Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson #3)

Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson #3) Page 7

Sometimes it seems like the distance between Adam's house and mine changes. Just an hour or so earlier, it had taken me only a moment to get from my door to his. It took me a long time to walk back home and I mourned all the way.

I would not choose Samuel. Not because I didn't trust him, but because I could trust him absolutely. He would love me and care for me, until I chewed off my arm to be free - and I wouldn't be the only person I'd hurt. Samuel had been damaged enough without me adding to it.

When I told him how I felt, he would leave.

I hoped he would still be gone, but his car was parked next to my rust-colored Rabbit. I stopped in the driveway, but it was already too late. He'd know I was outside.

I didn't have to tell him today, I thought. I wouldn't have to lose him today. But soon. Very soon.

Warren and Honey were right. If I didn't do something soon, blood would flow. It was a testament to the control both Adam and Samuel had, that there had been no fighting up until now. I knew in my heart of hearts, if it ever came down to a real fight between them, one of them would die.

I could bear losing Samuel again if I had to, but I could not bear being the cause of his death. And I was certain that it was Samuel who would die in a fight with Adam. Not that Adam was a better fighter. I'd seen Samuel in a fight or ten, and he knew what he was doing. But Adam had an edge of ruthlessness that Samuel lacked. Adam was a soldier, a killer, and Samuel a healer. He would hold back until it was too late.

The screen door of the house creaked and I looked up into Samuel's gray eyes. He wasn't a handsome man, but there was a beauty to his long features and ash brown hair that went bone deep.

"What put that look on your face?" Samuel asked. "Something wrong at Adam's house?"

"A couple of bigoted kids beat up on Jesse," I told him. It wasn't a lie. He wouldn't know that I was just answering his second question, not his first.

For an instant anger flew across his face - he liked Jesse, too. Then his control reasserted itself, and Dr. Cornick was on the spot and ready for action.

"She's all right," I told him before he said anything. "Just bruises and hurt feelings. We were worried for a bit that Adam was going to do murder, but I think we've got him settled down."

He came down off the porch and touched my face. "Just a few rough minutes, eh? I'd better go check Jesse over anyway."

I nodded. "I'll get something on for supper."

"No," he said. "You look like you could use some cheering up. Adam in a rage and Zee locked up, both in one day, is a little much. Why don't you get cleaned up and I'll take you out for pizza and company."

The pizza place was stuffed full of people and musical instrument cases. I took my glass of pop and Samuel's beer and went looking for two empty seats while he paid for our food.

After Tumbleweed shut down on Sunday night, their last night, all the performers and all the people who'd put it on apparently gathered together for one last hurrah - and they'd invited Samuel, who'd invited me. They made quite an impressive crowd - and didn't leave very many empty seats.

I had to settle for an already occupied table with two empty chairs. I leaned down and put my lips near the ear of the man sitting with his back to me. It was too intimate for a stranger, but there was no choice. A human ear wouldn't have picked up my voice in this din from any farther away.

"Are those seats taken?" I asked.

The man looked up and I realized he wasn't as much of a stranger as I thought...on two levels. First, he was the one who had complained about Samuel's Welsh, Tim Someone with a last name that was Central European. Second, he had been one of the men in O'Donnell's house, Cologne Man, in fact.

"No problem," he said loudly.

It could be coincidence. There could be a thousand people in the Tri-Cities who wore that particular cologne; maybe it didn't smell as bad to someone who didn't have my nose.

This was a man who knew Tolkien's Elvish and Welsh (though not as well as he thought he did, if he was critical of Samuel's). Hardly qualifications for a fae-hating bigot. He was more likely one of the fae aficionados who made the owner of the little fae bar in Walla Walla so much money, and had turned the reservation in Nevada into another Las Vegas.

I thanked him and took the seat nearest the wall, leaving the outside one for Samuel. Maybe he wasn't one of O'Donnell's Bright Future crowd. Maybe he was the killer - or a police officer.

I smiled politely and took a good look at him. He wasn't in bad shape, but he was certainly human. He couldn't possibly have beheaded a man without an ax.

So, not a Bright Futurean, nor a killer. He was either just a man who shared poor taste in cologne with someone who was in O'Donnell's house, or a police officer.

"I'm Tim Milanovich," he said, all but shouting to get his voice over the sound of all the other people talking, as he extended his arm carefully around his beer and over his pizza. "And this is my friend Austin. Austin Summers."

"Mercedes Thompson." I shook his hand - and the other young man's hand as well. The second man, Austin Summers, was more interesting than Tim Milanovich.

If he'd been a werewolf, he'd have been on the dominant side. He had the same subtle appeal of a really good politician. Not so handsome that people noticed it, but good-looking in a rugged football player way. Medium brown hair, several shades lighter than mine, and root beer brown eyes completed the picture. He was a few years younger than Tim, I thought, but I could see why Tim was hanging around him.

