13
THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY WE PAINTED THE GARAGE. True
to his word, Wulfe had removed the crossed bones. The least he
could have done was repaint the door, but he’d managed to remove
the bones and leave the graffiti that had covered them alone. I
thought he’d done it just to bug me.
Gabriel’s sisters had voted for pink as the new
color and were very disappointed when I insisted on white. So I
told them they could paint the door pink.
It’s a garage. What can it hurt?
“It’s a garage,” I told Adam, who was looking at
the Day-Glo pink door. “What can it hurt?”
He laughed and shook his head. “It makes me squint,
even in the dark, Mercy. Hey, I know what I can get you for your
next birthday,” he said. “A set of open-end wrenches in pink or
purple. Leopard print, maybe.”
“You have me confused with my mother,” I said with
dignity. “The door was painted with cheap spray paint—as no
reputable paint company had anything this gaudy in their color
palette. Give it a couple weeks, and it’ll turn this sickly
orangish pink color. Then I can hire them to paint it brown or
green.”
“Police have searched Blackwood’s house,” Adam told
me. “They haven’t found any sign of Blackwood or Amber. Officially,
they believe Amber might have run off with Blackwood.” He sighed.
“I know that it tarnishes Amber unfairly, but it was the best story
we could come up with and still leave her husband in the
clear.”
“The people who matter know,” I told him. Amber
didn’t have any immediate family she cared for. In a few months, I
was tentatively planning a trip to Mesa, Arizona, where Char was
living. I’d tell her, because Char was the only other person Amber
would care about. “No one is going to get into trouble about this,
are they?”
“The people who matter know,” he answered with a
faint smile. “Unofficially, Blackwood scared the bejeebers out of a
lot of people who are glad to see him gone. No one will take it
further.”
“Good.” I touched the bright white wall next to the
door. It looked better. I hoped that it wouldn’t scare away
customers. People are funny. My customers look at my
run-down-appearing garage and know they are saving the money I
don’t put into face-lifts.
Tim’s cousin Courtney had paid for all of the paint
and labor in return for my dropping the charges against her. I
figured she had been hurt enough.
“I heard you and Zee worked out something on the
garage.”
I nodded. “I have to repay him immediately—he said
so, and he is fae so it must be done. He’s going to loan me the
money to do it at the same interest rate as the original
loan.”
He grinned and opened the pink door so I could
precede him inside. “So you’re paying him the same amount as
before?”
“Uncle Mike came up with it, and it made Zee
happy.” Amused him was more like it. All the fae have a strange
sense of humor.
Stefan was sitting on my stool by the cash
register. He’d spent two nights unmoving in Adam’s basement, then
disappeared without a word to either Adam or me.
“Hey, Stefan,” I said.
“I came to tell you that we no longer share a
bond,” he told me stiffly. “Blackwood broke it.”
“When?” I asked. “He didn’t have time. You answered
my call—and it wasn’t very long after that when Blackwood
died.”
“I imagine when he fed from you again,” Stefan
said. “Because when Adam called me to tell me you’d disappeared, I
couldn’t find you at all.”
“Then how did you manage to find me?” I
asked.
“Marsilia.”
I looked at his face, but I couldn’t read how much
it had cost him to ask for her help. Or what she’d demanded in
return.
“You didn’t tell me,” Adam said. “I’d have gone
with you.”
The vampire smiled grimly. “Then she would have
told me nothing.”
“She knew where Blackwood denned?” Adam
asked.
“That’s what I hoped.” Stefan picked up a pen and
played with it. I must have used it last because his fingers
acquired a little black grease for his trouble. “But no. What she
did know was that Mercy had a message for me with a blood-and-wax
seal. Her blood. She could track the message. Since it was just
outside of Spokane, we were both pretty sure Mercy still had it
with her.”
That reminded me. I pulled the battered missive out
of my back pocket. It hadn’t gone through the wash with my
jeans—but only because Samuel had a habit of checking pockets
before he did laundry. Something about nuts and bolts in the dryer
being irritatingly noisy—I thought that was directed at me, but I
could have been paranoid.
Stefan took the letter like I was handing him a
bottle of nitroglycerine. He opened it and read. When he was
through, he balled it up in a fist and stared at the counter.
“She says,” he told us in a low, controlled voice,
“that my people are safe. She and Wulfe took them and convinced me
that they had died—so I would believe it. It was necessary that I
believe they were dead, that Marsilia no longer wanted me in the
seethe. She has them safe.” He paused. “She wants me to come
home.”
“What are you going to do?” Adam asked.
