5
“SOME DATE,” ADAM MURMURED. IT DIDN’T MATTER HOW
quiet he was; we both knew that most of the pack was inside his
house listening to us as we stood on his back porch.
“No one could ever accuse you of being boring,” I
said lightly.
He laughed with sober eyes. He’d scrubbed up in the
bathroom at Uncle Mike’s and changed as soon as we’d made it back
to his house. But I could still smell the blood on him.
“You need to see to Mary Jo,” I told him. “I need
to go to bed.” She would survive, I thought. But she’d survive
better with me at home and not disrupting the pack, who was forcing
her to fight to live.
He hugged me for not saying all of that out loud.
He lifted me to my toes—clad in a pair of Jesse’s flip-flops—and
set me back down. “You go scrub your feet clean first so none of
those cuts get infected. I’ll send Ben over to watch your house
until Samuel is satisfied with Mary Jo’s condition and goes
home.”
Adam watched from the porch as I walked home. I
wasn’t halfway there when Ben caught up with me. I invited him in,
but he shook his head.
“I’ll stay outside,” he said. “The night air keeps
my head clear.”
I scrubbed my feet and dried them before I went to
bed. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. But I woke up
while the dark still held sway, knowing that there was someone in
my room. Though I listened closely, I couldn’t hear anyone—so I was
pretty sure it was Stefan.
I wasn’t worried. The vampires, except Stefan,
wouldn’t have been able to cross the threshold of my home. Most
anyone else would have woken Samuel.
The air told me nothing, which was odd—even Stefan
had a scent. Restlessly, I rolled onto my side and right up against
the walking stick, which had taken to sleeping with me every night.
Mostly it gave me the creeps when it did that—walking sticks
shouldn’t be able to move about on their own. But tonight the warm
wood under my hand felt reassuring. I closed my hand around
it.
“There’s no need for violence, Mercy.”
I must have jumped because I was on my feet, stick
in hand, before it registered just whose voice I was hearing.
“Bran?”
And suddenly I could smell him, mint and musk that
told me werewolf combined with the certain sweet saltiness that was
his own scent.
“Don’t you have something more important to do?” I
asked him, flipping on the light. “Like ruling the world or
something?”
He didn’t move from his spot on the floor, leaning
against a wall, except to put his forearm over his eyes as light
flooded the room. “I came here last weekend,” he said. “But you
were asleep, and I didn’t let them wake you up.”
I’d forgotten. In the hubbub of Baba Yaga, Mary Jo,
the snow elf, and the vampires, I’d forgotten why he would have
come to visit me personally. Suddenly I was suspicious of the arm
he’d thrown over his eyes.
That Alphas are protective of their packs is an
understatement—and Bran was the Marrok, the most Alpha wolf around.
I might belong to Adam’s pack just now, but Bran had raised
me.
“I already talked it all over with Mom,” I said
defensively.
And Bran grinned hugely, his arm coming down to
reveal hazel eyes, which looked almost green in the artificial
light. “I bet you did. Are my Samuel and your Adam hovering over
you and giving you a bad time?” His voice was full of (false)
sympathy.
Bran is better than anyone I know, including the
fae, at hiding what he is. He looked like a teenager—there was a
rip in his jeans, just over the knee, and some ironic person had
used a marker to draw an anarchy symbol just over his thigh. His
hair was ruffled. He was perfectly capable of sitting around with
an innocent smile on his face—and then ripping someone’s head
off.
“You’re frowning at me,” he said. “Is it such a
puzzle that I’m here?”
I dropped to the middle of the floor. It is
uncomfortable for me to be in the same room for very long with Bran
if my head is higher than his. Part of it is habit, and part of it
is the magic that makes Bran the leader of all the wolves.
“Did someone call you about Adam bringing me into
the pack?” I asked.
This time Bran laughed, his shoulders shaking, and
I saw how tired he was.
“I’m glad I amuse you,” I told him grumpily.
Behind me the door opened, and Samuel said
cheerily, “Is this a private party, or can anyone join?”
How cool was that? In one sentence, one word
actually (party), Samuel told his father that we weren’t going to
talk about Tim or why I’d killed him, and that I was going to be
okay. Samuel was good at things like that.
“Come in,” I said. “How’s Mary Jo?”
Samuel sighed. “Da, let me tell you now. If I am
dead, and a fae offers to heal me—I’d prefer you tell her no.” He
looked at me. “I think she’ll be fine, eventually. But she’s not
very happy right now. She’s dazed and shocky to an extent I’ve
never seen before in a wolf. At least she’s not crying anymore.