It was too crowded for me to get a good handle on Austin's scent when he was sitting across the table, but impulsively, I managed to move the hand I'd used to shake his against my nose as if I had an itch - and abruptly the evening turned into something besides an outing to keep my mind off my worries.

This man had been at O'Donnell's house - and I knew why one of Jesse's attackers had smelled familiar.

Scent is a complicated thing. It is both a single identification marker and an amalgam of many scents. Most people use the same shampoo, deodorant, and toothpaste all the time. They clean their houses with the same cleaners; they wash their clothes with the same laundry soap and dry them with the same dryer sheets. All these scents combine with their own personal scent to make up their distinctive smell.

This Austin wasn't the man who'd attacked Jesse. He was too old, a couple of years out of high school at least, and not quite the right scent - but he lived in the same household. A lover or a brother, I thought, and put money on the brother.

Austin Summers. I would remember that name and see if I could come up with an address. Hadn't there been a Summers boy that Jesse had had a crush on last year? Before the werewolves had admitted to their existence. Back when Adam had just been a moderately wealthy businessman. John, Joseph...something biblical...Jacob Summers. That was it. No wonder she was so upset.

I sipped my pop and glanced up at Tim, who was eating a slice of pizza. I'd have bet my last nickel that he wasn't a police officer - he had none of the usual tells that mark a cop and he wasn't in the habit of carrying a gun. Even if they are unarmed, police officers always smell a little of gunpowder.

The odds of Tim being Cologne Man had just made it near a hundred percent. So what was a man who loved Celtic folk songs and languages doing in the house of a man who hated the largely Celtic fae?

I smiled at Tim and said sincerely, "Actually, Mr. Milanovich, we sort of met this weekend. You were talking to Samuel after his performance."

There were places where my Native American skin and coloring made me memorable, but not in the Tri-Cities, where I blended in nicely with the Hispanic population.

"Call me Tim," he said, while trying frantically to place me.

Samuel saved him from continued embarrassment by his arrival.

"Here you are," he said to me after murmuring an apology to someone trying to walk through the narrow aisle in the opposite direction. "Sorry it took me so long, Mercy, but I took a minute to stop and talk." He set a little red plastic marker with a black 34 on top of the table next to Tim's pizza. "Mr. Milanovich," he said as he sat down next to me. "Good to see you."

Of course Samuel would remember his name; he was like that. Tim was flattered to be recognized; it was written all over his earnest face.

"And this is Austin Summers," I yelled pleasantly, louder than I needed to, since Samuel's hearing was at least as good as mine. "Austin, meet the folksinging physician, Dr. Samuel Cornick." Ever since I heard them introduce him as "the folksinging physician," I'd known he hated it - and I'd known I had to use it.

Samuel gave me an irritated look before turning a blandly smiling expression to the men we shared the table with.

I kept a genial expression on my face to conceal my triumph at irritating him while Samuel and Tim fell into a discussion of common themes in English and Welsh folk songs; Samuel charming and Tim pedantic. Tim spoke less and less as they continued.

I noticed that Austin watched his friend and Samuel with the same pleasantly interested expression that I'd adopted, and I wondered what he was thinking about that he felt he had to conceal.

A tall man stood up on a chair and gave a whistle that would have cut through a bigger crowd than this one. When everyone was silent, he welcomed us, said a few words of thanks to various people responsible for the Tumbleweed.

"Now," he said, "I know that you all know the Scallywags..." He bent down and picked up a bodhran. He sprayed the drumhead with a small water bottle and then spread the water around with a hand as he spoke with a studied casualness that drew attention. "Now the Scallywags have been singing here since the very first Tumbleweed - and I happen to know something about them that you all don't."

"What's that?" someone shouted from the crowd.

"That their fair singer, Sandra Hennessy, has a birthday today. And it's not just any birthday."

"I'll get you for this," a woman's voice rang out. "You just see if I don't, John Martin."

"Sandra is turning forty today. I think she needs a birthday dirge, whatd' you all think?"

The crowd erupted into applause that quickly settled into anticipatory silence.

"Hap-py birthday." He sang the minor notes of the opening of the "Volga Boatmen" in a gloriously deep bass that needed no mike to carry over the crowd, then hit the bodhran once with a small double-headed mallet. THUMP.

"It's your birthday." THUMP.

"Gloom and doom and dark despair,

"People dying everywhere.

"Happy birthday." THUMP. "It's your birthday."

Then the rest of the room, including Samuel, started to sing the mournful tune with great cheer.

There were well over a hundred people in the room, and most of them were professional musicians. The whole restaurant vibrated like a tuning fork as they managed to turn the silly song into a choral piece.

Once the music started, it didn't stop. Instruments came out to join the bodhran: guitars, banjos, a violin, and a pair of Irish penny whistles. As soon as one song finished, someone stood up and started another, with the crowd falling in on the chorus.