I was pretty sure I knew. But I hoped that he made
her work like hell for it. She might not have killed his people,
but she’d hurt them—Stefan had felt it.
“I’m going to take the matter under advisement,” he
said. But he straightened out the note and read it again.
“Hey, Stefan,” I said.
He looked up.
“You’re pretty terrific, you know? I appreciate all
the chances you took for me.”
He smiled, folded the letter carefully. “Yeah, well
you’re pretty terrific yourself. If you ever want to be dinner
again sometime ...” He popped out of the office without saying
good-bye.
“Better collect your purse,” said Adam. “We don’t
want to be late.”
Adam was taking me to Richland, where the local
light opera company was performing The Pirates of Penzance.
Gilbert and Sullivan, pirates and no vampires, he’d promised
me.
It was a great production. I laughed until I was
hoarse and came out humming the final number. “Yes,” I told him. “I
think the guy playing the Pirate King was awesome.”
He stopped where he was.
“What?” I asked, frowning at the big smile on his
face.
“I didn’t say I liked the Pirate King,” he told
me.
“Oh.” I closed my eyes—and there he was. A warm,
edgy presence right on the edge of my perception. When I opened my
eyes, he was standing right in front of me. “Cool,” I told him.
“You’re back.”
He kissed me leisurely. When he was finished, I was
more than ready to head home. Fast.
“You make me laugh,” he told me seriously.
I WENT BACK TO MY HOUSE TO SLEEP SAMUEL WAS
working until the early-morning hours, and I wanted to be there
when he got home.
I stopped before I went in because something was
different. I took a deep breath but didn’t smell any vampires
lurking at my door. But there was an oak tree next to my bedroom
window.
It hadn’t been there when I’d left this morning to
go paint. But there it was, with a trunk nearly two inches around
and branches that were a couple of feet taller than my trailer.
There was no sign of freshly turned earth, just the tree. Its
leaves were starting to change color for the autumn.
“You’re welcome,” I said. When I started back to go
into the house, I tripped over the walking stick. “Hey. You’re
back.”
I set it on my bed while I showered, and it was
still there when I got out. I put on one of Adam’s flannel shirts
because the fall nights were pretty nippy and my roommate didn’t
want to turn up the heat. And because it smelled like Adam.
When the doorbell rang, I pulled on a pair of
shorts and left the stick where it was.
Marsilia stood on the porch. She was wearing
low-rise jeans and a low-cut black sweater.
“My letter was opened tonight,” she told me.
I folded my arms over my chest and did not invite
her in. “That’s right, I gave it to Stefan.”
She tapped a foot. “Did he read it?”
“You didn’t actually kill his people,” I told her
in a bored voice. “You just hurt them and ripped his ties from them
so he’d think they died.”
“You disapprove?” She raised an eyebrow. “Any other
Master would have killed them—it would have been easier. If he had
been himself, he’d have known what we’d done.” She smiled at me.
“Oh, I see. You were worried about his sheep. Better hurt a little
and alive—wouldn’t you say?”
“Why are you here?” I asked her.
Her face went blank, and I thought she might not
answer. “Because the letter was read, and Stefan did not
come.”
“You tortured him,” I said hotly. “You almost
forced him to do something he’d never willingly do—”
“I wish he’d killed you,” she told me sincerely.
“Except that would have hurt him. I know Stefan. I know his
control. You were never in any danger.”
“He doesn’t believe that,” I told her. “Now you
throw him a bone. ‘Look, Stefan, we didn’t really kill your people.
We tortured you, hurt you, abandoned you—but it was all in a good
cause. We meant Andre to die, and let you twist in guilt for months
because it served our purpose.’ And you wonder why he didn’t come
back to you.”
“He understands,” she said.
“I do.” Stefan’s hands came down upon my shoulders,
and he pulled me a few inches back from the threshold of the door.
“I understand the why and the how.”
She stared at him ... and for a moment I could see
how old, how tired she was. “For the good of the seethe,” she told
him.
He put his chin on the top of my head. “I know.” He
wrapped both arms around me just above my chest and pulled me
against him. “I’ll come back. But not right now.” He sighed into my
hair. “Tomorrow. I’ll get my people from you then.” And he was
gone.
Marsilia looked at me. “He’s a soldier,” she told
me. “He knows about sacrificing himself for the good of the whole.
That’s what soldiers do. It’s not the torture he can’t forgive me
for. Nor deceiving him about his people. It’s because I put you in
harm’s way he is so angry.” Then she said, very calmly, “If I could
kill you, I would.”
And she disappeared, just like Stefan had.
“Right back atcha,” I told the space where she had
been.