Adam finally forced her change, and that helped a lot. She’s
sleeping with Paul, Alec, Honey, and few others on the monstrosity
of a couch Adam keeps in the TV room in the basement.”
He gave his father a keen-eyed look, then sat on
the floor beside me—and that was a message, too. He wasn’t between
Bran and me, not precisely. But he could have sat beside Bran. “So
what brings you here?”
Bran smiled at him, having seen the message Samuel
wanted him to. “You don’t have to protect her from me,” he said
softly. “We’ve all seen she does a pretty good job of protecting
herself.”
With the wolves, there is always a lot more going
on in a conversation than just the words. For instance, Bran had
just told us that he’d seen the video, from the security camera, of
me killing Tim ... and of everything else, too. And that he’d
approved of my actions.
It shouldn’t have pleased me so much; I was no
child. But Bran’s opinion still meant a lot.
“And yes,” he told me after a moment, “someone
called me about Adam bringing you into the pack. Lots of someones.
Let me tell you the answers to the questions I’ve been asked, and
you can pass them on to Adam. No. I had no idea it was possible to
bring someone who was not a werewolf into the pack. Especially you,
upon whom magic can be unpredictable. No. Once done, only Adam or
you can break those ties. If you want me to show you how, I will.”
He paused.
I shook my head ... and then tempered it. “Not
yet.”
Bran gave me an amused look under his eyebrows.
“Fine. Just ask. And no, I’m not mad. Adam is Alpha of his pack. I
do not see how anyone has been harmed by this.” Then he grinned,
one of the rare smiles he had when he wasn’t acting, just genuinely
amused. “Except maybe Adam. At least he doesn’t have a Porsche you
can wrap around a tree.”
“That was a long time ago,” I said hotly. “I paid
for that. And after you practically dared me to steal it, I don’t
see why you were so angry about it.”
“Telling you not to take it out wasn’t daring you,
Mercy,” Bran said patiently ... but there was something in his
voice.
Was he lying?
“Yes, it was,” said Samuel. “And she’s right—you
knew it.”
“So you didn’t have any reason to be so mad I
wrecked the car,” I said, triumphantly.
Samuel laughed out loud. “You still haven’t figured
it out, have you, Mercy? He never was mad about the car. He was the
first one at the scene of the accident. He thought you’d killed
yourself. We all did. That was a pretty spectacular wreck.”
I started to say something and found I couldn’t.
The first thing I’d seen after hitting the tree was the Marrok’s
snarling face. I’d never seen him that angry—and I’d done a lot,
from time to time, to inspire his rage.
Samuel patted me on the back. “It’s not often I see
you absolutely speechless.”
“So you had Charles teach me how to fix cars and
how to drive them.” Charles was Bran’s oldest son. He hated to
drive, and until that summer I’d thought he couldn’t drive. I
should have known better—Charles can do anything. And everything he
did, he did very well. That’s only one of the reasons that Charles
intimidates me and everyone else.
“Kept you busy and out of trouble for a whole
summer,” said Bran smugly.
He was teasing ... but serious as well. One of the
oddest things about being grown-up was looking back at something
you thought you knew and finding out the truth of it was completely
different from what you had always believed.
It gave me courage to do what I did next.
“I need some advice,” I told him.
“Sure,” he said easily.
I took a deep breath and started with my killing
Marsilia’s best hope of returning to Italy, jumped to Stefan’s
appearance in my living room and the unexpected visit from my old
college nemesis, and ended it all with the nearly fatal adventure
at Uncle Mike’s and the little bag that smelled like vampires and
magic. I told him about Mary Jo and my fear that if I told Adam
about the bag, it would cause a war.
“I’ll stop by and see if I can help Mary Jo,” Bran
said after I’d finished. “I know a few tricks.”
Samuel looked relieved. “Good.”
“So,” I told Bran, “it is my fault. I chose to go
after Andre. But Marsilia’s not attacking me.”
“You expected a vampire to be straightforward?”
asked Bran.
I supposed I had. “Amber gives me a reason to get
out of town for a little while. Without me around, Marsilia might
leave everyone else alone.” And it would give me a chance to think
through my response. A day or two to figure out something that
wouldn’t lead to more killing.
“And give Adam and me a chance to mount a proper
response,” Samuel growled.
I started to object ... but they had the right to
go on the offensive. The right to know that they were
targets.
