew momentarily denser near the high school, then thinned again. We followed the main road miles farther on, out to where croplands took over from small ranchettes, turned down a rutted dirt road, and pulled in next to five police cars and an ominously unlit ambulance gathered along the edge of a hayfield.
I got out slowly as an angry man in a suit broke away from where a group of police officers were gathered and boiled over to Tonys car, glanced at me, and flushed even hotter with the rage that covered fear and horror.
What the hell are you thinking? Bringing her here?
I didnt know him, but he knew me. Adam was something of a local, if not a national, celebritygood looks are not always a good thing. That meant that lots of people Id never met knew who I was.
We need her, Tony told him. If what you told me was right and this was something other than human. She can tell us what it was.
I caught a scent that bothered me, but it wasnt coming from the direction of the group of police officers. Frowning, I turned in a slow circle to pinpoint it. I glanced at Tony, but he was busy arguing with the other man, so I wandered off in the direction my nose told me to, away from the cluster of officials.
The ground was more uneven than I would have thought a hayfield would be, maybe because it was alfalfa and not grass hay. I had to watch my step as I walked along the edge of where grass had been cut. The growing crop of hay was only about five inches highthe length of a lawn that had been left a week too long. Off the cultivated field, Id have been wading through the weeds that ruled where the ground was too rocky to be farmed.
Blasphemer, I told him. There are no cinnamon rolls better than chocolate.
He sniffed again. These might be.
I left him to it and retreated to go work on cars. In my garage, I ruled without questionand had since Zee had retreated to the fae reservation. Her makeup case wasnt going to end up in my garage.
But as soon as I put Christy out of my mind, I started fretting over my inability to find Coyote. Id been pretty optimistic after Honey had grilled Gary Laughingdog. But I hadnt had any brainstorms about how to be interesting enough to attract Coyotes attention.
Last night Id resorted to yelling Coyotes name to the open air (well away from home to make sure no werewolves would hear me making an idiot out of myself). Id tried talking to Coyote as if he were in the same room to see if he would come out of hidingand wondered if I was going to have to mastermind a bank heist in order to attract his attention.
I was contemplating criminal activities when Hank called. I peeled off the stupid latex gloves, so I didnt get grease on my phone. Christy had done that much for me: since I started wearing the glovesmy phone was staying cleaner.
Hey, Hank, I said.
You talk with Gary?
Something in his voice had me straightening my spine. Yes.
Hope you got the information you needed.
Whats wrong?
Last night or this morning, Laughingdog escaped. One of his relatives called me to see if I thought you might have had something to do with it.
No, I said. I wondered who Gary Laughingdogs relatives were and if they might be able to tell me how to get in touch with Coyote. I dont think so. Did you know that he has some kind of foresight?
Yes, said Hank. And much joy hes ever gotten from it. Gets him into trouble and never out, he says. You think he saw something and broke out?
I dont know him well enough to say that, I said. He had a couple of visions while we were there. Mostly a bunch of nonsense But hed known Honeys name. Something to the effect of CoyotesI remembered that odd pronunciationsomebodys children breaking the night with their cries. I dont know anyone else besides the two of us who qualify. Maybe he saw something that made his escape necessary.
And maybe Coyotes kin dont do well in lockup, Hank said. No more than does anyone, but Coyote was always good at getting out of places he didnt want to be. Anyway, you can expect to see police sometime. Theyll talk to everyone on his visitors list, and there are about four of us up in the Yakama Nation and you. Hes not big-time, but breaking out might make him more important to them. They dont like being thwarted. They, I knew, referred to the authorities of whatever flavor. Hank didnt like people who could tell him what to doand he avoided them by being a very law-abiding citizen.
Thank you for the heads-up, I said.
Probably hes just gone walkabout. Show up with another name in ten or twenty years. He does that.
Walkabout? I said doubtfully. Isnt that an Aussie Aboriginal term?
An Indian is an Indian, Mercy, no matter what continent they come from, he said with a grin in his voice. Before I could disagree, he disconnected.