Austin had a fine tenor. Tim couldn't sing on pitch if his life depended upon it, but there were enough people singing that it didn't matter. I sang until our pizza arrived, then I ate while everyone else sang.

Finally, I got up to refill my soda, and by the time I returned, Samuel had borrowed a guitar and was at the far end of the room leading a rousing chorus of a ribald drinking song.

The only one left at our table was Tim.

"We've been deserted," he said. "Your Dr. Cornick was summoned to play, and Austin's gone out to the car to get his guitar."

I nodded. "Once you get him singing"  -  I waved vaguely to indicate Samuel - "you're in for it for a while."

"Are the two of you dating?" he asked, rolling the Parmesan jar between his hands before setting it down.

I turned to look at Samuel, who was singing a verse alone. His fingers flew on the neck of the borrowed guitar and there was a wide grin on his face.

"Yes," I said, though we weren't really. And wouldn't now. It was less complicated just to say yes rather than explain our situation.

"He's a very good musician," Tim said. Then, his voice so quiet I knew I wasn't supposed to hear him, he murmured, "Some people have all the luck."

I turned back to him and said, "What was that?"

"Austin's a pretty good guitarist, too," he said quickly. "He tried to teach me, but I'm all thumbs." He smiled like it didn't matter, but the skin around his eyes was taut with bitterness and envy.

How interesting, I thought. How could I use this to pry information from him?

"I know how you feel," I confided, sipping my pop. "I was practically raised with Samuel." Except that Samuel had been an adult several times over. "I can plunk a bit on the piano if someone forces me. I can even sing on key - but no matter how hard I worked at it"  -  not very - "I could never sound as good as Samuel. And he never even had to practice." I let a sharp note linger in my voice, a twin to the jealousy he'd revealed. "Everything is so easy for that man."

Zee had told me not to help him.

Uncle Mike told me to stay out of it.

But then I'd never been very good at listening to orders - ask anyone.

Tim looked at me - and I saw him register me as a real person for the first time. "Exactly," he said - and he was mine.

I asked him where he'd learned Welsh, and he visibly expanded as he answered.

Like a lot of people who didn't have many friends, his social skills were a little lacking, but he was smart - and under all that earnest geekiness, funny. Samuel's vast knowledge and charm had made Tim close up and turn into a jerk. With a little encouragement, and maybe the two glasses of beer he'd drunk, Tim relaxed and quit trying to impress me. Before I knew it, I found myself forgetting for a while that I had ulterior motives and got into a spirited argument about the tales of King Arthur.

"The stories came out of the courts of Eleanor of Aquitaine. They were to teach men how to behave in a civilized fashion," Tim said earnestly.

A caller with more volume than tone on the other side of the room called out, "King Louie was the king of France before the Revolu-shy-un!"

"Sure," I said. "Cheat on your husband and your best friend. The only way to find love is through adultery. All good civilized behavior."

Tim smiled at my quip, but had to wait as the whole room responded, "Weigh haul away, haul away Joe."

"Not that," he said, "but that people should strive to better themselves and to do the right thing."

"Then he got his head cut off, it spoiled his constitushy-un!"

I had to hurry to slip in before the chorus. "Like sleep with your sister and beget your downfall?"

"Weigh haul away, haul away Joe."

He gave a frustrated huff. "Arthur's story isn't the only one in the Arthurian cycle or even the most important. Parcival, Gawain, and half a dozen others were more popular."

"Okay," I said. We were getting our timing down now and I started to tune out the music completely. "I'll give you the urge to do heroic deeds, but the pictures they painted of women were right along the lines the Church held. Women lead men astray, and they will betray you as soon as you give them your trust." He started to say something but I was in the middle of a thought and didn't pause. "But it's not their fault - that's just what women do as a result of their weaker natures." I knew better actually, but it was fun to rant.

"That's a simplification," he said hotly. "Maybe the popular versions that were retold in the middle twentieth century ignore most of the women. But just go read some of the original authors like Hartman von Aue or Wolfram von Eschenbach. Their women are real people, not just reflections of the Church's ideals."

"I'll give you Eschenbach," I conceded. "But von Aue, no. His Iweine is about a knight who gave up adventuring because he loved his wife - for which he must atone. So he goes out and rescues women to regain his proper manly state. Ugh. You don't see any of his women rescuing themselves." I waved my hand. "And you can't escape that the central Arthurian story revolves around Arthur, who marries the most beautiful woman in the land. She sleeps with his best friend - thereby ruining the two greatest knights who ever lived and bringing about the downfall of Camelot, just as Eve brought about the downfall of mankind. Robin Hood was much better. Maid Marian saves herself from Sir Guy of Gisbourne, then goes out and slays a deer and fools Robin when she disguises herself as a man."