As long as Mary Jo survived, Adam wouldn’t bring a
war to Marsilia’s doorstep. And if Mary Jo didn’t survive ...
Perhaps Marsilia was crazy. I’d seen that kind of madness in the
Marrok’s pack, where the oldest wolves often came to die.
“If you leave, Marsilia might take that as a
victory,” said Bran. “I don’t know her well enough to know if that
will help you or hurt you in the end. I do think that getting out
of here for a few days might not be a bad idea.”
He didn’t say Marsilia would quit targeting my
friends, I noticed. I was pretty sure Uncle Mike would figure out
that the vampires had used his place to target the wolves—and if I
thought that, Marsilia surely would. She must be truly furious if
she was willing to anger Uncle Mike and enrage Adam in order to get
to me.
I was betting that if I left, she’d wait, because
she wanted me to witness the pain I’d made her rain down upon my
friends. But I wasn’t sure. Still, it wouldn’t hurt.
“The problem is ... there’s something a little off
about Amber’s offer. Or maybe just after Tim ...” I swallowed. “I’m
afraid to go.”
Bran looked at me with keen yellow eyes, weighing
something in his mind. “Fear is a good thing,” he said at last. “It
teaches you not to make the same mistake twice. You counter it with
knowledge. What are you afraid of?”
“I don’t know.” Which wasn’t the right
answer.
“Gut check,” Bran said. “What does your gut tell
you?”
“I think that maybe it’s the vampires again. Stefan
lands in my lap to give me a good scare—and look, here’s a way out.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.”
Samuel was already shaking his head. “Marsilia
isn’t going to send you to Spokane to get you out of our protection
before she takes care of you. Not that it isn’t a good idea, but
she’d send you to Seattle maybe, she has some allies there. But in
Spokane, there’s only one vampire, and he doesn’t allow visitors.
There are no packs, no fae, nothing but a few powerless creatures
who manage to stay out of his sight.”
I felt my eyes widen. Spokane is a city of nearly
half a million people. “That’s a lot of territory for a single
vampire.”
“Not for that single vampire,” said Samuel at the
same time Bran said, “Not for Blackwood.”
“So,” I said slowly. “What will this vampire do if
I stay in Spokane for a few days?”
“How would he know?” Bran asked. “You smell like
coyote. But a coyote smells a lot like a dog to someone who doesn’t
hunt in the forests—which I assure you, James Blackwood doesn’t
do—and most dog owners smell like their pets. I wouldn’t want you
to move to Spokane, but a couple of days or weeks won’t put you in
danger.”
“So do you think it’s a good idea if I go?”
Bran raised his hip and pulled his cell phone out
of his back pocket.
“Don’t you break them like that?” I asked. “I
killed a couple of phones by sitting on them.”
He just smiled and said into the phone, “Charles, I
need you to find out about an Amber ... ?” He looked at me and
raised an eyebrow.
“Sorry to wake you, Charles. Chamberlain was her
maiden name,” I told Samuel’s brother apologetically. “I don’t know
her married name.” Charles would hear me as clearly as I heard him.
Private phone calls around werewolves needed headsets, not a cell
phone speaker.
“Amber Chamberlain,” Charles repeated. “That should
limit it to a hundred people or so.”
“She lives in Spokane,” I said. “I went to college
with her.”
“That helps,” he told us. “I’ll get back to
you.”
“Arm yourself with knowledge,” said Bran when he
hung up. “But I don’t see why you shouldn’t go.”
“Take some insurance with you.”
“It’s Stefan,” I shouted. Before I had the last
word out of my mouth, Bran had Stefan up against the opposite wall
from where he’d been sitting.
“Da.” Samuel was on his feet as well, a hand on his
father’s shoulder. He didn’t try to pry Bran’s hands off Stefan’s
neck—that would have been stupid. “Da. It’s all right. This is
Stefan. Mercy’s friend.”
After a very long couple of seconds, Bran stepped
back and dropped his hands from Stefan’s throat. The vampire hadn’t
fought back, which was good.
Vampires are tough, maybe tougher than wolves
because vampires are already dead. Stefan had been one of
Marsilia’s lieutenants, powerful in his own right. He’d been a
mercenary in life ... which had been in Renaissance Italy.
But Bran is Bran.
“That was stupid,” said Samuel to Stefan. “What
part of ‘never sneak up on a werewolf’ don’t you understand?”
