Beauclaire didn’t say anything, but his attention was so focused it felt electric on my skin. “You think it was quenched in the blood of this ‘river devil.’” He sneered on the last two words.
“‘River devil’ was the name given to it by other people, so don’t blame me for it,” I told him. “But yes. Because after the river devil died, the walking stick changed. It killed the otterkin and … it was aware.”
Beauclaire just watched me, and his eyes reminded me of Medea’s when she crouched outside a mousehole. Waiting.
“I’d broken it,” I admitted frankly. “And I didn’t know what to do about it.”
“You gave it to Siebold Adelbertsmiter,” Beauclaire said, his voice cool, his body ready to rend, and his eyes hungry.
“It wouldn’t let him take it when it first came to me,” I told him. “It wouldn’t have gone with him, so I didn’t even try.”
“Uncle Mike?” That would have bothered him less.
“No. Not Uncle Mike, either. I told you it wouldn’t go with him. What do you know about Native American guesting laws?”
He looked at me for a moment. “Why don’t you explain them to me?”
So I explained how I’d given Lugh’s walking stick to Coyote.
Lugh’s son looked at me in patent disbelief. “You gave it to Coyote? Because he was your guest, and he admired it.”
“That’s right,” I agreed.
He shook his head and muttered something in a language that sounded like Welsh, but wasn’t, because I speak a few words of Welsh. There are more British Isles languages than just Welsh, Irish, Scots, and English—Manx, Cornish, and a host of extinct variants. I have no idea what language Beauclaire spoke.
When he was finished, he looked at me, and asked, “Can you retrieve it?”
“I can try.” I smiled grimly. “I have a better chance of retrieving it from him than you do.”
He stood up. “I swore that I would not go from here empty-handed, and it is not in me to go back on my oath. So I will take from here your word that you will retrieve the walking stick and return it to me within one week’s time.”
“As much as I’d love to agree,” I told him, “I cannot. Coyote is beyond my ability to control. I will look for him and ask when I find him. That I will swear to.”
“One week’s time.” He met my eyes, and what I saw in his gaze made me cold to the bone as I remembered that he’d spoken of tidal waves and drowned cities. “If not, we will have another talk with a less cordial ending.”
He walked out of the kitchen the same way he’d come in; I took the shorter path, near the stairs, and watched as he left. The front door shut behind him with a gentle click.
A car started up. I couldn’t pick out the engine, though it had a low, throaty purr that sounded like something expensive. Nothing I’d worked on very much. He didn’t rev it up, just drove it like a family sedan out of the driveway and down the road.
The sound of Beauclaire’s engine was blending into the distant sounds of the night when I felt a tickling sensation, like someone had pulled mosquito netting off my skin. There was a half-second pause, then Adam, naked and enraged, was at the bottom of the stairs beside me. He looked at me. It was only a momentary look, but the intensity of it told me he saw that I was unharmed and not particularly alarmed. Then he was out the front door.
By the time I retrieved the gun from under the kitchen towels and checked the safety, Adam was back.
“Fae,” he said, sounding calmer than he looked. “No one I’ve smelled before. Who was it, and what did they want with you?”
“Gray Lord,” I told him because he needed to know that it had taken a Power to enspell him and successfully invade our home. “It was Beauclaire—you know, the guy who initiated the fae’s retreat to the reservations. He came looking for the walking stick. Have you seen Medea? He scared the holy spit out of her.”
Adam frowned. “I thought Zee knew about the walking stick. And nothing scares that cat.”
“Apparently she’s good with coyotes, vampires, witches, werewolves, and all the fae who’ve come around before, but Gray Lords are an entirely different proposition.” I started up the stairs. I had to get up in a couple of hours and go to work. Tomorrow, Christy was going to be here. It looked to be a long day, and I wanted to face it with at least the better part of a full night’s sleep. And first I needed to find the cat and make sure she was okay.
“Mercy,” Adam said patiently as he followed me. “Why didn’t Beauclaire know that you’d given the stick to Coyote?”
“As best I can put together,” I told him, “Zee didn’t pass it around widely, and Beauclaire and he are not speaking because Zee killed Beauclaire’s father Lugh in order to quench Excalibur.”
Adam’s footfalls had been steady behind me, but at that last they paused. He started up again, and said, “Dealing with the fae is always full of surprises.”
His hand came to rest on my back, then slid lower as he took advantage of being two steps below me and nipped at my hip. “So,” he said gruffly, “what did Lugh’s son say when you told him that you gave his walking stick to Coyote?”
“That I have a week to get it back.”
Adam’s hand curved around my hip and pulled me to a stop at the top of the stairs.
“Or?” His voice was a growl that slid over my skin and warmed me from the outside in.
“We have another talk,” I told him, doing my best to make it sound a lot less threatening than Beauclaire had. I didn’t want my husband out hunting Gray Lords because someone had threatened his family. “It won’t come to that. I’ll find out how to contact Coyote. I’ll call Hank in the morning.” Hank was another walker like me, though his second form was a hawk. He lived an hour and a half from the Tri-Cities and was my information source for most of what I knew about being a walker. “If he doesn’t know, he should be able to hook me up with Gordon Seeker. Gordon will know.” Gordon Seeker was Thunderbird, the way Coyote was Coyote. He liked to travel around in the guise of an old Indian with a thing for the gaudiest version of cowboy wear I’d ever seen.
Adam put his forehead against my shoulder. “No trouble you can’t handle, then.”
“I’m more worried about Christy,” I told him, and it was almost true.