He laughed, a low attractive sound that seemed to take him as much by surprise as it did me. "Okay. I give up. Guinevere was a loser." His smile slowly died as he looked behind me.

Samuel put his hand on my shoulder and leaned close. "Everything all right?"

There was a stiffness in his voice that had me turning a little warily to look at him.

"I came to rescue you from boredom," he said, but his eyes were on Tim.

"Not bored," I assured him with a pat. "Go play music."

Then he looked at me.

"Go," I said firmly. "Tim's keeping me entertained. I know you don't get much chance to play with other musicians. Go."

Samuel had never been the kind of person who put on graphic public displays of affection. So it took me by surprise when he bent over me and gave me an open-mouth kiss that started out purely for Tim's benefit. It didn't stay there for very long.

One thing about living a long time, Samuel told me once, it gave you a lot of time to practice.

He smelled like Samuel. Clean and fresh, and though he hadn't been back to Montana for a while, he still smelled of home. Much better than Tim's cologne.

And still...and still.

This afternoon, talking to Honey, I'd finally admitted that a relationship between Samuel and I would not work. That admission was making several other things clear.

I loved Samuel. Loved him with all my heart. But I had no desire to tie myself to him for the rest of my life. Even if there had been no Adam, I did not feel that way about him.

So why had it taken me so long to admit it?

Because Samuel needed me. In the fifteen years more or less between the day I'd run away from him and last winter when I'd finally seen him again, something in Samuel had broken.

Old werewolves are oddly fragile. Many of them go berserk and have to be killed. Others pine and starve themselves to death - and a starving werewolf is a very dangerous thing.

Samuel still said and did all the right things, but sometimes it seemed to me that he was following a script. As if he'd think, this should bother me or I should care about that and he'd react, but it was a little off or too late. And when I was coyote, her sharper instincts told me that he was not healthy.

I was deathly afraid that if I told him I would not take him for a mate and he believed me, he would go off someplace and die.

Despair and desperation made my response to his kiss a little wild.

I couldn't lose Samuel.

He pulled away from me, a hint of surprise in his eyes. He was a werewolf after all; doubtless he'd caught some of the grief I felt. I reached up and touched his cheek.

"Sam," I said.

He mattered to me, and I was going to lose him. Either now, or when I destroyed us both fighting the gentle, thorough care he would surround me with.

His expression had been triumphant despite his surprise, but it faded to something more tender when I said his name. "You know, you are the only one who calls me that - and only when you're feeling particularly mushy about me," he murmured. "What are you thinking?"

Samuel is way too smart sometimes.

"Go play, Sam." I pushed him away. "I'll be fine." I hoped that I was right.

"Okay," he said softly, then ruined it by tossing Tim a smug grin. "We can talk later." Marking his territory in front of another male.

I turned to Tim with an apologetic smile for Samuel's behavior that died as I saw the betrayed look on his face. He hid it quickly, but I knew what it was.

Damn it all.

I'd started out with an agenda, but the discussion had made me forget entirely what I was doing. Otherwise I'd have been more careful. It's not often I got a chance to pull out my history degree and dust it off. But still I should have realized that the discussion had meant a lot more to him than it had to me.

He thought I'd been flirting when I'd just been enjoying myself. And people like Tim, awkward and unlikable by most standards, don't get flirted with much. They don't know how to tell when to take it seriously or not.

If I'd been beautiful, maybe I'd have noticed sooner or been more careful - or Tim would have been more guarded. But my mongrel mix hadn't resulted as nicely for me as it had for Adam's second Darryl, who was African (his father was a tribesman from Africa) and Chinese to my Anglo-Saxon and Native American. I have my mother's features, which look a little wrong in the brown and darker brown color scheme of my father.

Tim wasn't dumb. Like most people who don't quite fit in, he'd probably learned in middle school that if a beautiful person paid too much attention to you, like as not, there was another motive.

I'm not bad looking, but I'm not beautiful. I can clean up pretty nice, but mostly I don't bother. Tonight my clothes were clean, but I wasn't wearing any makeup and hadn't taken particular care when I braided my hair to keep it out of my face.

And it had to have been obvious I'd been enjoying the conversation - to the point that I'd forgotten that I was supposed to be gathering information about Bright Future.

All this went through my head in the time it took him to clear his face of the hurt and anger I'd seen. But it didn't matter. I didn't have a clue on how to get out of this without hurting him - which he didn't deserve.

I liked him, darn it. Once he got over himself (which took a little effort on my part), he was funny, smart, and willing to concede a point to me without arguing it into the ground - especially when I thought he was more right than wrong. Which made him a better person than I was.

"A bit possessive, isn't he?" he said. His voice was light, but his eyes were blank.

There was a spill of dry cheese on the table and I played with it a little. "He's usually not bad, but we've known each other a long time. He knows when I'm having fun." There, I thought, a sop for his ego, if nothing else. "I haven't had a debate like that since I got out of college." I could hardly explain that I hadn't flirted on purpose without embarrassing us both, so that was the closest I could come.