The Stefan I knew would have bowed gracefully,
expressed his apologies with a hint of humor. This Stefan gave a
stiff jerk of his neck. “I’m no use here. It’s a good idea to get
Mercy out of the line of fire—she’s the weakest target. Send me to
keep her safe in Spokane.” He sounded almost eager ... and I
wondered what he’d been doing since he’d left Adam’s. What was
there for him to do? Maybe I wasn’t the only one who was trying to
find some action to take that wouldn’t get me and everyone I cared
about killed.
Still, I couldn’t let him get away with calling me
... “Weak?” I said.
Samuel turned on Stefan with a growl. “Stupid
vampire. My father had her nearly talked into going, and you ruined
it.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I hoped going to
Spokane would keep my friends safe, and they hoped me going to
Spokane would keep me safe. Maybe we were both right.
Bran’s phone rang, and we all listened to Charles
tell us that Amber was married to Corban Wharton, a moderately
successful corporate lawyer about ten years her senior. They had an
eight-year-old son with some sort of disability, hinted at in
various newspaper articles but not expressly stated. He rattled off
an address or two, cell phone numbers and real phone numbers ...
and social security numbers and most recent tax reports, personal
and business. For an old wolf, Charles knows how to make computers
sit up and beg.
“Thank you,” said Bran.
“I can go back to sleep now?” asked Charles. He
didn’t wait for an answer, just hung up his end of the
connection.
I looked at Samuel. “It will make your life easier
if I leave.”
He nodded. “We can protect ourselves ... but you
are too vulnerable. And if you aren’t here, if Marsilia doesn’t
know where you are, we can get her to the table for
negotiations.”
Bran looked at Stefan. “A vampire might draw too
much attention in Spokane.”
Stefan shrugged. “I’m not without resources. I was
in this room for a quarter of an hour, and none of you noticed me.
If I feed well, no one will know what I am.”
“You always smell like vampire to me,” I told him.
Vampire and popcorn. The good buttery kind. No, I don’t know why.
I’ve never seen him eat the stuff—I don’t know that vampires
can.
He raised his hands. “No one without Mercy’s nose,
then. If I’m in the room with the Monster, then perhaps he’ll
notice. Otherwise, he’ll never know I was there. I’ve done it
before.”
“The Monster?” Samuel asked.
“James Blackwood.”
Vampires give titles to some of the more powerful
ones. Stefan was the Soldier because he’d been a mercenary. Wulfe
was the Wizard ... and I knew he could do some magic. I resolved to
stay away from any vampire that other vampires called the
Monster.
“There is this, too,” Stefan said. “I can jump from
one location to another—and I can take Mercy with me.”
“How far?” asked Bran with sudden intentness.
Stefan shrugged ... and never quite straightened
up, as if it was too much trouble. “Anywhere. But taking another
person with me has a cost. I’ll be useless for a day afterward.” He
looked at me. “I have the address.” He’d have overheard Charles
give it to the rest of us. “I can get there tonight and find a safe
place nearby to spend the day.”
Bran raised an eyebrow at me.
“I’ll call Amber in the morning,” I said. It felt
like running away, but Bran seemed to think it was the right thing
to do.
Stefan swept me a perfect bow and disappeared
before he stood up.
“He used to hide his ability to do that,” I told
them. It worried me that he wasn’t hiding it anymore. As if it
didn’t matter what people knew about him.
Samuel smiled at me. “You decided to go to Spokane
because he needs to do something, didn’t you? You were all set to
stay until he started looking pathetic.” I gave him a look, and he
raised his hands in surrender. “I didn’t say he didn’t have a
reason to look pathetic. You just need to remember that sad sack or
not, he’s still a vampire—and more than a match for you if he
decides not to be friendly. You’ve cost him a lot, Mercy. He might
not be your friend.”
I hadn’t thought about it that way. So I did, for
maybe a tenth of a second. “If he was mad at me, he’d have killed
me when he dropped in here starving. For that matter he could have
come here anytime tonight and killed me. You need me gone—so quit
trying to make trouble.”
Samuel frowned at me. “I’m not trying to make
trouble. But you have to remember he is a vampire, and vampires are
not nice guys, no matter how chivalrous and gallant Stefan appears.
I like him, too. But you are trying to forget what he is.”
I thought about the two dead people whose only
crime was that they had seen me when I staked Andre. “I know what
he is,” I said stubbornly.
“Vampire,” said Bran. “Evil, yes.” He grinned, and
it made him look like he should be going to high school. “But I
think his Mistress made a mistake when she chose to throw him
away.”
“She broke him,” I said. And looking into Samuel’s
eyes, I whispered, “You stay safe, you and Adam. I’ll keep Stefan
busy looking for ghosts.”