He laughed without joy and pulled me tighter against him. “Me, too.” He whispered, “Don’t believe everything she says, okay? Don’t leave without talking to me.”
I turned around, and said fiercely, “Never. Not even if I talk to you first. You aren’t getting away now, buster.”
He dove for my mouth, and when he was finished ensuring that neither of us was going to get much sleep for a while, he said, “Remember that. We’re both likely to be clinging to that thought by the time this is over.”
I coaxed the bolt out with sweet words and steady, light hands.
I had already done all that I could this morning to find Coyote short of shouting his name into the open air—which I would have if I thought it would do any good. All I could do now was wait for the phone. Not that the fae was the only thing I worried about, or even the thing I was most worried about. Adam was, just about now, picking Christy up from the airport.
Mechanicking took my full concentration, letting my worries about the fae and Adam’s ex-wife fade in the face of a problem I could actually do something about.
The Beetle had been worked on by amateurs for decades, and the bolt that was turning so reluctantly was a victim of years of abuse. Her edges were more suggestions than actual corners, making getting her out of the ’59 Beetle a little tricky. So far I hadn’t had to resort to the Easy Out, and I was starting to get optimistic about my chances of success.
Someone cleared their throat tentatively and scared the bejeebers out of me—though I managed not to jump. He was standing behind me—a strange man, who was also a strange werewolf, my nose told me belatedly. Thankfully, he’d stayed back, waiting just outside the open garage-bay door.
Tad was twenty feet away in the office—and the stranger was probably only a customer who’d come around to the open garage bays instead of to the office. It happened all the time. I was perfectly safe. Reason didn’t have much effect on my spiking heartbeat and the shaft of terror that was my body’s reaction to being startled by a strange man in my garage.
I’d been assaulted a while ago. Just when I thought I was over it, some stupid little thing would bring it back.
I nodded stiffly at him, then visibly focused on the job ahead, no matter where my panicky attention really was. I kept talking to the bolt, finding the soothing tones surprisingly useful even if they were my own. I fought to regain control by the time the bolt came out. Every twist, I told myself, meant I had to calm a little more. To my relief, the silly exercise worked—six twists of the wrench, and I was no longer on the verge of shaking, tears, and (more rare, but what it lacked in frequency it made up for in humiliation) throwing up on a perfect stranger.
I set the wrench down and turned with a smile to face him. He had stayed right where he had been—at a polite and safe distance. He didn’t look directly at me, either—he was a werewolf, he’d know that I had panicked, but he’d allowed me to save face. Points to him for courtesy.
He was neither tall nor short for a man and carried himself pulled tightly toward his core. Arms in, shoulders in, head tipped down. His hair was curly and pulled back in a short ponytail. He looked as though he could use a good meal and a pat on the head.
“I’m looking for a place to be,” he said. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder that looked as old as the Beetle I was repairing. Maybe it was.
Several years ago, another werewolf had approached me at the garage, looking for a place to be. He was dead.
I nodded at this new wolf, to show him that I heard him and that I was not rejecting his almost request. But between panic attack and memory, words were beyond me at the moment.
“I called the home number of the local Alpha.” He’d given me time to talk and sounded a little stressed when he had to break the silence. “The girl that answered sent me here when I told her I didn’t have easy means of transport out that far. The city bus got me over here.” He glanced over his shoulder as if he’d rather have been anywhere else. It dawned on me that the reason he wasn’t looking me in the face had more to do with him than with my almost–panic attack. “I drift, you know? Don’t like to stay anywhere long. I’m bottom of the pack, so that means I don’t cause no trouble.”
His American accent was Pacific Northwest, but there was something about the rhythm of his words that made me think that English was not his native tongue, though he was comfortable in it. “Bottom of the pack,” like his averted eyes, meant submissive wolf: they tended to live longer than other werewolves because they weren’t so likely to end up on the losing end of a fight to the death. Submissive wolves also got to travel because no Alpha would turn down a submissive wolf—there weren’t many of them, and they tended to help a pack function more smoothly.
Honey’s mate, Peter, who had been killed a few months ago, had been our only submissive after Able Tankersley left. A wolf I’d only been barely acquainted with, Able had taken a job offer in San Francisco. It was not only the violence of Peter’s death but his absence that was affecting the pack. A new submissive wolf would be welcome.
“Bran send you to us?” I asked.
“Hell no,” he said, with emphasis. “Though he gave me a list of numbers when I told him I was drifting this way. Neither of us knew I would end up here at the time.” He looked out the garage door, again, at the bare beginnings of spring. “Don’t think I’ll stay here long, though. Hope you don’t take it amiss. I don’t generally stay where it’s hot, and I heard tell at the bus depot that this place gets scorching in the summer.”
“That’s fine. Do you need a place to stay?”
He gave my garage a dubious look, and I laughed. “I don’t know how much you know. I’m Mercy Hauptman, and my husband’s the Alpha here. We have extra bedrooms at home—that are open to pack members who need them.” Maybe with another visitor, the effects of Christy’s stay would be diluted.
“I’m Zack Drummond, Ms. Hauptman. I’d be grateful for a room tonight, but after that, I’d rather find my own place.”
“All right,” I said. “I’m headed out there at five thirty”—usually it was closer to six thirty, but usually my husband’s ex wouldn’t have been running around in my territory that used to be hers—“if you want to catch a ride. I can’t officially welcome you to the pack, that’s my husband’s job, but we don’t have a submissive in our pack, and we could use one.”
“If I can’t find another way out,” he said, “I’ll be here at five fifteen.”