So I wasnt surprised when the police showed up in the afternoon.
Mercy.
Tony? I looked up from the Passat I was working on. There was something wrong with the injectors, but it was intermittent, and I was afraid that meant it was electronicand probably something to do with the computer. And that would explain why the cars computer hadnt been able to tell me what was going on.
Mercy, I need you to clean up and come talk to me.
I blinked at the tightness in his voice and focused on his face. Trouble, that expression said, and in response, I backed out of the job, pulling bolts and pieces out of my pockets and putting them on the car where they wouldnt be lost. I peeled off the latex gloves and tossed them.
Tad? I said.
The sound of the crawlers hard wheels on pavement signaled his emergence from under the Vanagon he was repairing.
Im headed off with Tony for a bit. Dont burn down the garage or run off the customers while Im gone.
Tad glanced from Tonys face to mine, and said mildly, Is it okay if I call in a few strippers to put on a show and charge it to the garage? Ive been thinking it might pull in some more customers.
Sure, I said as I stepped out of my overalls: in the interest of time, I didnt bother to retreat to the bathroom. I was wearing a full set of clothes underneath anyway. Just make sure Christy makes it over in time for the show so she can tell the pack what kind of place I run here. Oh, and tell her I took off with a hot-looking man.
He grimaced. Yeah, sorry about that.
Shed called yesterday, and, knowing how I felt about her, Tad had told her that Id gone out for a run. Tad doesnt usually lie, though since he is only half-fae, he can, and he is a fair hand at misdirection. I had been in the garage bay, and hed answered my cell in the office, where Id left it.
Next thing I know, I was getting a call from Adam, who was mad because he thought that I had been running without protection. Grocery stores and other public places were unlikely spots for kidnapping the Alphas wife. Running I had to do with company for safetys sake. I regretted it, but I understood the necessity.
Id explained that Tad had been mistaken when he talked to Christy. I took the blame for itthus putting myself firmly in the wrong. The pack figurativelymaybe literally, for all I knowpatted Christy on the head for being so worried about my well-being.
Not your fault, I told TadChristy would have found something else to make me look bad anyway. Though this time you might mention that the handsome man is an armed police officer who will keep me safe as a fox in a henhouse.
Tad gave me a mock salute while I followed Tony out.
Trouble? Tony asked.
Adams ex-wife has a stalker, so she is living with us until we can figure out what to do about him, I told him as matter-of-factly as I could manage.
He stopped and looked at me, and finally lost the odd distance Id sensedas if Id been a stranger hed been sent to fetch. Maybe he was worried that I had had a hand in Gary Laughingdogs escape.
Adams ex-wife is living withyou? he asked incredulously.
Her stalker is dangerous, I told him. We are pretty sure he killed a man and burned down the building her condo was in. Until someone can find him and arrest him, Christy is staying with us because even a violent man might hesitate to face off with a pack of werewolves.
I had added the arrest him part because it sounded good. I was pretty sure at this point that any arrest would be postmortem. Maybe it had been a mistake because something in the last sentence put the distance right back between us.
I can see that, he said, and continued walking to his car.
I followed and, when he opened the passenger door for me, I got in. We sat in front of the garage for a minute, and I waited for him to ask me about Gary Laughingdogs escape from prison.
I saw what you became, he said instead. Over at Kyle Brookss house, when the body that was in the trunk of the car broke out, and you and Adam tried to chase it down.
I looked at him. Yep. That cat was out of the bag for sure. Id changed into my coyote shape to go chase after a zombie and had forgotten about all the people watching. Tony hadnt been the only one whod gotten an eyeful. Id grown used to having more people know what I was and hadnt even thought about what I was doing and who I was doing it in front of.
In most ways, it wouldnt matter if I shouted out that I was a coyote shapeshifter, a walker, to the whole world. I wasnt alone anymore. In other ways, though, it was possibly disastrous. If the public realized that the fae and the werewolves were just the top of the anthill of Other that lived hidden among the human population, it could be bad. Bad for humans and bad for everyone else, too.