He smiled a little, though it didn't go to his eyes. "Most of my friends wouldn't know de Troyes from Malory."

"Actually, I've never read de Troyes." Probably the most famous of the medieval authors of Arthurian tales. "I took a class in German medieval lit and de Troyes was French."

He shrugged...then shook his head and took a deep breath. "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get all moody on you. There was this guy I know. We weren't close or anything, but he was murdered yesterday. You don't expect someone you know to be murdered like that. Austin brought me here because he thought we both needed to get out."

"You knew that guy, the one who was a guard at the reservation?" I asked. I'd have to be careful now. I didn't think that my connection to Zee would have been newsworthy, but I didn't want to lie either. I didn't want to hurt him any more than I already had.

He nodded, "Even though he was pretty much a jerk, he didn't deserve killing."

"I heard they caught some fae they think did it," I said. "Pretty scary stuff. It would bother anyone."

He examined my face, then nodded. "Listen," he said. "I probably ought to collect Austin and go - it's almost eleven and he has to leave for work at six tomorrow. But if you are interested, some friends and I are having a meeting Wednesday night at six. Things are apt to be a bit odd this week - we usually met at O'Donnell's. But we do a lot of discussion about history and folklore. I think you'd enjoy it." He hesitated and then finished in a bit of a rush. "It's the local Citizens for a Bright Future chapter."

I sat back, "I don't know..."

"We don't go out and bomb bars, or anything," he said. "We just talk and write to our congressmen"  -  he smiled suddenly and it lit up his face - "and our congresswomen. A lot of it is research."

"Isn't that a little bit of an odd fit for you?" I asked. "I mean, you know Welsh and, obviously, all sorts of folklore. Most of the people I know like that are - "

"Fairy lovers," he said matter-of-factly. "They go to Nevada on vacation and hang out at the fae bars and pay fae hookers to make them believe for an hour or two that they aren't human either."

I raised my eyebrows. "That's a little harsh, isn't it?"

"They're idiots," he said. "Have you ever read the original Brothers Grimm? The fae aren't big-eyed, gentle-souled gardeners or brownies who sacrifice themselves for the children in their care. They live in the forest in gingerbread houses and eat the children they lure in. They entice ships onto rocks and then drown the surviving sailors."

So, I thought, here was my chance. Was I going to investigate this group and see if they knew anything that would help Zee? Or was I going to back out gracefully and avoid hurting this fragile - and well-informed man.

Zee was my friend and he was going to die unless someone did something. As far as I could tell, I was the only someone who was doing anything at all.

"Those are just stories," I said with just the right amount of hesitation.

"So is the Bible," he said solemnly. "So is every history book you read. Those fairy tales were passed down as a warning by people who could neither read nor write. People who wanted their children to understand that the fae are dangerous."

"There's never been a case of a fae convicted of hurting any human," I said, repeating the official line. "Not in all the years since they officially came out."

"Good lawyers," he said truthfully. "And suspicious suicides by fae 'who could no longer bear being held so near cold-iron bars. "

He was persuasive - because he was right.

"Look," he said. "The fae don't love humans. We are nothing to them. Until Christianity and good steel came along, we were short-lived playthings with a tendency to breed too fast. Afterward we were short-lived, dangerous playthings. They have power, Mercy, magic that can do things you wouldn't believe - but it's all there in the stories."

"So why haven't they killed us?" I asked. It wasn't really an idle question. I'd wondered about it for a long time. The Gray Lords, according to Zee, were incredibly powerful. If Christianity and iron were such a bane to them, why weren't we all dead?

"They need us," he said. "The pure fae do not breed easily, if at all. They need to intermarry in order to keep their race going." He put both hands on the table. "They hate us for that most of all. They are proud and arrogant and they hate us because they need us. And the minute they don't need us anymore, they will dispose of us like we dispose of cockroaches and mice."

We stared at each other - and he could see I believed him because he pulled a small notebook and a pen out of his back pocket and ripped out a sheet of paper.

"We're holding the meeting at my place on Wednesday. This is the address. I think you ought to come." He took my hand and put the piece of paper in it.

As his hands folded around mine, I felt Samuel approach. His hand closed on my shoulder.

I nodded at Tim. "Thank you for keeping me company," I told him. "This was an interesting evening. Thank you."

Samuel's hand tightened on my shoulder before he released it completely. He stayed behind me as I walked out of the pizza place. He opened the passenger door of his car for me, then got in the driver's side.

His silence was unlike him - and it worried me.

I started to say something, but he held up a hand in a mute request for me to be quiet. He didn't seem angry, which actually surprised me after the display he'd put on for Tim. But he didn't start the car and drive off either.

"I love you," he said finally, and not happily.