If I was really looking for ghosts, of course, it
would be stupid to bring Stefan. Ghosts don’t like vampires, and
they won’t come out when there are vampires around. Samuel knew
that, and he grinned at me with serious eyes. “We’ll be
fine.”
“Call me if you need me,” said Bran—to both of us,
I thought. “If I’m going to stop in to have a look at Mary Jo, I
need to go now.” He kissed me on my forehead, then did the same to
Samuel (who had to bend down). I didn’t know if he really knew who
Mary Jo was, or just seemed to. But I’d never seen him meet a wolf
he didn’t know by name.
Speaking of which ... “Hey, Bran?”
Halfway to the door, he turned back.
“What about that girl we sent to you? The one who
was Changed so young and hadn’t learned control. Is she all
right?”
He smiled and looked a lot less tired. “Kara? She
did fine last moon. Give her a few more months, and she’ll be fully
in control.” Waving casually over his shoulder, he walked out into
the dark.
“Get some rest,” I called after him. He shut the
front door behind him without answering.
We listened while Bran drove off—in a doubtlessly
rented Mustang. Once he was gone, Samuel said, “You have a few
hours. Why don’t you get some more sleep? I think I’ll hop the
fence to Adam’s and see what Da does for Mary Jo.”
“Why didn’t he just call?” I asked.
Samuel reached out and ruffled my hair. “He was
checking up on you.”
“Well,” I said. “At least he didn’t ask me if I was
okay. I think I’d have had to do something to him if he had.”
“Hey, Mercy,” said Samuel with false solicitude,
“are you okay?”
I punched him, connecting only because he hadn’t
expected it. “I am now,” I told him, as he dropped to the ground
and rolled—as if I’d really had some force behind my fist, which I
hadn’t.
SPOKANE IS ABOUT 150 MILES NORTHEAST OF THE
TRICITIES , and you know you’re getting close when you start seeing
trees.
My cell phone rang, and I answered without pulling
over. I usually obey the law, but I was late.
“Mercy?” It was Adam, and he wasn’t happy with me.
I guessed Samuel had told him about the vampires being responsible
for the debacle at Uncle Mike’s. I’d told him he could do it once I
was safely out of town.
“Uh-huh.” I pulled around an RV as we chugged up a
small hill. It’d pass me on the downhill side, but I had to take my
passing pleasures where I could—Vanagons are not speed demons. One
of these days I was going to put a Subaru flat six in it and see
what that would do. “Before you yell at me for not telling you
about the vampires, you should know that I am risking a ticket by
talking to you while I drive. Do you really want me to get a ticket
for letting you yell at me?”
He gave a reluctant laugh, so I supposed he wasn’t
too upset. “You’re still on the road? I thought you left this
morning.”
“Fixed a shift linkage in a Ford Focus at that rest
stop near Connell,” I told him. “Nice lady and her dog were stuck
after having a clutch job done by her brother-in-law. He hadn’t
tightened down a few bolts, and one of them fell off. Took me an
hour or so before we found someone who had a bolt and nut the right
size.” And I had the oil stains across my shoulders and the grit in
my hair to prove it. In my Rabbit I kept a towel to put on the
ground. I also kept a selection of useful car bits. It was going to
be a while before my Rabbit was up and running.
“How is Mary Jo?”
“She’s sleeping for real now.”
“Bran helped?”
“Bran helped.” I could hear the smile in his voice.
“You be careful ghost hunting—and don’t let Stefan bite you.”
There was just a little edge to the last.
“Jealous?” I asked. Yep. The RV passed me on the
downhill.
“Maybe a little,” he said.
“Don’t be. We’ll be fine. Ghosts aren’t as
dangerous as crazy vampire ladies.” I couldn’t help the anxiety
that crept into my voice.
“I’ll be careful—and Mercy?”
“Uhm?”
“Consider yourself yelled at,” he purred, then hung
up.
I grinned at the phone and closed it.
AMBER’S DIRECTIONS TO HER HOUSE HAD BEEN CLEAR and
easy to follow. The relief in her voice when I’d called that
morning made me want to believe she really had a ghost problem and
wasn’t part of some secret vampire conspiracy to get me somewhere
I’d be easier to kill. Despite Bran’s assurances that it was
unlikely Marsilia would ship me off to Spokane, I was still feeling
... not paranoid, really. Cautious. I was feeling cautious.
