Whitman was a doctor and a missionary, and he gained a reputation in the local tribes (Walla Walla, Nez Percé, and Cayuse mostly) as a spiritual leader and a man of powerful medicine. When measles swept through the Cayuse tribe, they turned to him for help he could not provide. The disaster that ensued was not, strictly speaking, the fault of either the Cayuse or the Whitmans, who were all doing what they believed to be right.
The symbolic irony of this meeting between werewolf, vampire, and fae at a hotel named after Marcus Whitman did not go over my head. I hoped our results were better than those Whitman and the Cayuse achieved.
The road to Walla Walla was one of those winding highways that meandered through small towns along the way instead of speeding right past them with nothing more than an exit to mark their place. As I rode shotgun next to Adam, following Thomas Hao’s white Subaru down the narrow highway to Walla Walla, we passed the road that used to lead to the fae reservation. “How do you want to play this?” I asked Adam, abruptly tired of the quiet in the car. I felt itchy with readiness, and the quiet, centered calm in both men irritated me.
“Nothing to plan,” he said.
When I snorted, he grinned at me. It wasn’t a lighthearted grin, but there was amusement in it. “There is no reason to overthink things, Mercy. We don’t know who we’re going to see or what they are going to say. We can’t plan except in the most general of fashions. We’ll let Margaret get her say in first—that’s courtesy. We’ll work our business in as we can. Probably that will be very short and sweet for our part. We’ll let them tell us what they are looking for if it gets that far. That part is up to them as well. It may be that we all just snap threats at each other and go home. I won’t know how to play it until we at least know who we’re playing with.”
He was right. I knew he was right. But I needed something to do, something to think about, so I could quit scaring myself with what-ifs, even if that meant talking about what-ifs. Adam was very good at making them less scary than my imagination did.
“There are only a few things we know for certain,” he said, as if he could hear my restlessness. “Zee isn’t going to let anything happen to Margaret. Thomas can take care of himself.” Then his voice dropped into a low, dangerous tone that was nothing like the easy, relaxed attitude he’d been portraying. “And nothing is getting past me to you.”
I absorbed that—the tone, not the words or intent behind it; those I already knew. Part of the magic of his voice was the Southern softness that blurred his consonants even when his accent wasn’t strong. Part of it was the reliable confidence behind every word—I just knew there was no guile, give, or hesitation in this man the first time I heard him speak. At the time, it had been frustrating and annoying.
But mostly, when he dropped his voice that way, it caressed something inside me—like he’d stroked the back of my neck without touching me. It made me want to melt into a puddle at his feet and settled my restlessness right down.
He knew it, too. He smiled a little and turned his attention back to driving. I glanced at Zee. “How about you? Are you planning or running by the seat of your pants, too?”
Zee smiled happily. Somehow it was worse than his usual tightly sour smile—even though the happy was real. Maybe it was because the happy was real. “I will keep my old enemy’s daughter safe. Sometime soon, I will deal with the fae who have offended me in such a way that others avoid annoying me for another century or two. That’s a good plan for the next few weeks, I think. Findest du nicht auch?”
He didn’t really expect an answer. “Don’t you find it so?” is usually a rhetorical question, especially with Zee, who seldom cares for other people’s opinions at the best of times.
We drove for a while longer, and I got restless again. Maybe if I started fidgeting, Adam would let me drive. Maybe someone could start a conversation so I would quit worrying about how wrong this night could go.
“Why so quiet?” I asked Adam.
“I’m planning my moves,” he said. “I think I’ll walk to the left of Thomas and Margaret. Studies show that right-handed people look right before they look left. That will give me a psychological advantage. Then I’ll walk at half speed—”
“I could smack you,” I said. “Just saying.”
“I’m driving,” he answered meekly. “And you shouldn’t hurt the one you love.”
“Flirt on your own time, Lieblings,” advised Zee. “I am too old for it—you could give me a heart attack.”
“You’d have to have a heart for that threat to work,” I said, and happily settled in for a game of insults with Zee.
—
We parked next to Thomas’s car. It was nearly full dark—close enough to it that the vampire had discarded his hoodie and stood, looking elegant, in his usual bright-colored silk shirt. This one was an iridescent pearly blue, with an embroidered dark blue or black dragon crawling over his shoulder and down his arm.
He opened the door for Margaret and stood watching her struggle to get out. He didn’t move a muscle, but I could feel the willpower it took not to help. Adam was right, Thomas was a goner. People who say that vampires don’t care about anyone except themselves are mostly right—but sometimes they are very and lethally wrong.