Yes? I said. It was a question because we werent sitting in the car just so I could confess to being a coyote shapeshifter.
I asked Gabriel about it.
Gabriel had been my right hand in the garage before he went to college, and Tony had been infatuated with Gabriels mother for as long as Id known him.
He told me something about what you are. Tony met my eyes. You arent human.
No, I agreed slowly. Not completely.
He huffed an unhappy breath. If there was someone in the pack murdering humans, would you cover for him?
I sucked in a breath. You have a body?
You didnt answer the question. His reply had answered mine, though.
If we had someone going around killing people for the fun of it, I said, Id tell Adam.
And what would Adam do?
Silence hung between us. Id known Tony a long time. Long enough, I decided, to tell him the real truth instead of sugarcoating it. Adam would deal with it before the police could step in. The faes sudden retreat to the reservations has put the werewolves on trial in the court of public opinion. Theywecant allow a murderer to stand trial or continue to rampage.
Are you a werewolf? he asked. I mean a werewolf who turns into a coyote. A werecoyote.
There coyote. I grinned at him and received a look. No. Im not a werewolf or werecoyotewhich I have never heard of, by the way. I have a different kind of magic entirely. Native magic, not European like the werewolves are. Mostly turning into a coyote is about all I manage. I wasnt going to explain to him about the ghosts or my partial immunity to magic, which was nothing I could count on anyway. It would be best if you didnt tell everyone about what I can do, though. Best for the public, who dont need to be looking at their neighbors and worrying if they are something from a horror show. If they think werewolves and fae are it, then everyone is safer.
Tony nodded as if that thought had occurred to him, and hed already been on board with keeping my secrets secret. You included yourself with the werewolves, though.
I shrugged. Im married to oneand he made me an official member of the pack. Not just in name, but in factaccepted by the pack magic that bound us all together. But Tony didnt need to know that. Even less than shapeshifting coyotes did people need to know that there was such a thing as pack magic. Where are you going with this, Tony?
He looked away, not happy. He patted the steering wheel nervously. I need to know if I can trust you.
For some things, I told him seriously. You can trust me not to leave people helpless against a monster. A human monster or a werewolf monster. I dont help bad guyseven if they are someone I thought I liked or felt some loyalty to. Bad guys need to be stopped.
That, apparently, had been the right thing to say.
Okay, he said with sudden assurance. Okay. Yes. He turned on the car and pulled out with a squeal, switching on his lights but not his siren. We need your help with something.
And thats all he said. But that something took us past the old Welchs factory, past the WELCOME TO FINLEY sign, past the road to my house that used to only be Adams house and once was Adam and Christys house. The semirural cluster of houses grew momentarily denser near the high school, then thinned again. We followed the main road miles farther on, out to where croplands took over from small ranchettes, turned down a rutted dirt road, and pulled in next to five police cars and an ominously unlit ambulance gathered along the edge of a hayfield.
I got out slowly as an angry man in a suit broke away from where a group of police officers were gathered and boiled over to Tonys car, glanced at me, and flushed even hotter with the rage that covered fear and horror.
What the hell are you thinking? Bringing her here?
I didnt know him, but he knew me. Adam was something of a local, if not a national, celebritygood looks are not always a good thing. That meant that lots of people Id never met knew who I was.
We need her, Tony told him. If what you told me was right and this was something other than human. She can tell us what it was.
I caught a scent that bothered me, but it wasnt coming from the direction of the group of police officers. Frowning, I turned in a slow circle to pinpoint it. I glanced at Tony, but he was busy arguing with the other man, so I wandered off in the direction my nose told me to, away from the cluster of officials.
The ground was more uneven than I would have thought a hayfield would be, maybe because it was alfalfa and not grass hay. I had to watch my step as I walked along the edge of where grass had been cut. The growing crop of hay was only about five inches highthe length of a lawn that had been left a week too long. Off the cultivated field, Id have been wading through the weeds that ruled where the ground was too rocky to be farmed.