Zee had agreed to work the shop while I was gone. I
probably could have gotten him to work cheaper than usual because
he was still feeling guilty about stuff that wasn’t his fault.
Cheaper would mean I could eat peanut butter instead of ramen
noodles for the rest of the month, but I didn’t think any of it was
his fault.
He had talked to Uncle Mike about the crossed bones
on my door. Definitely vampire work, he told me. The bones meant
that I had broken faith with the vampires and was no longer under
their protection—and anyone offering me aid of any kind was likely
to find themselves on the wrong side of the vampires as well. The
broad interpretation of that was horrifying. It meant that people
like Tony and Sensei Johanson were at risk, too.
It meant that it was probably a good thing that I
get out of town for a few days and figure out how to limit the
number of victims Marsilia could claim.
Amber lived in a Victorian mansion complete with a
pair of towers. The brick porch had been freshly tuck-pointed, the
gingerbread work around the roof edge and the windows bore a new
coat of paint. Even the roses looked ready for magazine
display.
Frowning at the leaded glass glistening in the sun,
I wondered when I’d last cleaned the windows in my house. Had I
ever cleaned the windows? Samuel might have.
I was still thinking about it when the door opened.
A startled boy gawked at me, and I realized I hadn’t rung the
doorbell.
“Hey,” I said. “Is your mom home?”
He recovered quickly and gave me a shy look out of
a pair of misty green eyes under long, thick eyelashes, and turned
to ring the bell I hadn’t.
“I’m Mercy,” I told him, while we waited for Amber
to emerge from the depths of the house. “Your mom and I went to
school together.”
His wary look deepened, and he didn’t say anything.
So I guessed she hadn’t told him anything.
“Mercy, I was beginning to think you weren’t
coming.” Amber sounded harassed and not at all grateful, and that
was before she saw what I looked like—covered in old oil and
parking-lot dirt.
Her son and I turned to look at her.
She still looked like a show dog, but her eyes were
stressed. “Chad, this is my friend who is going to help us with the
ghost.” As she spoke, her hands flew in a graceful dance, and I
remembered Charles had said her son had some sort of disability: he
was deaf.
She turned her attention to me, but her hands still
moved, letting her son know what she was saying. “This is my son,
Chad.” She took a deep breath. “Mercy, I’m sorry. My husband has a
client coming over for dinner tonight. He didn’t tell me until just
a few minutes ago. It’s a formal dinner ...”
She looked at me, and her voice trailed off.
“What?” I said letting sharpness creep into my
voice at the insult. “Don’t I look like I’m up to a formal dinner?
Sorry, the stitches in my chin don’t come out for at least a
week.”
Suddenly she laughed. “You haven’t changed a bit.
If you didn’t bring anything suitable, you can borrow something of
mine. The guy who’s coming is actually pretty well house-trained
for a cutthroat businessman. I think you’ll like him. I’ve got to
do some inventorying and run to the grocery store.” She tilted her
head so her son could see her mouth. “Chad, would you take Mercy to
the guest room?”
He gave me another wary look, but nodded. As he
went back inside the house and started up the stairs, Amber told
me, “I’d better warn you, my husband is pretty unhappy about the
ghost. He thinks Chad and I are making it up. If you could manage
not to mention it at dinner in front of his client, I’d appreciate
it.”
THERE WAS A BATHROOM ACROSS FROM THE ROOM I WAS
staying in. I took my suitcase and went in to scrub up. Before I
stripped off my grimy shirt, I closed my eyes and took a deep
breath.
Sometimes ghosts only appear to one sense or
another. Sometimes I can only hear them—sometimes I can smell them.
But the bathroom smelled like soap and shampoo, water, and those
stupid blue tablets some people who didn’t have pets put in their
toilets.
I didn’t see anything or hear anything either. But
that didn’t keep the hair on the back of my neck from rising as I
pulled off my shirt and stuffed it into the plastic compartment in
my suitcase. I scoured my hands until they were mostly clean and
brushed the dirt out of my hair and rebraided it. And all the while
I could feel someone watching me.
Maybe it was only the power of suggestion. But I
cleaned up as fast as I could anyway. No ghostly writing appeared
on the walls, no one appeared in the mirror or moved stuff
around.
I opened the bathroom door and found Amber waiting
impatiently right in front of the door. She didn’t notice that
she’d startled me.
“I have to take Chad to softball practice, then do
some shopping for dinner tonight. Do you want to come?”
“Why not?” I said with a casual shrug. Staying in
that house alone didn’t appeal to me—some ghost hunter I was.