"I know." My stomach tightened into knots and I forgot all about Tim and Citizens for a Bright Future. I didn't want to do this now. I didn't want to do this ever. "I love you, too." My voice didn't sound any happier than his did.

He stretched his neck and I heard the vertebrae crack. "So why aren't I tearing that little geeky bastard into pieces right now?"

I swallowed. Was this a trick question? Was there a right answer?

"Uhm. You don't seem too angry," I suggested.

He hit the dash of his very expensive car so fast that I didn't even really see his hand move. If his upholstery hadn't been leather, he'd have cracked it.

I thought about saying something funny, but decided it wasn't quite the moment. I've learned a little something since I was sixteen.

"I guess I was mistaken," I said. Nope. Haven't learned a thing.

He turned his head slowly toward me, his eyes hard chips of ice. "Are you laughing at me?"

I put my hand over my mouth, but I couldn't help it. My shoulders started to shake because I suddenly knew the answer to his question. And that told me why it bothered him that he wasn't in a killing rage. Like me, Samuel had had a revelation tonight - and he wasn't happy about it.

"Sorry," I managed. "Sucks, doesn't it?"

"What?"

"You had this great plan. You'd weasel your way into my house and carefully seduce me. But you don't want to seduce me all that much. What you really want to do is cuddle, play, and tease." I grinned at him, and he must have been able to smell the relief pouring off me. "I'm not the love of your life; I'm your pack - and it's really ticking you off."

He said something really crude as he started the car - a nice Old English word.

I giggled and he swore again.

That he didn't really consider me his mate answered a lot of questions. And it told me that Bran, who was both the Marrok and Samuel's father, didn't know everything, even if he and everyone else thought he did. Bran was the one who told me Samuel's wolf had decided I was his mate. He'd been wrong: I was going to rub his nose in it next time I saw him.

Now I knew why Samuel been able to restrain himself and not attack Adam all these months. I'd been crediting Samuel's control with a dash of the magic that comes from being more dominant than most other wolves on the planet. The real answer was that I wasn't Samuel's mate. And since he was more dominant than Adam, if he didn't want to fight, it would make it much easier for Adam to hold off.

Samuel didn't want me any more than I wanted him - not that way. Oh, the physical stuff was there, plenty of spark and fizzle. Which was puzzling.

"Hey, Sam," I asked. "Why is it, if you don't want me as a mate, that when you kiss me, I go up in flames?" Why was it that after the first rush of relief was over - I was starting to feel miffed that he didn't actually want me as a mate?

"If I were human, the heat between us would be enough," he told me. "Damned wolf feels sorry for you and decided to step down."

Now that made no sense at all. "Excuse me?"

He looked at me and I realized he was still angry, his eyes glittering with icy fury. Samuel's wolf has snow-white eyes that are freaking scary in a human face.

"Why are you still angry?"

He pulled over on the shoulder of the highway and stared at the lights of Home Depot. "Look, I know my father spends a lot of time trying to convince the new wolves that the human and wolf are two halves of a whole - but that's not really true. It is just easier to live with and most of the time it's so close to being the truth that it doesn't matter. But we're different, the wolf and the human. We think differently."

"Okay," I said. I could kind of understand that. There were plenty of times when my coyote instincts fought against what I needed to do.

He closed his eyes. "When you were about fourteen and I realized what a gift had been dropped in my lap, I showed you to the wolf and he approved. All I had to do was convince you - and myself." He turned to look me squarely in the eyes and he reached out and touched my face. "For a true mating, it isn't necessary for the human half to even like your mate. Look at my father. He despises his mate, but his wolf decided that he had been alone long enough." He shrugged. "Maybe it was right, because when Charles's mother died, I thought my father would die right along with her."

Everyone knew how much Bran had loved his Indian mate. I think that was part of what made Leah, Bran's current mate, a little crazy.

"So it is the wolf who mates," I said. "Carrying the man along for the ride whether he wants to or not?"

He smiled. "Not quite that bad - except maybe in my father's case, though he's never said anything against Leah. He never would, nor permit anyone else to say anything against her in his hearing either. But we weren't talking about him."

"So you set your wolf on me," I said, "when I was fourteen."

"Before anyone else could claim you. I was not the only old wolf in my father's pack. And fourteen was not an uncommon age for marriage in older days. I couldn't chance a prior claim." He rolled down the window to let the cooler night air flush the stuffy car. The noise of the traffic zipping past us increased dramatically. "I waited," he whispered. "I knew you were too young but..." He shook his head. "When you left, it was a just punishment. We both knew it, the wolf and I. But one moon I found myself outside of Portland where the wolf had taken us. The need...we went all the way to Texas to make sure there was no chance of an accidental meeting. Without distance...I don't know that I could have let you leave."

So, Bran had been right about Samuel after all. I couldn't bear the closed-off look on his face and I put my hand over his.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"You shouldn't be. It wasn't your fault." His smile changed to a lopsided grin as his hand gripped mine almost painfully tight. "Usually things work out better. The wolf is patient and adaptable. Mostly he waits until your human half finds someone to love and then he claims her, too. Sometimes years after they marry. I did it backward on purpose and got caught in the backlash. Not your fault. I knew better."

There's something really disturbing about finding out how little you really know about something you felt like you were an expert on. I grew up with the wolves - and this was all news to me.

"But your wolf doesn't want me now?" That came out pretty pathetic sounding. I didn't need his laugh to tell me so.

"Jerk," I said, poking him.

"Here I thought you were above all that girl stuff," he said. "You don't want me as your mate, Mercy, so why are you miffed that my wolf finally admitted defeat?"

If he'd known how much that last statement told me about how hurt he was that I'd rejected him, I think he'd have bitten off his tongue. Was it better to talk about it - or just let it pass by?

Hey, I may be a mechanic and I may not use makeup very often, but I'm still a girl: it was time to talk it out.

I nudged him. "I love you."

He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned sideways so he could see me without twisting his neck. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. And you're hot - and a terrific kisser. And if your father hadn't interfered, I'd have run away with you all those years ago."

The smile slid off his face, and I couldn't tell what he was feeling at all. Not with my eyes or my nose - which is usually a better indicator. Maybe he was feeling as confused as I was.

"But I'm different now, Samuel. I've been taking care of myself too long to be happy letting anyone else do it. The girl you knew was sure that you would make a place for her to belong - and you would have." I had to say this right. "Instead I made a place for myself and the process changed me into who I am now. I'm not the kind of person you'd be happy with, Samuel."

"I'm happy with you," he said stubbornly.

"As a roommate," I told him. "As a packmate. As a mate mate you'd be unhappy."

He laughed then. "A mate mate?"

I waved an airy hand. "You know what I mean."

"And you're in love with Adam," he said quietly, then a little humor crept into his voice. "You'd better not flirt with that geek in front of Adam."

I raised my chin; I was not going to feel guilty. Nor did I understand my feelings for Adam well enough to discuss them tonight.

"And you're not in love with me." I realized something more and it made me grin at Samuel. "Wolf or not, you aren't in love with me - otherwise you wouldn't have been getting such a charge out of teasing Adam all this time."

"I was not teasing Adam," he said, offended. "I was courting you."

"Nope," I said, settling back in my chair. "You were tormenting Adam."

"I was not." He started the car and pulled out aggressively into the traffic.

"You're speeding," I told him smugly.

He turned his head to say something to put me in my place, but just then the cop behind us lit up.

We were almost home when he decided to quit being offended.

"All right," he said, relaxing his hands on the steering wheel. "All right."

"I don't know what you were so mad about," I said. "You didn't even get a ticket. Twenty miles an hour over the speed limit and all you got was a warning. Must be nice being a doctor."

Once the cop had recognized him, she'd been all kinds of nice. He'd apparently treated her brother after a car wreck.

"There are a couple of cops whose cars I take care of," I murmured. "Maybe if I flirted with them, they'd - "

"I was not flirting with her," he ground out.

He wasn't usually so easy. I settled in for some real fun.

"She was certainly flirting with you, Dr. Cornick," I said, even though she hadn't been. Still...

"She was not flirting with me either."

"You're speeding again."

He growled.

I patted his leg. "See, you didn't want to be stuck with me for a mate."

He slowed as the highway dumped us in Kennewick and we had to travel on city streets for a while.

"You are horrible," he said.

I smirked. "You accused me of flirting with Tim."

He snorted. "You were flirting. Just because I didn't take him apart doesn't mean you aren't fishing in dangerous waters, Mercy. If it had been Adam with you tonight, that boy would be feeding the fishes - or the wolves. And I am not kidding."

I patted his leg again and took a deep breath. "I didn't mean to let it be a flirtation, I just got caught up in the conversation. I should have been more careful with a vulnerable boy like him."

"He isn't a boy. If he's five years younger than you, I'd be surprised."

"Some people are boys longer than others," I told him. "And that boy and his friend were both in O'Donnell's house not too long before he was killed."

I told Samuel the whole story, from the time Zee picked me up until I'd taken the paper from Tim. If I left anything out, it was because I didn't think it was important. Except, I didn't tell him that Austin Summers was probably the brother of one of the boys who beat up on Jesse. Samuel's temper might be easier than Adam's - but he'd kill both boys without a shred of remorse. In his world, you didn't beat up girls. I'd come up with a suitable punishment, but I didn't think anyone needed to die over it. Not as long as they quit bothering Jesse.

That was the only thing I left out. Both Zee and Uncle Mike had left me to my own devices in this investigation. Okay, they'd told me not to investigate, which amounted to the same thing. Proceeding without any help from the fae made investigating riskier than it would have otherwise been, and Zee was already mad at me for sharing what I had. More wouldn't make him any madder. The time for keeping their secrets strictly to myself was over.