Nothing had happened, and I was already jumpy.
I took shotgun. Chad frowned at me, but sat in
back. I didn’t think I impressed him much. No one said anything
until we dropped Chad off. He didn’t look happy about going. Amber
proved that she was tougher than me because she ignored the
puppy-dog eyes and abandoned Chad to his coach’s indifferent
care.
“So you decided not to become a history teacher,”
Amber said as she pulled away from the curb. Her voice was tight
with nerves. The stress was coming from her end, I thought—but then
she’d never been relaxing company.
“Decided isn’t quite the word,” I told her. “I took
a job as a mechanic to support myself until a teaching position
opened ... and one day I realized that even if someone offered me a
job, I’d rather turn a wrench.” And then, because she’d given me
the opening, “I thought you were going to be a vet.”
“Yes, well, life happened.” She paused. “Chad
happened.” That was too much honesty for her though, and she
subsided into silence. In the grocery store, I wandered away while
she was testing tomatoes—they all looked good to me. I bought a
candy bar, just to see how much she’d changed.
Not that much. By the time she’d finished lecturing
me on the evils of refined sugar, we were almost back to the house.
She was feeling a lot more comfortable—and she finally told me more
about her ghost.
“Corban doesn’t believe we’re haunted,” she told me
as she threaded her way through the city. She glanced at my face
and away. “I haven’t actually seen or heard anything either. I just
told him I had, so he’d leave Chad alone.” She took a deep breath
and looked at me again. “He thinks Chad might do better at a
boarding school—a private place for troubled kids that a friend of
his recommended.”
“He didn’t look troubled to me,” I said. “Aren’t
‘troubled’ kids usually doing drugs or beating on the neighbor’s
kids?” Chad had looked like he’d rather have stayed home and read
than go to play ball.
Amber gave a nervous half laugh. “Corban doesn’t
get along very well with Chad. He doesn’t understand him. It’s the
old Disney cliché of a quarterback dad and bookworm son.”
“Does Corban know he’s not Chad’s father?”
She hit the brakes so hard that if I hadn’t been
belted in, I might have become better acquainted with her
windshield. She sat there in the middle of the road for a moment,
oblivious to the honking horns around us. I was glad we were in a
stout Mercedes rather than the Miata she’d driven to my
house.
“You forget,” I said blandly. “I knew Harrison,
too. We used to joke about his eyelashes, and I’ve never see eyes
like his since. Not until today.” Harrison had been her one true
love for about three months until she dropped him for a premed
student.
Amber started forward again and drove for a little
until traffic settled down. “I’d forgotten you knew him.” She
sighed. “Funny. Yes, Corban knows he’s not Chad’s father, but Chad
doesn’t. It didn’t used to matter, but I’m not so sure. Corban’s
been ... different lately.” She shook her head. “Still, he’s the
one who suggested I ask you to come over. He saw the article in the
paper, and said, ‘Isn’t that the girl you said used to see ghosts?
Why don’t you have her come over and have a look-see?”’
I figured I’d been pushy enough, so I asked a
question that was less intrusive. “What does the ghost do?”
“Moves things,” she told me. “It rearranges Chad’s
room once or twice a week. Chad says he’s seen the furniture moving
around.” She hesitated. “It breaks things, too. A couple of vases
my husband’s father brought over from China. The glass over my
husband’s diploma. Sometimes it takes things.” She glanced at me
again. “Car keys. Shoes. Some important papers of Cor’s turned up
in Chad’s room, under his bed. Corban was pretty mad.”
“At Chad?”
She nodded.
I hadn’t even met him, and I didn’t like her
husband. Even if Chad was doing everything himself—and I had no
evidence to the contrary—throwing him into reform school didn’t
sound like the way to make things better.
We picked up a morose Chad, who didn’t seem
inclined to converse, and she quit talking about the ghost.
AMBER WAS WORKING IN THE KITCHEN. I’D TRIED TO
HELP but she finally sent me to my room to stay out of her way. She
didn’t like the way I peeled apples. I’d brought a book from home—a
very old book—with real fairy tales in it. It was borrowed and I’d
have to return it soon, so I was reading as fast as I could.
I was taking notes on kelpies (thought extinct)
when someone knocked at my door twice and then opened it.
Chad stood with a notebook and a pencil in
hand.
“Hey,” I said.
He turned the notebook around and I read, “How much
is my dad paying you?”
“Nothing,” I said.
His eyes narrowed, and he ripped away that page and
showed me the next one. Evidently he’d thought about this for a
while. “Why are you here? What do you want?”