If there was one thing I'd learned over the past few interesting (in the sense of the old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times") months, it was that when things started to get dangerous, it was important to have people who knew as much as you did. That way, when I stupidly got myself killed - someone would have a starting place to look for my murderer.

By the time I was finished telling him everything, we were sitting in the living room drinking hot chocolate.

The first thing Samuel said was, "You have a real gift for getting into trouble, don't you? That was one thing I forgot when you left the pack."

"How is any of this my fault?" I asked hotly.

He sighed. "I don't know. Does it matter whose fault it is once you're sitting in the middle of the frying pan?" He gave me a despairing look. "And as my father used to point out, you find your way into that frying pan way too often for it to be purely accidental."

I put aside the urge to defend myself. For over a decade I'd managed to keep to myself, living as a human on the fringe of werewolf society (and that only because, at the Marrok's request, Adam decided to interfere with my life even before he built a house behind mine). It was Adam's trouble that had started everything. Then I'd owed the vampires for helping me with Adam's problems. Clearing that up had left me indebted to the fae.

But I was tired, I had to get up and work tomorrow - and if I started explaining myself, it would be hours before we got back to a useful discussion.

"So, finding myself in the frying pan once again, I came to you for advice," I prodded him. "Like maybe you can tell me why neither Uncle Mike nor Zee wanted to talk about the sea man or how there happened to be a forest and an ocean - a whole ocean - tucked neatly into a backyard and a bathroom. And if any of that could have something to do with O'Donnell's death."

He looked at me.

"Oh, come on," I said. "I saw your face when I told you about the funny things that happened in the rez. You're Welsh, for heaven's sake. You know about the fae."

"You're Indian," he said in a falsetto that I think was supposed to be an imitation of me. "You know how to track animals and build fires with nothing but sticks and twigs."

I gave him a haughty stare. "Actually, I do. Charles - another Indian - taught me."

He waved his hand at me; I recognized the gesture as one of mine. Then he laughed. "All right. All right. But I'm not an expert on the fae just because I'm Welsh."

"So explain that 'ah-ha' expression on your face when I told you about the forest."

"If you went Underhill, you just confirmed one of Da's theories about what the fae are doing with their reservations."

"What do you mean?"

"When the fae first proposed that the government put them on reservations, my father told me he thought that they might be trying to set up territories like they once had in Great Britain and parts of Europe, before the Christians came and started ruining their places of power by building chapels and cathedrals. The fae didn't value their anchors in this world because their magic works so much better Underhill. They didn't defend their places until it was too late. Da believes the last gate to Underhill disappeared in the middle of the sixteenth century, cutting them off from a great deal of their power."

"So they've made new anchors," I said.

"And found Underhill again." He shrugged. "As for not talking about the sea fae...well, if he were dangerous and powerful...you're not supposed to speak about things like that, or name them - it may attract their attention."

I thought about it a moment. "I can see why they'd want to keep it quiet if they've found some way to regain some of their power. So does it have anything to do with figuring out who killed O'Donnell? Did he find out about it? Or was he stealing? And if so, what did he steal?"

He gave me a considering look. "You're still trying to find the killer, even though Zee is being a bastard?"

"What would you do if, in order to defend you from some trumped-up charge, I told a lawyer that you were the Marrok's son?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Surely telling her that there were killings in the reservation doesn't compare?"

I shrugged unhappily. "I don't know. I should have checked with him, or with Uncle Mike, before I told anyone anything."

He frowned at me, but didn't argue anymore.

"Hey," I said with a sigh, "since we're friends and pack now, instead of potential mates, do you suppose you could loan me enough to pay Zee what I owe him for the garage?" Zee didn't make threats. If he told his lawyer to tell me that he expected repayment, he was serious. "I can pay you back on the same schedule I was paying him. That will get you paid off, with interest, in about ten years."

"I'm sure we can arrange something," Samuel said kindly, as if he understood that my change of subject was because I couldn't stand to talk about Zee and my stupidity anymore. "You've got a pretty solid line of credit with me - and Da, for that matter, whose pockets are a lot deeper. You look beat. Why don't you go to sleep?"

"All right," I said. Sleep sounded good. I stood up and groaned as the thigh muscle I'd abused at karate practice yesterday made its protest.

"I'm going out for a minute or two," he said a little too casually - and I stopped walking toward my bedroom.

"Oh, no, you're not."

His eyebrows met his hairline. "What?"

"You are not going to tell Adam that I'm his for the taking."

"Mercy." He stood up, strode over to me, and kissed me on the forehead. "You can't do a damned thing about what I do or don't do. It's between me and Adam."

He left, closing the door gently behind him. Leaving me with the sudden, frightening knowledge that I'd just lost my best defense against Adam.