I set my book aside and stared back at him. He was
tough, but he wasn’t Adam or Samuel: he blinked first.
“I have a vampire who wants to kill me,” I told
him. Which I shouldn’t have, of course, but I wanted to see what
would happen. Curiosity, Bran has told me more than once, might be
as fatal for coyotes as it is for cats.
Chad crumpled the paper and mouthed a word.
Evidently he hadn’t expected that response.
I raised my eyebrow. “Sorry. You’ll have to do
better. I don’t lip-read.”
He scribbled furiously. “Lyer” said his
paper.
I took his pencil, and wrote, “liar.” Then I gave
him back his notebook, and said, “You want to bet?”
He clutched his notebook to his chest and stalked
off. I liked him. He reminded me of me.
Fifteen minutes later his mother barged in. “Red or
purple?” she asked me, still sounding frantic. “Come with
me.”
Bewildered, I followed her down the hall and into
the master bedroom suite, where she’d laid out two dresses. “I only
have five minutes before I have to put the rolls in,” she said.
“Red or purple?”
The purple had considerably more fabric. “Purple,”
I said. “Do you have shoes I can borrow, too? Or do you want me to
go barefoot?”
She gave me a wild-eyed look. “Shoes I have, but
not nylons.”
“Amber,” I told her. “I will put on high heels for
you. And I will wear a dress. But you aren’t paying me enough to
wear nylons. My legs are shaved and tan, that’ll have to do.”
“We can pay you. How much do you want?”
I looked but couldn’t tell if she was joking or
not. “No charge,” I told her. “That way I can leave when things get
scary.”
She didn’t laugh. I was pretty sure Amber used to
have a sense of humor. Maybe.
“Look,” I told her. “Take a deep breath. Find the
shoes for me, and go put your rolls in the oven.”
She did take a deep breath, and it seemed to
help.
When I went back to my room, Chad was there again
with his notebook. He was staring at the walking stick on my bed. I
hadn’t brought it with me, but it had come anyway. I wished I could
ask it what it wanted from me.
I picked it up and waited until he was looking at
me so he could read my lips. “This is what I use to beat problem
children with.”
He clutched his notebook tighter, so I guessed his
lipreading skills were up to par. I put the stick back on the bed.
“What did you want?”
He turned his notebook around and showed me a
newspaper article that had been cut out and was taped to a page of
his notebook. “Alpha Werewolf’s Girlfriend Kills Attacker” it said.
There was a picture of me looking battered and dazed. I didn’t
remember anyone taking pictures, but there were large chunks of
that night I was pretty shaky on.
“Yes,” I said, like my stomach didn’t suddenly
hurt. “Old news.”
He turned the page, and I saw he had another
observation for me. “There R no vampyrs.” I guessed spelling wasn’t
his strong suit. Even at ten, I’d been able to spell “are.”
“Okay, thanks,” I said. “Good to know. I guess I’ll
go home tomorrow.”
He dropped his hands to his sides, the notebook
swaying back and forth with irritation like a cat’s tail. He knew
sarcasm when he heard it, even if he was lip-reading it.
“Don’t worry, kid,” I told him more gently. “I’m
not a part of the plot to send you off to kid-prison. If I don’t
see anything, it doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to see. And I’ll
tell your father so, too.”
He blinked his eyes furiously, hugged his notebook
again. He lifted his chin—a smaller, less-stubborn version of his
mother’s. And he left.
AMBER TROTTED UP THE STAIRS DOUBLE TIME AND waved
to me as she went past. I heard her knock, then open a door. “You
need to clean up, too,” she told her son. “You don’t have to eat
with us—there’s a plate in the microwave—but I don’t want you
scuttling around trying to be unseen, either. You know how that
irritates your father. So comb your hair, wash your hands and
face.”
I stripped off my clothes and pulled on the purple
dress. It fit just fine—a little tight in the shoulders and snugger
in the hips than I preferred, but when I looked at it in the
full-length mirror, it looked just fine. Amber, Char, and I had
always been able to trade clothes with each other.
The heels were higher than was comfortable, but as
long as we were staying in the house, they should be all right.
Char’s feet had been smaller than Amber’s and mine. I brushed out
my hair again, then French-braided it. A touch of lipstick and
eyeliner, and I was good to go.
I wished it was Adam I was about to eat with
instead of Amber, her jerk of a husband, and some important client.
It was enough to make me wish I had a plate in the microwave,
too.